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Civic justice : from Greek antiquity to the modern world
Peter Murphy
Amherst, N.Y. : Humanity Books, 2001
ISBN: 1573929514
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Book description
This imaginative and original study traces the passage of the
civic idea of justice from its origins in the ancient Greek polis and Roman
civitas, through its various transformations in medieval and Renaissance
Europe, to the modern world and its adaptation by the American Republic.
Peter Murphy systematically explores the meaning of civic justice in its
philosophical, art-historical, sociological, and political dimensions. The
classical city embodies civic justice as a beautiful equilibrium of
contending forces. Murphy traces its ascent and descent. Following the fall
of Rome and the collapse of the City form, the civic idea finds renewed
expression during the Renaissance in the Italian city-republic, both in its
political arrangements and in the works of the great humanist architects who
captured the virtues of civic pride, proportion, symmetry, and moral beauty
in stone. The humanist legacy will in turn profoundly influence later
European society and the new world.
Reflected in its historical oscillations, the delicate balance of civic
forces is frequently subject to crisis: it breaks down or is altered by the
emergence of the absolutist state, capitalism, mercantile imperialism, and
modern expansionism. In analyzing these, Murphy addresses fundamental
questions about the use and abuse of space in city architecture, the quality
of urban life, and the interplay of reason and authority, freedom and
limits, and modernity and antiquity in Europe and America. He concludes with
a sustained reflection on the legacy of the American Republic. Founded on a
torturous compromise between resistance to authority and the civic ideals of
justice, America becomes the first great republic to disavow the city--a
disavowal that has had enduring and tragic effects on its politics and
social life.
This superb volume is a provocative re-evaluation of the significance of
humanism and the relevance of an enduring classical idea to contemporary
life.
About the author
Peter Murphy is an Associate Professor in the School of
English, Communications and Performance Studies, Faculty of Arts, Monash
University.
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