A Wolf in the City Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic

The problem of tyranny preoccupied Plato, and its discussion both begins and ends his famous Republic. Though philosophers have mined the Republic for millennia, Cinzia Arruzza is the first to devote a full book to the study of tyranny and of the tyrant's soul in Plato's Republic.

In A Wolf in the City, Arruzza argues that Plato's critique of tyranny intervenes in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. Arruzza shows that Plato's critique of tyranny should not be taken as veiled criticism of the Syracusan tyrannical regime, but rather of Athenian democracy. In parsing Plato's discussion of the soul of the tyrant, Arruzza will also offer new and innovative insights into his moral psychology, addressing much-debated problems such as the nature of eros and of the spirited part of the soul, the unity or disunity of the soul, and the relation between the non-rational parts of the soul and reason.

Cinzia Arruzza is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. She works on ancient philosophy and Marxist and feminist theory. She is the author of Plotinus. Ennead II 5. On What is Potentially and What Actually (Parmenides, 2015); Dangerous Liaisons. Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism (Merlin Press, 2013); Les Mésaventures de la théodicée. Plotin, Origène et Grégoire de Nysse (Brepols Publishers, 2011).

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I: Tyranny and Democracy
Introduction
Chapter 1: Tyranny in Athens: Aversion, Fascination, and Fear
Chapter 2: Plato's Tyrant and the Crisis of Athenian Democracy
Chapter 3: Tyrannical Democracy

Part II: The Tyrant's Soul
Introduction
Chapter 4: The Tyranny of Eros and the Tyrannical Man's Appetites
Chapter 5: The Lion and the Wolf: The Tyrant's Spirit
Chapter 6: Clever Villains: The Tyrant's Reason
Conclusion

References
General Index
Index Locorum