This book illuminates the distinctive character of our modern understanding of the basis and value of free speech by contrasting it with the very different form of free speech that was practised by the ancient Athenians in their democratic regime. Free speech in the ancient democracy was not a protected right but an expression of the freedom from hierarchy, awe, reverence and shame. It was thus an essential ingredient of the egalitarianism of that regime. That freedom was challenged by the consequences of the rejection of shame (aidos) which had served as a cohesive force within the polity. Through readings of Socrates's trial, Greek tragedy and comedy, Thucydides's History, and Plato's Protagoras this volume explores the paradoxical connections between free speech, democracy, shame, and Socratic philosophy and Thucydidean history as practices of uncovering.
Plato wrote dialogues. While there has been attention to the dramatic elements of Plato’s dialogues by a number of scholars, there has been much less attention to the narrative style of the dialogues. I argue that we should consider whether the dialogues are recited or presented like dramatic works with each character speaking his own words—or as a mixture of these narrative forms. By employing this interpretive tool to read the Republic, I illustrate how paying attention to the narrative style enables us to see a democratic Socrates who undermines readings of the Republic famously offered by Karl Popper and Leo Strauss. Plato appears then as neither a defender of the “closed society” nor an advocate of the elite rule of the wise over the many.
The modern language of tyranny has distorted the significance of the Greek term tyrannos. In ancient Greek the term was accorded to the new ruler in the city, one whose legitimacy did not reside in his bonds to the ancient rulers and ancient families. Tyranny thus suggested a freedom from the past. Reason, as the Greeks understood it, also entailed a breaking away from the physical world. Reason and tyranny thus work together as expressions of freedom, but it is a freedom that in its transcendence of boundaries leads to tragedy. An examination of Sophocles' Oedipus draws out both the glory and the failure of the individual attempt of the political actor to rise above the historical particular and the mere body to build a world where reason alone is power.
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