Of Rule and Office - by Melissa Lane

About the Book

"In this book, Melissa Lane argues that the concept of political office should be central to our understanding of Greek politics and political theory. Yet discussions of the Greeks tend to focus on courts and assemblies, or at most, on lottery as a means of selecting officeholders - without thinking about their powers of command or about how they were held accountable. Meanwhile, discussions of Plato's Republic and Statesman tend to ignore the profound extent to which his understanding of politics was articulated in terms of the vocabulary and practice of officeholding, on the one hand, and an interrogation of whether these were adequate to a full understanding of ruling, on the other. In The Origins of Political Office: Ancient Greek Ideas of Ruling and Being Ruled, based on the 2018 Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford, Melissa Lane explores public office as a principal building block of Greek political ideas that lies at the intersection of command and accountability. In this way, she argues, the normative conception of office was not a form of absolute rule, but rather always constrained by the ruled, who held them accountable through elections and various forms of review. In return, the ruled gave up some of their freedom by agreeing to obey their rulers. Lane weaves together the role played by this understanding of office in key historical moments, especially but not only in Athens, with its use and rethinking by the philosophers particularly Plato. She does so with novel attention to the absence and abuse of office in various dimensions: from anarchy to tyranny. The book offers a path-breaking interpretation of the relationship between office-holding and ruling, of the meaning of ruling and being ruled, and of the significance of office in political theory and practice both in ancient Greece and with reference to today"--

Book Synopsis

A constitutionalist reading of Plato's political thought

Plato famously defends the rule of knowledge. Knowledge, for him, is of the good. But what is rule? In this study, Melissa Lane reveals how political office and rule were woven together in Greek vocabulary and practices that both connected and distinguished between rule in general and office as a constitutionally limited kind of rule in particular. In doing so, Lane shows Plato to have been deeply concerned with the roles and relationships between rulers and ruled. Adopting a longstanding Greek expectation that a ruler should serve the good of the ruled, Plato's major political dialogues--the Republic, the Statesman, and Laws--explore how different kinds of rule might best serve that good. With this book, Lane offers the first account of the clearly marked vocabulary of offices at the heart of all three of these dialogues, explaining how such offices fit within the broader organization and theorizing of rule.

Lane argues that taking Plato's interest in rule and office seriously reveals tyranny as ultimately a kind of anarchy, lacking the order as well as the purpose of rule. When we think of tyranny in this way, we see how Plato invokes rule and office as underpinning freedom and friendship as political values, and how Greek slavery shaped Plato's account of freedom. Reading Plato both in the Greek context and in dialogue with contemporary thinkers, Lane argues that rule and office belong at the center of Platonic, Greek, and contemporary political thought.

Review Quotes

"A major contribution to our faltering efforts to understand the challenges of politics across the world."---John Dunn, History of European Ideas

"It is not often that one comes across a book that changes how one sees or understands something in the world. . . . Melissa Lane's Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political represents such a rare achievement. . . . [I]t changes the way we read and understand Plato's political thought, uncovering a whole new feature of some of the most well-studied texts in the history of Western philosophy."---Avshalom M. Schwartz, Political Science Quarterly

"Winner of the Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize"

"Excellent. . . . In this monumental study, Lane offers a sophisticated and insightful reinterpretation of Plato's political thinking."---Daniel Vazquez, Greece & Rome

"An original contribution to Platonic scholarship. . . . [Of Rule and Office] is a book worth reading, and in full."---Geoff Bakewell, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"A delight to read."---Patrick Rioridan, The Heythrop Journal

"Written with extraordinary scrupulousness. . . . With [Of Rule and Office], Plato's ideas of the political are put firmly on the map."---Christopher Rowe, Mind

"[A] meticulous new analysis of Plato's constitutionalism. . . . With the appearance of Melissa Lane's authoritative Of Rule and Office, debate over the evolution of Plato's discussion of the vulnerabilities of political office and the various ways in which rule and office might be understood must be nearly at an end."---Andrew David Irvine, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics and a faculty member of the Program in Classical Philosophy at Princeton University. She is also the 50th Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College. Her books include Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living and The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter (both Princeton) and Method and Politics in Plato's "Statesman."