030332 SE The Soul and the City (2021S)

It is was quite common among ancient political philosophers to pay attention to the right “fit” in the relation between the political community and the soul of its citizens. Indeed, since political governance was expected to be reasonable it had to be made sure that those possessing a strong reasonable part of their soul are to occupy the position of rulers. Aristotle, arguably, supported this idea. More intriguingly, Plato’s Politeia can be understood as the attempt to use the model of the human soul in order to conceive of the composition of the polity and vice versa. While modern political philosophy took leave of these ideas, they have survived in the context of modern psychoanalysis. Freud, not least, used the psychology of the masses in order to illuminate the functioning of the individual soul, again, and vice versa, used insights from individual psychology to understand political behavior. In any event, while modern political philosophy is decidedly interested in “law” as an instrument of government, the political psychology of the ancients is not owing to its focus on the interaction of different parts of the soul. The seminar would like to explore this topic by look at authors like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Freud and Fromm.
Aims: Introduction to ancient constitutional thought, understanding of the alternative to a juridical understanding of the constitution and to normativism.