Ancient Greek Political Theory

In this article I reinterpret Plato’s allegory of the cave as dramatizing democracy’s dependency on slave labor. Doing so, I argue that Plato allegorizes not the birth of the philosopher, as in the dominant readings of the allegory, but of the militant intellectual, one invested in the axiom of equality and the problem of emancipation. Equality, emancipation, intellectual militancy, and the meaning of Plato’s dramatic allegories are the main attributes of Alain Badiou’s and Jacques Rancière’s long investments in Plato’s Socratic plays, which explains why they are my main interlocutors in this article. However, in this article I argue that a decolonial interpretation of the allegory shows ways in which Rancière and Badiou’s interpretations of Plato ultimately undermine their own commitments to the axiom of equality by radicalizing the axiom in a different geopolitical location.

G reek constitutional theory-the theories of ancient Greek philosophers and historians about how polities naturally organize themselves, how they evolve over time, and how statesmen might optimize both their organization and evolution-arrived in Latin Christendom in two waves. The first wave came in the High Middle Ages, when Aristotle's Ethics and Politics were translated into Latin. The recovery of Aristotle's political thought stimulated a great deal of reflection among major theorists such as Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John of Paris, and Marsilius of Padua, and these thinkers in their turn have been studied extensively by modern historians of scholastic political thought, and their debts to Aristotle analyzed. Most agree that the reception of Aristotle's Politics represents a major inflection point in the history of Western political philosophy. 1 Less noticed by historians of political thought is the second wave in the reception of Greek political thought. This occurred in fifteenth century Italy, when philosophers, orators, and historians such as Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Polybius, Appian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Dio Cassius, and Diodorus of Halicarnassus were translated for the first time into Latin. This second wave has been much less studied. Indeed, in some cases we still lack precise and comprehensive answers to basic questions: what texts were translated, by whom, when and why; their diffusion and readership; and the commentaries and paratexts that escorted them into the Latin environment and governed how they were understood. 2 As yet there are only a few specialized studies of how and to what extent the reception

This article explores the relationship between theory and praxis by contrasting three different models of intellectual endeavor: totalizing, particular and decolonial. Attending to the critique that Gayatri Spivak raised against Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in Can the Subaltern Speak?, this article advocates a dramaturgical reading of texts as a model for political theory to address subaltern agency. It reads such agency in the smile that Pier Paolo Pasolini registers in his 1967 film version of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Tyrannos. Dramaturgically read, Oedipus reveals another text, the tragic history of a yet insufficiently explored democratic alternative that goes against the established democracy and its complicity with inequality in the continued naturalization of slavery despite its foundation in equality. This subtext demands understanding Oedipus as a political production from the speechless agency of dissident servants, a more subversive aspect of democratic politics.
Keywords: decolonial intellectual; dramaturgical reading; subaltern; Gayatri Spivak; Michel Foucault; Oedipus Tyrannos

This paper seeks to destabilize the silent privilege given to the secured juridical-political position of the citizen as the stable site of enunciation of the problem/solution framework under which the stranger (foreigner, immigrant, refugee) is theoretically located. By means of tex-tual, intertextual, and extratextual readings of Antigone, the paper argues that it is politically and literarily possible to (re)invent her for strangers in the twenty-first century, that is, for those symbolically produced as not-legally locatable and who resignify their ambivalent ontological status between life and death as an alternative sociopolitical location of

Religion, Politics and Law in an Attic Inscription
The article aims to shed light on the complex issues of polis-religion in Classical Athens through the example of a 4th century ritual norm from Attica. According to the inscription, the priest of Apollo Erithaseos is responsible for the trees in the sanctuary, but can only impose fines on the transgressors with polis authorities (archon basileus, bule). The priest is acting according to the decisions of the council and the popular assembly, and he is required to report the violations to the magistrates, while it seems that the god/Apollo is entirely absent from the administration and maintenance of his own cult. The inscription shows how religion, politics, and law can relate to each other in a culture, where religion does not exist as a separate sphere of society.

In this paper, I examine Plato’s references to, and the potential role of, “chance” and “divine inspiration” in the context of the realization of the “perfect city.” In conjunction, I examine Plato’s references in the Republic to other inspirational phenomena, including the Delphi Oracle, Socrates’ daimon, and poetic insights. I also contextualize the vocabulary relative to the phenomenon of inspiration from Homer to Plato, with the aim of showing that Plato would place more faith in inspiration than chance, although the two, at times, must overlap. I show that the references to inspiration indicate to what degree Plato remained captivated by the iconic poetry of Homer and Hesiod. Finally, I note the difference between the Greek and the Judeo-Christian notions of “revelation.” This paper is part of a larger research project on the role of inspiration in philosophy and poetry in ancient Greece.
These are the works cited in the paper, the published version of which has an integrated bibliography at the end of the volume.
Leonard Brandwood. A Word Index to Plato. Leeds: Maney & Son Ltd, 1976.
Pierre Chantraine. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. 4 vols. Paris: Klincksieck,
1968–80.
Gerard Naddaf. “The Role of the Poet in Plato’s Ideal Cities of Callipolis and Magnesia.”
Kriterion 46, no. 116 (July/Dec. 2007): 329–49.
Gerard Naddaf. A. “Algunas reflexiones sobre la noción griega temprana de inspiración poética.”
ARETĖ: Revista de Filosofía 21, no. 2 (2009): 51–86.
Gerard Naddaf. B. “Allegory and the Origins of Philosophy,” in Logos and Mythos:
Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature, ed. W. Wians, 99–131. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009.
Gerard Naddaf. “Spontaneous generation and creationism in Pre-Socratic monism in light of Aristotle’s analysis in the Physics,” Anais de Filosofia Clássica 8, no. 5 (2010): 23-40.

Les philosophes de l’Antiquité évoquent assez peu la monnaie. Pourtant, un examen attentif des rares passages où elle apparaît chez Aristote, Diogène le Cynique et Platon révèle qu’elle n’est pas à leurs yeux un instrument quelconque, seulement destiné à faciliter les échanges économiques. Tous s’interrogent en effet sur sa nature : ils s’accordent à voir en elle un instrument de mesure conventionnel, mais se séparent sur la nature de son caractère conventionnel et sur le sens qu’ils lui accordent. Leurs positions respectives varient selon l’ampleur et l’importance de la dimension politique qu’ils accordent à l’animal humain.

What is money the measurement of?Aristotle, Diogenes and Plato, or the money convention in the horizon of politicsAncient Greek philosophers do not say much about money. But a close scrutiny of the scarce references to money in the works of Aristotle, Diogenes the Cynic and Plato shows that these philosophers do not consider it a mere economical instrument aimed at making trade easier. They all investigate the nature of money and understand it as a conventional standard. Nevertheless, they do not agree on what its conventional dimension is and means. My claim is that their respective positions depend on the importance and meaning they assign to the political dimension of the human being.

Since a decade, sortition has been experiencing a surprising and strong revival in political theory and political practice. The rediscovery of the drawing of lots has been inspired by a specific reading of the history of political ideas. According to this reading, a systematic connection between sortition and democracy already existed in ancient Greece - a point of view which I call the "democracy thesis of the lottery". The article argues that the democracy thesis of the lottery is incorrect not only with respect to the actual use of lotteries in ancient Greek poleis, but also with respect to those who theorized about this issue at that time, in particular Plato and Aristotle.

This article explores the relationship between theory and praxis by contrasting three different models of intellectual endeavor: totalizing, particular and decolonial. Attending to the critique that Gayatri Spivak raised against Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in Can the Subaltern Speak?, this article advocates a dramaturgical reading of texts as a model for political theory to address subaltern agency. It reads such agency in the smile that Pier Paolo Pasolini registers in his 1967 film version of Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Tyrannos. Dramaturgically read, Oedipus reveals another text, the tragic history of a yet insufficiently explored democratic alternative that goes against the established democracy and its complicity with inequality in the continued naturalization of slavery despite its foundation in equality. This subtext demands understanding Oedipus as a political production from the speechless agency of dissident servants, a more subversive aspect of democratic politics.

This paper studies some aspects of Plutarch's ethical-political thought in comparison with the Igwebuike philosophy. So, it exposes, on the one hand, how Plutarch insists on the need for citizens, especially those involved in politics to seek frst the good of the community and give priority to the progress of society above personal achievements. On the other hand, the paper presents the communitarian/communal view that springs from the Igwebuike understanding of life in the community. We present the positions of various African thinkers who reason along the line of this worldview to establish that community does have pride of place in the African conception of life together. The last step in this study is a synthesis of Plutarch's ideas and the Igwebuike philosophy. We discover that mutatis mutandis, what Plutarch advocates for his Greek compatriots, constitutes the underlining principle of the Igwebuike worldview. Moreover, this confrms the universality of this emerging trend in African philosophy.

This article criticizes Lawrence Hamilton’s disavowal of more radical political positions on the basis of their ‘unrealistic assumptions,’ by putting his concept of ‘real modern freedom’ in conversation with a Lacanian notion of the Real, yet one that invests that Real with the historically differentiated modes of concrete racialized and gendered labor that capitalism obscures in order to create value. Drawing from critical race theory I argue against the reformist impulse that seeks to improve the representational reach of liberal masks. Instead, my understanding of political representation argues for the crack in the mask as the symptom that reminds us of the Real, the irreducible antagonism at the heart of the social.
Key Words: Political Representation, Real, Symptom, Mask, Flesh.