Aristotle

Unit One – Question Two – Part Two 2017-2018

“Greek and roman history has revealed that thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero thought that although democracies may begin well, they tend to end in tyranny. What was Aristotle's thinking about different forms of government? Which did he prefer, and how might his ideas have influenced the Framers of the Constitution?

In what ways, if any, does our government reflect Aristotle's idea of a “polity?”

How are the ideas of classical republicanism and natural rights philosophy reflected in our government?

Some background information on Aristotle -

He was born in 384 BCE (before the common era) and died in 322 BCE. He was born on the northern edge of classical Greece in Stagira. Look it up on google maps. His father was a physician who served King Amytas of Macedon. His father died when Aristotle was young. At the age of 18 he came to Athens (look it up on google maps) and studied for twenty years in Plato's Academy. After Plato's death Aristotle left Athens for twelve years. He lived across the Aegean Sea in what is now Turkey and studied plants and marine animals. He was a botanist and zoologist and his work on animals is found in his History of Animals.

The fact that Aristotle was a hands-on scientist is important because his philosophy although influenced by his teacher, Plato, is also less abstract, less poetic (Aristotle did not use the artistic form of the dialogue as Plato did in featuring his teacher, Socrates) and more pragmatic and practical. Plato was a mathematician; Aristotle was a biological scientist, and their philosophies reflect those differences. After his twelve years of work on the other side of the Aegean Sea, Aristotle was called to the court of Philip of Macedon, a successor to King Amytas that Aristotle's father had served as physician. He became the tutor to King Philip's son, Alexander, who became the infamous Alexander the Great. (One of the earliest conquering military leaders who apparently thought that others should enjoy some of the excellences of his own civilization so he killed and maimed to be sure that they got the point!) Aristotle was not the first to tutor a budding dictator, Plato had gone twice or thrice to tutor Dionysius II on the island of

Syracuse and failed in his efforts. An advantage that Aristotle reportedly received from his tutoring of Alexander, is that Alexander would send specimens of plants and animals back to Aristotle from his conquests of Turkey and the Balkans.

In 335 BCE Aristotle returned to Athens and set up his school where he taught until his death in 322 BCE. What was Aristotle like as a person? Take this with a grain of salt.

“His character is reported to have been warm and affectionate; he was a kind husband and father, and a true friend...Rumor goes also that he has a bald head, thin legs, small

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eyes, and lisped; and that he dressed smartly.”

The source for most of the above is Aristotle by John Herman Randall, Jr., Columbia University Press (1960) The following are quotes or near quotes from that same book:

Books IV, V, and VI (of Aristotle's Politics) are Aristotle “observing and analyzing nature's way with human governments, the natural processes of the generation and the destruction of organized human societies. And it is in this spirit that the historical account of Athenian constitutional history in the Constitution of Athens is set down.”

(P. 256) Books IV, V, and VI are a treatment of actual Greek cities, causes of their decay , and the best means of giving them stability. (P. 257)

Books II, III, VII, VIII are treatments of the ideal state and theories about it.

The works of Aristotle may be full notes of lectures, students' notes, brief summaries of what Aristotle has said, Aristotle's own outlines and lecture notes. P. 25 (Like the Bible, there are many theories as to from where and when the written words came to be attributed to Aristotle).

“Aristotle investigated the facts of political science: he collected digests of the Constitutions of 158 of the Greek city-states...the Constitution of Athens – assumed to be written by Aristotle himself was discovered on papyrus (an aquatic plant used to make paper in ancient times) in 1890...” P. 20 The Athenian Constitution is a history of Athens; rule from the 7^th Century BCE to the 4^th BCE.

“Aristotle is always very keenly sensible of the fact of language as the instrument of thinking, and of the need for precision.” P. 23

“Aristotle sought intelligibility rather than power. Or better, we can say that for Aristotle the highest power a man can exercise over the world is to understand it.” P. 3

“Groups of men in their natural settings – what Greeks called “cities” poleis – formed the most insistent fact in the Greek world.” P. 4

“Aristotle is convinced that no way of understanding the world, no scheme of “science”,

is worth its salt unless it provides the means for understanding living processes of human living in particular...For Aristotle, life and human life present to us a fact to be grasped and understood, indeed the central fact. Throughout Aristotle there runs this controlling biological and functional point of view.” PP 4-5

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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle Politics

You can find this on google. It is an excellent summary and explanation of Aristotle's Politics. Here are some sections of it, usually not quoted word for word, but pretty close to what is written -

“The constitution is not a written document, but an immanent organizing principle, analogous to the soul of an organism. A constitution then is a way of life for the minority of the resident population who possess full political rights.” (Aristotle Politics, IV, VII and III)

Every city-state is a community; every community is established for the sake of some good; that good is for the sake of the good life (happiness or well-being).

The constitution is fashioned by a lawgiver and governed by politicians who are like craftsmen for politics (similar to craftsmen who seek to build the best furniture or the best ships).

Citizens are residents, not women, aliens or slaves. In Athens citizens had the right to attend the assembly, the council, and other bodies, or to sit on juries.

Despotic rule is characterized by the master/slave relationship. It is primarily for the master, not for the slave. Slaves lack a deliberative faculty and need a master to direct them.

Paternalistic rule is characterized by the father/wife and children relationship. The male is by nature more capable of leadership. Children need adult supervision because their “rationality” is imperfect.

The three primary forms of government and their correct and deviant forms are:

Correct Deviant

One Ruler Kingship Tyranny

Few Rulers Aristocracy Oligarchy

Many Rulers Polity Democracy

An oligarchy is generally the wealthy few. Democracy is generally the many poor

These three forms of rule and their correct and deviant forms were also put forth by Plato in his Statesman. Aristotle lays them out in Book III of his Politics.

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In Aristotle's Politics, book IV he characterizes polity as a kind of “mixed” constitution, that is rule by a middle group of citizens, those moderately wealthy, between the rich and the poor.

For Aristotle, the best constitution or polity (we could call it “way of life”) is one where every citizen possesses moral virtue and the means to carry it out in practice and thereby attain a life of excellence and complete happiness.

Second best constitutions or polity or ways of life are where citizens possess an inferior, more common grade of virtue and/or a mixed constitution that combines elements of democracy, oligarchy, and kingship. Generally, this would be those constitutions controlled by a middle class that stands between the rich and the poor. “...it is the freest from faction, where the middle class is numerous and where least occur factions and divisions among citizens. Book III

Democracy is a deviant form and not the best polity, but many coming together, even though inferior individually to the virtuous few, collectively they may have better pooled assets of virtue and practical wisdom.

Last summer we read some about Rousseau's politics. In his The Social Contract he describes what for him is the ideal government - “Each one of us puts into the community his person and all all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

P. 60

You can see the similarity to pooled assets of virtue and practical wisdom suggested by Aristotle and Rousseau's idea of every member becoming an indivisible part of the whole. You can also see the enormous difference between an Aristotelian idea of pooling assets of individuals to make a stronger whole and Rousseau's idea that each individual gives up his/her individual will (freedom) and joins together into a group that has a general will (group freedom) that is better than the individual wills that it has replaced.

Book VI, part 2 of Aristotle's Politics:

“The basis of a democratic state is liberty...One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn...in a democracy the poor have more power than the rich because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme...to rule and be ruled in turn...contributes to the freedom based up equality.”

“...appointment to all offices, or to all but those which require experience and skill,

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should be made by lot...no property qualification should be required for offices, or only a very low one...the tenure of as many offices as possible should be brief...the assembly should be supreme over all causes.”

“...the best material of democracy is an agricultural population, second best is pastoral [herding animals], and third best are the artisans, traders, and laborers

Note that Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Blair in 1787 wrote that “Cultivators of earth are the most valuable citizens...independent...virtuous...tied to their country and wedded to its liberty.” Jefferson believed that the yeoman farmer (the self-sufficient person with enough acres for self-support) was the backbone of America and America's future.

We need to remember that Aristotle believed that slavery was an acceptable institution because some men did not have the “deliberative” capacity to govern their lives and needed to have masters to govern them. Aristotle also had opinions about different races. In Aristotle's Politics book VII, part 7 he wrote that 1) Those who live in cold climates in Europe are full of spirit but wanting in intelligence, have no political organization, and are incapable of ruling over others, 2) Natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive but wanting in spirit, and therefore are always in a state of subjection and slavery, 3) the Hellenic race (Greeks) are situated between l) and 2) and intermediate in character, being high spirited and also intelligent – hence it continues free, and is the best governed of any nations – if formed into one state it would be able to rule the world.

What were the institutions of Athenian Democracy?

The Assembly of Demos – in the 5^th Century BCE there were 40,000 to 60,000 eligible

men who could attend the 40 regularly scheduled meetings a year. The meetings took place outdoors and attendees would vote by raising their hand on decrees applicable to all aspects of their lives. They received payment for attendance. They were all eligible to speak as well as to vote. By the 4^th Century BCE there were 20,000 to 30,000 such men.

The Council of 500 (50 from each of ten tribes).

The People's Court

There were also the Generals, who wielded a lot of power, Pericles being the most famous of them.

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How to answer the questions:

What was Aristotle's thinking about different forms of government? Well, he studied 158 constitutions of Greek city-states. He didn't just sit down and make things up. He

found that governments took the three forms set forth above. He was a realist in that he did not expect people to reach the ideal state of government. And, he saw from what he studied that the positive forms of the three forms of government tended to dissolve into the deviant forms of the three forms of government. He preferred a form of government that was more ideal than the second best governments such as aristocracy or democracy. The ideal is perhaps the one where each citizen exercises the excellence of the highest virtues and where the government facilitates that result so that citizens are leading the lives that produce the most excellence, the most happiness, the most well-being.

Look at the US Constitution and find and identify in it those sections that exemplify the advantages of strong leadership in the form of a king, where aristocrats, the more privileged and wealthy play a role, and where the ordinary citizen is best represented.

Which features are most democratic and which features are more King like and which features include greater privileges or powers for the office holders, etc. Be creative and think of something that others might overlook. Once you have identified such features, then consider why the Framers might have been influenced by Aristotle in adopting those features into the Constitution.

In what ways, if any does our government reflect Aristotle's idea of a “polity.” Here you should define what a “polity” is for Aristotle. You should consider that Aristotle had ideas about what an ideal polity would be and that he had ideas about different forms of a polity and that he realized that men, at best, would be living in second best forms of a polity rather than the very best.

I will send out some other materials on the third question about classical republicanism and natural rights philosophy. But, take note that Athens and its constitution was considered to be a prime example by the Framers of a classical republican government. So attributes of Athenian democracy, a classical republic, are reflected in our government. Your task is to identify them and compare similarities and differences to natural rights philosophy also found in our Constitution, some of which are in the 1787 Constitution and many of which are in the Bill of Rights.