The essay project is worth 30% of your grade.Wednesdays from 17:30-21:20 at the Burnaby Campus (room SWH 10061)
Hour 1 = Marsilius of
Padua (plus feedback and response to revisions of the essay project according
to
explicit criteria)
Hour 2 = Aristotle's Politics (plus Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance
Diplomacy)
Hour 3 = various historical documents from "The
Papacy Overreaches" etc.
Hour 4 = Aquinas on Aristotle
The essay project is worth 30% of your grade.
Read one chapter a week from both the Defensor Minor and De Translatione Imperii of Marsilius of Padua. (Chapter 1 in Week 2, etc.)
Then dig into Defensor Pacis if you seek deeper understanding, following this schedule:
Week 2: I.1-5
Week 3: I.6-10
Week 4: I.11-15
Week 5: I.16-19
Week 6: II.1-5
Week 7: II.6-10
Week 8: II.11-15
Week 9: II.16-20
Week 10: II.21-25
Week 11: II.25-30
Week 12: III.1-3
To study Marsilius more profoundly, we go both backwards in time and forwards in time.
Forwards in time: If it pertains to your chosen essay topic, then please read a chapter each week (I–XI, XXVIII) from Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (beginning in Week 2).
Backwards in time: Compare Marsilius's project with Aristotle's efforts. (Try becoming familiar with Aristotle, by zipping through the entire Politics of Aristotle, by quickly reading approximately one book a week. If that is too much, read the first four books over a span of eight weeks. Then finish up the last four books in the last four weeks of the course.)
How may we gather our thoughts on all this for the essay project? These readings help bring that task into focus:
Week 1: first class Sep 7
Week 2: Pierre Manent, "What is a Nation?", The Intercollegiate Review (Fall 2007): 23–31.
Week 3: papal claims and political reaction (from "The Papacy Overreaches"), esp. Pope Boniface VIII
Week 4: intellectual and theological reaction (from "The Papacy Overreaches"), esp. Pope John XXII
Week 5: Ralph A. Powell, “‘That a State Establishment of Any Religion Claiming Divine Revelation Is Contrary to Natural Law’: The Semiotics of Separation of Church and State”, in Semiotics 2000: “Sebeok’s Century”, ed. Scott Simpkins and John Deely (Ottawa, Canada: Legas, 2001), 455–469. [PDF]
Week 6: Eric Voegelin, "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism", in Modernity Without Restraint: Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 5 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 295–313.
Week 7: "IV. Aristotle & The National State", in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church & State, 1050-1300. With Selected Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 159–210.
Week 8: G.W. Bowersock (trans.), Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 24 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), with an appendix of the complete Latin text of the Constitutum Constantini and a facing English translation and notes.
Week 9: John von Heyking, "Aquinas's Mediated Cosmopolitanism and the Impasse of Ancient Political Philosophy", in Lee Trepanier & Khalil M. Habib (eds.), Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization: Citizens without States (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 70–96.
Week 10: "I. The First Thousand Years", in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church & State, 1050-1300. With Selected Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 7–32.
Week 11: David P. Goldman (writing as "Spengler"), "Why Do Nations Exist?", Asia Times (Jul 29, 2008).
Week 12: Eric Voegelin, "Marsilius of Padua", in The Later Middle Ages: History of Political Ideas: Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. 21 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 83–102.
Week 13: John von Heyking, "Post-9/11 Evocations of Empire in Light of Eric Voegelin’s Political Science", in David Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski (eds.), Enduring Empire: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 185–214.
Note that the last class is on Nov 30 (and the essay project due date is Nov 30 @ 5:30 p.m.)
Aquinas serves up a detailed "x-ray" of the anatomy of Aristotle's argument. Can you convert his detailed analysis into a brief synopsis of the Aristotle readings that he discusses?
In each of the weeks beyond Week 3, if you would prefer to submit a tentative first draft of one page from your essay assignment instead of a one-page Aristotle synopsis, you have that option. Either one-page submission will count towards the weekly 2% synopsis portion of your grade.
Either way, the goal of this weekly writing assignment is to allow you to build up a repertoire of material, conforming to scholarly standards for discussion of Aristotle, that you will be able to draw upon when writing your essay's argument.
If you're not sure what to do for your essay topic yet, please continue reading Aristotle and trying your hand at a one-page synopsis of the weekly excerpt.
Because discussing and interpreting Aristotle's text is so important for Marsilius, you will benefit from writing about Aristotle's text yourself and learning how to cite specific passages from Aristotle according to genre-specific scholarly practice, e.g., using correct references to chapter numbers and Bekker numbers. (You may consult the footnotes in your Marsilius textbooks for examples of what is considered the "A+" standard for reference to and discussion of Aristotle.)
Please note that you only have to make ten one-page submissions to earn the 20% of your grade portion: 10 x 2% = 20%.
These writing assignments are designed to help you draft your essay and also to prepare you for the take-home final exam (which will require you to be able to discuss Marsilius' interpretation of Aristotle).
Revisions accomplished through successive similar assignments:
Week 2: Aquinas, In Pol. I, 1–2 = Aquinas book, pages 1–24 (on Aristotle, Pol. I.1–4, 1252a1–1254a17)
Week 3: Aquinas, In Pol. I, 3–5 = Aquinas book, pages 25–41 (on Aristotle, Pol. I.5–7, 1254a17–1255b40)
Week 4: Aquinas, In Pol. I, 6–8 = Aquinas book, pages 42–60 (on Aristotle, Pol. I.8–10, 1256a1–1258b8)
Week 5: Aquinas, In Pol. I, 9–11 = Aquinas book, pages 60–77 (on Aristotle, Pol. I.11–13, 1258b9–1260b24)
Week 6: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 1–2 = Aquinas book, pages 78–90 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.1–3, 1260b27–1262a24)
Week 7: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 3–4 = Aquinas book, pages 90–101 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.4–5, 1262a24–1263b29)
Week 8: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 5–7 = Aquinas book, pages 101–120 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.5–6, 1263b29–1266a30)
Week 9: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 8–12 = Aquinas book, pages 121–144 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.7–8, 1266a31–1269a28)
Week 10: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 13–15 = Aquinas book, pages 144–166 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.9–10, 1269a29–1272b23)
Week 11: Aquinas, In Pol. II, 16–17 = Aquinas book, pages 166–172 (on Aristotle, Pol. II.11–12, 1272b24–1273b26)
Week 12: Aquinas, In Pol. III, 1–3 = Aquinas book, pages 172–197 (on Aristotle, Pol. III.1–4, 1274b32–1277b32)
Week 13: Aquinas, In Pol. III, 4–6 = Aquinas book, pages 197–211 (on Aristotle, Pol. III.5–8, 1277b33–1280a6)
See also: Peter Simpson, "Aristotle's Defensible Defense of Slavery", also in A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1998): 28–46; Hector Zagal, "Aquinas on Slavery: An Aristotelian Puzzle"; and John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics (ISI Books, 2010), 203–209.