Politeia and the historical account of the polis in Aristotle

doi:10.12795.14

Autori

Università di Cagliari https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6347-9432

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795.14

Parole chiave:

politeia’s intelligibility, polis’ history, political justice, Aristotle on the unity of the polis, Cleisthenes’ reform, Aristotle on history and poetry

Abstract

Aristotle’s conception of the politeia (regime, constitution) as a distinctive feature of the historical experience of the polis is a key aspect in his treatment of politics. Part of this discussion deals with Aristotle’s attempt to locate and define the qualities of the politeia as the most valid criteria for a historical account of the polis. These are the qualities I intend to address in this chapter. In section 1 I consider the role of the politeia in Aristotle’s account of the history of the polis after it deviates from the monarchic model of government. In section 2 I tackle the problem of the politeia’s intelligibility inside the polis understood as a “community of interpretation”. Finally, in section 3 I address the politeia as an expression of the unity of the polis and discuss its quality to unify actions (praxeis) aimed at a common goal. Here I argue that it is the politeia’s “unifying quality” that highlights the causal connections underlying actions that regard the polis. Within the context of the politeia, the historical account of the polis connects actions which outside the framework of the politeia do not appear to be so closely related.

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Biografia autore

, Università di Cagliari

Elisabetta Poddighe (poddighe@unica.it) teaches Greek History in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cagliari and in the International PhD Programme in Philological and Literary, Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Cagliari (in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków). She works on the history of Athenian democracy (VI-IV centuries BCE), ancient Greek political thought, Aristotle’s general thinking on democracy and his specific evaluation of Athenian democracy. Her publications include the volumes Aristotele, Atene e le metamorfosi dell’idea democratica: da Solone a Pericle, Roma, 2014; Aristotele e il synoran. La visione globale tra politica e storia, tra retorica e diritto, Milano, 2020.

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