Equality and Excellence in Ancient and Modern Political Philosophy

Steven Frankel is Professor of Philosophy at Xavier University. He is coeditor (with Martin D. Yaffe) of Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Tocqueville. John Ray is Associate Professor of Political Science at Xavier University. He is coeditor (with Steven Frankel) of French Studies: Literature, Culture and Politics.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionSteven Frankel and John Ray1. Pursuing the Forms: Equality and Excellence in Plato's Republic and Symposium Stephanie A. Nelson2. Equality and Excellence in the Education of CyrusNathan Tarcov3. Splendid Equality in the Nicomachean Ethics: MunificenceAnn Charney Colmo4. How Excellence Bows to Equality in Aristotle's PoliticsMary P. Nichols5. First among Equals: Philosophers, Statesmen, and Citizens in Spinoza's DemocracySteven Frankel6. Excellence and Equality in Fénelon's TelemachusRyan Patrick Hanley7. The Seductive Dangers of Equality and Excellence: The Moderating Wisdom of Montesquieu's Science of Ovidian MetamorphosisFrank J. Rohmer8. Equality and Excellence in Rousseau's Emile, Book IIIPamela K. Jensen9. Hegel's Evaluation of Liberalism: Equality of Rights without Human ExcellenceAndrea E. Ray10. Democracy, Nobility, and Freedom: The Political and Moral Aesthetics of TocquevilleJohn C. Koritansky11. Does Kierkegaard Have a Concept of Excellence? Christopher A. Colmo12. Nietzsche: The Indignity of EqualityTimothy Sean Quinn13. The Good and the Excellent: John Rawls's Egalitarian LiberalismMichael ZuckertBibliographyContributorsIndex

"This comprehensive volume combines good writing, a sensitivity to texts leavened by an appreciation of enduring human questions, and an admirable resistance to ideological readings of the Western political tradition. Connecting philosophical and scholarly concerns to common life, it shines impressive light on the persistent tensions, affinities, and competing demands of equality and excellence in human nature and in decent and free societies." — Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity