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Political theory has developed at important junctures by questioning its ontological foundations. Modern political thought begins by questioning the naturalness of human sociability. Instead of the civic friendship propounded by the ancients, modern liberals see friendship as belonging to a private sphere, whereas the state is an alliance among competitors. Postmodern theorists have extended the logic of competition to encompass private friendships, doing so, in part, by critiquing liberal foundations. Plato's account of friendship reveals surprising affinities with two such postmodern critiques. TheLysisexplores what friendship would be like without ontological claims or with only negative foundations such as the power and enmity found in accounts of friendship as diverse as those of Foucault and Derrida. The Platonic/postmodern comparison offers a way of ensuring that foundational inquiry illuminates political theory and argues for a greater role for fundamental ontology than mainstream liberal theorists have yet conceded.

Eros and Polis examines how and why Greek theorists treated political passions as erotic. Because of the tiny size of ancient Greek cities, contemporary theory and ideology could conceive of entire communities based on desire. A recurrent aspiration was to transform the polity into one great household that would bind the citizens together through ties of mutual affection. In this study, Paul Ludwig evaluates sexuality, love and civic friendship as sources of political attachment and as bonds of political association. Studying the ancient view of eros recovers a way of looking at political phenomena that provides a bridge, missing in modern thought, between the private and public spheres, between erotic love and civic commitment. Ludwig's study thus has important implications for the theoretical foundations of community.

s College T he first extant play of Aristophanes, Acharnians, contains an eerily modern thought-experiment: what if justice is self-interest, rightly understood? The drama examines evidence for the hypothesis in three contexts: international relations; relations between the citizen and the polity; and a special case of the latter, relations between the artist and the polity. The drama shows how rudimentary justice can be secured by promoting economic interests over citizenship and artistic dissent over loyalty. Historically, these thoughts on justice--as refined in Aristophanes' later works--constitute an ancient analog of early liberal thought with its derivation of justice from interest. They represent a pre-Platonic position on justice that differs from both Sophistic and conventional Greek thinking. Normatively, Aristophanes' thought sheds light on weaknesses in modern justice theory. By making the artist's political function the linchpin of a vision of justice, Acharnians suggests a new way to view justice in relation to self-interest.

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