Σοφοκλέους πολιτικά

Τί τὸ πολιτικό;

Social and political changes played their part, especially the growth of democracy at Athens. This was
a gradual process, begun by Solon (who first introduced the principle of appointing public officials by
a combination of election and lot) and continued by Cleisthenes after the Peisistratid tyranny. It was
already far advanced by the time of the Persian Wars, and completed by the reforms of Pericles and
Ephialtes about 458. These opened the archonship to the lowest classes and introduced pay for the
archons, boulé and people’s courts, thereby making it not obly legal but practically possible for the
poorer citizens to give up their time to public affairs.

Justice, Virtue, Constitution, Democracy, Citizenship, Cosmopolitanism, Republic and Sovereignty

ἰσονομία  : is it equality of law? Isegoria, isosephos polis, isokratia

put the question of forms of regimes or contitusion at the center of its concerns

 “Politics” and what is “political” emerged as part of a widespread set of sociolinguistic

practices, most notably and best documented in Athens, while “philosophy” was
invented by a relatively small number of self-professed “philosophical” thinkers.
Justice is the basis: Eudaimonia + regime acceptable to the gods, basis of
equalcitizenship
 Μετέχειν τῶν πολιτικῶν τε καὶ τῆς πολιτείας

 Ober, J., 1989, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: rhetoric, ideology, and the
power of the people, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 –––, 1998a, “The Polis as a Society: Aristotle, John Rawls, and the Athenian
Social Contract,” as reprinted in his The Athenian Revolution, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, pp. 161–187.
 –––, 1998b, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: intellectual critics of popular
rule, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 –––, 2008, Democracy and Knowledge: innovation and learning in classical
Athens, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Heroic ethos

 Schofield, M., 1991, The Stoic Idea of the City, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press; reprinted 1999, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 –––, 1999, ‘Equality and hierarchy in Aristotle’s thought’, in his Saving the City:
Philosopher-Kings and other classical paradigms, London and New York: Routledge,
ch.6 (pp. 88–100).
 –––, 2006, Plato. Political Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Should philosophers act politically (and if so, should they engage in ordinary politics in

existing regimes, or work to establish new ones), or should they abstain from politics in
order to live a life of pure contemplation? 

 indications of the principled limits which he might have put on the requirement to obey
the law. The first two recalled political incidents: while serving on the Council, he had
voted against an illegal proposal (32b–c); and under the brief oligarchical domination of
“The Thirty”, he had disobeyed an order of the ruling body to arrest a democratic
partisan for execution (32c–d). The third is a hypothetical remark. If, he imagines, the
jurors were to say to him, “we acquit you, but only on condition that you spend no more
time on this investigation and do not practice philosophy, and if you are caught doing so
you will die,” his reply would be: “I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I
draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy” 
Ἀριστοτέλης

Πλάτων
Δημοσθένης

Τὰ ἐπιταττόμενα ποιεῖν

Doing what you’re told : Philoctetes and Oedipus

1er episode

ὁ τύραννος Oidipous Rex: portrait of a tyrant

Kreon: δίκαιος βασιλεύς;

Ἀντιγόνη, 162-211

Antigone : Agon and politics

ὦ σχετλία, Κρέοντος ἀντειρηκότος;

ἐρωτάω, ἐρωτήσω, ἠρόμην, ἠρώτηκα, ἠρώτημαι, ἠρωτήθην)