An Origin for Political Culture
Laws 3 as Political Thought and Intellectual History
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6107958 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carol Atack (0000-0001-9125-5436, Newnham College, University of Cambridge Cambridge UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 468-484 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Polis The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0142-257X • E-ISSN: 2051-2996 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1163/20512996-12340295 |
| OpenAlex | W3083175531 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
Plato’s survey in Laws book 3 of the development of human society from its earliest stages to the complex institutions of democratic Athens and monarchical Persia operates both as a conjectural history of human life and as a critical engagement with Greek political thought. The examples Plato uses to illustrate the stages of his stadial account, such as the society of the Cyclops and the myths of Spartan prehistory, are those used by other political theorists and philosophers, in some cases also drawing on the presence of the same stories in classical Greek epic and tragedy. By incorporating his critique into a timeline Plato is able to suggest that some approaches are limited in scope to specific social conditions, whereas his Athenian Stranger presents his analysis from an external and superior viewpoint, looking down on human society from above
Ancient Greek · Art · Democracy · Greeks · Literature · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Timeline · Tragedy (event · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Classics · History · Law · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
| Highly cited | No |
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