- I am a Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows at The University of Chicago. My book project, 'Aristotle and the End of Tyranny,' takes its point of departure from Aristotle’s claim in Rhetoric 1.8 that the end or goal (telos) of tyranny is self-preservation (phulakē), in order to scrutinize the causes and consequences of tyrannical fear. Through Aristotle, I examine ho... moreI am a Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Society of Fellows at The University of Chicago.
My book project, 'Aristotle and the End of Tyranny,' takes its point of departure from Aristotle’s claim in Rhetoric 1.8 that the end or goal (telos) of tyranny is self-preservation (phulakē), in order to scrutinize the causes and consequences of tyrannical fear. Through Aristotle, I examine how citizens’ ethical and political attachments to justice motivate the tyrant’s fearful hold on power, structure the strategic aims of the tyrant’s repression, and inform how those citizens respond strategically in turn. Combining close textual analysis with attention to historical context, this project contributes to the study of Aristotle’s ethical and political philosophy, to the understanding of tyranny in the history of political thought, and to debates in contemporary political theory.
My website: https://www.jordanjochim.com/edit
Abstract: Treatments of collective action in political science, classical Greek history, and democratic theory often focus on the episodic and public-facing dimensions of dissent. This article turns to Aristotle for an account of... more
Abstract: Treatments of collective action in political science, classical Greek history, and democratic theory often focus on the episodic and public-facing dimensions of dissent. This article turns to Aristotle for an account of solidaristic political action whose scale and tempo is sometimes obscured by such engagements. Revisiting the Athenian Constitution’s account of the tyrannicides of 514 BCE and the democratic revolution of 508/7 BCE, I argue for the centrality of comradeship to Aristotle’s discussion of these episodes. I demonstrate that Aristotle’s attention to the politics of comradeship is also legible in Politics 5—which notes the dangers political clubs (hetaireiai) pose to tyranny—as well as Aristotle’s discussions of comrades (hetairoi) in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. This article contributes to our understanding of the birth of Athenian democracy and how comradeship—a vice, to Aristotle, under ordinary political circumstances—becomes a virtue.
Research Interests:
Political theorists converge in identifying modern techniques of domination as habit-formative and psychologically invasive, in contrast to earlier, more blatantly coercive forms of repression. Putting Aristotle on tyranny in conversation... more
Political theorists converge in identifying modern techniques of domination as habit-formative and psychologically invasive, in contrast to earlier, more blatantly coercive forms of repression. Putting Aristotle on tyranny in conversation with Michel Foucault on subject formation, this article argues for continuity across the pre-and postmodern divide. Through a close reading of the "three heads of tyranny" in Politics 5.11 (1314a13-29)-those being the tyrant's efforts to form subjects who (1) have small thoughts (2) are distrustful of one another, and (3) are incapable of action-I argue that central to Aristotle's account of tyrannical domination is how tyrants cultivate the ethical vice of "small-souledness" (Nicomachean Ethics 1123b7), thus producing subjects with humbled desires for a proportionate distribution of political power. This article deepens our appreciation of the social and psychological registers of Aristotle's theorization of domination and gives reasons for continuing to take Aristotle's insights into tyranny seriously today.