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Article: Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community: Arion's Leap.
- Article from:
- American Political Science Review
- Article date:
- December 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Cambridge University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Clifford Orwin, University of Toronto
See that woman with the bronze-tipped ram battering at the gates of the pantheon of political theory? She's not trying to demolish the edifice but to compel the admission of one unjustly excluded. To hear Norma Thompson tell it, the "canon" has discriminated even against a dead white Hellenic male.
Thompson's villain is Aristotle, whom she blames for the low repute in which Herodotus came to be held as a thinker. "Aristotle scorned Herodotus' 'ancient' way of thought as chaotically inclusive of virtually all dimensions of human life" (p. 7). It is precisely this greater inclusiveness that Thompson sets out to ...