Greek thinking, fast and slow. Euripides and Thucydides on deliberation and decision-making

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Titel: Greek thinking, fast and slow. Euripides and Thucydides on deliberation and decision-making
Autoren: Hesk, Jonathan Peter
Weitere Verfasser: University of St Andrews.School of Classics, University of St Andrews.Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research
Verlagsinformationen: 2017.
Publikationsjahr: 2017
Schlagwörter: T-NDAS, PA Classical philology, PA
Beschreibung: The author acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust via a Research Fellowship award. Euripides’ Suppliant Women and Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ leadership within the Athenian democracy of 431/430 BCE are good examples of classical Greek texts which ask citizen-audiences to reflect very deeply on the processes by which they come to make political or legislative decisions in a council or assembly. They also stimulate reflection among elite citizens and leaders on their own involvement in such processes. Both texts achieve these forms of reflection by anticipating recent empirical work in sociology, political psychology, ‘behavioural economics’ and cognitive science. These anticipations may reflect an elite ‘paternalistic’ approach to political rhetoric and leadership to an extent. But in the case of the mass art form of Greek tragedy, its dramatization of ‘pathologies’ and ‘errors’ of both mass deliberation and leaders’ responses to them may have contributed to Athens’ relative success as a participatory ‘deliberative democracy’ in which the masses were sovereign.
Publikationsart: Article
Dateibeschreibung: application/pdf
Sprache: English
Zugangs-URL: https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ias/insights/HeskFinal.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/10023/12358
Dokumentencode: edsair.dedup.wf.002..95b1b4da38ac6bcfaf862a4b881824f1
Datenbank: OpenAIRE
Beschreibung
Abstract:The author acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust via a Research Fellowship award. Euripides’ Suppliant Women and Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ leadership within the Athenian democracy of 431/430 BCE are good examples of classical Greek texts which ask citizen-audiences to reflect very deeply on the processes by which they come to make political or legislative decisions in a council or assembly. They also stimulate reflection among elite citizens and leaders on their own involvement in such processes. Both texts achieve these forms of reflection by anticipating recent empirical work in sociology, political psychology, ‘behavioural economics’ and cognitive science. These anticipations may reflect an elite ‘paternalistic’ approach to political rhetoric and leadership to an extent. But in the case of the mass art form of Greek tragedy, its dramatization of ‘pathologies’ and ‘errors’ of both mass deliberation and leaders’ responses to them may have contributed to Athens’ relative success as a participatory ‘deliberative democracy’ in which the masses were sovereign.