Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship

Susan D. Collins

may 2006 · Cambridge University Press

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Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship confronts a question that is central to Aristotle's political philosophy as well as to contemporary political theory: what is a citizen? Answers prove to be elusive, in part because late twentieth-century critiques of the Enlightenment called into doubt fundamental tenets that once guided us. Engaging the two major works of Aristotle's political philosophy, his Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics, Susan D. Collins poses questions that current discussions of liberal citizenship do not adequately address. Drawing a path from contemporary disputes to Aristotle, she examines in detail his complex presentations of moral virtue, civic education, and law; his view of the aims and limits of the political community; and his treatment of the connection between citizenship and the human good. Collins thereby shows how Aristotle continues to be an indispensable source of enlightenment, as he has been for political and religious traditions of the past.

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Susan D. Collins is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on political thought in classical antiquity. She has contributed to American Journal of Political Science and Review of Politics, is co-editor of Action and Contemplation: Studies in the Moral and Political Thought of Aristotle and co-translator of Empire and the Ends of Politics: Plato's 'Menexenus' and Pericles' Funeral Oration.