Political thought before Plato _

1. Political thought before Plato_

2. Dictionary Entry • Piety :dutiful respect or regard for parents, homeland. • Wont :custom; habit; practice. • Jostle: to bump, push, shove, brush against, or elbow roughly or rudely.

3. Introduction • Athenian public life fell(3rd ¼ of the 5th century B.C.)/Political Phil.came afther the downfall Athens to Sparta. • city-states were experimenting with various forms of political organization including Monarchy, Democracy and Aristrocracy. Ideas cannot be properly traced,but they´re important (bases of…)

4. Popular Political Discussion • Athenians were immersed in politics.(public concerns and affairs) • Traces of comparative government. *Athens *Sparta *Persia In the 5th century BC, Sparta and Athens were reluctant allies against the Persians, but after the foreign threat was over, they soon became rivals. Greek traveled and had new material to compare.

5. Herodotus wrote about the merits of monarchy , aristocracy and democracy. Monarchy---tyrany Democracy---mob-rule Aristrocracy---government by the best men Conclusion=nothing can be better than the rule of one best man.

6. Disinteresed curiosity about foreign countries was not the main motive for political thought, but the quick change of the Athenian government • Intense discussion on the causes of this changes (economic , democracy) “Democracy is a mechanism for exploting the rich and putting money into the pockets of the poor.”

7. Democracy in Athens • Athenian democracy is today considered by many to have been a form of direct democracy, originally it had two distinguishing features: firstly the allotment (selection by lot) of ordinary citizens to government offices and courts,and secondarily the assembly of all the citizens. All the male Athenian citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state, but neither political rights, nor citizenship, were granted to women or slaves

8. Athenian public was familiar with the most radical programs of social change. Aristophanes made a comedy about the idea of women´s rights and abolition of marriage.Utopian ideas of radical democracy.

9. Order in Nature and Society • Active thought and discussion of political and social questions preceded explicit political theory. • Isolated political ideas were common knowledge before Plato tried to incorporate them to phylosophy.

10. Certain general conceptions (not only political but forming an intelectual point of view)within which political thought would develop stated as phylosophical principles. • They are important because they determine direction that later theories would take.

11. Greek fundamental thought ;state was the harmony of life shared in common by all it´s members. • Pythagorean phylosophy refered to harmony or proportion as the basic principle in music , medicine ,physics and politics. At first the idea of harmony was applied indifferently as physical or ethical principle. The first development on this principle took place in natural phylosophy.(details were to be explained on the hypothesis. Roots of atomic theory; unchanging atoms in various combinations

12. At about the middle of the century there was a swing from physical sciences to humanistic studies: economic growth ,urbanity, higher educational level. This change was consummated by Socrates and the Dialogs of Plato.

13. Protagoras… _ • “The proper study of mankind is man” • He failed setting the object of the new humanism. • He succeeded by giving a new interest and a new direction to humanism. • Physical explanation.- The discovery of simple and unchanging realities to the modification of which they might attribute the changes that eveywhere appear upon the face of concrete things.

14. Greeks of the 5th Century.- • What more natural, then, than that they should find in custom and convention the analogue of fleeting appearances and the appearances could be reduced to regularity? • Law of nature • Political and ethical philosophy continued along the ancient line already struck out by the philosophy of nature. • If men discover how to be “natural” will they still be faithful to their families and loyal to their states? • Skeptics declared in utter weariness that one thing is as natural as another and thar use and wont are literally “

15. Nature and Convention • There is ample evidence that this great disscussion about nature vs convention was spread wide among the Athenians of the 5th Century. • Antigone of Sophocles • A duty to human law and duty to the law of God. • Identification of nature with the law of God and the contrast of convention with the truly right was destined to become almost a formula for the critiscm of abuses.

16. Euripides • The critical Athenian of the 5th century was quite awre that his society had its seamy side and the citric was prepared to appeal to natural right and justice as against the adventious distinctions of convention. • Antiphon • He asserted flatly that all law is merely conventionl and hence contrary to nature. • Nature for him was simply egoism or self-interest. • Thrasymachus • Justice is the “interest of the stronger”

17. Socrates • All posibilities were equally indebted to him. • He carried into his humanism the rational tradition of the older physical phylosophy. • The discovery of a calid general rule of action is not impossible, and imparting it by means of education is not impractible. • Is certainly an elaboration of Socrate’s conviction that virtue, poitical virtue not excluded, is knowledge.

18. Bibliography • City State and World state in Greek and Roman political Theory. • Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle • Life in Ancient Athens: The Social and Public Life of a Classical Athenian from Day to Day