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Cover of How Can We Live Better Together? 2,500 Years of Western Order
How Can We Live Better Together? 2,500 Years of Western Order
Key turning points and underlying logic in the evolution of order
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Liu Qing: Know Your Place within an Order and Become a Clear-Eyed Modern Person Zhou Lian: An Unconventional Academic Adventure Zhai Zhiyong: Understanding Where the Future Leads through the Depth of History Opening Remarks: Order Is How a Community Lives Better Together Introduction: How Did Humans First Develop Order? 1. Have Human Ways of Living Always Improved? 2. A Nontraditional Story of Order: The Intellectual Trap of the Agricultural Revolution 3. Mesopotamian Order: How Did the Fertile Crescent Give Rise to City-States? 4. Egypt's Pyramid Order: Kingship, Sun Worship, and the Territorial State 1. Why Did the Ancient Greeks Invent ‘Politics’? The Polis and the Community of Citizens 2. Athens and the Political Community: From Tyranny to an Order of Equality 3. Agamemnon's Fate: An Endless Chain of Vengeful Justice within a Ruling House 4. Revenge and Voting: Were the Seeds of America's Electoral Divisions Sown in Ancient Greece? U.S. Elections and Political Order: Preventing Worse, Not Pursuing Better | Special 5. Can Custom as an Order Be Challenged? | Greco-Persian Wars I 6. When Despotism and Expansion Become Custom, Even Persia's King Is Constrained | Greco-Persian Wars II 7. You Know How to Be a Slave but Have Never Known Freedom | Greco-Persian Wars III 8. When Athens Adopted Double Standards and the Dragon Slayer Became the Dragon | Nature and Custom 9. What Do You Mean by Justice? | Sophists and Socrates on Exploitation 10. Athens's Democratic Imperial Order: Acquiring It May Be Unjust, but Surrendering It Is Dangerous 11. Extreme Conditions Reveal the Character of People and Regimes | The Athenians 12. Civil Strife: When a Family Turns on Itself | Generational Difference and the Limits of Order Special I: Memories of Tyrants, Beginning with Regime Change in Syria Special II: How Did Trump Break the Establishment's Power Structure? The Logic beneath Populist Tyranny New Year Special: Even When People and Their Age Merely Put Up with Each Other, Build an Order for Life | Q&A I New Year's Day Special: Forget Politics and Live Creatively, Decently, and with Possibility | Q&A II 13. Why Were All Real-World Poleis Hopelessly Corrupt? | Plato's Republic I 14. Is the Republic Ideal? Why Would Plato Abolish the Private Family? | Republic II 15. What Life Is Worth Living? The Ideal Order of Soul and City | Republic III 16. How Does Political Order Shape Craftsmen, Citizens, and Self-Governing People? | Plato's Laws I 17. What Should a Real Polis's Model Order Look Like? | Plato's Laws II Year of the Snake Greetings: Athena's Medusa and Freudian Compensation 18. Politics as the Polis's Highest Science: Aristotle on the City 19. Outside the Polis, One Is Either Beast or God 20. What Gives You the Right to Rule Me? Aristotle on the Grounds of Rule 21. Forms of Civic Life Together | Aristotle's Classification of Constitutions How Should We Judge the Zelensky–Trump–Vance Performance? | Special 22. Ideal and Reality in Good Order: Aristotle on the Best Regime 23. Why Is Friendship More Important than Justice in the Polis? Aristotle's Community of Friendship Summary: How Do Ancient Greek Political Ideas Still Rule Us? Eight Keywords of Polis Order Special: Is Trump Uniquely Reliable—or Totally Unreliable? Today's Predicament of Human Order | Q&A 1. In the Beginning There Was No Rome: Myth and Reality in the City's Foundation 2. Rome Was Not Built in a Day: The Ordering Principles behind Monarchical Expansion 3. How Was the Roman Republic Born after the Monarchy Ended? 4. The Roman Republic's Code of Order: Compromise through Conflict 5. Why Was Rome's Expanding Order Politically Wiser than Athens's Empire? 6. The Secret of Rome's Rise: Polybius on the Mixed Constitution 7. Republican Empire Turns against Its Own Order: Contradictions and Stopgap Solutions 8. A Turning Point in the Republic's Fall: When States of Exception Enter Normal Politics 9. Cicero's Political Career: The Roman Republic's Last Friend A Brief Farewell So We Can Meet Again | Schedule Notice 10. Cicero's Political Thought: An Intellectual Elegy for the Roman Republic 11. Octavian's Road to Princeps: The Republic Ends and the Principate Begins 12. Augustus's Power and Authority: How Did Rome Move from Republic to Dynasty? 13. Did the Princeps Truly Receive Power from the People? Appearance and Reality in Imperial Order 14. From Citizen Soldiers to Generals' Private Armies: Why Did Loyalty Shift? 15. Whoever Controls the Army Controls Rome? Military Power and Imperial Order 16. How Do You Rule an Empire across Three Continents? Rome's Provincial System 17. Diocletian and the Creation of Monarchy: The Beginnings of Late Roman Order 18. Believers in God Refuse to Worship the Emperor: How Did Christianity Overturn Rome's Spiritual Order? 19. From Persecution to State Religion: Christianity's Twisting Fate in the Roman Empire 20. The Decline of Roman Order: Division and Barbarian Invasion Reshape Europe Special: What Legacies of Roman Political Order Remain in Our World? | Q&A 1. From Many Gods to One: How Did Judaism's New Relation between God and Humanity Shape Today's World? 2. The Origins of Sin and Evil: God's Will and Rebellious Humanity 3. Abraham's Sacrifice: How Does Revealed Faith Cross the Limits of Reason and Ethics? 4. Seizing Power from His Brother and Wrestling with God: Jacob and Israelite Group Order 5. Exodus: Divine Deliverance and the Origins of Covenant Politics 6. Eternal Covenant, Chosen People, and Sacred Law: Israel's Political Bonds and Identity 7. From Divine Rule to Kingship: Four Thousand Years of Conflict in Canaan 8. Davidic Covenant and Messiah: What Sustained Israel's Dream of Restoration through Exile? 9. God's ‘Chosen People’ across the World: How Did the Diaspora Shape Jewish Civilization? 10. The World's Longest Hatred: Antisemitism Past and Present 11. A Turning Point in Revealed Theology: How Did Christianity Become Western Civilization's Mainstream? 12. Jesus versus Moses: How Did Jesus Challenge the Law and Offer an Alternative Faith? 13. How Did Paul Deconstruct Jewish Law and Argue That ‘Christ Is the End of the Law’? 14. The Most Radical Structure in Romans: How Is Sin Redeemed? 15. From Heresy to Roman State Religion: The Organizational Secret of Early Christian Expansion 16. From Persecution to Union: What Happened to Christianity in the Roman Empire? 17. Which Is Higher, Salvation or Earthly Order? Conflict between Church and Emperor 18. How Did Christianity and Rome Unite Theologically? Eusebius, Father of Political Theology 19. Augustine Faces the Fall of Rome: Individual Suffering Matters More than a City 20. How Did Augustine Tell World History through the Order of the Soul? City of God and Earthly City Special: If Scripture Cannot Explain Israel, Why Discuss the History of Western Order? | Q&A 1. The Middle Ages: A Laboratory for Western Civilization in Transition 2. Why Was Early Medieval European Order a ‘Mosaic’? 3. From Spiritual to Secular Affairs: The Expansion of Church Power in the Early Middle Ages 4. From Barbarian Kingdoms to Christian Empire: Carolingian Integration 5. Not Historical Dross: What Was Feudalism Really? 6. How Did the Church Reclaim Itself from Secular Power? Cluny and the Dictatus Papae 7. Pope or Emperor—Who Decides? The Investiture Controversy 8. Why Did Europe Not Unite Church and State? How Canon Law Shaped Western Order 9. If the State Is Sick, the King May Be Killed: John of Salisbury and Medieval Political Thought 10. Roman Law and Aristotle Return: The Middle Ages' Little-Known Renaissance 11. Myth and Reality of Magna Carta: How Could One Charter Restrain a King? 12. Why Was a Theologian a Forerunner of Liberal Democracy? | Thomas Aquinas Reconstructing the Odyssey: More than a Hero's Journey Home | Special The Odyssey: Did Nolan Tell This Greek Story Well? | Special In Hadrian's Rome: How Did an Emperor Bathe, Fall in Love, and Build a Wall? | Conversation 13. When the Pope Stood above the King: The Height of Medieval Church Power 14. How Kings Made States: Justice, Finance, and the Birth of England's Parliament 15. Three Centuries of Rising French Kingship: How the Capetians Centralized Power 16. Beyond The Divine Comedy: What Did Dante Consider a Good Life?