| Abstract: | Abstract Does Aristotle's case for honorable statesmen endanger the case for democratic institutions and equal rights, as two critics contend? It had better not: democracies too need the guidance of a Mandela, an FDR, a Washington. Also, the ancient thinkers had their own doubts about grand ambition, seeking to cabin such types through education and moderate republics, including democratic republics. Also, the objection neglects the relativism, doctrinairism, and postmodernist disillusion that eventually undermined modern political philosophy. Might the old philosophers’ reasonableness, not least on the topic of leadership, be now indispensable to political science? After such points I address the other criticisms: have I not neglected the Biblical improvements on classical political science? Do I portray adequately Plato's analysis of that quintessential lover of power and glory, Alcibiades? |
