Josiah Ober

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Josiah Ober is an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist. He is Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor in honor of Constantine Mitsotakis, and professor of classics and political science, at Stanford University. His teaching and research links ancient Greek history and philosophy with modern political theory and practice.

Contents

Career

Ober was educated at the University of Minnesota (B.A., major in history, 1975) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D., Department of History, 1980).[ citation needed ]

He was a professor of ancient history at Montana State University (1980–1990), and then at Princeton University (1990–2006).[ citation needed ]

He has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1989–90), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science (2004-5).[ citation needed ]

He delivered the 2002-2003 Sigmund H. Danziger, Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the 2019 Sather Lectures University of California, Berkeley.[ citation needed ]

Ober was a student of Chester Starr, and has taught classicist John Ma, ancient Greek historian Emily Mackil, and the political theorist Ryan Balot.[ citation needed ]

Influence

Ober's Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens won the Goodwin Award in 1989. Paul Cartledge called Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens “a seminal work”. [1] Some early work was criticized by Mogens Herman Hansen for overemphasizing the ideological aspect of Athenian democracy against its institutional dimension, [2] and P.J. Rhodes accused him of abandoning scholarly impartiality in favour of democratic advocacy. [3]

Jennifer Roberts called Political Dissent in Democratic Athens “a major contribution to a dialogue of enormous import”. [4]

Danielle Allen praised Ober's Democracy and Knowledge in The New Republic (2008). Melissa Lane wrote: "Ober draws on empirical evidence about the ancient world in the service of normative political theory, and in so doing sheds light not just on Athens but on the creation and operation of democratic institutions." [5]

Mimis Chrysomalis's review of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece CritCom states that in this “significant resource for scholars of classical antiquity, political science, and economic history” Ober “offers a novel perspective on how economic performance was connected to . . . democratic institutions.” [6] Adriaan Lanni's review praised Rise and Fall as part of the “exciting (and controversial) recent developments” in the 'Stanford school of ancient history' and judged Ober's arguments an “unusually compelling compilation of methods, data and argument in support of a broad thesis.” [7] By contrast, in a review of The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece for New Left Review, Peter Rose concluded that Ober had produced “an eccentric, at times intriguing, but deeply flawed work of history, which ultimately tells us more about the ideology of the Stanford classics department than it does about ancient Greece”. [8]

Barton Swaim called Demopolis: Democracy Before Liberalism a “tightly reasoned work of scholarship” in his Wall Street Journal review. [9]

Books

Authored

Co-authored

Edited

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References

  1. In The Times Higher Education Supplement
  2. Described definitively (though not exclusively) by Hansen in his The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology, University of Oklahoma Press: New York, 1999.
  3. In his Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology, Duckworth: London, 2003.
  4. In The American Journal of Philology 121 (2000), 482.
  5. "Josiah Ober's Democracy and Knowledge - review by Danielle Allen". March 20, 2009.
  6. "The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece (The Princeton History of the Ancient World) | CritCom". critcom.councilforeuropeanstudies.org.
  7. "The Stanford School of Ancient History - New Rambler Review". newramblerreview.com.
  8. Peter Rose, 'Secrets of the Ancients', New Left Review 103, January–February 2017
  9. Swaim, Barton (November 24, 2017). "Review: Barton Swaim on Political Books" via www.wsj.com.
  10. 1 2 Giorgini, Giovanni (1999). "Book Reviews: The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory by Josiah Ober & Dēmokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern edited by Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick". Political Studies. 47: 161–162. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00195.
  11. Tessitore, Aristide (2006). "Review of Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going On Together by Josiah Ober". Journal of Political Science. 34 (1); Article 10{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  12. Somin, Ilya (2009). "Review of Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens by Josiah Ober". Ethics. 119 (3): 585–590. doi:10.1086/599235. S2CID   171331557.