Athenian Democracy Research Articles

뮈틸레네 논전에 나타난 아테네 민주정과 제국주의: 클레온의 연설을 중심으로

뮈틸레네 논전에 나타난 아테네 민주정과 제국주의: 클레온의 연설을 중심으로

Knowledge Management for Self-Organised Resource Allocation

Many instances of socio-technical systems in the digital society and digital economy require some form of self-governance. Examples include community energy systems, peer production systems, participatory sensing applications, and shared management of communal living areas or workspace. Such systems have several features in common, of which three are that they are rule-oriented , self-organising, and value-sensitive , and in operation, this combination of features entails self-modification of the rules in order to satisfice a changeable set of values. This presents a fundamental dilemma for systems design. On the one hand, the system must be sufficiently unrestricted (resilient, flexible) to enable a diverse group but with a shared set of congruent values to achieve their joint purposes in collective action situations. On the other hand, it must be sufficiently restricted (stable, robust) to prevent a subset of the group from exploiting self-determination ‘against itself’ and usurp control of the system for the benefit of its own narrow interests. To address this problem, we consider a study of classical Athenian democracy which investigates how the governance model of the city-state flourished. The work suggests that exceptional knowledge management , i.e., making information available for socially productive purposes, played a crucial role in sustaining its democracy for nearly 200 years, by creating processes for aggregation, alignment, and codification of knowledge. We therefore examine the proposition that some properties can be generalised to resolve the rule-restriction dilemma by establishing a set of design principles intended to make knowledge management processes open, inclusive, transparent, and effective in self-governed social technical systems. We operationalise three of these principles in the context of a collective action situation, namely self-organised common-pool resource allocation, and present the results of a series of experiments showing how knowledge management processes can be used to obtain robust solutions for the perception of fairness, allocation decision, and punishment mechanisms. By applying this operationalisation of the design principles for knowledge management processes as a complement to institutional approaches to governance, we demonstrate empirically how it can satisfice shared values, distribute power fairly, and apply “common sense” in dealing with rule violations. We conclude by arguing that this approach to the design of socio-technical systems can provide a balance between restricted and unrestricted self-modification of conventional rules, and can thus provide the foundations for sustainable and democratic self-governance in socio-technical systems.

A problem child

Summary Soclees of Corinth has just foiled the Spartan move to crush the infant Athenian democracy, and the exiled tyrant Hippias tells the Corinthians that one day they will yearn for the Peisistratids, when they find pain at the hands of the Athenians (5.93.1). Soclees had told how the infant Cypselus escaped death at the hands of those sent to kill him: is the implication that Corinth should have strangled the infant Athens? Is Athens to be the new Cypselus, a ‘tyrant city’ indeed? Herodotus’ moralism is not so simple, and his emphasis usually falls on freedom more than on democracy. Still, democracy offers a test-case to see what happens when freedom is pushed to its limit, rather as Persia exemplifies the opposite extreme, personal power at its most unbridled. On democracy the outcome was still not clear when Herodotus wrote: would Athens suffer the same fate as its imperialistic predecessor Persia? Or would it be different, perhaps because of democracy and freedom? Whatever the outcome turned out to be, future readers would find strands in Herodotus’ narrative that would help them to understand.

Poverty, Wealth, and Well-Being: Experiencing Penia in Democratic Athens by Claire Taylor

Reviewed by: Poverty, Wealth, and Well-Being: Experiencing Penia in Democratic Athens by Claire Taylor Michael Leese Claire Taylor. Poverty, Wealth, and Well-Being: Experiencing Penia in Democratic Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xv + 352 pp. 13 black-and-white illus. Cloth, $105. With the recent surge of interest in wealth inequality and in reconstructing the lives of the underprivileged in the ancient world, poverty has become a very hot topic in Athenian history. But because of the difficulties of interpreting the source material and creating quantitative demographic models based on that evidence, scholars still are puzzled about just how widespread poverty was among the Athenian dêmos, how poor penêtes actually were, and how they felt about their condition. Claire Taylor confronts these fundamental problems in a book that acts as a corrective to earlier approaches to the topic of poverty and offers new directions for future research. Focusing on Athens from c. 420–c. 320 b.c.e., she packs an enormous amount of material into this book, and with an impressive eye for detail, she provides as comprehensive an examination of this field and its associated issues as one could hope for in a single monograph. Chapter 1, “Poverty and Penia,” serves as the introduction with a methodological outline and programmatic statement for how one should proceed to examine poverty in classical Athens, and Taylor lays out a sophisticated, thoroughly-considered, and theoretically well-informed approach to her topic. Eschewing anachronistic notions of poverty based purely on wealth or material welfare, Taylor instead attempts to view Athenian conceptions in their own terms, with particular emphasis on ptôcheia, penia, and aporia, and employs Amartya Sen’s capability approach to capture the relative conceptualization of poverty in non-western cultures, a useful counter to the absolute measures of poverty that often prevail in modern social science. In contrast to a static view of class structure (and of an individual’s place within it), Taylor provides a dynamic view of well-being that transcends simple economic baselines, incorporates social capital in the form of relationships as resources, and allows the inclusion of women and slaves into the analysis instead of only male citizens. This approach also considers agency, which in turn can translate into social mobility; conversely, social exclusion can seriously impede one’s ability to operate as an economic actor, which complicates older models focused simply on ‘hard surfaces.’ Absolute measures of material welfare are not lacking, however, as she incorporates osteological [End Page 171] evidence to provide a yardstick for contextualizing the depictions of poverty in the written sources. While such skeletal sources may not be entirely representative of Athenian society overall and are perhaps skewed to the higher levels of society, they nevertheless constitute a baseline for measuring Athenian standards of living and health both against other premodern societies and against the claims that are made in contemporary Athenian sources. The variety of source material in this chapter acts as a preview of the wide range of evidence Taylor draws upon in the rest of the book—comedy, philosophy, epigraphy, archaeological material, and modern quantitative demographic models. Chapter 2, “Poverty and Poverty Discourses,” provides detailed overviews of the concepts of ptôcheia, penia, endeia, and chreia as they are depicted in Athenian sources. The link between moral and material deficiencies is explored in depth, as is the rhetorical use of these terms within the context of Athenian political and social discourse. Perhaps most shocking about the people that could be labeled as penêtes in Athenian sources is that many of them were not poor by our standards at all—the term simply denotes someone who needed to work for a living, in contrast to the leisured plousioi, and as Taylor emphasizes, penêtes could actually be quite wealthy. Bipolar oppositions dominate Athenian discussions of wealth and poverty, and obscure the wide spectrum of economic gradations that must have existed. Rich claim to be poor in oratory, and many of the poor and ptôchoi that we see in tragedy are wealthy (or even royalty) fallen from their station, so rather than providing insight into poverty per se, such examples only reveal...

Conservative Women

In response to the rise of conservative women, the author engaged in a long and meaningful Socratic dialogue with two self-identified conservative women. The paper describes the conversation (approved by participants), then analyzes it according to various political trends, Jungian and other psychological theories, the author’s dialectical teaching methodology, the value of a traditional liberal arts education and the failure of the intellectual elite in the past 50 years to create and sustain meaningful friendships with fellow citizens from all social sectors and educational levels. Athenian democracy also degenerated into authoritarianism because of the professional elite’s corruption and/or detachment.

The Physical Parameters of Athenian Democracy

AbstractThis article investigates the physical parameters of Athenian democracy. It explores the collective-action problems that these parameters caused and settles debates about them that R. G. Osborne famously provoked. Classical Athens was ten times larger than an average Greek state. Fourth-century Athenians were ten times more numerous. These parameters significantly contributed to the success of Athenian democracy. Athens could field more combatants than almost every other Greek state. With such huge manpower reserves individual Athenians had to fight only every few years. Nevertheless, this huge population also caused collective-action problems. Attica's farmers could not grow enough to feed them. The Athenians never had adequate personnel nor recordkeeping centrally to administer so many citizens over such a large territory. Yet they found effective means at home and abroad to overcome these collective-action problems.

The Rhetoric of Home and Homeland in Demosthenes 19 on the False Embassy

Responding to internal and external threats to the Athenian democracy, Demosthenes uses language, imagery, and sentiment connected to the house to unite the demos under a single metaphorical roof. Pointing to politicians' houses as visible symbols for the constitution and using the language of inheritance, Demosthenes links home and homeland, patriotism and family, to persuade the Athenians to actively oppose Philip. In contrast, he attributes to Aeschines an isolationist interpretation of home that rejects ancestral models and historical alliances. This study of Demosthenes' rhetoric of home—the nexus of public and private—demonstrates how inextricably politics and emotion are intertwined.

The Memory of the Persian Wars through the Eyes of Aeschylus: Commemorating the Victory of the Power of Democracy

The present paper addresses Aeschylus, and the way he wanted to be remembered by his fellow Athenians and the other Greeks. Having lived from 525/524 until 456/455 BCE, Aeschylus experienced the quick transition of his polis from a small city-state to a leading political and military force to be reckoned with throughout the Greek world. The inscription on his gravestone at Gela, Italy, commemorates his military achievements against the Persians, but makes no mention on his enormous theatrical renown. His plays were so respected by the Athenians that after his death, his were the only tragedies allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions. And yet Aeschylus, when time came to describe himself and the work of his lifetime, mentioned exclusively his contribution in the fight against the Persian Empire as an Athenian. Triggered by the poet’s narrative on his most memorable moment of his life, the present paper seeks to shed some light on the Athenian political identity, emerged during and soon after the Persian Wars, which not only derived from the newly-established democratic constitution of the late sixth century, but also supported it. Aeschylus’ epigram as well as some particular plays of his (the Persians, the Eumenides, and the Suppliants), narrates the confidence, the solidarity and the feeling of equality the Athenian citizens shared in regards to the defence of freedom of their polis as well as of all Greece, which came above anything else in their life, meaning above noble lineage and wealth. The gravestone of the poet stresses, in other words, how it felt like for an Athenian to live during the emergence of the very first Democracy that progressively supported the claim of Athens to become a ruler in the Aegean, by constructing its naval "Empire", ideologically upon the commemoration of the victory of the Athenian Democracy against the tyranny of Persia at Marathon and Salamis.

Jacob Burckhardt and his Athens or How to Shape an Authoritarian Democratic State

This article was organized in three parts. In the first one, a concise introduction to the History of Greek Culture and its historical environment is presented. The focus of the second part lies on Burckhardt’s ideas on the emergence of the polis in Ancient Greece, and how the main thoughts of the Swiss historian tend to materialize in the Ancient past some theoretical conceptions of the nineteenth century. The Athens of Burckhardt is analyzed in the final part of this paper; the core of the author’s approach, and the way he built the idea of the “state as evil” to the democratic Athens of the fifth and the sixth centuries BC are explained. At last, the very meaning of Burckhardt’s Athens – a city-state degenerated by the government of its demoralized mob rule –, is discussed.

L’ostracismo di Santippo, figlio di Arrifrone, «il più colpevole tra i pritani sacrileghi». Alcune riflessioni alla luce di recenti scoperte archeologiche

The institution of ostracism has been considered a central practice of the Athenian democracy during the fifth century B.C.: the purpose of its establishment was to prevent tyranny. Anyway, according to Athenaion Politeia (22, 6), from Xanthippos’ ostracism (484) Athenians started to use the practice to remove from Athens any person who seemed to be too great, even if unconnected with tyranny. Among the ostraka against Xanthippos found during the Agora Excavations, one seems to be remarkable because it contains an elegiac couplet which stated why the father of Perikles should be ostracized. Interpretations of the text differ in details, but the general sense is that Xanthippos should be condemned because he did most wrong of all the leaders. Analyzing the inscription and the events of the Aeginetan War (Her. VI 88-93), this paper supposes that the ostracism of Xanthippos could have been caused by the rising figure of Themistokles, who condemned the Alkmeonid associate for his failed attack against Aegina. In fact, this defeat elicited a sacrilege against one of Nikodromos’ supporter. As the word ἀλeιτeρο῀ ν, inscribed on the ostrakon, seems to suggest, this event could have been related to the Cylonian curse.

La democracia ateniense entre la estabilidad y la anarquía

En un breve artículo sobre las particularidades del gobierno en la Atenas democrática, P.J. Rhodes planteaba que si bien la demokratía no se comportó en el registro histórico-concreto como un sistema anárquico, sin embargo, “el potencial para la anarquía estuvo siempre presente allí”. Teniendo en mente lo anterior, se propone una indagación sobre las condiciones del funcionamiento democrático en la Atenas clásica. En particular, se hace foco en la cuestión de cómo la compulsión al mantenimiento de la isonomía y el poder del dêmos delimitaban las capacidades y posibilidades de acción tanto de los líderes políticos como de los magistrados de la pólis. Como hipótesis se postula que una parte importante de los inconvenientes epistemológicos que la historiografía actual encuentra al momento de asir a la democracia ateniense surgen por la tradición de pensar a la pólis griega bajo el paradigma de la estatalidad.

The Standing of Sailors in Democratic Athens

Résumé Dans l’Athènes démocratique, les marins étaient tout aussi importants culturellement que les hoplites. En effet, il était clair pour le dèmos que son État était une importante puissance maritime. Athènes était consciente qu’il était crucial de préserver ses forces navales, puisqu’elle menait avant tout ses combats en mer. Pour le peuple, combattre en tant que marin profitait autant à l’État que le faire en tant qu’hoplite, et les Athéniens n’appartenant pas à l’élite étaient convaincus qu’un citoyen honorait de la même manière ses devoirs en servant dans la marine ou dans l’armée de terre. Il leur tenait donc à cœur que les Athéniens combattant en mer obtiennent la même reconnaissance de leur bravoure. Traditionnellement, l’ aretè était définie en fonction de ce que les hoplites devaient accomplir en se battant sur terre. Cependant, la manière de combattre des marins était nettement différente. Par conséquent, les reconnaître comme courageux posait un problème, puisqu’ils ne répondaient pas strictement à la définition de l’ aretè telle qu’elle était appliquée aux hoplites. Les orateurs publics et les dramaturges identifièrent deux manières de contourner ce problème : parfois, ils mettaient en exergue les aspects des combats en mer par lesquels les marins répondaient aux critères traditionnels du courage, ou tout au moins s’en approchaient. Plus souvent encore, ils utilisaient tout simplement une nouvelle définition de l’ aretè , considérant que le courage consistait à braver les dangers du champ de bataille malgré les risques. Puisque cette nouvelle définition n’était plus liée aux hoplites, elle pouvait facilement s’appliquer aux marins. Tout cela différait grandement de la vision négative des marins que les Athéniens classiques avaient héritée de leurs ancêtres, et c’est ainsi que le dèmos est parvenu à redéfinir les valeurs aristocratiques traditionnelles dans le domaine militaire.

Alle radici dell’eloquenza shakespeariana. La retorica tra antichità classica ed età cristiana

Abstract – The first part of the chapter introduces a short history of classical rhetoric, focusing in particular on the theories of Isocrates and Aristotle in the Greek context, and Cicero and Quintilian in the Latin context. The second part stresses that Christianity revitalizes rhetoric, which was condemned to sterility and decadence due to the lack of parrhesia within the empire. Putting Logos at the center of his reflection and proposing to spread the message of salvation among all men, Christianity recovers the fruitful link between words and life that had characterized the great seasons of Athens democracy and of the Roman republic. The last part analyzes a particular rhetorical technique, the metric clause.

Mit totalitaryzmu i Platońska filozofia demokracji

A certain trend in political philosophy has associated Plato with a totalitarian tradition, which is disputed in this paper. The author argues that Plato could be included in the political philosophy of a democratic type, referring to the interpretation of the theory of ideas, presented in the text. This interpretation involves a certain understanding of the idea of the Good and the two principal methods of defining it, as well as ‘Plato’s dilemma’ (the Good above the Demiurge versus the Demiurge above the Good), and a peculiar Platonic way to resolve this dilemma. Additionally, the author confronts Plato’s dilemma with the axiological duality of the cultural message conveyed by the Old Testament. The author develops a hypothesis that especially (albeit not exclusively) as the author of The Republic, Plato laid the foundations for the political philosophy in general, but also, despite the disapproval of the Athenian democracy he manifested, for the philosophy of democracy, perceived as a kind of order, based on defining the Good by means of dialogue and the prevalence of so-defined Good over any kind of ‘Demiurge’, including a political Demiurge.

Le procès et l’exécution de Socrate chez trois auteurs de l’époque impériale

Although the trial of Socrates happened in the IVth century BC, the impression of the injustice that the great philosopher had suffered remained alive during the early centuries of our era. In this article, we examine how the trial and execution of Socrates through the eyes of three authors of the imperial era, specifically Plutarch, Dion Chrysostome and Lucien. Each author reacts to Socrates’ trial and execution according to his own style and temperament. Plutarch testifies to the hatred of the Athenians against Anytos, Meletos and Lycon and their tragic end, while Dion informs us of the poor reputation that the Athenians retain because of the condemnation of Socrates since then and until the imperial era. Finally, Lucien exploits the rich material provided by the end of the great philosopher in many ways. However, all three agree that it was an unjust death and a shameful condemnation, as well as an event that casts a shadow over the ideal image that we have of Athenian democracy in the classical era.

Socrates’ Trial and Execution in Xenophon’sHellenica

Xenophon provides the historical background to Socrates’ trial and execution in the Hellenica, but notoriously does not mention these events anywhere in it. Nevertheless, a re-examination of specific episodes from the early part of the Hellenica reveals that he does offer very pointed political commentary on the trial and execution of Socrates, even without mentioning them explicitly. In addition, deliberate parallels with and verbal echoes of Xenophon’s apologetic Socratic works suggest that the Hellenica is intended to be read as a defence of Socrates and a condemnation of the Athenian democracy.

The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia

Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique for authenticating their speech – the specific problem that the move to ethical parrhēsia in ancient Greece was designed to solve – becomes intractable in a social media environment, even with the added Cynical move to pure visibility. The problem is that contemporary society overproduces visibility as a condition for participation, which means that the context for authenticating parrhesiastic speech is one in which visibility is banalized and in which there is a surplus of speech which presents as parrhesiastic. The problem of authentication is thus a serious one, one which social media makes particularly intractable.

The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and the Limits of Authentic Parrhēsia

Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if Foucault is pursuing parrhēsia as a contemporary strategy for resistance. This essay argues that ethical parrhēsia on either the Socratic or Cynical model would have little critical traction today because the current environment is plagued by problems analogous to those Plato thought plagued Athenian democracy. Specifically, authentication of parrhesiasts as a technique for authenticating their speech – the specific problem that the move to ethical parrhēsia in ancient Greece was designed to solve – becomes intractable in a social media environment, even with the added Cynical move to pure visibility. The problem is that contemporary society overproduces visibility as a condition for participation, which means that the context for authenticating parrhesiastic speech is one in which visibility is banalized and in which there is a surplus of speech which presents as parrhesiastic. The problem of authentication is thus a serious one, one which social media makes particularly intractable.

Walking into Democratic Citizenship: Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania’s Capital

Walking into Democratic Citizenship: Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania’s Capital

Bernard Manin lector de la democracia antigua

Este artículo analiza las fuentes que Bernard Manin recupera de la filosofía antigua y sobre las que sustenta los argumentos de una parte de su teoría política, contenida fundamentalmente en su obra: Los principios del gobierno representativo. Tanto en sus reflexiones como en el diálogo con otros, Manin volverá en ocasiones, casi siempre de forma poco explícita, a lecturas de la democracia ateniense sobre las que surgen controversias por el sentido de su trabajo, manteniendo de ese modo su vigencia para la comprensión del presente. En este artículo se mostrará que tanto el autor como su obra están atravesados por una tensión intelectual de un marcado carácter filosófico y político y que, entre dicha tensión y las disputas por una definición de qué es una buena democracia, se dibuja un espacio que arroja luz sobre tales controversias. Las controversias, concluiremos, no son resultado de malos entendidos; o si lo son, cobran sentido en el propio texto de Bernard Manin.