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3 - Theorizing Athenian society: the rule of law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
Summary
The previous chapter argued that Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plato regarded conflict and civil strife as occurring naturally in Greek cities. The rivalries through which political and social hierarchies are established and contested unleash the centrifugal forces of resentment, enmity, retaliation, and violence. These forces are fueled by the corrosive power of envy and the primal drive for revenge. How can these centrifugal tendencies be checked? In classical Athens political thinkers of various ideological hues all agreed that the rule of law could provide a bulwark against civil strife. As Thucydides showed how the survival of a political community required the preservation of legal institutions independent from competing factions, so too Plato and Aristotle argued that the stability of the polis depended upon the rule of law. Skeptical of radical democracy, they contrasted the rule of law of the good society with the lawlessness and license of contemporary Athens. Athenian democratic politicians, on the other hand, tirelessly reaffirmed that the rule of law was the bulwark of radical democracy, and that in non-democratic cities those who held power pursued their interests without respect for the laws and constitution. In other words, while everyone might agree that the rule of law alone could preserve a city from stasis, their respective conceptions of the rule of law were closely connected to commitments to particular ideologies of political community.
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- Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens , pp. 34 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995