Bøker av Melissa Lane

"In this book, Melissa Lane argues that the concept of political office should be central to our understanding of Greek politics and political theory. Yet discussions of the Greeks tend to focus on courts and assemblies, or at most, on lottery as a means of selecting officeholders - without thinking about their powers of command or about how they were held accountable. Meanwhile, discussions of Plato's Republic and Statesman tend to ignore the profound extent to which his understanding of politics was articulated in terms of the vocabulary and practice of officeholding, on the one hand, and an interrogation of whether these were adequate to a full understanding of ruling, on the other. In The Origins of Political Office: Ancient Greek Ideas of Ruling and Being Ruled, based on the 2018 Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford, Melissa Lane explores public office as a principal building block of Greek political ideas that lies at the intersection of command and accountability. In this way, she argues, the normative conception of office was not a form of absolute rule, but rather always constrained by the ruled, who held them accountable through elections and various forms of review. In return, the ruled gave up some of their freedom by agreeing to obey their rulers. Lane weaves together the role played by this understanding of office in key historical moments, especially but not only in Athens, with its use and rethinking by the philosophers particularly Plato. She does so with novel attention to the absence and abuse of office in various dimensions: from anarchy to tyranny. The book offers a path-breaking interpretation of the relationship between office-holding and ruling, of the meaning of ruling and being ruled, and of the significance of office in political theory and practice both in ancient Greece and with reference to today"--

Socrates and Plato have played crucial and dramatically changing roles in western culture. This book is framed by accounts of modern responses to Socrates and has at its centre chapters exploring the idea of Platonic 'origins' in philosophy and of Platonic 'foundations' for philosophical politics.

What is politics?What are the origins of political philosophy? What can we learn from the Greeks and Romans?In Greek and Roman Political Ideas, acclaimed classics scholar Melissa Lane introduces the reader to the foundations of Western political thought, from the Greeks, who invented democracy, to the Romans, who created a republic and then transformed it into an empire. Tracing the origins of political philosophy from Socrates to Cicero to Plutarch, Lane reminds us that the birth of politics was as much a story of individuals as ideas.

The transition to a sustainable society is a profound challenge to ethics and political thought, as well as to humankind. It is comparable to the great transitions of the past, such as the Enlightenment. Yet the distinguished tradition of groundbreaking ideas has not so far been widely invoked in public debates in this area. What can we learn from the history of ethics and political thought to enable us to cope with climate change? Climate change and sustainability are not just technical problems or problems in applied ethics: they require a new political imagination. Melissa Lane identifies Key messages ¿ on the role of the individual, the household, the nature of citizenship, and the significance of the imagination ¿ which bring the wisdom of the past to bear on the challenges of the present. Using these resources, and building on these insights, she calls for the construction of a ¿new normal¿, remaking our imagination of our society and our selves. Drawing on Platös Republic as a model while also challenging aspects of Platonic politics, the book sets out the political and psychological challenges that we face in moving beyond the psycho-political settlement of modern commercial society.