First, a House, a Wife, and a Cow — Aristotle’s Politics
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Nov. 1 – We will read Politics I.3 and maybe 4. Quoting Hesiod, Aristotle says that a young man begins adulthood qua citizen by founding a household, starting with a house, then a wife, then a cow. (Some translations may conflate wife and cow, but let's not quibble.) What things else constitute a household? That's chapter 3 and maybe chapter 4.
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In the second half of I.2, we finally learned that the human being is naturally meant to live in the city—that is, man is a city-living being. Properly understood, that is a profound fact.
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We are live-reading Aristotle's Politics, the treatise on the practical governance of the city-state for the sake of enabling and promoting its citizens individually to flourish.
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The prerequisite to this treatise is a familiarity with Aristotelian ethics—whether that be Nicomachean ethics, Eudemian Ethics, or Magna Moralia.
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.