Chapter 2: The Ancients Flashcards
Political Theory is both ___ and ___.
Prescriptive and analytical.
Prescriptive:
Prescribing how societies and political bodies should be structured and how they should function.
Analytical:
Analysing how and why our political relations function the way they do.
Three key points in political philosophy:
There is no winner.
Building Canon of Knowledge.
Accepting that we need to change the way we think according to changing circumstances of our own political environment.
Canon of Knowledge
Building on past and present knowledge. Amalgamating knowledge, not replacing it.
Western political thought originated in ___.
Greece.
___ Wars influenced Plato and Aristotle.
Peloponnesian.
More specifically, the execution of ___ influenced Plato’s ideas.
Socrates.
During the trial and execution of his teacher, Plato came to realize that:
The ignorant were allowed to rule over the masses and run the government.
Before the wars, there were ___ democracies in the Greek city-states.
Direct.
Direct democracies meant that anyone who was a ___ could vote.
Citizen.
What was the problem with the system of direct democracy in ancient Greece?
The definition of citizen was extremely limited, excluding women, foreigners, and slaves.
Plato supported/questioned direct democracy
Questioned
Plato proposed social and political justice through a state organized to individuals’ ___ and ___.
Capabilities and personalities.
Plato’s new idea of system of governance can be identified as prescriptive/analytic.
Prescriptive.
Governments before Plato’s ideas were run on the basis of virtues such as strength and courage. However, Plato proposed that…
Governments should be run by intellectuals who engaged in philosophical thought and contemplative reason.
Aristotle was considered to be a philosopher of the ___.
Possible.
Aristotle was not as focused on the idea of an ideal state: rather, he looked for ways to make it ___ and ___.
Practical and possible.
Aristotle sought to establish a link between ___ and ___.
Ethics and politics.
By Aristotle’s ideas, the ideal was that you would become the best person for your ___.
Capabilities.
Aristotle stated that a good ___ can prosper only in a good ___.
Individual, community.
By Aristotle’s theories, the ___ comes before ___.
Community, individual.
___ is fundamental to ___, and vice versa.
Politics, ethics.
Political philosophy is thinking about the nature and the ___ requirements of the good life.
Public.
Polis in Greek means
City state, and the active life among citizens within it.
Political philosophy should be understood as a ___ ___.
Extended conversation.
Give an example of the failure of direct democracy
Pericles was reprimanded, but then re-elected.
The most common divide in political philosophy is between the ___ and the ___.
Ancients and the moderns.
The ancients believed in…
The classical tradition starting with the Greeks.
The moderns believed in…
The thought that emerges with the sovereign state and market economy.
In Athens, politics was a moral activity, and was about enabling the ___ ___ and the common good.
Good life.
Socrates proposed that men of good character would rule not for money or power, but out of fear of…
Being ruled by someone worse.
Socrates’ three parts of the soul:
Moderation, courage, and wisdom.
Socrates defined wisdom as the ability to…
See beyond the surface of things.
In Socrates’ division of labour, there would be:
Those who loved money, those who loved honour, and those who were capable of wisdom.
Socrates’ division of labour is likened to these three things:
Sheep, watchdogs, and shepherds.
Aristotle worked from ___, not abstract logic.
Observation.
Aristotle tutored ___ the Great
Alexander.
Aristotle’s citizens required ___.
Phronesis
Phronesis
Practical judgement, which they could gain only by experience and emulation of those who demonstrated it.
Aristotle’s two assumptions that would unsettle us are:
Slaves are expected to do housework, allowing citizens to participate in politics, and women do not possess the rational thought necessary for phronesis.
According to the tragic and Sophocles, the worst of human afflictions is…
The lack of judgement.
Who said that “fanatical enthusiasm is the mark of a real man”.
Thucydides.
Aristotle insisted that “the most important thing is not life, it is the ___ ___”.
Good life.
Hannah Arendt called the capacity for self-interrogation ___.
Thinking.
