POLITICS
In his Politics, as in his Ethics, Aristotle stresses the element of purpose. Just like human beings, the
state is naturally endowed with a distinctive function. Combining these two
ideas, Aristotle says, “It is evident that the State is a creature of nature,
and that human beings are by nature political animals.” Human nature and the
state are so closely related that “he who is unable to live in society, or who
has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a
god.” Not only does human nature incline us to live in a state, but the state,
like every other community, “is established with a view to some good” and
exists for some end. The family exists primarily to preserve life. The state
comes into existence in the first instance to preserve life for families and
villages, which in the long run cannot survive on their own. But beyond this
economic end, the function of the state is to ensure the supreme good of
people, namely, our moral and intellectual life. Unlike Plato, Aristotle did
not create a blueprint for an ideal state. Even though Aristotle viewed the
state as the agency for enabling people to achieve their ultimate goals as
human beings, he nevertheless realized that any theory of the state must take
note of several practical issues. For example, we must determine “what kind of
government is adapted to particular states” even though the best of these is
often unattainable. Also, we must determine “how a state may be constituted
under any given condition” and how it may be preserved. For Aristotle “political
writers, although they have excellent ideas, are often impractical.” For these
reasons he had little patience with Plato’s most radical ideas. He ridicules
Plato’s arrangement for abolishing the family for the guardian class and
providing a public nursery for their children. With this kind of arrangement,
according to Aristotle, “there is no reason why the so-called father should
care about the son, or the son about the father, or brothers about one another.”
The communal ownership of property would likewise destroy certain basic human
pleasures as well as create inefficiency and endless disputes.
Types of
States
Aristotle was willing to recognize that, under appropriate
circumstances, a community can organize itself into at least three different
kinds of government. The basic difference among them is primarily the number of
rulers each has. A government can have as its rulers one, a few, or many. But each of these forms of
government can have a true or a perverted form. When a government is functioning
rightly, it governs for the common good of all the people. A government is
perverted when its rulers govern for their own private gain or interests. The
true forms of each type of government, according to Aristotle, are monarchy (one), aristocracy (few), and polity (many). The perverted forms are tyranny (one), oligarchy (few), and democracy (many). His own preference was
aristocracy, chiefly because there are not enough people of exceptional
excellence, in spite of our best efforts. In an aristocracy there is the rule
of a group of people whose degree of excellence, achievement, and ownership of
property makes them responsible, able, and capable of command. Differences and Inequalities Because he relied so heavily upon anecdotal observation of things, it
was inevitable that Aristotle would make some mistakes. Nowhere is this truer
than with his view of slavery. Observing that slaves invariably were strong and
large, he concluded that slavery was a product of nature. “It is clear,”
Aristotle said, “that some men are by nature free, and other slaves, and that
for these slavery is both expedient and right.” To be sure, Aristotle took
great care to distinguish between those who became slaves by nature, a type of
slavery that he accepted, and those who became slaves by military conquest, a
type he rejected. Aristotle rejected slavery by conquest on the highly
defensible grounds that to overpower people does not mean that we are superior
to them in nature. Moreover, the use of force may or may not be justified, in
which case enslavement could very well be the product and extension of an
unjust act. At the same time, speaking of the “proper treatment of slaves,” he
proposed that “it is advantageous that liberty should be always held out to
them as the reward of their services.” The fact is that in his own last will
and testament Aristotle provided for the emancipation of some of his slaves.
Aristotle also believed in the
inequality of citizenship. He held that the basic qualification for citizenship
was a person’s ability to share in ruling and being ruled in turn. A citizen
had the right and the obligation to participate in the administration of
justice. Since citizens would therefore have to sit in the assembly and in the
law courts, they would have to have both ample time and an appropriate
temperament and character. For this reason, Aristotle did not believe that
laborers should be citizens, as they had neither the time nor the appropriate
mental development, nor could they benefit from the experience of sharing in
the political process.
Good
Government and Revolution
Over and over again Aristotle made the point that the state exists for
the sake of everyone’s moral and intellectual fulfillment. “A state,” he noted,
“exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only”;
similarly, “the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and
self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.” Finally, he
said, “Our conclusion . . . is that political society exists for the sake of
noble actions, and not mere companionship.” Still, whether a state produces the
good life depends upon how its rulers behave. We have already seen that
Aristotle distinguished between perverted forms of government and true forms,
and that the good rulers seek to achieve the good of all, whereas the perverted
rulers seek their own private gain. Whatever form government has, it will rest
on some conception of justice and proportionate equality. But these conceptions
of justice can bring disagreement and ultimately revolution. Democracy, as
Aristotle knew it, arises out of the assumption that those who are equal in any
respect are equal in all respects: “Because people are equally free, they claim
to be absolutely equal.” On the other hand, Aristotle said oligarchy is based upon the notion that “those
who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal.” Hence, “being
unequal . . . in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely.”
For these reasons, whenever the democrats or oligarchs are in the minority and
the philosophy of the incumbent government “does not accord with their
preconceived ideas, [they] stir up revolution. . .. Here then . . . are opened
up the very springs and fountains of revolution.”
Aristotle concluded that “the
universal and chief cause of this revolutionary feeling [is] the desire of
equality, when men think they are equal to others who have more than
themselves.” He did not overlook other causes such as “insolence and avarice,”
as well as fear and contempt. Knowing these causes of revolution, Aristotle
said that each form of government could take appropriate precautions against
it. For example, a king must avoid despotic acts, an aristocracy should avoid
the rule by a few rich men for the benefit of the wealthy class, and a polity should
provide more time for its abler members to share in the government. Most
importantly, Aristotle urged that “there is nothing which should be more jealously
maintained than the spirit of obedience to law.” In the end people will always
criticize the state unless their conditions of living within it are such that they
can achieve happiness in the form of what they consider the good life.
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