For Tuesday, February 5

Length: about 3 pages, double spaced, typed.

We have spent the past week working on Robert Kaplan's essay, Was Democracy Just a Moment? In it, he makes a number of assertions concerning the success or failure of Democracy in the late twentieth century, and he raises the questions of its significance in the United States on the one hand, and in the rest of the world on the other.

Write a thoughtful essay in which you react to his assertions concerning the relevance of Democracy, making either international questions or the American system your primary focus. Do you agree with Kaplan? Why? or Why not? If you agree with him, are you happy to agree with him? Why, or why not? If you disagree with him, what is it about his evidence that you find disturbing or unconvincing?

For Friday, February 8

As our analysis of Kaplan's sources has shown, the roots of the democratic idea extend deeply into Western culture. Classic Greece and Rome began the process of defining direct democracy and the republican principles of representative democracy. We now turn our attention to some key thinkers of that era.

#1, "Democracy and Despotism," by Euripides, p. 1
#2, "The Funeral Oration" by Pericles, pp. 3-6

Democracy and Despotism is a short excerpt from a play by one of the most popular and prolific Greek playwrights. Here we have a dialogue, of sorts, between two characters which frames a sort of debate between an advocate of "tyranny" and an advocate of "democracy". We're going to continue to think about assertions today. In a debate, one can respond to an assertion with a counter-assertion, which denies the assertion and offers an alternative, or which possibly seeks to modify the claim in some way. Alternately, one can ignore the assertions made and simply make an assertion of one's own. Sometimes we refer to this as "talking past one another, rather than talking to one another". What I would like to have you do is make lists of the assertions of the Theban Messenger and of Theseus... the claims they make about democracy and tyranny, and see to what degree they respond to each other and what degree they ignore each other.
 

NOTE: The Swanson Four Star Playhouse will be casting actors in the roles of Theseus and the Theban Messenger.
Practice your lines!

Pericles' Oration is not unlike the kind of patriotic speeches which we hear on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. Pericles has two objectives. First, he wishes to assert the value of Athenian culture in comparison with the cultures with which it is in conflict. Second, he wants to ennoble the sacrifices made in support of that culture. I'd like to have you take notes which reflect what he has to say about Athens, and think about ways in which the objectives of Athenian life as described by Pericles are reflected in our definition of what the good life is here in America.

When you prepare your questions and comments for this class period, focus on what you need to know about Classic Greek culture to fully understand these two documents. For example, what did the Greeks mean by "Tyrant," or a "City?" The context of ideas is crucial to a full understanding of them. So far, we've not devoted much attention to this, but we will be starting to do that next week.