Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece Individuals Performing Justice and the Law

This 2006 study examines how the ancient Greeks decided questions of justice as a key to understanding the intersection of our moral and political lives. Combining contemporary political philosophy with historical, literary and philosophical texts, it examines a series of remarkable individuals who performed 'scripts' of justice in early Iron Age, archaic and classical Greece. From the earlier periods, these include Homer's Achilles and Odysseus as heroic individuals who are also prototypical citizens, and Solon the lawgiver, writing the scripts of statute law and the jury trial. In democratic Athens, the focus turns to dialogues between a citizen's moral autonomy and political obligation in Aeschyleon tragedy, Pericles' citizenship paradigm, Antiphon's sophistic thought and forensic oratory, the political leadership of Alcibiades and Socrates' moral individualism.

Introduction; 1. Justice to the dead: prototypes of the citizen and self in early Greece; 2. Performing justice in early Greece: dispute settlement in the Iliad; 3. Self-transformation and the therapy of justice in the Odyssey; 4. Performing the law: the lawgiver, statute law and the jury trial; 5. Citizenship by degrees: Ephebes and demagogues in democratic Athens, 465–460; 6. The naturalization of citizen and self in democratic Athens, c.450–411; 7. Democracy's narcissistic citizens: Alcibiades and Socrates; Conclusion; Reference list.

This 2006 study looks to the ways the Greeks decided questions of justice. Using Greek epic, law, drama, philosophy and forensic rhetoric over nearly six hundred years, it identifies the various 'scripts' of citizen life that inspired different philosophies of moral individualism and political obligation.