New Slow Reading Pathway: Aristotle’s Politics

Recommended editions: 
1. Aristotle’s Politics, Translated by Carnes Lord. 
2. –translated by Joe Sachs, Focus Philosophical Library

The Design of the Pathway

Aristotle’s Politics is perfectly suited for a slow, unhurried conversational reading. 

You can read about the Politics on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and many other sources besides; you can take a lecture course, or read internet articles or watch youtube lectures. But none of these resources will help you do the one thing that is needful, when reading a work such as the Politics: to engage in a sustained encounter the text itself, with the words of the author himself, as the arguments unfold, and to do so on the basis of your own questioning, and in the context of other serious, curious readers like yourself. 

For this reading, no terminal date is set, which means that we will take as much time as we and the book needs – sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down, always taking care to reflect as deeply as we can on the book and on our own lives. This is the most pure form of slow reading.   

This kind of reading can change your life.  

On the Politics

Since we see that every city is some kind of association, and every association is organized for the sake of some good (since everything everyone does is for the sake of something seeming to be good), it is clear that all associations aim at something good, and that the one that is most sovereign and encompasses all the others aims at the most sovereign of all goods.  And this is the one called the city [polis/community of persons], the political association.”