S25-07 Ancient Athenian Citizenship in Practice and Theory
Class | Registration opens 3/3/2025 9:00 AM
From approximately 600 BCE to 400 BCE, Athens developed institutions and ideas about citizenship that in some ways were profoundly egalitarian, such as subsidizing participation for the poor. Other ideas, however, were profoundly exclusive. For instance, citizen-women were excluded from most forms of civic participation and citizenship was limited to those with dual Athenian parents. This course will first look at Athenian citizenship "in practice" through a reading of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, which is a short history of Athens during this period. After we have a better sense of actual Athenian citizenship, we will look at how Aristotle defines citizenship "in theory," in his work on political science, entitled The Politics.
Thornton Lockwood
Thornton Lockwood is Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University (with a joint appointment in Environmental Studies). His research focuses on ancient Greek and Roman ethical and political thought, and he has published the co-edited volumes Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Aristote Politique VII: La constitution « selon nos vœux ». His research on Aeschylus, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero has been published in numerous peer-reviewed research journals. He is currently at work on two overlapping projects: He has written several pieces on the moral status of non-human animals in Aristotle’s ethical and political works, which he plans to develop into a monography tentatively titled Animals in the City by Nature: Aristotle’s Environmental Philosophy. He is also finishing up a book-length manuscript entitled Aristotle on Justice: The Virtues of Citizenship (currently under contract at Cambridge University Press).