Author Meets Critics: Naomi T. Campa’s "Freedom and Power in Classical Athens"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This author meets critics roundtable brings together a group of scholars working at the intersection of classics and political theory to discuss Naomi T. Campa's recently published book, Freedom and Power in Classical Athens (Oxford University Press, 2024): Mark Fisher (Georgetown), Matthew Landauer (University of Chicago), Melissa Lane (Princeton), Josiah Ober (Stanford), and Matthew Simonton (University of Arizona).

Athenian democracy was distinguished from other ancient constitutions by its emphasis on freedom. In Freedom and Power in Classical Athens, Campa contends that this was understood as being able to do “whatever one wished,” a widely attested phrase. Revisiting and modifying Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative freedom, she then argues that this was a form of positive freedom as autonomy. Thus, citizen agency and power constituted the core of democratic ideology and institutions. Rather than create anarchy, as ancient critics claimed, positive freedom underpinned a system that ideally protected both the individual and the collective. Even freedom, however, can be dangerous. The notion of citizen autonomy both empowered and oppressed individuals within a democratic hierarchy. These topics strike at the heart of democracies ancient and modern, from the discursive principles that structure political procedures to the citizen's navigation between the limitations of law and expression of individual will to the status of noncitizens within a state. The book offers a view of freedom before liberalism, and before republicanism too.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 1: Political Thought and Philosophy

Chair

• Mark Fisher Georgetown University

Presenters

• Matthew Landauer University of Chicago

• Melissa Lane Princeton University

• Josiah Ober Stanford University

• Matthew Simonton Arizona State University

• Naomi T. Campa The University of Texas at Austin