BASC50035 - Aristotle's "Politics" and "Constitution of Athens"

Course Description

Our study will be of Aristotle's Politics and Aristotle's Constitution of Athens. Our activity will be reading and discussing these texts during the Winter and Spring Quarters of 2020. The Constitution will supply some insight into Aristotle's extensive study of actual constitutions in the Greek world, and their relations to the completed Politics. And it serves as an interesting account of the Constitution of the Ancient Greek city with which we are most familiar, as well as it's history. Such a study is complicated to some extent by the intricate relations of the Politics with many other writings by Aristotle, notably the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Physics. A secondary benefit of our study will be to give us a glimpse of the method, structure, and intent of Aristotle's body of work.