Greeks and the Rational

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A01=Josiah Ober
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ancient civilizations
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books for classicists
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classical philosophers
classics
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democratic
economics
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game theory
humanities
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politics
practical reasoning
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rational thought
revisionist history
social sciences
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thinking
understanding

Product details

  • ISBN 9780520380165
  • Weight: 771g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 29 Nov 2022
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations
 
The Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature of and a bug in our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, The Greeks and the Rational traces the long history of theorizing rationality back to ancient Greece.
 
In this book, Josiah Ober explores how ancient Greek sophists, historians, and philosophers developed sophisticated and systematic ideas about practical reason. At the same time, they recognized its limits—that not every decision can be reduced to mechanistic calculations of optimal outcomes. Ober finds contemporary echoes of this tradition in the application of game theory to political science, economics, and business management. The Greeks and the Rational offers a striking revisionist history with widespread implications for the study of ancient Greek civilization, the history of thought, and human rationality itself.

 

Josiah Ober is Mitsotakis Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow (Courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of eighteen books, including The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece and Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice.