15 November 2005

P.D.Q. Aristotle

Sent to me by Matt Walker. Definitely looks entertaining. It's clear from the Jefferson-Adams correspondence that the Founders had little respect for Plato, at least, as a political theorist. But what might Plato or, in this case, Aristotle have thought of them?

The Whitney Humanities Center at Yale's Working Group in Ancient Philosophy
invites you to a workshop on:

"Aristotle's 'Regime of the Americans'"
Peter Simpson

Wednesday, November 16, 4pm
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 211
Yale University

Refreshments provided.

Professor Simpson is Professor of Classics and Philosophy at the City University
of New York. His books include A PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARY ON THE _POLITICS_ OF
ARISTOTLE (University of North Carolina Press, 2002) and a translation of THE
_POLITICS_ OF ARISTOTLE (University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Copies of Professor Simpson's English translation of this recently discovered
lost work of Aristotle's will be available in Connecticut Hall Room 101.

(By the way, it's not an a recently discovered work of Aristotle's. Rather, it's
a speculative reconstruction of a work Aristotle _might_ have written about the
American political system had he existed today.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the risk of plugging for Peter, it should be noted that he "discovered" the entire MS of the text in Greek, and then translated it into English. It's brilliant!

Anonymous said...

But when will he be publishing his critique of scientific realism as 'idealist' and his accompanying defense of classical realism? We all know that the American constitution fails in itself to direct people toward the good life; what we don't know is whether we can really still talk about things like honest-to-goodness real essences and the like. Somebody nudge Simpson to publish this stuff for the sake of those of us who can't make it to his lectures.