Aristotle's Politics
7 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
This course on Aristotle's classic work will help you understand, analyze, reframe, and judge contemporary politics.
Aristotle's Politics
7 Weeks
·Cohort-based Course
This course on Aristotle's classic work will help you understand, analyze, reframe, and judge contemporary politics.
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Course overview
Get a deeper understanding of political life.
Many think that ancient political science is outdated and irrelevant. In fact, it holds the keys to our future.
Who is this course for
01
You want to understand politics beyond the terms of today's reigning ideologies.
02
You want to learn and apply the original concepts of classical political science.
03
You want to discuss politics and philosophy freely with intelligent, passionate peers!
Key outcomes
Understand Aristotle's key arguments and ideas
What is the nature of political community? What is a regime? Why is it bad to change laws too often? What's the difference between ruling a household and ruling a city? Is democracy really the best form of government? Get into these questions and many more!
Learn to reframe political debates in Aristotelian terms
Sometimes it can be helpful to reframe or restate a policy issue from various perspectives, bringing different sides of the issue to light depending on how you view it. You'll practice doing that by applying Aristotle's reasoning to contemporary political affairs.
Practice arguing for and against political arrangements.
In this course, you'll have the opportunity to develop arguments for and against various policies and political arrangements using Aristotle's book as the starting point. You'll practice arguing against Aristotle, too. You'll become a more effective debater, speaker, and analyst.
Recover Ancient Political Wisdom
It has often been suggested that we are in the midst of a social, political, cultural, civilizational crisis. Could it be that we turned our back on ancient wisdom? We won't know until we revisit a lost tradition. Have we progressed past Aristotle? Or lost our way?
Aristotle's Politics
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Meet your instructor
Dr. Michael Millerman
Michael Millerman (PhD, Political Science, University of Toronto) is an award-winning scholar and teacher of political philosophy, whose work studies classical political rationalism and phenomenology.
Michael is the author of Beginning with Heidegger: Strauss, Rorty, Derrida, Dugin, and the Philosophical Constitution of the Political. He has been published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, The International Journal of Political Theory, Telos, American Mind, Chronicles, and other academic and non-academic journals.
He teaches political philosophy courses privately at the Millerman School (millermanschool.com).
Course syllabus
01
Introduction and Book 1
"One of the fundamental works of Western political thought, Aristotle's masterwork is the first systematic treatise on the science of politics." In this session, we motivate the turn to Aristotle's work and start to consider: what is politics, what is the political community, what is the regime? Bring your hunches, intuitions, opinions, and takes!
02
Finishing Book 1 and Starting Book 2
We've set the scene and started to find our footing in Aristotle. But straight away we are faced with a host of difficult problems and issues: nature, property, life, slavery, money-making, exchange, even the soul! We'll take our time to analyze and assess what's going on with all of that as we try to bring Aristotle's arguments into clear relief.
03
Book 2: The Errors of Plato and Others
Before Aristotle, there was Plato. In his book The Republic (Politeia!) he seems to have argued that in a just city there is no private property among the rulers, not even any private families. Rather, women and children are kept in common. We'll see how Aristotle responds to that and other erroneous teachings about politics in this session.
04
Book 3: The City and the Regime
What kinds of political community are there? How do they differ? Which is best? Who should rule? What are the tradeoffs? What's the best case scenario? What kind of laws make citizens excellent? What does it mean to be a good citizen? What kinds of inequality are politically relevant? These are just some of the questions on deck in book three.
05
Books 4, 5 and 6: The Regimes
The best regime isn't always within reach. What is the best one that we can actually hope to institute? And what are the challenges and opportunities of a democratic, oligarchic, or mixed regime? How can we design a political community that lasts? And what about revolution, destruction, and transformation of regimes?
06
Books 7 and 8: Education and the Best Regime
What if politics was the way in which you're actually able to realize the peak existence of a human being and to fulfill on the common desire for happiness, eudaimonia, flourishing in the full sense? What if it's not just an unavoidable dumpster fire? What if the perfection of man passes through the realm of the political? That's our topic here.
07
Conclusion/Transition/Presentations/Beyond Aristotle
We made it. But questions remain. In this session, we tie together some final threads and indicate where the study of political philosophy can go next. You will keep exploring and even presenting the application of Aristotle's teaching to contemporary politics. Take a moment to solidify your new friendships and mark the end of this awesome journey.
Can we understand modern politics without classical political science?
The Cohort-Based Course Advantage
A safe, friendly space for lively discussion
You won't get kicked out for Wrong Think. And you're not tested on ideological conformity. Instead, you just discuss intelligently and authentically the questions and issues that arise for you from studying Aristotle, with other people who want to do the same, everyone together searching for understanding.
Connections that outlast the course
We're together for a set number of weeks. But the beauty of a cohort-based course is that you can make friendships that will last a lifetime, or as long as you nurture them. Meet other intelligent professionals. Introduce yourself to a future business partner. Find your intellectual soulmate. Anything is possible when you're learning together.
A great way to learn
Asynchronous, video-based lecture courses can be highly rewarding. But there's still something special about learning live with a group. You get the benefit of activities, group reflections, discussions, breakouts, back and forth, heated arguments, debates, and disagreements, clarifications, and much more that you don't get through video courses alone.