September 22-23, 2002
Michigan League, University

Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History, Cambridge University

Exemplars of Western Civilisation? What the Spartans Have Done For Us

ABSTRACT: We're not long past the first anniversary of the events of 9/11. Those tragic events have at least also provoked a salutary spate of Western reflection on just what it is to be "Western", on what "Western civilisation" is, or should be. Some of us Westerners were provoked, specifically, into wondering aloud whether any definition of our civilisation and its cultural value would justify our dying for them, or even maybe killing for them. Those of us who are historians of ancient Greece wondered that with especial intensity. For the world of ancient Greece is one of the principal taproots of our Western Civilisation. The two best known exemplars of ancient Greek culture that have meant most to the Western tradition are Athens and Sparta. Often they have been opposed to each other: luxury versus virtue in the eighteenth century, democracy against authoritarian fascism in the twentieth. The battle of values continues in our own century, and the literal battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE, arguably Sparta's finest hour, would seem to provide an apt focus for the discussion. The downside of the Spartans' achievements, most notoriously their treatment of the Helots, cannot be overlooked. And yet the ancient ideal encapsulated in the myth of Thermopylae—the concept that there are some values that are worth dying for, as well as living for—still resonates today. "Utopia" is formally ambiguous: it can mean either "No Place" or "Place of Well-Faring". I'd like to think that a Thermopylae-inspired eutopia might not be too bad a place to be.

Josiah Ober, Magie Professor of Classics & Acting Director of the Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Democratic Culture, Knowledge Exchange, and Military Capacity

ABSTRACT: The paper develops three main points: First, that in ancient Athens the institutions of democracy were profoundly implicated in the processes of knowledge exchange; next, that democratic conditions of knowledge circulation constitute a primary reason for the remarkable
Athenian rise to prominence as a military power in the fifth century B.C.; and finally that democratic culture's tendency to promote the knowledge sharing remains a primary reason that modern democracies are able to compete effectively with authoritarian regimes that seem to possess obvious operational advantages in terms of command and control, secrecy,
indoctrination, and insulation from moral concerns. There are, therefore, urgent practical reasons for citizens of modern democracies to resist scaling back on democratic institutions when faced with new and unexpected military challenges. The more closely we attend to how military power was developed and deployed in classical Athens, the less likely we are to accept that there is a meaningful tradeoff between the open culture of democracy and the concerns of national security. Indeed, abandoning democratic freedoms in a time of crisis is a foolish sort of unilateral
disarmament in the face of danger: embracing authoritarianism to save ourselves from terror risks losing both the war and the values we fight to protect.

Michael Zuckert, Nancy R. Dreux Chair of Government & International Studies,
University of Notre Dame

The American Founding:  The Classics and the Problem of Democratic International Relations

ABSTRACT: The focus of the paper will be The Federalist, the most significant work of political theory produced during the American founding era. The Federalist presents itself as the product of Publius, a figure from the history of the early Roman republic, the subject of one of Plutarch's biographies in his Parallel Lives. The first task of my paper will be to uncover the meaning of this adoption of a classical persona during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. I will argue that this appropriation of the classics has a specific but limited meaning in the context of the ratification debate, and is not meant to be (as some take it) a wide-ranging endorsement of the perspective of classical republicanism or ancient political philosophy. I will then examine
Publius' treatment of the issues of international politics, in which he argues for a moderate form of international realism, in a context where democratic (or republican) norms constantly stand as a challenge to that realism. I conclude with some reflections on the differences between Publius' "realism" and that of Thucydides, the ancient world's most important democratic realist.

Further Reading
as suggested by the guest speakers of War and Democracy:

D. D. Boedeker and K. A. Raaflaub, Democracy, Empire and the Arts in Fifth Century Athens

Paul Cartledge, Spartans: An Epic History

Paul Cartledge, Spartan Reflections

J. Dunn, Democracy: The Unfinished Journey

L. Fitzhardinge, The Spartans

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist

J. Hesk, Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens

Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite Democratic Athens

Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens:
Intellecutual Critics of Popular Rule

Thomas Pangle and Peter Ahrensdorof, Justice Among
Nations

Plutarch, Life of Poplicola

Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought

Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics

Michael Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean
Political Philosophy

Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New
Republicanism