Route 1 tradition = one shifting question → what is politics for + where does authority rest → each age reworks the last

Route 2 read as a swing between ideal and power → Plato’s moral ideal → contemporary critique → continuity-in-change

Plato (ideal moral order, justice as harmony, rule of knowledge → philosopher king) → Aristotle (empirical turn, political animal, state natural & prior, rule of law → polity as best practicable) → Machiavelli (autonomy of politics, ethics/religion split, Dunning: medieval–modern borderline, power over good life) → Hobbes (first modern, authority from fearful self-preserving individuals → social contract → absolute sovereign) → Mill (order → its limits: liberty, individuality, self-development → women’s equality) → Gramsci (power beyond coercion → cultural hegemony → consent in civil society) → Arendt (against totalitarianism → politics as action → power as citizens acting together)

line not smooth → swings between ideal & real, authority & liberty → modern break (Machiavelli/Hobbes) disrupts the moral continuity Plato began

Route 1 one thread holds → from rule of knowledge → power as shared civic action → each age answers anew what politics is for

Route 2 evolution as continuity, not straight-line progress → same question (ends of politics, basis of authority) recast each age