[SydPhil] Reminder: Critical Antiquities Workshop #3 Miguel Vatter

[Ben Brown]

Dear Friends of Critical Antiquities,



Our next workshop in the series will be on Wednesday, October 12, 10-1130am (AEST)



Miguel Vatter (Deakin University)



“Leo Strauss and Kelsen on Aristotle and the Question of Natural Right”



Abstract:

Strauss’s thought is notoriously complicated to decipher. One of the best guiding threads to his thinking is provided by the way in which he understands the role of Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics within “Platonic political philosophy.” The latter is a technical term of art coined by Strauss which covers what he also calls “classical natural right” and in other places refers to as the problem of the difference between “legality and legitimacy”. It is now widely assumed that Strauss, around the time of his emigration to the United States, came to believe that the works of Xenophon grant the best approximation to what is at stake in the problem of Platonic political philosophy. Despite the importance of Xenophon for Strauss, in this talk I try to show that Aristotle’s political thought plays a crucial supporting role throughout the development of Strauss’s discourse on Platonic political philosophy; and, perhaps, Strauss’s reading of Aristotle is ultimately more telling about the meaning of this discourse than his readings of Xenophon. The central issue here is Strauss’s discussion of the relation between justice and law in Aristotle’s political and ethical thought. This is an extremely complicated and controversial topic, and Strauss’s treatment remains elusive, in part because he never explicitly acknowledges the tradition of scholarship on this very issue, and in part because his pronouncements on this topic do not directly refer to any Aristotelian texts. In my talk I shall try to fill in some of the gaps on both accounts, and in particular by contextualizing Strauss’s reading of Aristotle on justice in reference to Kelsen’s own interpretations of Aristotelian natural right.



Biography: Miguel Vatter is Professor of Political Science at Deakin University. He is an international authority and author of an extraordinary range of books and articles on Machiavelli, Spinoza, Foucault, Arendt, Schmitt, Agamben, biopolitics, democracy and political theology. His most recent book is Living law: Jewish political theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (2021) published by OUP.



Zoom Details:

https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/84945943878?pwd=Z1F0OUZUT2k5SVN4YS8zYlVjK0NHZz09

Password: 915629

Corresponding times elsewhere:

London: Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at 1:00 am

Paris: Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at 2:00 am

Los Angeles: Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at 5:00 pm

Perth: Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at 8:00 am

UTC (GMT): Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at Midnight (0:00)



If you have any further questions about the network and the workshop please email either fass.can at sydney.edu.au<mailto:fass.can at sydney.edu.au> or benajmin.brown at sydney.edu.au<mailto:benajmin.brown at sydney.edu.au>.



All very best, Ben and Tristan


DR BEN BROWN
Classics and Ancient History
School of Humanities (SoH)
Co-director Critical Antiquities Network<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/CYO6C71R2NTmGJgJXs8Y5Y4?domain=criticalantiquities.org>
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY NSW 2006
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