I would like to begin my presentation by calling our attention to what Heidegger said of Aristotle.

You can find the quote displayed on the top of the first page of your hand-out. My suggestion is: lets take Heideggers words seriously. What I propose to do today is to take a look at a couple of lines from Aristotles Politics in the Attic Greek. A transliteration and a mot--mot translation are provided on your hand-out along with the text in Attic Greek. I hope that we can decipher the Greek together and that something will be gained by us taking the time and pain to read the Greek. I will then say just one or two things about idiomatic moments in the text of Aristotles Politics. So lets read some Greek now. When you follow my reading you will undoubtedly notice that the order of the words in a Greek sentence looks a bit chaotic when compared to an English sentence. Thats because Ancient Greek is a highly inflected language and, unlike English, words in a Greek sentence can be shuffled to appear in really just any order. It would be like saying in English: I like to eat blueberries for breakfast. Or Like I eat to blueberries breakfast for. Or Blueberries I to eat for breakfast like. Or Like I to eat for blueberries breakfast. Etc. etc.etc. Even though the Greeks were probably unaware of the magical taste of blueberries, they would have understood each sentence because the endings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns and articles would inform the reader of the grammatical function of each word. Ok, enough said about blueberries and grammar. Time to read Greek. I would like to say a couple of things now concerning the singular and idiomatic flavor of the Ancient Greek language. If you turn to page 1, you will notice that the very first word of the first paragraph of Aristotles Politics is

translated as seeing that by yours truly.

is a derivative word. It comes from the Greek verb

meaning to see,

look upon, behold. Only two words after

, our eyes encounter the verb ,

also meaning to see, to have sight, to look. About twenty words later, another explicit reference to vision is made by the adjective

which can take any of the following

translations: visible, conspicuous, clear, manifest, self-apparent, self-evident. We can get a sense, even though we have done no more than reading one full sentence in the Greek, of how important the sense-perception of vision is for Aristotle. In fact, one of the main differences between Aristotles and Platos philosophy lies in the fact that, for Aristotle, form is always perceptible by a sense-organ such as the eye whereas, for Plato, form is invisible and inaccessible to human vision. As we will see in just a bit, it is the very look and appearance of different kinds of rule that allow Aristotle to claim that those [Socrates and Plato] who think that the natures of the statesman, the royal ruler, the head of an estate, and the master of a family are the same, are mistaken; they imagine that the difference between these various forms of authority is one of greater and smaller numbers, not a difference in kind. (the Greek word for kind is which can also mean look, appearance, shape, form) Aristotle sees the specific particularities characteristic of each form of government and claims that it is only through a minute understanding of the smallest parts of each form of government that we can gain a better appreciation of the singularity of each one. Aristotle is rather attentive to detail in a very systematic fashion for his method, as he explains in the end of the first paragraph, is to analyze the composite whole down to its uncompounded elements (for these are the smallest parts of the whole). Now, let us turn to page 2 of the hand-out.

Let me make a connection between these last words and the first sentence of the Politics. If you turn to page 1 of the hand-out, you will notice that I have underlined the word

which can mean for the sake of, on account of, and because of. Aristotle uses this word in the opening of the Politics to indicate two things at once. He states that every communion is brought together due to a given good or goal that orients the gathering of the communion. At the same time, Aristotle suggests that it is the very end-goal or good that give rise to that communion. The good or end-point opens a path which provides a beginning as well as an orientation towards the goal itself. In other words, the end and final destination of the path end up being the very cause and origin of the path itself. Now, if you turn to page 3 of the hand-out and examine the last line we were just looking at, you will see how the word The word

shows itself again, as Heidegger would perhaps say. ,

meaning to live, or life.

here is placed right after the word

Aristotle here claims that the accomplished city state came into being for the sake of life or because of life (

).

He further specifies that the coming into being

() of the accomplished city ( emphasize enough how crucial the preposition of is in:

) is of the good life. I cannot

. ginomen men tou zn tou eu zn.

coming into being while the to live

, heneken,

ousa de of the
good life.

for the sake of, being and because of on account of

The preposition of entails that life owns the coming into being of the polis. It implies a teleological understanding of nature (phusis) on Aristotles part for a

telos (a good of

some sort, a goal, an end-point, etc) determined and pushed the action to achieve completeness, perfection, the telos itself. In view of the fact that the finitude of time is about to speak, let us now read together one of the most famous passages from the entire corpus of Western philosophy. Please turn to page 3 of the hand-out.

It remains now to say thanks to your kind and persistent attention. Thank you.