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Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history.When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

Idées politiques --- Démocratie --- Athènes (Grèce) --- Grèce --- Politique et gouvernement --- Democracy --- History. --- Grèce ancienne --- Politique --- Democracy - Greece - Athens - History --- Self-government --- Political science --- Equality --- Representative government and representation --- Republics --- History --- Democracy. --- Greece --- al-Yūnān --- Ancient Greece --- Ellada --- Ellas --- Ellēnikē Dēmokratia --- Elliniki Dimokratia --- Grčija --- Grèce --- Grecia --- Gret︠s︡ii︠a︡ --- Griechenland --- Hellada --- Hellas --- Hellenic Republic --- Hellēnikē Dēmokratia --- Kingdom of Greece --- République hellénique --- Royaume de Grèce --- Vasileion tēs Hellados --- Xila --- Yaṿan --- Yūnān --- Ελληνική Δημοκρατία --- Ελλάς --- Ελλάδα --- Греция --- اليونان --- يونان --- 希腊 --- Aeschines. --- Bowles, S. --- Bugh, G. --- Cohen, D. --- Connor, W. R. --- Council, role of. --- Dover, K. J. --- Finley, M. I. --- Golden Age myths. --- Gomme, A. W. --- Hansen, M. H. --- Hanson, V. D. --- Iron Law of Oligarchy. --- Isagoras. --- Jones, A.H.M. --- Kagan, D. --- Knight, D. W. --- Loraux, N. --- MacDowell, D. M. --- Meier, C. --- Ostwald, M. --- Petrey, S. --- Rawls, J. --- Sinclair, R. K. --- atimia. --- decision-making. --- democratic ideology. --- evidence, problems of. --- exclusion, and citizenship. --- foundationalism. --- justice. --- koinōnia. --- liberalism. --- noncitizens: and the polis. --- objectivity. --- politeia. --- positivism. --- pragmatism. --- regime of truth, democratic. --- social contract theory.

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How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing arise in Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C.? By interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition originated in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime "irrationally" based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem became acute after two oligarchic coups d' tat in the late fifth century B.C. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the oligarchs' violence and corruption. Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality. Ober offers fresh readings of the political works of Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, by placing them in the context of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular rule. The competitive Athenian environment stimulated a century of brilliant literary and conceptual innovation. Through Ober's re-creation of an ancient intellectual milieu, early Western political thought emerges not just as a "footnote to Plato," but as a dissident commentary on the first Western democracy.

Democracy --- -Dissenters --- -Dissidents --- Nonconformists --- Rebels (Social psychology) --- Conformity --- Self-government --- Political science --- Equality --- Representative government and representation --- Republics --- Historiography --- Political activity --- Athens (Greece) --- -Intellectual life --- -Political aspects --- Dissenters --- Dissidents --- Aḟiny (Greece) --- Atene (Greece) --- Atʻēnkʻ (Greece) --- Ateny (Greece) --- Athen (Greece) --- Athēna (Greece) --- Athēnai (Greece) --- Athènes (Greece) --- Athinai (Greece) --- Athīnā (Greece) --- Intellectual life --- Political aspects. --- Political aspects --- Historiography. --- Political activity. --- Αθήνα (Greece) --- Democracy - Greece - Athens - Historiography --- Dissenters - Political activity - Greece - Athens --- Athens (Greece) - Intellectual life - Political aspects

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When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad. Democracy and Knowledge is the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security. Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well-designed democracy far outweigh its costs. Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times. Democracy and Knowledge reveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.

Political participation --- Democracy --- Citizen participation --- Community action --- Community involvement --- Community participation --- Involvement, Community --- Mass political behavior --- Participation, Citizen --- Participation, Community --- Participation, Political --- Political activity --- Political behavior --- Political rights --- Social participation --- Political activists --- Politics, Practical --- History --- Greece --- Athens (Greece) --- Politics and government --- Politics and government.

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How do communities survive catastrophe? Using classical Athens as its case study, this book argues that if a democratic community is to survive over time, its people must choose to go on together. That choice often entails hardship and hard bargains. In good times, going on together presents few difficulties. But in the face of loss, disruption, and civil war, it requires tragic sacrifices and agonizing compromises. Athenian Legacies demonstrates with flair and verve how the people of one influential political community rebuilt their democratic government, rewove their social fabric, and, through thick and thin, went on together. The book's essays address amnesty, civic education, and institutional innovation in early Athens, a city that built and lost an empire while experiencing plague, war, economic trauma, and civil conflict. As Ober vividly demonstrates, Athenians became adept at collective survival. They conjoined a cultural commitment to government by the people with new institutions that captured the social and technical knowledge of a diverse population to recover from revolution, foreign occupation, and the ravages of war. Ober provides insight into notorious instances of Athenian injustice, explaining why slaves, women, and foreign residents willingly risked their lives to support a regime in which they were systematically mistreated. He answers the question of why Socrates never left a city he said was badly governed. At a time when social scientists debate the cultural grounding necessary to foster democracy, Athenian Legacies advances new arguments about the role of diversity and the relevance of shared understanding of the past in creating democracies that flourish when the going gets rough.

Democracy --- History

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Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations   The Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature of and a bug in our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, The Greeks and the Rational traces the long history of theorizing rationality back to ancient Greece.   In this book, Josiah Ober explores how ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they recognized its limits--that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of optimal outcomes. Ober finds contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of game theory to political science, economics, and business management. The Greeks and the Rational offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itself.

Democracy --- Practical reason --- History. --- Moral and ethical aspects. --- Athens (Greece) --- Civilization. --- ancient civilizations. --- books for classicists. --- classical philosophers. --- classics. --- democratic. --- economics. --- game theory. --- humanities. --- politics. --- practical reasoning. --- rational thought. --- revisionist history. --- social sciences. --- thinking. --- understanding. --- History --- Moral and ethical aspects