Table Of ContentAthenian Political Thought
and the Reconstruction
of American Democracy
Athenian Political Thought
and the Reconstruction
of American Democracy
EDITED BY
J.
Peter Euben, John R. Wallach,
and Josiah Ober
Cornell University Press
ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 1994 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher. For
information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1994 by Cornell University Press.
Library of CongressC ataloging-in-PublicationD ata
Athenian political thought and the reconstruction of American
democracy/ edited by J. Peter Euben, John Wallach, and Josiah Ober.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8014-2980-3 (cloth: alk. paper).-ISBN 0-8014-8179-1
(paper : alk. paper)
1. Democracy-Greece-Athens-History. 2. Democracy-United
States. 3. Democracy. 4. Elite (Social sciences)
5. Representative government and representation. 6. Political
participation. 7. Political stability. 8. Legitimacy of
governments. I. Euben, J. Peter. II. Wallach, John. III. Ober,
Josiah.
JC79.A8A86 1994 94-18797
321.8-dc20
Printed in the United States of America
© The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1
J. PETER EUBEN, JOHN R. WALLACH, AND JOSIAH OBER
I Democracy and Regimes of Power
1. Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy 29
SHELDON S. WOLIN
2. Democracy: An Idea of Ambiguous Ancestry 59
ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD
3. The Creation of a Legacy: A Manufactured Crisis in
Eighteenth-Century Thought 81
JENNIFER ROBERTS
4· Democracy, Power, and Imperialism in Fifth-Century
Athens 103
KURT A. RAAFLAUB
II Critical Discourse in Athenian Democracy
5. How to Criticize Democracy in Late Fifth- and
Fourth-Century Athens 149
JOSIAH OBER
V
VI CONTENTS
6. Frank Speech, Democracy, and Philosophy: Plato's Debt
to a Democratic Strategy of Civic Discourse
S. SARA MONOSON
7. Democracy and Political Theory: A Reading of
Plato's Gorgi,as 198
J. PETER EUBEN
III Athenian Ideals and Contemporary Issues
8. The Tragedy of Critical Theory
229
CHRISTOPHER ROCCO
9. The Melting Pot, the Mosaic, and the Agora
BARRY S. STRAUSS
10. Athenian Political Thought and the Feminist Politics of
Poiesis and Praxis
WARREN J. LANE AND ANN M. LANE
11. The Zero Degree of Society: Aristotle and the
Athenian Citizen
CHARLES W. HEDRICK, JR.
12. Two Democracies and Virtue
JOHN R. WALLACH
Selected Bibliography 341
Contributors
347
Index
349
Athenian Political Thought
and the Reconstruction
of American Democracy
J. PETER EUBEN, JOHN R. WALLACH,
AND JOSIAH OBER
Introduction
"I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society,"
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "but the people themselves, and if we think
them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a whole
some discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform
their discretion." 1 A generation later, John Stuart Mill insisted that
because "the first element of good government" was "the virtue and
intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most
important point of excellence which any form of government can pos
sess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people them
selves."2 Yet the idea that the rulers should educate the people so they
can rule and educate themselves is not a widely held view in the
United States today. Despite the oft-heard paeans to democracy and
"the American people" sung by politicians as well as talk-show hosts
from all parts of the ideological spectrum, a more widely shared senti
ment is that "the people" are best able to rule themselves when led by
"responsible elites,"3 drawn from politics, journalism, education, and
1. Letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820, in The Collected Works of Thomas
Jefferson, ed. Paul Ford (New York: Putnam, 1905) 12: 1630. Jefferson's belief in a natural
aristocracy did not undermine this conviction, as he thought that only an attentive and active
citizenry could keep aristocrats from becoming voracious wolves. On the extent and ways
Jefferson was or was not a democrat, cf. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking,
1963) with Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988).
2. John Stuart Mill, On Representative Government, vol. 2 (Everyman), 193.
3. The phrase and sentiment are from Trilateral Commission, The Crisis of Democracy
(New York: New York University Press, 1975). The report's authors are merely echoing dem
ocratic revisionists, who sound very much like Athenian antidemocrats.
2 INTRODUCTION
business. Because of their pos1uon, experience, and expertise, such
elites lay claim to be the true defenders of democracy-whatever the
administration in power-because they save the people from their
worst selves while recognizing current political complexities and en
gaging in the rational analysis the people do not or cannot manage.
Such elites should "inform" the people's discretion, so that the people,
thus informed, can then legitimate the elites' exercise of power to the
degree of accepting their own alienation from the democratic political
process. When such elites talk about public education, their emphasis
is on making America economically competitive in the global capitalist
economy.
Even if one shares the sentiments of Jefferson and Mill, hard ques
tions remain. For who is Jefferson's "we" who promote the virtue and
intelligence of the citizenry? How can such education be accomplished
and in what institutional forms and forums? Hannah Arendt has ar
gued that all education must begin by initiating the young and new
into the habits and ways of their people.' Is there a uniquely "demo
cratic" way of doing this? Or conversely, are there modes of education
that democracies cannot engage in without contradicting their animat
ing principles? And who, especially in a society as diverse as ours,
constitutes "the people"? How we think about such matters depends
on how we regard citizenship, democracy, and politics as well as the
relationship between education and political education.
Citizenship today primarily signifies a legal status that accrues to all
individuals born into a society. In turn, that society guarantees them
rights against both the state and other individuals. But if this is all that
citizenship implies, then nonparticipation in politics is simply a choice
made by people who have more pressing things to do. Similarly,
where political activity is considered merely one way of achieving grat
ification, which may be more efficiently attained, as Robert Dahl put
it, by "working at a job, moving to another neighborhood or city, or
coping with an uncertain future," 5 then politics has no moral priority,
and the reasons for educating democracy as the aim of education in a
democracy are less pressing. If the obligation of citizenship is epito
mized in the choice of representatives from among competing elites
whose shared commitment is ensuring domestic tranquility, the rights
of property, and national security, then all the political education we
need is to know which party or leader will do these tasks best. And if
the system "works," if the checks and balances indeed preclude anar-
4. Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Education," in Between Past and Future, enlarged ed.
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1968), 143-72.
5. Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 224-
