Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.52685/cjp.26.77.3
Athenian Democracy: A Debate between its Advocates and Critics
Enes Kulenović
; University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Sažetak
The article attempts to reconstruct and offer a critical evaluation of the arguments put forward in debates concerning the nature of democratic rule in ancient Athens between the supporters and the opponents of de- mocracy. By relying on ancient sources, but also insights from contempo- rary scholarship, the article looks at three main issues discussed in these debates: the issue of efficiency of democratic collective decision-making, the issue of stability of democratic regimes, and the issue of justice of democratic government. Given that the arguments put forward by the critics of democracy are both more voluminous and more philosophi- cally sophisticated, this imbalance in the debate is compensated by the reconstruction of the pro-democratic arguments that appear in the texts of the most prominent critics of democracy in the ancient Greek world, as well as historical accounts offered by modern scholars. In the concluding part of each section, the article offers an assessment of the validity of the arguments of both sides in these debates.
Ključne riječi
Democracy; ancient Athens; Plato; Aristotle; Thucydides.
Hrčak ID:
347239
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.5.2026.
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