Saturday 7 April 2018

Out now! John Bloxham's Ancient Greece and American Conservatism


I'm delighted to announce that my latest book, Ancient Greece and American Conservatism: Classical Influence on the Modern Right, has just been published by I.B. Tauris. This book is based upon PhD research undertaken at the University of Nottingham.

According to the blurb... US conservatives have repeatedly turned to classical Greece for inspiration and rhetorical power. In the 1950s they used Plato to defend moral absolutism; in the 1960s it was Aristotle as a means to develop a uniquely conservative social science; and then Thucydides helped to justify a more assertive foreign policy in the 1990s. By tracing this phenomenon and analysing these, and various other, examples of selectivity, subversion and adaptation within their broader social and political contexts, John Bloxham here employs classical thought as a prism through which to explore competing strands in American conservatism. From the early years of the Cold War to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bloxham illuminates the depth of conservatives' engagement with Greece, the singular flexibility of Greek ideas and the varied and diverse ways that Greek thought has reinforced and invigorated conservatism. This innovative work of reception studies offers a richer understanding of the American Right and is important reading for classicists, modern US historians and political scientists alike.

Reviews
'John Bloxham's timely and original study of the engagement of postwar American conservatism with the ideas of ancient Greece will be essential reading for anyone interested in US political history or in the enduring influence of classical philosophy on the modern world.'
Patrick Finglass, Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek and Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol

'John Bloxham's study of the reception of Greek political thought in the United States since World War II is a model of its kind. He offers a lucid and intelligent analysis of the use of antiquity by influential and important thinkers such as Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom as well as the place of Greek thought in the development of movements such as neoconservatism. His timely book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of modern American conservatism, in the politics of the American educational system, and in the reception of Greek historiography and philosophy.'
Tim Rood, Professor of Greek Literature, University of Oxford

Available from Amazon, Blackwells, Barnes & Noble, WH Smiths etc. Full research interests available at my Academia page here.

New article: Willmoore Kendall’s ‘McCarthyite’ Socrates in conservative free speech debates of the 1950s and 1960s

Latest article out in the March 2018 International Journal of the Classical Tradition (volume 25, issue 1):

Willmoore Kendall’s ‘McCarthyite’ Socrates in conservative free speech debates of the 1950s and 1960s


Abstract: Sennator Joseph McCarthy and the ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates occupied opposing ends of a freedom spectrum in the 1950s: one became a byword for repression and the other is remembered as a fearless seeker of truth and opponent of tyranny. This paper explores the reaction on the Right created by liberalism’s appropriation of Socrates to attack McCarthyism. Focusing on works by Willmoore Kendall, an influential right-wing populist who came to embrace Leo Strauss’s elitist emphasis on classical Greek thinkers, it examines how the resulting populist/elitist synthesis justified McCarthyism using Socrates’ trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy. Kendall’s Socrates, based upon a close re-engagement with Plato’s Apology and Crito, may actually be closer to the figure seen through our sources than the liberal version. However, this apparent accuracy requires sacrificing the reader’s ability to judge events for themselves.