Politics (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Kostas Vlassopoulos | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Ancient Greece is famous as the civilization which "gave" the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism & dictatorship. It's embedded in the assumptions of Western powers who proclaim their faith in the global spread of democratic governance & at the same time wielded by protesters in the developing world who challenge what they view as the West's cultural imperialism. Thus, a lively & well informed treatment of the nexus between politics in antiquity & political discourse in the modern era is both timely & apposite. As Vlassopoulos shows, much can be learned about the practice of politics from a comparative discussion of the classical & the contemporary. His starting point is that the value of looking back to a political system with different assumptions & elements can help us think, even shape, what the future of modern politics might be. He discusses the contrasting political systems of Athens, Sparta & Rome; the political theories of thinkers like Plato, Aristotle & Cicero; how great events like the Peloponnesian War or the Roman civil wars shaped the course of political theory; & the discovery of freedom, participation & equality as political values in antiquity. Above all, the book shows how important & surprising an analysis of the ancient world can be in reassessing modern political debates.