Democratic Decline: an ancient Greek diagnosis — and possible cure
V-Dem, a Swedish think tank, recently published a report about democratic decline in a range of countries, including India. While this has made waves in the media, the report held nothing surprising for those of us familiar with the history of political systems. Democracy is at least as old as ancient Athens and autocracy is even older. Athens, where democracy flourished in the ancient world, was also no stranger to the suspension and eventual decline of this system. In this talk, I will discuss a range of ancient Greek texts that lay out the symptoms and the aetiology of democratic decline. However, this needn’t give us cause for despair as, I will contend, these texts and Greek history also show us how democracy can be resuscitated and even made to flourish. I will argue that these texts, from a place and time so far removed from ours, leave us with important lessons about democracy and citizenship.
Speaker Profile
Dr Aditi Chaturvedi is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation was on the role of harmonia in Platonic and pre-Platonic texts, a topic on which she has published and presented at international conferences. Apart from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, her research and teaching interests include the history of philosophy, political philosophy, comparative philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of music.
Date: 10th November, 2020
Time: 3:00 PM
Registration Link: bit.ly/dottalks1110