The Death of Christ and Political Theory

Part 1 The idea of constitutionalism: overview confusion of staticism with stability - nomenclature, need for nomenclature, constitutionalism, corrective constitutionalism preventive constitutionalism, curative constitutionalism institutional arrangements, inherent limitations, mixed, balanced government assessments. Part 2 Athenian constitutional background: overview the passing of Athenian and Greek supremacy - the Peloponnesian War - class war assessments. Part 3 Biographical note on Plato: early years - birth and lineage, connections with the White Terror, influence of Socrates and the Sophists middle years - Plato in Sicily and Italy, Plato and The Academy final years - life's work, life's end problems and interpretation. Part 4 Plato's ideal political theory - The Republic: overview exposition - imperfect government by fallible men requires justice, elitism, asceticism, and education, indoctrination and education for justice and security, balancing and unifying of classes, environmentalism, eugenics and religion, cardinal virtues of the ideal sate, justice based on hierarchical specialization, women, breeding, and social mobility, doubts of practicality, scepticism, philosophy, and praxis, cycle of forms of government, aristocracy yields of timocracy, timocracy yields to oligarchy, oligarchy yields to democracy, description of democracy, democracy breeds tyranny, tyranny worst and kingship best, divine rule assessments. Part 5 Plato's more realistic political theory - The Statesman: overview exposition - scientific and imitative forms of government, inherent human capabilities, good laws and wise rulers, a heaven-born race and system assessments. Part 6 Plato's more sophisticated political theory - The Laws: overview exposition - peace and happiness preferable to war, the golden cord between God and humanity and among humanity - reason and law intertwined, a multiple governmental contract, ignorance a cause of ruin, natural right to rule, division of powers with checks and balances, constitutional monarchy advocated, rugged, masculine education to produce strong character, rule of law by elected magistrates conducive to patriotism and unity, danger of too much freedom for he multitude, location and composition of colonies, God and the tyrant legislate together, hierarchical polity and the rule of law, God's will is justice, example and admonition to train the young, three best forms of the state, limitations of riches and occupation. (Part contents).

There is no scientific reason to question the existence of Jesus as an authentic historical figure. It means that all the scholars who acknowledge the historicity of Jesus at least as a Jewish teacher and healer accept the fact of his death on the cross. The reasons and the details of the crucifixion given by commentators of the historical sources vary. One thing remains invariable: Jesus was sentenced to death and crucified in Jerusalem on the order of the Roman Prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, most probably on the charge of incitement to rebellion against the Roman Empire.

Three recent volumes indicate a growing appreciation of the significance and complexity of Plato's account ofmousikēin theLaws. Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi's edited work,Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws, collects fifteen diverse chapters by prominent scholars in Greek literature, philosophy, and culture to produce an immensely rewarding and original range of perspectives on Plato's treatment of performance and poetics in theLaws. As Peponi notes in her brief introduction, the complexity of the cultural background that Plato manipulates and appropriates in theLaws, as well as the intricacy of the Platonic appropriation itself, combine to present a very real challenge to any scholar seeking to understand them. In addition, it is hard to see that any robust treatment of theLaws’ political theory can avoid getting to grips with the fundamental connections between politics and performance established within the dialogue. Any reader with an interest in either Plato's political philosophy or his poetics will be well rewarded by time spent with this volume. The chapters are divided into four sections, which focus in turn on issues of cultural identity (‘Geopolitics of Performance’), the role of the choruses in Magnesia (‘Conceptualising Chorality’), theLaws’ treatment of genre (‘Redefining Genre’), and the later reception of theLaws’ poetics (‘Poetry and Music in the Afterlife of theLaws’). In the second of the volume's two chapters on cultural identity, Ian Rutherford considers theLaws’ representation of Egypt as a culture that successfully resists political and moral decline via a commitment to stability inmousikē. Setting Plato's account against the external evidence, Rutherford suggests that theLawsoffers a partial fiction of stable Egyptianmousikē, useful not least for the implications of its possible critical connection to Dorian culture. In the last of five chapters on theLaws’ interest in the civic apparatus of choral performance, Peponi demonstrates the singularity of choral performance in the work. Whereas theLawstreats most types of performance as producing pleasure in the spectator, in the case of choruses, the emphasis is on the pleasure and experience of the performers. Peponi argues that this shift in focus represents a Platonic attempt to ‘de-aestheticize’ the chorus. In this way, Plato seeks to rehabilitatemousikēby divesting it of the psychological and aesthetic flaws identified in theRepublic’s extended critique. However, as Peponi notes in conclusion, theLawsis not altogether comfortable with this sort of performative pleasure. In the first of five chapters on genre, Andrea Nightingale discusses theLaws’ manipulation of generic diversity in service of the unified truth represented by the law code at its heart. Nightingale presents a fascinating and original analysis of the law code as a written text rather different in character from that criticized in thePhaedrusas apharmakonthat destroys our memory of truth. Rather, it serves to encourage the internalization of truths by obliterating the citizens’ memories of previous unwanted cultural norms. In the volume's final chapter, Andrew Barker turns to Aristoxenus for help in making sense of Plato's suggestion that music can be assessed as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, or as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Contrasting the Platonic focus onmimesisand ethical correctness with Aristoxenus’ assessment of music ‘by the standard of its own intrinsic values’ (413), Barker suggests that, of the two treatments, Plato's is the furthest removed from general Greek opinion. These varied and illuminating chapters are representative of the scope and quality of the volume, which not only serves to open up new directions for research on theLawsbut also makes plain that theLawsis at least as important as theRepublicfor a thorough understanding of Plato's views on art and culture, and their relation to politics.

This is a review essay of Fernando Bermejo-Rubio’s book, They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023). The starting point for the book is the crucifixion of Jesus at Golgotha with him at the center and two bandits crucified on both sides of him. Since crucifixion was the Roman punishment for rebellion, Bermejo-Rubio conjectures that Jesus was the leader of a rebellion and that he must have had some connection with the two bandits. Bermejo-Rubio does this to counteract the predominant narrative in the Gospels that it was the priests, elders, and the scribes who were responsible for Jesus’ execution, in other words, that the Jews killed Jesus. This article argues that Bermejo-Rubio absolves the responsibility of the Jewish priest class and that it was most likely both them and the Romans who were responsible for Jesus’ death.

The Passover Computation

InPilate and Jesus, Giorgio Agamben argues that Pontius Pilate never formally condemned Jesus of Nazareth. “The traditional interpretation of Jesus’ trial … must be revised,” he urges, because “there has not been any judgment in a technical sense.” In Agamben's telling, Pilate's non-judgment is the original truth of Jesus's death that has been covered over by tradition. This is an intriguing hypothesis, but Agamben's use of sources in arguing it is highly irregular. This article offers a critique of the legal and philological argumentation ofPilate and Jesus. In the process, it revisits an ancient—and still actual—controversy surrounding the Roman trial of Jesus and demonstrates that Pilate did sentence Jesus,pro tribunali, to death on a cross.

The death of Socrates as described by Plato often appeals to the author more strongly than the death of Jesus. It seems to be that one must first have the Christian point of view in mind in order to be able to say that what Jesus did during the crucifixion was greater and nobler than what Socrates did at his death. The author have greater admiration and love for Jesus if he were a man than if he were the Son of God. It would not be remarkable at all for the Son of God to act as Jesus did act. But it was and will always be remarkable that a man should have acted as Jesus did. English and emphasis are Hu's own. Hu Shi, a native of Anhui, was born in Shanghai. He was a leading Chinese scholar from the 1920's on.

Robert Eisner SOCRATES AS HERO The very first experience that philosophy had on Greek soil, the Sanction of the Seven Sages, is an unmistakable and unforgettable feature of the Hellenic image. Other people have saints; the Greeks have sages. ' Nietzsche Plato composed in a mythomorphic vein, or rather he attempted in his dialogues to superimpose a new kind of myth on the much older palimpsest of the sagas. To do this effectively he had to present Socrates not just heroically, but as a hero far different from the bronzed figures of that timocracy and shame culture whose legacy he resented and whose lingering influence on the Adienian present he was, in his more Utopian moods, determined to eradicate. Hence many of the traditional traits of the Homeric warrior are found in the Platonic Socrates, but they have been substantially modified to sustain the new philosophic content of die hero's role. These revitalized characteristics serve to highlight the radically novel establishment of the hero as philosopher and the philosopher as hero. The heroic comparisons that Socrates and Plato make, delineating a new prototype , risk the inflation of Socrates' ego, to use a modern term for what the Greeks called hubris. In the agonistic world of politicians, sophists, athletes, and lovers, Plato's Socrates stands out as the most erotically powerful intellectual in Athens. Even the chryselephantine Alcibiades shows himself captivated by this most charismatic of pedagogues. The self-proclaimed ignorance of the philosopher restrains him from too overt a display of his pride and arrogance, but the repeated success of his ironic gambits constantly tempts him to press his rhetorical advantages too far. For the Greek who is also a Socratic philosopher and therefore primarily concerned with the problems of the ethical life, the discernment of rational standards , patterns, and paradigms is not only the epistemological road to the examPhilosophy and Literature Vol. 6 Nos. 1 and 2 Pp. 106-118 0190-0031/82/0061-0106 © 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Robert Eisner107 ined life but is also the mimetic way to Virtue.2 For such an individual, questing along new heights of moral speculation, there are older figures for him to model himself on, despite Alcibiades' insistence at Symposium 221c-d that no parallel in the sagas exists for Socrates. With the death of Socrates and the emasculation of political possibilities for civic man after the Peloponnesian War, Plato sought to absorb the external world of battlefield and assembly into the no less contentious inner domain of the soul. As reconstituted or invented by Plato this monde intérieur needed myth for its shores to be made accessible to the likes of mere men, and in this requirement it did not differ from the Troad of the Achaean expedition or the Persia of Xenophon's dreams and deeds.3 What better hero to animate the new myth of the quest for virtue and the forms than the man who was himself entheos, "enthused"? Platonic myth, however, is not simply a matter of a new sort ofhero searching for a new sort of treasure. The several sorts of myths employed in the dialogues are all more or less supplementary in those areas where Logos is more or less deficient. From the ancient point of view human reason is especially weak in science and history, where myth must aim at the truth and explore its ramifications , even if it must take the place of rational knowledge, as in the great central myths of the Timaeus and the Critias. In ethics, however, where human reason is adequate to the task of knowing, myth adds to the rational and speaks to man's passions, as in the accounts of the cave, the chariot of the soul, and Ei^s visit to the Underworld. Ludwig Edelstein remarks on this function of myth: "It rouses and confirms hopes; it enhances courage and allays fears. It is like a charm that one must sing to oneself."4 Unlike the rational certainty obtained through dialectic, the myths provide the reader (the silent but never absent interlocutor of the dialogues) with an essential and otherwise unobtainable conviction. Only myths can ease the rational helplessness of man...

Reviewed by: A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic by Cinzia Arruzza Kevin M. Cherry ARRUZZA, Cinzia. A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 296 pp. Cloth, $74.00; ebook, $72.99 In this clearly argued work, Cinzia Arruzza focuses on the presentation of the tyrant—the titular wolf—in Plato's Republic. [End Page 132] Maintaining that tyranny is, if not "the heart of the dialogue," then at least "one of its main threads," she traces its influence from the opening argument with Thrasymachus to the concluding Myth of Er. Arruzza's approach to the dialogue is thus a holistic one. She takes seriously both its literary and philosophical dimensions as well as its political and ethical arguments, highlighting "the reciprocal interaction between moral corruption of the individual and political and moral sickness of the city." In the first part of the book, Arruzza provides valuable context for readers of the Republic, exploring the political and philosophical context in which Plato wrote and the dramatic personae and setting of the dialogue. She argues that Plato does not intend his description of tyranny to match a particular historical tyrant. To be sure, the tyrant reflects the political context of Athens during and after the Peloponnesian War, with some specific traits that clearly recall Alcibiades. Plato's intention, however, is to adopt a wide range of literary and philosophical tropes critical of tyranny, appropriating "the democratic critique of tyranny and turn[ing] it into a weapon against democratic principles" by showing how tyranny arises, perhaps naturally, from democracy. There are two reasons for this connection. The first of these is institutional: Although the demos possesses political power, it is simply unable to use that power well, leaving it susceptible to "the political charisma of ruthless and self-interested politicians." More important, though, is the way that "tyrannical natures are literally created" by democracy insofar as that regime emphasizes freedom, understood as "the indiscriminate satisfaction of all their desires." The latter, ethical problem of democracy leads to the second part of the book, which is likely to be of greater interest to specialists. Arruzza develops Plato's account of the way in which the soul of the tyrant is deformed, concluding that the tyrant is "a man with a philosophical nature gone astray." Although persuasive, this conclusion is not, as she acknowledges, wholly original. More original, though, is her account of what the deformed rational and spirited parts of the tyrannical soul are like. Without the guidance of reason and "inflamed" by lawless desires, the spirited part of his soul behaves savagely in the pursuit of "absolute power" in order to satisfy those desires. Despite its savagery, the tyrannical soul is also fearful because of the constant need for its calculating part to assess threats to the tyrant's position. The tyrannical soul is therefore incapable of satisfaction: Not only does "spatio-temporal existence" limit the tyrant's ability to pursue all pleasures at once, but "prudential considerations—primarily, concerns for self-preservation and for the preservation of his power" will also frustrate some of the appetites he has. The result of the domination of the appetitive part of the soul over the spirited and rational parts is not the desired freedom but rather slavery for both the tyrant and those whom he rules. It is only in the conclusion that Arruzza alludes to the contemporary interest in tyranny, suggesting that Plato offers a "faithful psychological portrait of a number of contemporary tyrants." She denies that Plato can [End Page 133] ever be reconciled with democracy, although she is more open to the possibility of reconciling him with liberalism insofar as Plato's dialogues value "diversity, openness, freedom, and common inquiry." Her Plato is thus "anti-democratic" without being "proto-totalitarian." Although most philosophic natures will, in democratic times, be corrupted, Arruzza insists that a genuine philosopher must be ready and willing to take control "whenever the appropriate circumstances allow it." Left unsaid is what such a philosopher would do once in power in order to bring about the "radical political transformation" she envisions...

The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BC) became a fateful era of the ancient world. It changed the direction of the further historical development of most of the ancient policies of Greece. The events of this war have attracted the attention of researchers for centuries not only with their intense drama and consequences. They preserve for future generations a rare and valuable experience not only in the field of military art, in the field of political relations between the policies, but also valuable generalizations in the field of social psychology, the transformation of the system of moral values in society during the long-term power confrontation between the enemy states. And, in addition, the example of such experience opens up the possibility of a deeper and more correct understanding of the relationship and mutual influence of ideology, mass consciousness and the moral state of the polis society in the conditions of the processes of the crisis of the polis society and the long-term military confrontation between Athens and Sparta. Analysis and generalization of the nature of the mutual influence of the polis ideology and the moral state of the polis society of Athens in the conditions of the Peloponnesian War helps to expand the system of views on the content and essence of the polis ideology, inherent in the society of the Athenian state during its highest heyday. The process of natural transformations in the economic, political and social spheres causes the gradual flow of property into the hands of the non-civil part of the population, which causes the destruction of polis morality and ideology. The main purpose of the article was to study the relationship between the ideology of the polis collective and the moral state of society in the conditions of the development of crisis processes under the influence of the events of the Peloponnesian War. The scientific novelty of the article lies in an attempt to recreate a generalized view of the essence and content of the polis ideology, the conditions of its formation and the nature of the impact on the moral state of the society of the Athenian state during the last third of the 5th century BC. The nature of the relationship and mutual conditionality of the nature of the polis ideology and social processes and the moral state of the Athenian state during its highest heyday is revealed. Conclusions. The second half of the 5th century BC was marked by a crisis and the beginning of the destruction of the polis society. As a result of the natural course of social and economic processes, the civil collective lost its dynamics of development, cohesion, and the decay of the polis morality was felt. This had tragic consequences in the internal and external policy of the Athenian state, caused the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and led to the degradation of the polis society and the loss of state sovereignty Keywords: polis, ancient society, social strata, polis ideology, polis society, transformation of society, civil community, politics, ancient state

In classical antiquity, thinkers like Aristotle regarded hatred, unlike envy, as a moral emotion, elicited by the perception of vice. Nevertheless, hatred might be taken to irrational extremes (there are occasional expressions of hatred of all women, for example), and antagonisms between ethnic groups (as in Sparta or Alexandria) or social classes (in many Greek city states) could lead to open conflict or civil war. Classical states had few resources to inhibit or control such hatreds. One significant development in this direction, however, was the amnesty decreed in Athens to heal the wounds of the civil strife that broke out after Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

Among the many dozens of Greek comic dramatists whose names are recorded in ancient sources, only two are known to us directly through plays preserved in whole or in substantial fragments: Aristophanes and Menander.1 Both were Athenians. Aristophanes’ productive career dates to the last quarter of the fifth century B.c. and the first decade of the fourth. During most of his active life, Athens was engaged in the conflict with Sparta and her allies known as the Peloponnesian War, which culminated in Athens’ defeat and surrender. Menander produced his comedies in the late fourth and early third centuries, when the conquests of Alexander the Great had transformed life in the Greek city states. He experienced the ten-year reign of the philosophically minded Demetrius of Phalerum, who ruled the city with the support of a foreign garrison from 317 to 307B.c., and the subsequent restoration of the democratic constitution by Demetrius, the son of Antigonus.

Xenophon and Plato in Elizabethan Culture:The Tyrant's Fear Before Macbeth Francesco Dall'Olio (bio) When in the Wasps (422 BCE) Aristophanes satirized the Athenians' obsession with tyranny,1 the state of uncertainty and anxiety provoked by the Peloponnesian War had caused the Athenians to fear that one man or a group of conspirators could take advantage of the situation to overthrow the democracy. As a result, the definition of tyranny, the personality of the tyrant, and democracy in relation to other forms of government became issues of great interest, sparking off a lively debate. Twenty centuries later, Renaissance England experienced a similar theoretical urge: the political, religious, and cultural turmoil triggered by Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy (1534) initiated a heated debate on the difference between a king and a tyrant, the legitimacy of tyrannical rule, and the obedience of the people to monarchical sway.2 The kings and queens of England in this period were repeatedly charged with accusations of tyranny from different quarters and for different reasons. Henry VIII's personalistic and despotic rule solicited the infamous parallel with the Roman tyrant Nero from Catholics and Protestants alike, who accused him of using the Reformation for his private purposes.3 Anthony Gilby, a Marian exile in Geneva and a translator of the Geneva Bible, wrote in his Admonition of England and Scotland (1558) that "thus was there no reformation, but a deformation, in the tyme of that tyrant and lecherous monster." 4 Mary's rule led Protestant writers to compare her to such traditional tyrannical figures as Herod, Nero, or Caligula, as the politician John Hales refers to in an oration to Elizabeth (1559) printed by John Foxe, the author of the martyrological The Acts and Monuments of the English Church (1563).5 In the course of her reign, Queen Elizabeth had [End Page 476] to face both Catholic and Protestant threats: the former accused her of being an unlawful sovereign (Pius V, on deposing and excommunicating her, defined her "pretensia Angla regina," and Sixtus V accused her of "exercysinge an absolute Tyrannie"),6 while radical Protestants manifested their disappointment with her politics in religious matters (the clash became particularly virulent in 1584, with her royal veto on Anthony Cope's Puritan revision of the Book for Common Prayer).7 The official ideology of the Elizabethan age replied to this constant state of threat and uncertainty by endorsing a new political theory about tyranny and kingship based on the concept of obedience. Elizabeth and her advisors encouraged the composition of homilies and treatises to instruct the people that rebellion against an anointed king was always a sin, no matter how bad the sovereign was. An Homily Against Disobedience and Willful Rebellion, the clearest and most direct expression of this new doctrine, was very explicit on this point: "a rebel is worse then the worst prince, and rebellion worse then the worst government of the worst prince that hitherto hath ben."8 During Elizabeth's reign, this view influenced the way political theory came to associate tyranny with the usurpation of the throne, replacing medieval conceptions focused on the ruler's personality9 and identifying in illegitimate kingship the only case when revolt could be tolerated.10 As Maynard Mack has noticed, "England, in contrast [to the Continent], assigned to the king what had been developed by the Church lawyers for clerics, compressing into the doctrine of two bodies united in one being the faceless permanence of an institution and the character of a man," while the royalists moved "toward the theory of divine right."11 All this, however, did not occur smoothly. The idea of the tyrant as a bad ruler had been the foundation of medieval interpretations of tyranny, and in the works of such theorists as John of Salisbury (Policraticus 8.7) and Thomas Aquinas (Sententiae 2. quaest.44. art.2), it served to legitimize the people's right (and sometimes duty) to depose and even kill the tyrant, conceived of as a monstrous beast and Satan's envoy.12 This theory, still current in Italian humanism,13 in the Elizabethan age furnished theoretical ground for such "heretical" authors as John Ponet, a...

To the vast literature on Plato's Republic comes a new interpretation. In Beautiful City, David Roochnik argues convincingly that Plato's masterpiece is misunderstood by modern readers. The work must, he explains, be read dialectically, its parts understood as forming a unified whole. Approached in this way, the text no longer appears to defend an authoritarian and monolithic political system, but rather supplies a qualified defense of democracy and the values of diversity. Writing in clear and straightforward prose, Roochnik demonstrates how Plato's treatment of the city and the soul evolves throughout the dialogue and can be appreciated only by considering the Republic in its entirety. He shows that the views expressed in the early parts of the text do not represent Plato's final judgment on these subjects but are in fact dialectical moments intended to be both partial and provisional. Books 5-7 of the Republic are, he maintains, meant to revise and improve upon books 2-4. Similarly, he sees the usually neglected books 8-10 as advancing beyond the thoughts presented in the previous books. Paying particular attention to these later books, Roochnik details, for instance, how the stories of the mistaken regimes, which are often seen as unimportant, are actually crucial in Plato's account of the soul. Beautiful City is certain to be controversial, as the author's insights and opinions will engage and challenge philosophers, classicists, and political theorists.

Political theory has developed at important junctures by questioning its ontological foundations. Modern political thought begins by questioning the naturalness of human sociability. Instead of the civic friendship propounded by the ancients, modern liberals see friendship as belonging to a private sphere, whereas the state is an alliance among competitors. Postmodern theorists have extended the logic of competition to encompass private friendships, doing so, in part, by critiquing liberal foundations. Plato's account of friendship reveals surprising affinities with two such postmodern critiques. TheLysisexplores what friendship would be like without ontological claims or with only negative foundations such as the power and enmity found in accounts of friendship as diverse as those of Foucault and Derrida. The Platonic/postmodern comparison offers a way of ensuring that foundational inquiry illuminates political theory and argues for a greater role for fundamental ontology than mainstream liberal theorists have yet conceded.