Practical Politics: Plutarch’s Lives: Founders and Statesmen

We’ve lost something in our Modern world: what we mean by “politics” isn’t what many of our forebears in the West meant. Writing during the time of the Emperor Trajan in the first century AD, Plutarch exhaustively examined perennial issues of human society. Founders represent the most important stage of a political society, for what that society contains in its origination exercises enormous power over what it can become as it makes its way in the world. Next we’ll look at statesmen, individuals who are not mere politicians, but good people who guide the “ship of state” through trials so as to maximize the well-being of all its people. We will end with a close reading of a text which chronicles the interplay of two factors underlying all true political success: the ever-changing circumstances of the world, and the personal character of the politician. This study is not merely antiquarian in nature: the American Founders themselves based much of their work setting up the new country on Plutarch. Arguably, then, a solid acquaintance with this ancient author constitutes one of the best ways to be practically political. This is an 8-week course.

Course Objectives:

1. To develop the skill of closely reading ancient biographies, seeking to allow them to suggest and refine the social and political interpretive questions we bring to them.
2. To engage with great characters and events of the past with a developing sense of their fundamental connectedness to and relevance for our own present and future.

Texts:

All texts will be provided by the instructor:

• Moralia
• Theseus
• Romulus
• Lycurgus
• Pericles
• Pelopidas
• Cicero
• On the Fortune and Virtue of Alexander

***Course Price:

$149 / single participant rate; $99 / ea., group rate