This collection of essays sheds light on the writings of leading figures in the history of political philosophy by exploring a nexus of questions concerning mastery and slavery in the human soul. To this end, Masters and Slaves elucidates archetypal human alternatives in their import for political life: the philosopher and king; the lover of wisdom and the lover of glory; the king and the tyrant; and finally, the master and the slave. Palmer re-examines these ideas as a framework for achieving a deeper understanding of the work of famous thinkers-from the ancient to modern times-including Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. As well, the book addresses distinctions between the "ancients" and the "moderns," and touches on the work of contemporary theorists such as Leo Strauss, George Parkin Grant, and Allan Bloom.

Michael Palmer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine. He is the author of Love of Glory and the Common Good: Aspects of the Political Thought of Thucydides (1992), and coeditor of Political Philosophy and the Human Soul: Essays in Memory of Allan Bloom (with Thomas L. Pangle).

Chapter 1 Mastering Slaves or Mastering Science?: An Aristotelian Reprise
Chapter 2 Kings, Philosophers, and Tyrants in Plato's Republic
Chapter 3 Alcibiades and the Question of Tyranny in Thucydides
Chapter 4 Thucydides on Ambition to Rule
Chapter 5 Machiavellian virtù and Thucydidean arete: Moderation and the Common Good
Chapter 6 Machiavelli's Inhuman Humanism in The Prince
Chapter 7 The Master Fool: The Conspiracy of Machiavelli's Mandragola
Chapter 8 Hobbesian and Thucydidean Realism
Chapter 9 The Citizen Philosopher: Rousseau's Dedicatory Letter to the Discourse on Inequality
Chapter 10 On Leo Strauss's Jerusalem and Athens
Chapter 11 On George Grant's English-Speaking Justice
Chapter 12 On Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind