Full Description
Originally published in 1965, this was the first analysis from the viewpoints of modern sociology and social psychology of the social structure and culture of ancient Greece. The book examines Greece's class system (with special attention to slavery), its various solutions to the problems of social identity, and its system of international relations as a background for what was also the first intensive analysis by a modern sociologist of Plato's social theory. This study is then used to develop a more general framework within which modern social theory may be viewed and appraised in its relation to classical social thought.
The book will be of interest to sociologists, classicists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists and of course philosophers.
Contents
Part 1: The Hellenic World 1. Civil War in the Polis 2. The Greek Contest System: Patterns of Culture 3. Self and Society in Greece 4. The War Between the Cities Part 2: Enter Plato 5. An Alternative to Politics 6. Social Diagnosis: Lacunae and Assumptions in Plato's Diagnosis 8. Therapeutics: Planned Social Change in Plato's Theory 9. Therapeutics: Law and Universalism 10. The Fatigue of Reason and the Metaphysics of Authoritarianism 11. Death and the Tragic Outlook. Glossary of Greek Terms. Major Dates in Greek History.
