Ebook: Political dissent in democratic Athens: intellectual critics of popular rule

Cover; Title; Copyright; Dedication; CONTENTS; PREFACE; ABBREVIATIONS; INTRODUCTION Why Dissent? Why Athens?; CHAPTER 1: The Problem of Dissent: Criticism as Contest; A. Beginning at a Dead End: Ps.-Xenophon Political Regime of the Athenians; 1. Democracy as Demotic Self-Interest; 2. Public Pleasures and Private Perversity; 3. What Is to Be Done? Ps.-Xenophon's aporia; B. Dissident Texts and Their Democratic Contexts; 1. Critical versus Democratic Discourse; 2. Democratic Knowledge; 3. J.L. Austin and Performative Political Speech; 4. Why Democracy Begets Dissent.;How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing arise in Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C.? By interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition originated in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime ""irrationally"" based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficac.