Ancient Greece

This chapter argues for the value of historically grounded scholarship on ancient Greek political thought. The endeavor to understand the ancient Greeks as they understood themselves not only augments the accuracy and richness of scholarly interpretations of their work, but also promotes self-reflectiveness by confronting modern political scientists with a worldview far different, but not wholly removed, from their own. This is demonstrated through an exploration of three different aspects of alterity that emerge from historically attentive studies of the politics of ancient Greece: equivocal attitudes toward the Greeks’ highly participatory form of democracy; unique struggles to conceptualize who constitutes “the people” in the context of a highly exclusionary society; and difficulties grappling with the transition from polis to empire. The chapter suggests that deeper awareness of the culturally diverse context in which ancient Greek political thought developed would further enrich scholarship and multiply opportunities for self-examination.