Aristotle in his Political Context

The backbone of this course will be three major political works by Aristotle: the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics, and the Rhetoric. To help us get a better grasp of what he was responding to historically, ethically, and politically, where his thinking and argumentation is typical of his time, and where it's most distinctive, we'll support our reading of those texts with others from the late classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Among other items, we'll consider fragments of Protagoras and Antiphon; selected excerpts of Plato; the two Constitutions of the Athenians; the four extant Athenian "funeral orations"; speeches by Demosthenes and Lykourgos of Athens; parts of the Rhetoric ad Alexandrum by Anaximenes; and essays by Plutarch on Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, and Alexander the Great. The course is open to all interested graduate students in Political Science, Rhetoric, History, Philosophy, and Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. I hope to welcome some interested undergraduates as well: please email me at daniela.cammack@berkeley.edu so we can discuss your level of preparation and whether the course may be right for you.