A stimulating appraisal of a crucial contemporary theme, this comprehensive analysis of globalizaton offers a distinctively cultural perspective on the social theory of the contemporary world. This perspective considers the world as a whole, going beyond conventional distinctions between the global and the local and between the universal and the particular. Its cultural approach emphasizes the political and economic significance of shifting conceptions of, and forms of participation in, an increasingly compressed world. At the same time the book shows why (...) culture has become a globally contested issue - why, for example, competing conceptions of ′world order′ have political and economic consequences. (shrink)

Discusses how cultural and economic changes around the world have caused a shift in the concepts that shape modern politics and defined the new global order.

"A major accomplishment. Eckstein's merit is to have demonstrated that Polybius was fully aware of the moral component of historiography and was able to reconcile this with the purposes of a responsible and critical scholarly historian."--Kurt Raaflaub, Director, Center for Hellenic Studies "A major book on a major author, this fresh and stimulating interpretation represents a significant challenge to current specialist thinking. It forcefully raises the fundamental historiographic questions of praise and blame and the function of history."--Philip A. Stadter, Falk (...) Professor in The Humanities, University of North Carolina "In Polybius's Histories, as Eckstein so adroitly shows, politicians see their predecessors, even in defeat or failure, praised when they act nobly and responsibly, thus finding by example a code of ethical behavior and moral duty that remains a guide to conduct even in changin circumstances."--Richard Mitchell, author of Patricians and Plebians: The Origins of the Roman State (1990). (shrink)

An excellent introduction to the field of international relations, The Global Philosophers examines the intellectual roots of contemporary literature on international relations and discusses the historical context in which famous historical political theorists wrote.

In this book Professor Baldry describes this development from Homer to Cicero when, although the traditional divisions and prejudices still remained string, the ...

A comprehensive interpretation of the "Scienza Nuova" and of the ways in which Vico managed to present his essentially naturalistic philosophy in a form acceptable within the ecclesiastical climate of 18th century Italy.

‘Globalization’ has become in recent years one of the central themes of social scientific debates. Social theories of globalization may be regarded as specific academic and analytic manifestations of wider forms of ‘global consciousness’ to be found in the social world today. These are ways of thinking and perceiving which emphasize that the whole world should be seen as ‘one place’, its various geographically disparate parts all being interconnected in various complex ways. In this article we set out how both (...) a general ‘ecumenical sensibility’ involving such ways of thinking, and its specifically academic variant, an ‘ecumenical analytic’, are simultaneously responses to ‘globalizing conditions’ and also products of the latter. We demonstrate how social theories of globalization, locatable in the overall set we call the ‘ecumenical analytic’, are reflexive thought-products, in that they both seek to investigate, and are made possible by, ‘globalizing conditions’. Rejecting the view that both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic are solely products of modernity, we show how such modes of consciousness and analysis were present in the period of Greek history between the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the Roman Empire. We show how at that period a socio-political situation akin in certain ways to modern ‘globalizing conditions’ generated both an ecumenical sensibility and an ecumenical analytic, the latter most forcefully represented by a revolutionary new genre in historiography called Universal History. By examining the ideas of its most famous practitioner, the historian Polybius, we demonstrate that Universal History both provided a framework for understanding what we today would call ‘globalization’, and exhibited a remarkable degree of reflexive awareness about its own conditions of possibility. We seek to show that an attentiveness to ‘global’ processes and a reflexive understanding of what makes that form of thinking possible in the first place, are not solely confined to modernity but were identifiable features of intellectual production in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. In this way we argue that scholars today should not imagine that the contemporary ‘global turn’ in social thought is either unique or wholly historically unprecedented. (shrink)

This powerful new translation makes it clear why this work marked a turning-point in humanist thinking as significance as Newton's contemporary revolution in ...

In this volume, the author describes some of the salient features of the Athenian social structure and culture, as well as the wider Hellenic society. The aim is not to reveal new facts about this much-studied civilization, but rather to apply such perspectives as are common to sociologists to help understand how this civilization gave rise to and shaped Plato's social theory. This, then, is a study in the sociology of knowledge - of the Platonic origins of Western social theory, (...) of some of the earliest secular diagnoses of and proposed remedies for the human condition, and of the growth of critical reflection on human relationships as it emerged in ancient Greece. (shrink)

Books V and VI of Aristotle's Politics constitute a manual on practical politics. In the fifth book Aristotle examines the causes of faction and constitutional change and suggests remedies for political instability. In the sixth book he offers practical advice to the statesman who wishes to establish, preserve, or reform a democracy or an oligarchy. He discusses many political issues, theoretical and practical, which are still widely debated today--revolution and reform, democracy and tyranny, freedom and equality. David Keyt presents a (...) clear and accurate new translation of these books, together with a commentary which, though primarily philosophical, also supplies a key to Aristotle's many historical references. It is intended to guide readers towards a proper understanding of this classic text in the history of political thought, and does not assumes knowledge of Greek or of ancient history and politics. (shrink)

Beginning with an examination of the Homeric world and continuing with a discussion of the political ideas of the lyric poets from Hesiod to Pindar, the author moves on to a political analysis of the pre-Socratic philosophers, the tragedians, Herdotus, Thucydides, the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans. Finally, the writings of Polybius are examined as a key to understanding the assimilation of Greek political thought into the mainstream of Roman thought.