Gerald M. Mara is Executive Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Professorial Lecturer in Government at Georgetown University and the author of Socrates' Discursive Democracy: Logos and Ergon in Platonic Political Philosophy, also published by SUNY Press.

• Acknowledgments1. Political Space and Political Purpose in Contemporary Democratic Theory2. The Borders of Rational Choice3. Deliberating Democracy4. Culture’s Justice5. Proximate Others6. Conclusion: Extending the Limits of DemocracyNotesReferencesIndex

"…Mara does a great service in drawing theorists' attention to the necessity of engaging as seriously with the ancients as with contemporaries. In doing so, Mara's book promises to stimulate future conversations and to entice readers into precisely the open-ended, discursive conversations that he favors." — Review of Politics"Gerald Mara presents to the academic community a complex, insightful and quite difficult book, whose audience, it should be immediately said, could only be one of specialists." — Bryn Mawr Classical Review"Clearly written, creative, and original, this book is useful for political theorists interested in democratic theory and Greek thought." — CHOICE "Mara has a clear, though complex, plan in mind, and he carries it out from beginning to end with care and style. He shows that an active reading of Plato and Thucydides can provide a way out of some of the central dilemmas and dead ends that seem to plague various forms of modern and postmodern democratic political theory. In addition, Mara's dialectical ability shows itself not only in bringing ancients and moderns together in conversation but also in suggesting sharp and novel ways of bringing Plato and Thucydides into dialogue with one another." — Stephen G. Salkever, author of Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy