Masters and Slaves

Revisioned Essays in Political Philosophy

Michael Palmer

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2001
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739157596
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This collection of essays sheds light on the writings of leading figures in the history of political philosophy by exploring a nexus of questions concerning mastery and slavery in the human soul. To this end, Masters and Slaves elucidates archetypal human alternatives in their import for political life: the philosopher and king; the lover of wisdom and the lover of glory; the king and the tyrant; and finally, the master and the slave. Palmer re-examines these ideas as a framework for achieving a deeper understanding of the work of famous thinkers-from the ancient to modern times-including Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. As well, the book addresses distinctions between the "ancients" and the "moderns," and touches on the work of contemporary theorists such as Leo Strauss, George Parkin Grant, and Allan Bloom.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 - Mastering Slaves or Mastering Science?: An Aristotelian Reprise
• Chapter 2 - Kings, Philosophers, and Tyrants in Plato’s Republic
• Chapter 3 - Alcibiades and the Question of Tyranny in Thucydides
• Chapter 4 - Thucydides on Ambition to Rule
• Chapter 5 - Machiavellian virtù and Thucydidean arete: Moderation and the Common Good
• Chapter 6 - Machiavelli’s Inhuman Humanism in The Prince
• Chapter 7 - The Master Fool: The Conspiracy of Machiavelli’s Mandragola
• Chapter 8 - Hobbesian and Thucydidean Realism
• Chapter 9 - The Citizen Philosopher: Rousseau’s Dedicatory Letter to the Discourse on Inequality
• Chapter 10 - On Leo Strauss’s “Jerusalem and Athens”
• Chapter 11 - On George Grant’s English-Speaking Justice
• Chapter 12 - On Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind
• Index
• About the Author