ROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE MODERN THEORETICAL IMAGINATION

Hammer, Dean

ISBN 10: 0806139277 / ISBN 13: 9780806139272

Published by University of Nebraska Press, 2008

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: ROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE MODERN THEORETICAL IMAGINATION
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806139277
• ISBN 13: 9780806139272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Links modern political theorists with the Romans who inspired them

Roman contributions to political theory have been acknowledged primarily in the province of law and administration. Even with a growing interest among classicists in Roman political thought, most political theorists view it as merely derivative of Greek philosophy.

Focusing on the works of key Roman thinkers, Dean Hammer recasts the legacy of their political thought, examining their imaginative vision of a vulnerable political world and the relationship of the individual to this realm. By bringing modern political theorists into conversation with the Romans who inspired them―Arendt with Cicero, Machiavelli with Livy, Montesquieu with Tacitus, Foucault with Seneca―the author shows how both ancient Roman and modern European thinkers seek to recover an attachment to the political world that we actually inhabit, rather than to a utopia―a “perfect nowhere” outside of the existing order.

Brimming with fresh interpretations of both ancient and modern theorists, this book offers provocative reading for classicists, political scientists, and anyone interested in political theory and philosophy. It is also a timely meditation on the hidden ways in which democracy can give way to despotism when the animating spirit of politics succumbs to resignation, cynicism, and fear.

About the Author

Dean Hammer is the John W. Wetzel Professor of Classics and Professor of Government at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Puritan Tradition in Revolutionary, Federalist, and Whig Political Theory: A Rhetoric of Origins and The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought.