Danielle S. Allen

For Danielle Allen, punishment is more a window onto democratic Athens' fundamental values than simply a set of official practices. From imprisonment to stoning to refusal of burial, instances of punishment in ancient Athens fueled conversations among ordinary citizens and political and literary figures about the nature of justice. Re-creating in vivid detail the cultural context of this conversation, Allen shows that punishment gave the community an opportunity to establish a shining myth of harmony and cleanliness: that the city could be purified of anger and social struggle, and perfect order achieved. Each member of the city--including notably women and slaves--had a specific role to play in restoring equilibrium among punisher, punished, and society. The common view is that democratic legal processes moved away from the "emotional and personal" to the "rational and civic," but Allen shows that anger, honor, reciprocity, spectacle, and social memory constantly prevailed in Athenian law and politics. Allen draws upon oratory, tragedy, and philosophy to present the lively intellectual climate in which punishment was incurred, debated, and inflicted by Athenians. Broad in scope, this book is one of the first to offer both a full account of punishment in antiquity and an examination of the political stakes of democratic punishment. It will engage classicists, political theorists, legal historians, and anyone wishing to learn more about the relations between institutions and culture, normative ideas and daily events, punishment and democracy.

A landmark work of political theory on the central importance of group identity and cultural pluralism in political lifeJustice and the Politics of Difference challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice, critically analyzing basic concepts underlying most theories of justice such as impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. Drawing on the experiences and concerns of social movements created by marginalized and excluded groups, Iris Marion Young shows how democratic theorists fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms of reason and respectability. Basing her vision of the good society on the differentiated, culturally plural network of contemporary urban life, she argues for a principle of group representation in democratic publics and for group-differentiated policies. Danielle Allen’s incisive foreword contextualizes Young’s work and explains how debates surrounding social justice have changed since—and been transformed by—the original publication of the book.

Why Plato Wrote argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politicsOffers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theorySelected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011

Why Plato Wrote argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politicsOffers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theorySelected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011