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Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political

Online ISBN:
9780691237855
Print ISBN:
9780691192154
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political

Melissa Lane
Melissa Lane
Princeton University
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Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
20 June 2023
Online ISBN:
9780691237855
Print ISBN:
9780691192154
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Plato famously defends the rule of knowledge. Knowledge, for him, is of the good. But what is rule? This book reveals how political office and rule were woven together in Greek vocabulary and practices that both connected and distinguished between rule in general and office as a constitutionally limited kind of rule in particular. In doing so, the book shows Plato to have been deeply concerned with the roles and relationships between rulers and ruled. Adopting a longstanding Greek expectation that a ruler should serve the good of the ruled, Plato's major political dialogues—the Republic, the Statesman, and Laws—explore how different kinds of rule might best serve that good. The book offers the first account of the clearly marked vocabulary of offices at the heart of all three of these dialogues, explaining how such offices fit within the broader organization and theorizing of rule. It argues that taking Plato's interest in rule and office seriously reveals tyranny as ultimately a kind of anarchy, lacking the order as well as the purpose of rule. When we think of tyranny in this way, we see how Plato invokes rule and office as underpinning freedom and friendship as political values, and how Greek slavery shaped Plato's account of freedom. Reading Plato both in the Greek context and in dialogue with contemporary thinkers, the book argues that rule and office belong at the center of Platonic, Greek, and contemporary political thought.

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