#8 Melissa Lane, how do we rule for the good of the people?

Political theorist Melissa Lane talks about constitutionalism in Plato’s philosophy and how his differentiation between ‘ruling’ and ‘holding office’ can help governments rule for the good of the people.  

Melissa is Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University. She has published extensively on ancient Greek political thought and its modern significance.

📚 REFERENCES

Melissa Lane, Eco-Republic: Ancient Ethics for a Green Age (Peter Lang, 2011)

Melissa Lane, Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Melissa Lane:https://melissalane.princeton.edu/

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Routledge, 1945)

Josiah Ober:https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/people/josiah-ober

Sarah Broadie, Plato's Sun-Like Good: Dialectic in the Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

🔗 LINKS

• Website ↗ http://www.intellectualhistory.net/roots-and-branches

• Instagram ↗ @roots_and_branches_podcast

• X ↗ @rbpod_ih

• Bluesky ↗ @rbpodcast

• Selma Sondern ↗ www.linkedin.com/in/selma-sondern

🎶 MUSIC

'A New Year' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

📸 PHOTO

Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy