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The Athenian Revolution : Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory / Josiah Ober.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©1996Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691217970
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 321.8/0938/5 20
LOC classification:
  • JC75.D36 O24 1996
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgment -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction: Athenian Democracy and the History of Ideologies -- CHAPTER 2. Models and Paradigms in Ancient History -- CHAPTER 3. Public Speech and the Power of the People in Democratic Athens -- CHAPTER 4. The Athenian Revolution of 508/7 B.C.: Violence, Authority, and the Origins of Democracy -- CHAPTER 5. The Rules of War in Classical Greece -- CHAPTER 6. Thucydides, Pericles, and the Strategy of Defense -- CHAPTER 7. Power and Oratory in Democratic Athens: Demosthenes 21, Against Meidia -- CHAPTER 8. The Nature of Athenian Democracy -- CHAPTER 9. The Athenians and Their Democracy -- CHAPTER 10. How to Criticize Democracy in Late Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athens -- CHAPTER 11. The Polis as a Society: Aristotle, John Rawls, and die Athenian Social Contract -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.
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Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780691217970

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgment -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction: Athenian Democracy and the History of Ideologies -- CHAPTER 2. Models and Paradigms in Ancient History -- CHAPTER 3. Public Speech and the Power of the People in Democratic Athens -- CHAPTER 4. The Athenian Revolution of 508/7 B.C.: Violence, Authority, and the Origins of Democracy -- CHAPTER 5. The Rules of War in Classical Greece -- CHAPTER 6. Thucydides, Pericles, and the Strategy of Defense -- CHAPTER 7. Power and Oratory in Democratic Athens: Demosthenes 21, Against Meidia -- CHAPTER 8. The Nature of Athenian Democracy -- CHAPTER 9. The Athenians and Their Democracy -- CHAPTER 10. How to Criticize Democracy in Late Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athens -- CHAPTER 11. The Polis as a Society: Aristotle, John Rawls, and die Athenian Social Contract -- Bibliography -- Index

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Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)