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Greek Political Thought
This wide-ranging history of ancient Greek political thought shows what ancient political texts might mean to citizens of the twenty-first century.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 17, 2005
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July 10, 2019
So enormous are the donations and contributions of the Greek thinkers, particularly of Plato and Aristotle, that English poet S.T. Coleridge once said that 'everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. There is almost no danger at all, that the primacy and importance of the Greek political thought will be forgotten. The outstanding qualities of Plato and Aristotle will see to that. Certainly in the past, thinkers have, on the whole, recognized their greatness, often making a foe of one and a friend of the other. One might as well begin studying Greek politics with this shimmering acknowledgment that political thought, as we know in the West, was the invention of the Greeks. As they say: prior to the Greeks, ‘government’ and ‘theories’ had, of course, existed, but were scarcely political as we comprehend them.
Ryan Balot of University of Toronto took me personally by storm with his 2001 work ‘Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens’, where he goes on to afford a historical and sociological elucidation of classical Athens vis-a-vis the perception of ravenousness and greed. The work under discussion here
is a work of pure genius – it is masterful in execution. The product description delineates five headers which account for the brilliance of this book. They are: a) A provocative and wide-ranging history of ancient Greek political thought; b) Demonstrates what ancient Greek works of political philosophy might mean to citizens of the twenty-first century; c) Examines an array of poetic, historical, and philosophical texts in an effort to locate Greek political thought in its cultural context; d) Pays careful attention to the distinctively ancient connections between politics and ethics and e) Structured around key themes such as the origins of political thought, political self-definition, revolutions in political thought, democracy and imperialism.
Each and every word of the depiction falls in place delightfully.
Looking at the advance of political thought in Europe we instigate our exploration from the Greeks. An answer to the question as to why it started with the Greeks, the author says, is that they were the first to have ‘rationality’. Even though the Greeks were religious minded, they concurrently were very matter-of-fact and never hesitated to adjudicate everything in the in the light of rationale and experience. The basis for the same is credited with the inauguration of political thought itself. Balot opines that it was only in ancient Greece that citizens were liberated and enjoyed scores of opportunities to think for their own, which noticeably assisted in the mellowness of the practice of freethinking. In a word the absence of despotism was what, if truth be told, acted as a windfall for ancient Greek traditions.
The coherent intellect of the Greeks was further enriched, as the author shows, by regional Democracies universally termed as The City-state. This institution of city-state created lush ground of steady political experiments and out of these experiments emerged political thought.
For the Greeks the thought of the State and the Individual was indistinguishable and overlapping. Both the individual and the state were very much analogous to their moral principle and ethical activity. In other words, the individuals could not have any separate moral rationale from the state and accordingly, there was faultless resemblance between the two. The Greeks were familiarized to assume ‘individual’ and ‘state’ as standing upon similar ground. They were mindful that any dissimilarity would customarily generate a friction between the two and that would be rather detrimental to the good of the state.
In the antiquity, Chinese, Egyptians or even the the Hindus, and others made conjectures regarding political influence, but none save the Greeks could produce an articulate and orderly thought. It becomes particularly astonishing when we see ancient Greek philosophers and private teachers engaged themselves in seeking rational answers to the basic questions of political philosophy and putting them to close scrutiny in their small ken of city-states.
The author comes up with a host of decisive resons and seeks to ascertain the causes of Greek primacy. The Greeks possessed a secular thinking and as such religious motive appealed little to them. They did not view the state as a spiritualist entity or an object of celestial origin. Instead they sought to scrutinize its composition and traits from a cogent standpoint. The city-states witnessed a rapid cycle of growth and decay. Barring Sparta, every other city-state saw a recurrent ascend and plummet of their constitutional systems. Balot holds that changes from one system to another, i.e., from monarchy to aristocracy, thereon to tyranny and, finally, to democracy supplied much material for critical enquiry. The afterward striving of democracy for the sake of its own survival provided further impetus for political debate. These speculations assumed additional weight when direct democracy failed to prove itself as the best system. The political thought made advancement owing to the pervasiveness of direct democracy. It gave the people a convenient instruction in political life. In their popular assemblies, councils and courts, it was a common Greek custom, to speak unreservedly on political, philosophical and psychological questions
The author logically proves that deplorable affairs such as the execution of Socrates, the refutation of Plato's political philosophy by the Syracusan tyrant and Alexander's cruel verdict amounting to capital punishment awarded to his teacher Aristotle significantly shaped and influenced the political ideas of Greek thinkers. Each city-state had its own political system and was proud of it. Pericles bragged of his Athenian lineage. He said: "Our government is not copied from those of our neighbours”. Such a swank, the author holds, might have initiated the spirit of antagonism in the political sphere and also sharpened the quest for evolving a political system of the state.
Greek political thought developed out of need of correcting a political theory that had already been experimented with. The Sophists gave ideas that in some way deeply countered the Phythagoreanism of Sicily. Socrates corrected much of Sophism by assault on of his dialectical method. Plato's Republic was a great attack on the Sophistic traditions. Aristotle's Politics contained a condemnation of some theories of Plato and his predecessors. Greek politics proceeded through dialectics. Close inter-action between the state and society provided much material for the study of political thought. A man who was a vigorous member of the society became a lively member of the state, and the rapport between state and society unsurprisingly became a study of political science.
Through the eleven chapters into which the book is conveniently divided, the author upholds the fact that Greek political thinkers conceived state as the product of a creative mind. They examined the composition and attributes of state from a rational angle of vision. They regarded the state as a natural association so much so that only a god or a beast could live without it. The Greeks conceived state not as a purely legal or merely political entity but as a moral association. They took it is a 'partnership in virtue.' They also viewed state as an organic whole in which all parts 'were welded into each other. Moreover, -they believed that this organism belonged not as such to the sphere of law and politics as to the domain of morality.
The four base-points which a reader would carry home through a careful reading of this book are : 1) Greeks placed attention on the phenomena of authority. Both, Plato and Aristotle thought that this was an essential element of any' political association; 2) The place of ethics in political life, was essential. Political science was the study of political values and the means of achieving them; 3) The field of political science was an extraordinarily broad one. The political art or the air of governing was considered as involving almost every discipline in what we now call 'social sciences' and 4) It was heavily and curiously 'culture bound'.
In his afterword to the book, the author hints at the fact that the Greeks set the tone for the centuries of political writing which included concepts of politics almost totally oriented to political community as an abstraction towards legal authority and the institutions exercising it, and towards the proper relationship between, political order and good life.
Paul Cartledge of the University of Cambridge nails it, when he says: "Balot′s historical and narrative approach has the huge merit of combining ancient context and modern relevance. Balot eavesdrops on Plato, Aristotle and their forerunners and successors to bring us the hot political news. His lively brand of ′virtue politics′ should instruct the advanced undergraduate and graduate student audience at which it is aimed, as well as refresh the parts of the established academy that drier scholarship cannot reach. Written in an easy and attractive style, Greek Political Thought promises to stimulate a vivacious dialogue between ancient and modern political concerns."
Great bibliography to round the book off!!
Ryan Balot of University of Toronto took me personally by storm with his 2001 work ‘Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens’, where he goes on to afford a historical and sociological elucidation of classical Athens vis-a-vis the perception of ravenousness and greed. The work under discussion here
is a work of pure genius – it is masterful in execution. The product description delineates five headers which account for the brilliance of this book. They are: a) A provocative and wide-ranging history of ancient Greek political thought; b) Demonstrates what ancient Greek works of political philosophy might mean to citizens of the twenty-first century; c) Examines an array of poetic, historical, and philosophical texts in an effort to locate Greek political thought in its cultural context; d) Pays careful attention to the distinctively ancient connections between politics and ethics and e) Structured around key themes such as the origins of political thought, political self-definition, revolutions in political thought, democracy and imperialism.
Each and every word of the depiction falls in place delightfully.
Looking at the advance of political thought in Europe we instigate our exploration from the Greeks. An answer to the question as to why it started with the Greeks, the author says, is that they were the first to have ‘rationality’. Even though the Greeks were religious minded, they concurrently were very matter-of-fact and never hesitated to adjudicate everything in the in the light of rationale and experience. The basis for the same is credited with the inauguration of political thought itself. Balot opines that it was only in ancient Greece that citizens were liberated and enjoyed scores of opportunities to think for their own, which noticeably assisted in the mellowness of the practice of freethinking. In a word the absence of despotism was what, if truth be told, acted as a windfall for ancient Greek traditions.
The coherent intellect of the Greeks was further enriched, as the author shows, by regional Democracies universally termed as The City-state. This institution of city-state created lush ground of steady political experiments and out of these experiments emerged political thought.
For the Greeks the thought of the State and the Individual was indistinguishable and overlapping. Both the individual and the state were very much analogous to their moral principle and ethical activity. In other words, the individuals could not have any separate moral rationale from the state and accordingly, there was faultless resemblance between the two. The Greeks were familiarized to assume ‘individual’ and ‘state’ as standing upon similar ground. They were mindful that any dissimilarity would customarily generate a friction between the two and that would be rather detrimental to the good of the state.
In the antiquity, Chinese, Egyptians or even the the Hindus, and others made conjectures regarding political influence, but none save the Greeks could produce an articulate and orderly thought. It becomes particularly astonishing when we see ancient Greek philosophers and private teachers engaged themselves in seeking rational answers to the basic questions of political philosophy and putting them to close scrutiny in their small ken of city-states.
The author comes up with a host of decisive resons and seeks to ascertain the causes of Greek primacy. The Greeks possessed a secular thinking and as such religious motive appealed little to them. They did not view the state as a spiritualist entity or an object of celestial origin. Instead they sought to scrutinize its composition and traits from a cogent standpoint. The city-states witnessed a rapid cycle of growth and decay. Barring Sparta, every other city-state saw a recurrent ascend and plummet of their constitutional systems. Balot holds that changes from one system to another, i.e., from monarchy to aristocracy, thereon to tyranny and, finally, to democracy supplied much material for critical enquiry. The afterward striving of democracy for the sake of its own survival provided further impetus for political debate. These speculations assumed additional weight when direct democracy failed to prove itself as the best system. The political thought made advancement owing to the pervasiveness of direct democracy. It gave the people a convenient instruction in political life. In their popular assemblies, councils and courts, it was a common Greek custom, to speak unreservedly on political, philosophical and psychological questions
The author logically proves that deplorable affairs such as the execution of Socrates, the refutation of Plato's political philosophy by the Syracusan tyrant and Alexander's cruel verdict amounting to capital punishment awarded to his teacher Aristotle significantly shaped and influenced the political ideas of Greek thinkers. Each city-state had its own political system and was proud of it. Pericles bragged of his Athenian lineage. He said: "Our government is not copied from those of our neighbours”. Such a swank, the author holds, might have initiated the spirit of antagonism in the political sphere and also sharpened the quest for evolving a political system of the state.
Greek political thought developed out of need of correcting a political theory that had already been experimented with. The Sophists gave ideas that in some way deeply countered the Phythagoreanism of Sicily. Socrates corrected much of Sophism by assault on of his dialectical method. Plato's Republic was a great attack on the Sophistic traditions. Aristotle's Politics contained a condemnation of some theories of Plato and his predecessors. Greek politics proceeded through dialectics. Close inter-action between the state and society provided much material for the study of political thought. A man who was a vigorous member of the society became a lively member of the state, and the rapport between state and society unsurprisingly became a study of political science.
Through the eleven chapters into which the book is conveniently divided, the author upholds the fact that Greek political thinkers conceived state as the product of a creative mind. They examined the composition and attributes of state from a rational angle of vision. They regarded the state as a natural association so much so that only a god or a beast could live without it. The Greeks conceived state not as a purely legal or merely political entity but as a moral association. They took it is a 'partnership in virtue.' They also viewed state as an organic whole in which all parts 'were welded into each other. Moreover, -they believed that this organism belonged not as such to the sphere of law and politics as to the domain of morality.
The four base-points which a reader would carry home through a careful reading of this book are : 1) Greeks placed attention on the phenomena of authority. Both, Plato and Aristotle thought that this was an essential element of any' political association; 2) The place of ethics in political life, was essential. Political science was the study of political values and the means of achieving them; 3) The field of political science was an extraordinarily broad one. The political art or the air of governing was considered as involving almost every discipline in what we now call 'social sciences' and 4) It was heavily and curiously 'culture bound'.
In his afterword to the book, the author hints at the fact that the Greeks set the tone for the centuries of political writing which included concepts of politics almost totally oriented to political community as an abstraction towards legal authority and the institutions exercising it, and towards the proper relationship between, political order and good life.
Paul Cartledge of the University of Cambridge nails it, when he says: "Balot′s historical and narrative approach has the huge merit of combining ancient context and modern relevance. Balot eavesdrops on Plato, Aristotle and their forerunners and successors to bring us the hot political news. His lively brand of ′virtue politics′ should instruct the advanced undergraduate and graduate student audience at which it is aimed, as well as refresh the parts of the established academy that drier scholarship cannot reach. Written in an easy and attractive style, Greek Political Thought promises to stimulate a vivacious dialogue between ancient and modern political concerns."
Great bibliography to round the book off!!
Displaying 1 of 1 review