Of Civil Service so a lot of order purecratic functions, running the city harbors, establishing the weights and measures. Those things were staffed by ordinary people who were put into position by lottery. But one of the things i argue is that sometimes modern political theorists exaggerate that too far. They sometimes people say they ran everything by lottery, and there was no division between rich and poor. The poor did everything. And thats actually an overstatement. Actually the athennians had certain roles which by law or custom were reserved for the rich but the poor could still hold the rich accountable and thats that able to control the rich and hold them accountable that i think really account ares to the great powers the athennian people. Host one thing you talk about in your book is some of the things that modern politics has derived from both the greeks and in the romans, and one of the things is virtue. What do you mean by that . Guest so, virtue is the idea that well in greek its the word for excellence. Its being good at what you do. So it can have a nonmoral meaning. We can say this knight has a virtue of cutting well. Thats what it is to be a knife. And so one of the things the grexes debated do we have political virtues . Are there certain and even just virtue of the way of life as a human being. There are certain things that as human beings we need to do well . Just as a knife needs to cut well to be a good knife. And those are the terms in which they thought about politics. So, in a way they there are there was a kind of longstanding greek agreement going back to the poultry of poetry of homer of what some of the virtues were. So they were things like wisdom courage, piety justice moderation but in the great period of the classical age the fifth and fourth inch century fourth century the big debate was in particular what about the virtue of justice . Is that really a virtue or is that a kind of illusion . Is it really something that is good for us as humans good for us in our lives as individuals to be just or is that simply something we have been suckered into doing by cunning political rulers and a lot of the philosophers i write back in the book are debating that question. Host what do you teach here at princeton . Guest i teach political theory, so i teach in the department of politics. Im also an associated faculty member in classicsics and fill so if and drs philosophy, and i teak courses on mid ethat political their, and taught courses on knowledge and politics and even on science and democracy, which takes me a little far from the greeks but actually one of the interesting things about the greeks is they were some of the people who really insisted that knowledge and expertise should be central to politics, and so i followed that thread into also thinking about aspects of modern society. Host when you talk about the greeks and their political growth period and the romans and their political growth period exactly what ages are we talking about here . What years. Guest so, in athens solan is acting in 510bc the end of the sixth century. Goes the other way when youre going backwardses and plato and aristotle are writing in the 300s so athennian democracy comes to an end after alexander the great fights a battle that essentially extinguishes it in 322. There were a few skim mitches after that, and i then i write about the period under alexanders general and then you have the rise of rome. The roman republic, articles arguably established in 510, and gradually becoming new institutions being folder. The emergence of the tribune of the other new roman institutions until essentially again its extinguish with a battle 25 years before the birth of christ. And then i write a little bit about the early centuries of the roman empire after the birth of christ. Host another one of the ideas and why they matter today, according to professor melissa lane is cosmopolitanism. Guest this is very interesting. For the greeks politics was really something that took place in the city state bounded by the city walls and the citys laws. And what happens partly with this breakdown of greek city states and the rise of alexander the great empires in the period, you start to get empires based in egypt based in other macedonia and other parts of the larger met mediterranean people think. Poll picks and many in prison it can expand beyond a particular citys walls or laws. And so this becomes the idea of what the first person who uses the term i am a citizen of the cosmos, as opposed to being a citizen of athens can a citizen of sparta and that develops into a kind of ethical ideal that maybe one can live according to a kind of set of universal values and laws that arent bounded geographically. And i think that really is the origin of our idea of cosmo cosmo poll tip. That was da daring idea to declare you war cools mow poll continue. Guest absolutely. The first person who did it he mentioned in a kind of mentioned in a rejecting way. He was famous for rejecting not just the citys boundaries but also all kinds of human conventions. So he lived in a barrel. He often defecated in public or had sex in public. He didnt abide by any of the sort of conventions of clothing or money that ordinary people would follow and according to him this was living according to nature and political boundaries were just another set of these norms or conventions that he rejected. But later philosophers take the idea and make it gradually something more seemly, writ doesnt have to do with rejecting all these every existing boundary but pushing our allegiances out to wider and wider circles. So just as now we might say i start off with an allegiance to my own body and self to my family to my town to my state, then why not go further and have an allegiance to all rational beings and the cosmos. Host what would Plato Socrates think about our current democracy. They would raise some pretty powerful challenges. Platos view was that its hard to imagine a democracy that can taken scientific expertise and scientific knowledge seriously enough. He thinks in a democracy the problem is that people think theyre equal and they think their pin opinion is just as good as anybody else so that makes its hard to respect what we would call scientific knowledge, scientific authority. This is something that tocqueville saw in american democracy in the 19th century. And i think the jury is out in terms of the criticism. Its really a question still whether democracy can actually manage to take sufficient account of scientific challenges and Scientific Understanding and respond adequately and respond quickly enough. So i think we need to take stock of that challenge and really kind of reflect on whether the resources that democracy has to meet it. Host what about socrates . Guest socrates is platos teacher. We know about his ideas only through the writings of plato and others, but what socrates did in his life he raised a similar challenge but to the individual. So in his society most people were concerned with pursuing power and wealth. Not so up like what a lot of people spend their time today pursuing and socrates challenged them as individuals to say, what is the real value of what youre pursuing . Dont power and wealth end up kind of undoing themselves . You always want more power. What do you want wealth for . There must be some good which is the end to which wealth is a means, and so he really challenged people to see that again virtue might be logically the more fundamental thing they needed to value and they needed to care about living an ethical life more fundamentally than pursuing just power and wealth. Host that is a taste of professor melissa lanes can the birth of politics eight greek and roman political ideas and while they matter. Theres the cover. You have been watching booktv on cspan2 from princeton university. Heres a look at some booked being published this week. Heres a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. This weekend the city of new orleans is hosting the Tennessee Williams literary festival. Next the san antonio book festival will take place on the 11th of april. Look for programs to air in the following weeks. On april 18th and 19th book tv will be live from the university of Southern California for the 20th annual Los Angeles Times festival of books. Then the Annapolis Book fair. In 2004, i was out of the marine corps and did me first tour as an imbedded reporter in iraq, and came back and noticed immediately getting off the plane in california and not just feeling very different. I remember just going to a bar and looking over i went to this my best friend took me to this bar near the airport. We went to this club, and i remember looking out over the people and there was dish could tell everyone was drinking and talking and socializing and just hays that before as if nothing changed, and i remember there was no particular reason to feel angry or upset. Really stuck me i had changed. And i remember oddly not being suddenly very bored and uninterested with what was going on inside the bar and i left. Stepped out and went to i think i went to use the atm at a local lick liquor store, and in san diego the stores are owned by iraqis, and the owner of the store was from buying and i talked to him just off the plane north fitting in, and i walk next door and theres this iraqi so we Start Talking about baghdad and he was looking for work and he was like, lets go over. It was this very strange feeling of apartness i felt from my earliest days returning in 2004. And was angry about the war houston it had been prosecuted. I had been in the to tail end of the first battle of fallujah and i had seen marines explain what they thought was gross mismanagement, poor leadership and a completely irrational policymaking decision process that they had lost men as a result of this, and then a few weeks later, abu ghraib happened and no wmd, and then i was in iraq return in july of 2004, and then just a few months later, in november, president bush was reelected and so for me, that was a very difficult process to understand, that americans would in light of everything that happened all of the lies exposed in 2003, 2004, very difficult for me to accept that people would in the face of knowledge, of that information, turn and reelect the person that had put news there in the first place, and as i began researching i began to develop symptoms of my own there was a Movie Theater in 2009 fast forwarding briefly, was in a Movie Theater in an action film and there was an ied explosion that closely resembled one i was in and it was shot from point of view where i would be in the humvee and so that and the cinematic experience wag overwhelming and i blacked out and when i regained full consciousness i was in the hallway of the theater and snuck back into the theater. And i asked my girlfriend at the time what happened. She said there was an explosion in the movie and you ran out. So i began to sense on a personal level that not all was right upstairs and i did not have full control of my memories. One marine i interviewed for the book told me that it was having ptsd was like having memories gone wild. They take on their own life. So this is the people tuesday emtuesday for me to examine ptsd because is was curious like a lot of marines and veterans i thought of ptsd as a copout shortcut to not have a more full authentic honest emotional engagement with your service and your post war service. I thought it was a way to dodge responsibility. Nil start looking into it and until i started having the symptoms. And what i discovered briefly is that the original people who fought authorize the ptsd diagnosis in the 1970s felt similar to you i felt. The founder of the group, Vietnam Veterans against the war, the group that advocated for the ptsd diagnosis in the 7s so they saw januarybery, the founder in his view there was no distinction to be made between the politics of vietnam and their own personal psychological struggle. And out of that conversation and that acknowledgment came the ptsd diagnosis we have today. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Each year the chief of staff of the air force assembles a list of books he recommends for service men and women. Heres the 2015 list. To begin, Norwegian Air force colonel explores the lives of 12 men who have shaped the history of air combat in, air commanders. Next on the list is no place to hide. The story of retired air force neurosurgeon w. Lee warren who spent 120 days working in a tent hospital in iraq. In Cyber Security and cyber war, pw singer and Allen Freedman trace the development and future implications of cyber warfare. The examines how cultures between western militaries and nonwestern allies in beer, bacon and bullets. On the reading list is team of rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin which explores lincoln and his cabinet in the noise the boat, the story of the university of washington rowing crew that won a gold medal in the 1936 berlin olympics. Wrapping up the list is a collection of books on the importance of professionalism, need for focus and work place leadership strategies and thats a look at the air force chief of staffs book list. Good morning. Im jim cornell the president of the International Science Writers Association and a member of the science Book Committee for this the seventh festival of books this mornings present, the catastrophe calamity and cataclysm, recording disaster manmade and narl is sponsored by Cox Communications and the if you or your could i would like to back friend of the festival your tax deductible contribution can help support literacy programs for southern arizona. Information about the friends and how to join is Available Online or go to an information book on the mall
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