January 21, 2025
Last week SMPA slowly woke up. After a month of quiet halls and gray weather, there is life in the building again. Students came into my office to chat after a few weeks (or a semester abroad) away from SMPA. I caught up with colleagues returning from break, sabbatical, and leave. Classrooms were full and elevators were crowded.
The SMPA staff were around over the break and a few faculty were in and out. We got a lot done because there was no one else to talk to and nothing else to do. SMPA was a job and we worked. But that’s not why we’re here (at least not entirely). We’re here for the noise and the conversations, the debates and the stories. We’re here because what we study and do is necessarily social - we are Aristotle’s political animals - and being social requires people with whom to be social.
In Politics, Aristotle argued, “Why man is a political animal in a greater measure than any bee or any gregarious animal is clear. For nature, as we declare, does nothing without purpose; and man alone of the animals possesses speech…” For Aristotle, “Speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities, and it is partnership in these things that makes a household and a city-state.”
Here in SMPA we study, shape, and tell the stories that matter. We investigate and communicate the most human thing people do: be “in partnership” with other people. The break was nice, it was good to get stuff done and relax a bit. But being together - with its frustrations, interruptions, laughter, stories, ideas (good and bad), debates, and the rest of the things that make us fully human - is much better.