Introduction: The politics of democracy / Stephen A. Block, Patrick N. Cain, and Stephen Patrick Sims -- To bear the blame for all time : the role of Judah in the Joseph story / J. David Alvis -- Of power, worthiness, and equality : Homeric melancholia and democratic theory / Arlene W. Saxonhouse -- Equality of speech : Athenian democracy in the histories of Herodotus / Ann Ward -- Democracy and demagogy in Thucydides / Steven Forde -- Plato's democratic moment / Mary P. Nichols -- Aristotle on statesmanship, freedom, and the spirit of democracy / Stephen A. Block -- Cicero's populism / Stephen Patrick Sims -- Reflections on Augustine and democracy / Douglas Kries -- Democracy in Muslim Spain : Averroes's domestic account of popular rule / Alexander Orwin -- Thomas Aquinas on democracy and the best regime / Patrick N. Cain -- Machiavelli on the possibilities and problems of democratic politics / Catherine H. Zuckert -- Politics, rhetoric, and philosophy in Hobbes' Leviathan / William Mathie -- Democracy in the thought of John Locke / Daniel E. Burns -- The place of democracy in Montesquieu's spirit of the laws / David K. Nichols -- Rousseau of the promise and perils of democracy / Denise Schaeffer -- Edmund Burke and the dependence of democracy on community / David Clinton -- Kant's retributive liberalism / Susan Meld Shell -- Alexander Hamilton and popular government : friendly defender and friendly critic / Adam M. Carrington -- On reading James Madison : constitutional Republican or democratic theorist? / Jerome C. Foss -- Thomas Jefferson on democracy / Lee Ward -- Hegel and the civil society of imagination / Sara MacDonald -- Tocqueville on pantheism, materialism, and Catholicism / Peter Augustine Lawler -- Marx's economic science and liberal democracy / Sean D. Sutton -- Heidegger and democracy / Mark Blitz -- Leo Strauss on democracy, technology, and liberal education / Timothy Burns.
This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each essay addresses a single thinker's reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes.
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