Susan Collins: Political Order and the Spartan Ideal

Although democratic Athens has long been the focus of study in political theory, influential thinkers from the classical era to the nineteenth century celebrated the Spartan politeia, the “regime” or “constitution” attributed to the legendary Lycurgus, as the ideal or best constitutional order. After laying out the grounds of this earlier celebration of the Spartan politeia—especially the regime’s success in addressing the problems of faction and war—this paper argues that the claims about political affairs undergirding the praise of Sparta have re-emerged in what some scholars call our post-liberal age.

‍

About Susan Collins

Susan Collins is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Her teaching and research interests range the history of political thought, and her main expertise is in classical political philosophy. She is the translator with Robert Bartlett of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (University of Chicago, 2011), author of Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship (Cambridge 2006), co-author and translator of Empire and the Ends of Politics: Plato’s “Menexenus” and Pericles’ Funeral Oration (Focus 1999), and co-editor of Action and Contemplation: Studies in the Moral and Political Thought of Aristotle (SUNY 1999). Her other publications include peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and review essays. Most recently, she has completed a book-length study of the Spartan regime in classical political philosophy and its relevance for debates about political order today, a project that was awarded fellowships by the Earhart Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich.

Before joining Notre Dame in fall 2013, Collins held a joint appointment in Political Science and the Honors College at the University of Houston. She was a recipient of the Provost Excellence in Teaching in the Core Curriculum and, in 2012, was awarded the Ross M. Lence Distinguished Teaching Chair. In the Honors College, she was the founding director of the interdisciplinary undergraduate program, Phronesis: A Program in Politics and Ethics. Collins earned her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Alberta and her Ph.D. from Boston College.

Host or Publisher Civitas Institute