Corrupting Youth: Political Education, Democratic Culture, and Political Theory

287 Pages·1997·0.85 MB·English

by  J. Peter Euben

Corrupting Youth
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Corrupting Youth
POLITICAL EDUCATION,
DEMOCRATIC CULTURE, AND
POLITICAL THEORY
• J. PETER EUBEN •
P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
P R I N C E T O N , N E W J E R S E Y
Copyright(cid:1) 1997 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Euben, J. Peter.
Corrupting youth : political education, democratic culture, and political
theory / J. Peter Euben.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-01202-4 (cloth alk. paper) — ISBN 0-691-04828-2 (pbk. alk. paper)
1. Political science—Greece—History. 2. Democracy—Greece—History.
3. Politics and literature—Greece—History. 4. Political plays, Greek—History and
criticism. 5. Political socialization. I. Title.
JC73.E93 1997 321.8(cid:1)01—dc21 96-54911 cip
This book has been composed in Times Roman
Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for
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T O T H E M E M O R Y O F
MY GRANDFATHER JOSEPH FEINGOLD
MY SISTER JULIE ANN EUBEN FRIEDFELD
MY COUSIN ELLEN ROTH REISMAN
MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE RICHARD GORDON
A L L O F W H O M D I E D O F
T E R R I B L E I L L N E S S E S
W I T H A C O U R A G E T H A T C O N T I N U E S
T O G I V E S T R E N G T H T O T H E
M A N Y W H O L O V E D T H E M
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And this thinking, fed by the present, works with the “thought fragments” it
can wrest from the past and gather about itself. Like a pearl diver who de-
scends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to
light but to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral in the
depths, and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths
of the past—but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute
to the renewal of extinct ages. What guides this thinking is the conviction
that although the living is subject to the ruin of the time, the process of decay
is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea,
into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things “suffer a
sea-change” and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain
immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who
one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the
living—as “thought fragments,” as something “rich and strange,” and per-
haps even as everlasting Urpha¨nomene.
—Hannah Arendt, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin
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• •
C O N T E N T S
PREFACE xi
CHAPTER I
Imploding the Canon: The Reform of Education and the War
over Culture 3
CHAPTER II
Corrupting Socrates 32
CHAPTER III
The Battle of Salamis and the Origins of Political Theory 64
CHAPTER IV
Democratic Accountability and Socratic Dialectic 91
CHAPTER V
When There Are Gray Skies: Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Political
Education of Democratic Citizens 109
CHAPTER VI
Antigone and the Languages of Politics 139
CHAPTER VII
Oedipean Complexities and Political Science: Tragedy and the Search
for Knowledge 179
CHAPTER VIII
The Gorgias, Socratic Dialectic, and the Education
of Democratic Citizens 202
CHAPTER IX
The Protagoras and the Political Education of Democratic Citizens 229
INDEX 267