The Age of Pericles | Freedom, Equality, and the Rights of Man (Lecture 20)

Lecture 20: We associate the Greeks with concepts such as freedom and equality and often assume that our understanding of these ideas derives from the Greeks. A U.S. senator once wrote, for example, “The historical and philosophical roots of the Constitution run very deep. We have been nourished by a long tradition of thought reaching back to the ancient Greeks.” But freedom and equality can mean different things to different people. In this lecture, we’ll examine how the Athenians in the time of Pericles used such terms as freedom and equality. What did these mean to them, and how did they reconcile these ideals with the reality of slavery and imperialism? We shall find that democracy was then, as now, a complex phenomenon and that Athenian attitudes to freedom were in many ways quite alien to our own.

Suggested Reading:
Ober, J., and C. Hedrick, eds. Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies Ancient and Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Hansen, M. H. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Lecture 21: https://rumble.com/v5f0yb9-the-age-of-pericles-athens-after-pericles-lecture-21.html