Excerpt from The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics As the processes of note-taking and translation and exegesis and bibliography gathered momentum, I began to seem to myself involved almost unwillingly in a task of restitution, an enterprise which would render historical justice to a group of forgotten men. In the fall of 1954 I resorted to solitude in New Hampshire in order to write out the story of their thought, and they can be said to have followed me there, as I sought to live with their memory, sitting beside a wood stove and composing the entire first draft in a sort of sustained fury of composition. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Three Traditions of Greek Political Thought: Plato in Dialogue is an analysis of the emergence of Western philosophical and political thought in archaic and classical Greece. With particular focus on Plato, this book is an in-depth study of the contentious dialogue in classical political philosophy. In the late archaic and classical periods, two major traditions of philosophical and political thought developed. One tradition was associated with the Presocratic mechanistic materialistic philosophers and the Sophists. The second tradition, beginning with Pythagoras, gained full expression in the collected dialogues of Plato. Both of these philosophic traditions challenged the long established Greek mythico/religious tradition associated with Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and others. This study examines the dynamic dialogue involving these three traditions, which present competing and conflicting world views. It concludes that Plato's dialogues, taken together, quintessentially embody the mainstream dialogue or trialogue, as it could be called, in Greek political thought. This book also makes the case that the three major traditions of Greek political thought set the stage for the future dialogue of Western political philosophy even to this day.

Ancient Greece was a place of tremendous political experiment and innovation, and it was here too that the first serious political thinkers emerged. Using carefully selected case-studies, in this book Professor Cartledge investigates the dynamic interaction between ancient Greek political thought and practice from early historic times to the early Roman Empire. Of concern throughout are three major issues: first, the relationship of political thought and practice; second, the relevance of class and status to explaining political behaviour and thinking; third, democracy - its invention, development and expansion, and extinction, prior to its recent resuscitation and even apotheosis. In addition, monarchy in various forms and at different periods and the peculiar political structures of Sparta are treated in detail over a chronological range extending from Homer to Plutarch. The book provides an introduction to the topic for all students and non-specialists who appreciate the continued relevance of ancient Greece to political theory and practice today.

Revered and reviled, Leo Strauss has left a rich legacy of work that continues to spark discussion and controversy. This volume of essays ranges over critical themes that define Strauss's thought: the tension between reason and revelation in the Western tradition, the philsophical roots of liberal democracy, and especially the conflicting yet complementary relationship between ancient and modern liberalism. For those seeking to become acquainted with this provocative thinker, one need look no further.