Starting from the spread of the Aristotelian Politics, the book of political science (intended as a unitary composition or part of a larger work) assumed various types of structure. The always polysemic and problematic term politeia was declined in a kind of scientific analysis concerning the tradition of the main Hellenistic schools, continuing in Rome and in the Byzantine world by means of their own and often innovative traditions.
Would it be possible to identify the emergence of a philosophical-literary genre focused on political analysis, with a recognizable structure, partitions and hierarchy? Could the legacy of Platonic and Aristotelian models (opposed since the traditional titles of their most complex works: Politeia vs. Tà politiká) be channeled into typologically comparable treatises? In ancient historiographical works, would it be possible to recognize recurring structures inside the passages of properly political reflection and analysis? How much survives of the model(s) structure schemes in the anthological re-uses by Heraclides Lembus, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Ioannes Stobaeus, and so on? To what extent did the book of ancient political science survive, for example, within the specula principis of Late Antiquity?
To all these questions one could try to give a joint answer, by means of the comparison of different texts, problems and traditions. Among all this diversity, maybe there is a common (structural) element, depending on the identification of the recipient and the ideological objective that, in part, transpires from the very order and presentation of the political items.
Since medieval culture has systematized specific types of commentary, political treatises and educational handbooks for the ruler, focused on the knowledge of politics and almost exclusively based on the Aristotelian model (at least starting from the second half of the 13rd century), a space for comparison, reflection and discussion on the vitality (or, on the contrary, on the failure) of some proposals for structure and internal hierarchy in the composition of the book about political science, from classical Antiquity onwards, would be useful.
LIVE BROADCAST OF CONGRESS SESSIONS:
May 25th
Morning: https://youtube.com/
Afternoon: https://youtube.com/
May 26th
Morning: https://youtube.com/
Afternoon: https://youtube.com/
Project financed by Agencia Estatal de Investigación
(PID2019-110568GB-I00 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033)
