Issues About Politics and Government

Aristotle and Civil Society Theory
Paper for: WIMPS presentation Tuesday, October 28, 2008 1:00 – 2:30 Walker II Building conference room, #201-B IUPUI By: Marty Sulek Ph.D. Candidate Indiana University Center On Philanthropy Phone: [phone] Cell: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail] Box 236 103B North Main St. Farmland, IN 47340

Marty Sulek is currently a Ph.D. candidate in philanthropic studies, with a minor in philosophy. He was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and earned his B.A. with an honours certificate in political science and philosophy at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. Before coming to the Center On Philanthropy to pursue graduate studies, he worked for several years as a non-profit development professional. Marty’s primary academic interest is in political philosophy, both ancient and modern, for the light it sheds on contemporary understanding of civil society and philanthropy. The working title of his dissertation is: Gifts of Fire – Promethean Imagery and Philosophical Philanthropy in Plato, Bacon and Nietzsche.

1

Aristotle and Civil Society Theory
Aristotle’s Life Aristotle (384-322 BCE) is one of the most famous philosophers of antiquity, and a founding figure of Western philosophy. A student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle founded the Lyceum, one of the earliest and most influential philosophical schools of the ancient world. By some accounts, he also invented political science as a distinct academic discipline (Strauss, 1978, pg. 21). There is a rich biographical tradition on Aristotle in ancient sources, of which Düring (1957) provides a useful scholarly inventory. One of the most extensive extant ancient accounts is provided by Diogenes Laertius (‘DL’) in the fifth book of his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, written sometime in the 2nd century AD. In the introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s Politics, Lord (1984) also provides a speculative biography, extrapolated from

References: and Further Readings Bartlett, Robert C. (Mar., 1994): ‘Aristotle’s Science of the Best Regime’, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 1, 143-155 Chroust, Anton-Hermann (1967): ‘Aristotle Leaves the Academy’, Greece & Rome, 2nd Ser., Vol. 14, No. 1. (Apr., 1967), pp. 39-43 Coby, Patrick (Nov., 1988): ‘Aristotle’s Three Cities and the Problem of Faction’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 896-919 Düring, Ingemar (1957): Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Göteborg (distr.: Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm) Edwards, Michael (2004): Civil Society, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press Kraut, Richard (2002): Aristotle Political Philosophy, New York: Oxford Univ. Press Kumar, Krishan (Sep., 1993): ‘An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term’, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 375-395 Loos, Isaac (Nov., 1897): ‘The Political Philosophy of Aristotle’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 10, pp. 1-21 Lord, Carnes (1987 [1st publ. 1963+): ‘Aristotle’, In Strauss, L. & Cropsey, J., eds., The History of Political Philosophy, Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press MacIntyre, Alasdair C. (1984): After Virtue: a study in moral theory (2nd ed.), Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press Marcianus of Heraclea (1962): Vita Aristotelis Marciana, ed. Olof Gigon, Berlin: De Gruyter Strauss, Leo (1978 [1st publ. 1964]): The City and Man, Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press Tessitore, Aristide, ed. (2002): Aristotle and Modern Politics – The Persistence of Political Philosophy, Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press 12