Join us for a discussion of Aristotle's Politics
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Reading: Aristotle, Politics
Book IV, Chapters 8-13
Our February conversation took us through the forms of democracy and oligarchy, which range at the good end from something resembling a "so-called aristocracy" to the bad end, where they are both practically indistinguishable from tyranny.
From there Aristotle takes on Politiea or "constitutional rule" which, "to put it simply, is a mixture of oligarchy and democracy."
We left off at this point, where Aristotle concludes "it is impossible for a city to be well regulated if it is NOT run along arisotcratic lines" and also impossible "for a city NOT well regulated to be run aristocratically", even though all we have to work with is democracy and oligarchy. We will try to solve this puzle in our March meeting.
RSVPs will receive directions to our meeting place in in Rice Village the week of the meeting.
Here are three traslations:
Cairnes Lord -- most commonly used translation in universities today:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ANLZ3rQyO4a4kQ5sc-RL2U5IRmHpinX0/view?usp=sharing
Cairnes Lord, the Kindle version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z1jCLFbE02XOLU1qKljshb9T8kBGnbEk/view?usp=sharing
Ernest Barker -- the gold standard when I was in school:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AL8sjX-DsQO6fM1Ht-IQuKDw9Hy_Bvfm/view?usp=sharing
Joe Sachs -- a recent translation that sticks closely to the Greek and is very helpful with Greek terminology:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A3Px3tYlFaXXJwNbwmS9jG9_oZsXZnvi/view?usp=sharing
