I have been teaching this course, at least once per quarter, since 1989. Second only to the Govt. 4401 course, it is my favorite one because this is where I get to meet all the “new” students who, alas, seem to be looking younger with each passing year. It is always fascinating to hear their perceptions at the outset of the course about what they think political science examines and what is their overall impression of politics. Without fail their responses about the subject parallel civics courses as taught in high school and their feelings about politics range from a total apathy to strongly held negativity and even enmity. It is perhaps a reflection of our times. It is thus always a pleasure when in the process of the course I see that many of them change their mind about the subject and about the importance of politics to their lives.

My course’s operational definition of politics stems directly from Aristotle, the founder of the discipline of political science, who called politics “the master science.” Aristotle was the first to ponder upon something that had been happening for thousands of years up to his time and since. His question was this: what makes humans live in the “polis?” – Greek for city-state. His answer was equally matter of fact: because humans are “political animals,” preferring to congregate and live in the polis. All persons living in the polis are thus, by definition, inherently involved in “politics,” i.e. the affairs of the polis that surrounds us. This is a much wider and truer definition of politics than merely the narrower but more prevalent one that equates politics with political campaigns, voting, governing, and the institutions of government. According to Aristotle’s definition, we can choose all we want to hate or to ignore “politics” and thus “drop out” so to speak or we can choose (encourage? promote?) to be more actively involved in the affairs of the polis as the Ancient Athenians did.

And here is another point that needs to be made. The ancient Greeks felt that in human nature two realms existed, the public and the private. The public was the polis or politics and they felt humans achieved their highest development and became more complete by being involved in politics. They shunned the private realm as debasing to humans. If a person was more preoccupied with the private rather than the public realm then the person would descent into something less human and less complete. Their word for the private realm was “idiotic.”