书名: The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy
作者: John R. Wallach (Author)
出版社: Pennsylvania State University Press (February 2001)
语言: English
ISBN-10: 027102075X
ISBN-13: 978-0271020754
Book Description
A comprehensive interpretation of Plato's political philosophy that highlights its relevance for modern democratic theory.
In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato's political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Plato's theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today.
The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty years—principally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M.I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos.
The author's distinctive approach for understanding Plato—and, he argues, for the history of political theory in general—can inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.
Review
"An ambitious and instructive work, which explains the development of Plato's political thought as a critical reflection on the relation between ethics and power in Athens. Few books on Plato have both the sense and the scope of this one." — Melissa Lane, Cambridge University
"John Wallach has written a remarkably wide-ranging, erudite, and provocative book. His resuscitation/construction of a rational, ethically informed Platonic political art as a critical mirror on ancient and ‘post-liberal' democracies and contemporary thought, from postmodern to skepticism, pragmatism, contextualism to Platonism itself, is done with daring, originality, and independence. In his hands Plato becomes a political thinker who has no one final or complete version of the political art since that would contradict what a political art must be. Insisting that the volatility in the relationship between words and deeds precluded a systematic Platonic political philosophy, Wallach argues that we must read the dialogues as discursive efforts to deal with particular political challenges as they emerged in late 5th and early 4th century B.C.E. Athens."
"One may disagree with Wallach's critical judgments, with his theoretical constructivism, or with the critical historicism that defines his interpretative approach. But one cannot help being pushed to think harder and deeper by a book that is so consistently enlightening, stimulating, and informed." — Peter Euben, University of California, Santa Cruz
About the Author
John R. Wallach is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, CUNY. His previous book, co-edited with J. Peter Euben and Josiah Ober, is Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Cornell, 1994).
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作者: John R. Wallach (Author)
出版社: Pennsylvania State University Press (February 2001)
语言: English
ISBN-10: 027102075X
ISBN-13: 978-0271020754
Book Description
A comprehensive interpretation of Plato's political philosophy that highlights its relevance for modern democratic theory.
In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato's political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Plato's theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today.
The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty years—principally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M.I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos.
The author's distinctive approach for understanding Plato—and, he argues, for the history of political theory in general—can inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.
Review
"An ambitious and instructive work, which explains the development of Plato's political thought as a critical reflection on the relation between ethics and power in Athens. Few books on Plato have both the sense and the scope of this one." — Melissa Lane, Cambridge University
"John Wallach has written a remarkably wide-ranging, erudite, and provocative book. His resuscitation/construction of a rational, ethically informed Platonic political art as a critical mirror on ancient and ‘post-liberal' democracies and contemporary thought, from postmodern to skepticism, pragmatism, contextualism to Platonism itself, is done with daring, originality, and independence. In his hands Plato becomes a political thinker who has no one final or complete version of the political art since that would contradict what a political art must be. Insisting that the volatility in the relationship between words and deeds precluded a systematic Platonic political philosophy, Wallach argues that we must read the dialogues as discursive efforts to deal with particular political challenges as they emerged in late 5th and early 4th century B.C.E. Athens."
"One may disagree with Wallach's critical judgments, with his theoretical constructivism, or with the critical historicism that defines his interpretative approach. But one cannot help being pushed to think harder and deeper by a book that is so consistently enlightening, stimulating, and informed." — Peter Euben, University of California, Santa Cruz
About the Author
John R. Wallach is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, CUNY. His previous book, co-edited with J. Peter Euben and Josiah Ober, is Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Cornell, 1994).
[thread=13206]论坛相关讨论主题[/thread]
