History can accurately be characterized as an unbroken chain of nations rising and falling. Plato’s Socrates, reflecting on the near rhetorical perfection of his “city in speech” lamented that “for everything that has come into being,” even this most perfect of regimes, “there is decay.” America’s founders were keenly aware of the challenges of creating a new nation, even a very good one. They faced these dangers brilliantly with a number of political, institutional, and intellectual props. The question must be asked though, did their supports uphold the structure, or did this regime change too?
This fall, The Telos Academy invites Claremont fellowship alumni to explore these questions in Regime Change, a seminar series examining how political orders emerge, evolve, and collapse.
Course Schedule
- Sep. 09: Plato's Republic Books 8 and 9
- Sep. 14: Aristotle's Politics
- Sep. 21: Polybius 6:3-18
- Sep. 30: Cicero's Republic
- Oct. 07: Montesquieu on Greatness and Decline
- Oct. 14: America’s Foundings
- Oct. 21: Tocqueville and France
- Oct. 28: The Russian Revolution
- Nov. 04: America: From Nation to Empire Post WWII
- Nov. 11: From Nation to Empire Post Cold War
- Nov. 18: America On the Brink: Another Regime Change?