When: 09/07 | 09/14 | 09/21 | 09/28

Time: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm

Where: Harrison House

Description:

Conflict and animosity seem to have reached unprecedented levels in the current election season. The most disturbing aspect of this phenomenon, however, may not be its shocking proportions, but on the contrary, its increasing inability to shock us. We are no longer surprised. Verbal attacks, corruption, negative integration: these “scandals” now seem routine, if not banal. Behind any compromise or agreement, we tend to assume not so much goodwill as an affinity of interests. Is it sensible to be so jaded? What is the end of politics anyway? How much or what kind of unity is necessary in a pluralistic society to be able to pursue a truly common good? Is there hope for politics, or is that just another self-serving slogan?

This September, the Coffee with the Classics seminar will join students together with faculty facilitators in community to explore these timely yet perennial questions by sifting salient, classical responses to them. We will consider brief selections from the great conversation of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Marx, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Winthrop, and Aquinas, none of whom were of one mind, and discuss them over dinner freely, uncompelled by requirements or grades, for our own sakes and, perhaps, for the sake of the polis.

To join this four-part weekly dinner series in September, directed by the Collegium Institute Student Association at Penn, please fill up this form with your contact information and a brief letter of interest (50-250 wds).

Admitted students will receive all dinners and readings free of charge.