Masters and Slaves

Revisioned Essays in Political Philosophy

Michael Palmer

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9780739157596
• Edition: 0
• Topic: 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