Democracy and the History of Political Thought

This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each essay addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes.

This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each author addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes. Together, these essays explore the tensions within the democratic way of life that arise from an attachment to equality, liberty, citizenship, law, and the divine. Above all, this work aims at recovering a more complex understanding of democracy, connecting the perennial questions of political philosophy to the perplexities and crises of modern democracy.

Introduction: The Politics of Democracy by Stephen A. Block, Patrick N. Cain, and Stephen Patrick Sims

Chapter 1: To Bear the Blame for All Time: The Role of Judah in the Joseph Story by J. David Alvis

Chapter 2: Of Power, Worthiness, and Equality: Homeric Melancholia and Democratic Theory by Arlene W. Saxonhouse

Chapter 3: Equality of Speech: Athenian Democracy in the Histories of Herodotus by Ann Ward

Chapter 4: Democracy and Demagogy in Thucydides by Steven Forde

Chapter 5: Plato’s Democratic Moment by Mary P. Nichols

Chapter 6: Aristotle on Statesmanship, Freedom, and the Spirit of Democracy by Stephen A. Block

Chapter 7: Cicero’s Populism by Stephen Patrick Sims

Chapter 8: Reflections on Augustine and Democracy by Douglas Kries

Chapter 9: Democracy in Muslim Spain: Averroes’s Domestic Account of Popular Rule by Alexander Orwin

Chapter 10: Thomas Aquinas on Democracy and the Best Regime by Patrick N. Cain

Chapter 11: Machiavelli on the Possibilities and Problems of Democratic Politics by Catherine H. Zuckert

Chapter 12: Politics, Rhetoric, and Philosophy in Hobbes’ Leviathan by William Mathie

Chapter 13: Democracy in the Thought of John Locke by Daniel E. Burns

Chapter 14: The Place of Democracy in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws by David K. Nichols

Chapter 15: Rousseau of the Promise and Perils of Democracy by Denise Schaeffer

Chapter 16: Edmund Burke and the Dependence of Democracy on Community by David Clinton

Chapter 17: Kant’s Retributive Liberalism by Susan Meld Shell

Chapter 18: Alexander Hamilton and Popular Government: Friendly Defender and Friendly Critic by Adam M. Carrington

Chapter 19: On Reading James Madison: Constitutional Republican or Democratic Theorist? by Jerome C. Foss

Chapter 20: Thomas Jefferson on Democracy by Lee Ward

Chapter 21: Hegel and the Civil Society of Imagination by Sara MacDonald

Chapter 22: Tocqueville on Pantheism, Materialism, and Catholicism by Peter Augustine Lawler

Chapter 23: Marx’s Economic Science and Liberal Democracy by Sean D. Sutton

Chapter 24: Heidegger and Democracy by Mark Blitz

Chapter 25: Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education by Timothy Burns