POLITICAL THINKER IS INFLUENCED BY THE CONDITION IN HIS ENVIRONMENT. DISCUSS THIS IN REGARDS TO ARISTOTLE

POLITICAL THINKER IS INFLUENCED BY THE CONDITION IN HIS ENVIRONMENT. DISCUSS THIS IN REGARDS TO ARISTOTLE

INTRODUCTION

We humans as social beings live together and societies where we share the resources, jobs, and rewards. We are also individuals needing some basic human rights. The process of organizing state and society, therefore, becomes important to maximize harmony and prosperity and to allow the circumstances for individual self-realization. So to facilitate the unity and integrity of human societies or the collective needs of society political theory becomes important it tries to study and find solutions to problems in this process. The relevance lies in evolving various approaches regarding the nature and purpose of the state, the basis of political authority and the best form of government to practice, relations between the state and the individual in the context of his basic rights. Apart from this political theory also seeks to establish the moral criterion for judging the ethical worth of a political state and to suggest alternative political arrangements and practices.

The works of ancient philosophy and history offer timeless insight into modern questions. Aristotle’s Politics is as relevant today as it was when it was written over two thousand years ago.  Aristotle, Born in 384 B.C., Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, court physician to the king of Macedon, Amyntas II. After entering the Academy in 368, Aristotle traveled through much of the Aegean. He married and was eventually called back to Macedonia to serve as tutor to Philip of Macedon’s son, Alexander. For three years he served as Alexander’s personal tutor. Upon the boy’s appointment as regent, Aristotle left once again for Athens where he established the Lyceum. Following Alexander’s death in 323, Aristotle fled Athens under a cloud of suspicion. He died in Euboea in 322. As Richard McKeon writes, "an epoch in Greek history was brought to a close when Alexander [and] Aristotle . . . all died within somewhat more than a year. In his sixty-two years, Aristotle produced works on science, ethics and foundational texts on politics.

Aristotle’s works on political matters represent the first recorded attempt to put political thought into a greater context. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that "since politics uses the rest of the sciences and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others  so that this end must be the good for man." Aristotle was clearly one of the first political scientists. This assignment will reconstruct Aristotle’s argument, as presented in Politics, as they relate to these themes. It concludes with a series of principles that emerge from this examination.

According to Aristotle, philosophic wisdom — and Aristotle’s judgment is rather harsh on its utility — is enlightened and "divine" but ultimately useless. Philosophic knowledge, or knowledge of more than just managing people’s affairs, is extreme as "there are other things much more divine in their nature even than man." Aristotle identifies practical wisdom or knowledge that allows one to "see what is good for themselves and what is good for men in general," as the middle point or mean on the same spectrum. Aristotle writes that "it would be strange to think of the art of politics, or practical wisdom, is the best knowledge  since man is not the best thing in the world." Not only is this concept of practical wisdom important for effective governance, but its place as a middle position between two extreme forms of knowledge serves to illuminate the importance Aristotle places on the median.

At this point, a brief examination of Aristotle’s definition of the state is useful. In Book III of Politics, Aristotle admits that the definition "is at present a disputed question." Even though Aristotle’s "present" was over two thousand years ago, the comment still rings true as debates continue as to exactly what constitutes a state. Aristotle found that where some argued that a state is a sort of monolithic entity, others saw the state’s institutions as definitional. But Aristotle suggests "a state is a composite, like any other whole made up of many parts; these are citizens." The notion of people being the key element in the states is not Aristotle’s alone and this fact simply reinforces its original importance. Thucydides, in The History of the Peloponnesian War, records Nicias, who states: "it is men who make the city, not the walls or ship with no men inside them." According to Aristotle and his predecessors, a state is not about its institutions, but its people. It would follow that a study on nation-building would need to study the people as well as state institutions.

A POLITICAL THINKER IS INFLUENCE BY THE CONDITION OF HIS ENVIRONMENT

Aristotle sees governance as a process that must adapt to changes in the society it is trying to govern. As a system of inputs and outputs in a feedback loop, they are interdependent. Development cannot be achieved in one sector alone or in a linear fashion; all sectors must develop simultaneously and at varying rates depending on the situation at the time. The debates in the contemporary literature on nation-building question whether economic development or institutional development should come first. For Aristotle, this debate misses the point. Development must be addressed simultaneously across all sectors. A template or model that will work in every situation is unrealistic. Nation-builders, Aristotle counsels, need to analyze the situation within the state or region being developed and apply appropriate developmental strategies that are able to shift and adjust with the changing socio-economic realities. Aristotle’s approach involves first identifying the socio-economic realities of the state and then applying a constitutional form that is consistent with those realities.

Aristotle articulates the importance of identifying the socio-economic realities in his seventh book in Politics. He states that the population is the most important of the "materials required by the statesman" and that a statesman "will consider what should be the number and character of the citizens, and then what should be the size and character of the country." In identifying the character of the citizens, Stephen Everson suggests that Aristotle sees a basic characteristic for people. If someone is "to be rational" then that demands "that one chooses the good life, the life in which we exercise our disposition for virtue and such a life is contingent upon the existence of the state." For Aristotle, the search for the good life is a universal characteristic of humanity and it would seem that a state’s existence is necessary.

In Aristotle’s second consideration, he argues that there is a basic characteristic of a country universal to all societies. In Book I, Aristotle holds that property "is part of the household and the art of acquiring property is a part of the art of managing the household; for no man can live well or indeed live at all, unless he is provided with necessaries." Everson elaborates upon this by stating "human development depends on the existence of the state." Concomitant with this, almost a side effect of property rights, is a greater propensity toward stability. Terchek and Moore point out that "property ownership is important to Aristotle: It provides citizens with a tangible stake in the republic. . . . their good is intimately tied to the good of the republic." All people need their necessities. These necessities are provided first through the household and later the state. The state, through efficiencies and economies of scale, allows people to develop. Not unlike Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, without the necessities enabled by the state, people will not develop to the good life that Aristotle argues to us all desire.

Several notable political theorists have argued that this approach creates a paradox. The state removes certain freedoms yet one cannot be free to self-actualize (using Maslow’s more modern concept of Aristotle’s idea of virtue) without the state. Salkever explains the paradox as a system of limiters and enablers.

If there is a paradox at the heart of human politics, it is this: we need something authoritative in our emotional and dianoetic lives to restrain the tendency to unlimited acquisition and help develop the potential for practical reason and the virtues of character; but no person, no principle (or law), and no way of life can serve as a perfectly adequate and permanent authority.

Politically speaking, a basic education in Aristotelianism could benefit humanity as a whole. Aristotle is positive about democracy, with which he finds fewer faults than other constitutions. Unlike his elitist tutor Plato, who was skeptical about the intelligence of the lower classes, Aristotle believed that the greatest experts on any given topic (eg zoology, of which he is the acknowledged founding father) are likely to be those who have accumulated experience of that topic (eg farmers, bird-catchers, shepherds and fishermen), however, low their social status; scholarship must be informed by what they say. The trust that Aristotle felt in humanity’s general good sense enabled him to conceive a prototype of the ‘smart mob’ – a group that, rather than behaving in a loutish manner often associated with crowds, draws on universally distributed intelligence to behave with maximum efficiency. The idea, introduced by Howard Rheingold in Smart Mobs (2003), was anticipated in Aristotle’s Politics: where many people come together to deliberate, and become ‘a single person with many feet and many hands and many senses, so also it becomes one personality as regards the moral and intellectual faculties’. 

Aristotle (384-322 BC) The Politics

Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle was interested in the nature of the political as such and deeply normative in his approach to politics. He was, however, more empirical and scientific in his method, writing treatises instead of dialogues and often handling his materials with considerable detachment. The result in the Politics is a far-reaching and often penetrating treatment of political life, from the origins and purpose of the state to the nuances of institutional arrangements. While Aristotle’s remarks on slavery, women, and laborers are often embarrassing to modern readers, his analysis of regime types (including the causes of their preservation and destruction) remains of perennial interest. His discussion of “polity”— a fusion of oligarchy and democracy — has been of particular significance in the history of popular government. Finally, his the contention that a constitution is more than a set of political institutions, but also embodies a shared way of life, has proved a fruitful insight in the hands of subsequent thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville.

Ethics and Politics by Way of Law

In considering practical reason to be the domain of both ethics and politics, Aristotle follows Plato in drawing no sharp line between those two domains (see on this point for ancient testimonies and modern arguments respectively, Bodéüs 1993: 22–24 and 59–63, and Vander Waerdt 1991, though for a contrary argument, see Duvall and Dotson 1998). In fact, he closes his Nicomachean Ethics by remarking that for most people, the practice of ethics can only be ensured by their being governed by law, which combines necessity (compulsion) with reason. Because for most people, the ethical life presupposes government by law, the student of ethics must become a student of political science, studying the science of legislation in light of the collection of constitutions assembled by Aristotle and his school in the Lyceum. Aristotle’s theoretical claims about the nature of politics in Politics must be understood against this backdrop. The legislator (whose standpoint is adopted in the Politics, see the entry on Aristotle’s political theory) needs to have a grasp of the nature of politics as such (pursued especially in Books I and III); an understanding of the major faultlines in the interpretation and practice of politics (pursued especially in Books II and IV-VI); and a grip on the structure and characteristics of the specific city for which he aims to legislate (pursued also in Book II for existing constitutions and constitutional models; Books IV-VI for types of flawed constitutions; and Books VII-VIII for the “best constitution” (1323a14).

At the beginning of Book IV (1288b1–39), Aristotle offers a fourfold account of what the expertise regarding constitutions must encompass. As glossed by Eugene Garver (2011: 107), and drawing on standard Aristotelian terminology distinguishing formal from material causes, these include: “The first, ‘that which is best in the abstract’...orients politics around the end of politics, the best life. The second, the best relative to circumstances, start with the material cause and organizes political inquiry around the best that can be made out of given material. The third, the best on a hypothesis, starts not from the true end of politics, but any posited end, and so looks for means and devices that will preserve any given constitution. The final inquiry, the search for ‘the form of constitution which is best suited to states in general,’ articulates a formal cause that can organize almost any material, any kind of people.” These four elements of expertise regarding constitution are not tidily segregated in different parts of the text; they are pursued variously, sometimes in combination, and draw on wider discussions of the nature of politics and the human good that is threaded throughout.

Politics begins by setting the stage for the first kind of understanding of constitutions identified above, by offering an analysis of the teleological ends of life and the human capacity for speech which together supports its two most famous contentions: that “it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal” (I.2, 1253a2–3). While for some modern readers this sentence asserts that political participation is necessary for virtuous human flourishing (as for Irwin 1990), others contend that “the argument that man is a political animal does not imply that man must participate in politics to become virtuous, only that he must literally be a part of a polis and live under its laws.” (Mulgan 1990: 205)^[10] In either case, as Hannah Arendt (1958) emphasizes, Aristotle’s understanding of civic unity insists on respect for human plurality as the condition of political action; in Book II, he criticizes Plato’s Kallipolis for interpreting the requirement of civic unity in so extreme a fashion as to have obliterated the properly political domain altogether (Nussbaum 1980). Nevertheless, civic unity is still an aim of Aristotle’s ideal virtuous regime, and a limited Platonic spirit survives in the common meals that this regime would offer to all citizens: VII.10.

In another famous contention of the work—that “a citizen is one who shares in governing and being governed” (III.13, 1283b42–1284a1, also translatable as “ruling and being ruled in turn”), the Greek dictum of citizenship among equals is presented as an analytical truth, leaving open how such equality is to be conceived in practice. The citizen “shares in the administration of justice, and in offices” (III.1, 1275a23–24). In defective regimes, the good citizen and the good man may come apart. The good citizen of a defective regime is one whose character suits the particular regime in question (whether oligarchic, or democratic, say) and equips him to support it loyally; hence he may be deformed or stunted by a role of holding (or a role of holding accountable) offices defined on incorrect terms. In “the best state,” however, the citizen is “one who is able and chooses to be governed and to govern with a view to the life of excellence” (III.13, 1284a1–3). In such a state, “the citizens must not lead the life of artisans or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble and inimical to excellence” (VII.9, 1328b39–41), nor that of farmers, as political participation requires leisure. Here the limitations and exclusions among actual humans licensed by the principled formulation of the possibility—requiring actual realization—of human virtue become apparent.

Aristotle recognizes that there are other possible claims, or as it titled, to the political rule: “There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state:—Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the best man? Or a tyrant?” (III.10, 1281a11–13). He develops in particular detail the arguments that might be made on behalf of the many and the knowledgeable one respectively. The many can judge, as they did in Athenian dramatic audiences, juries, and the Assembly (where they “judged”, by voting on, the merits of something advanced for their consideration, whether a play, an indictment, or a speaker’s proposed resolution). Aristotle uses the image of a collectively provided feast to illustrate the potential superiority of such collective judgment; how to interpret this image (whether as a potluck, Waldron 1995, Wilson 2011, Ober 2013, or in a more aggregative way, Bouchard 2011, Cammack 2013, Lane 2013a) and other images that he uses is a matter of some renewed controversy (for a recent review, see Bobonich 2015). But the lesson Aristotle draws from the various images is clearly limited to vindicating a role of the many in electing and holding accountable incumbents of the highest offices rather than in holding such offices themselves (III.11, 1281b31; Lane 2013a). The many can contribute to virtuous decision-making in their collective the capacity of judgment—presumably in assemblies and juries—but not as individual high officials (Lane 2013a, 2014b, Poddighe 2014).

As Aristotle turns to a consideration of the best constitutions relative to particular (and imperfect) circumstances, the major issue is a conflict between rival factions over the basis for defining equality and so justice. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Aristotle had identified two types of equality: geometrical, or proportional to merit; and arithmetical, or proportional to mere numerical counting. In Politics III.9 he picks up this distinction and aligns it with the conflict between oligarchical and democratic justice. As he later puts it, “Democrats say that justice is that to which the majority agree, oligarchs that to which the wealthier class agree…” (VI.3, 1318a18–20), while truly aristocratic justice would enfranchise only those equal in virtue. This attention to the actual political contentions of rival Greek groups leads into a discussion of the relative goodness and badness of imperfect regimes, modeled in part on Plato’s Statesman. Whereas that Platonic text had distinguished monarchy from tyranny, aristocracy from the oligarchy, and good from bad democracy on the basis of obedience to the law (all these regimes being conceived as lacking the genuine political knowledge of the true statesman), Aristotle instead makes the dividing line the question of rules for the common advantage as opposed to ruling for the advantage of a single faction. The “bad” democracy, for example, rules for the faction of the many as opposed to the faction of the few, whereas the “good” democracy—which Aristotle baptizes “polity”, using the general word for “constitution” (politeia) —rules for the advantage of all citizens. Aristotle augments this analysis with appeals to historical narrative, overlapping with the narrative of Athenian political history offered in the Constitution of Athens compiled by him or, more likely, by members of his school. On his telling in the Politics, Athenian democracy had degenerated from an aboriginal democracy of non-meddling farmers (VI.4), through various intermediate forms, to a democracy (seemingly that of contemporary fourth-century Athens) in which men rule, not laws. Yet this trajectory does not prevent him from asserting that in general democracy is “most tolerable” of the three perversions (IV.2, 1289b4–5) and noting that it at least involves the characteristic political liberty of ruling and being ruled in turn (VI.2).

A further major turn in the analysis comes when the question of some single “best” regime is replaced by a question about not what is “best” in the “ideal” sense, but the good constitution “that is easily attainable by all” (IV.1, 1288a37–39) and in practice best for most cities (IV.11). This Aristotle calls the middling regime: a political, because sociological, mean between oligarchy and democracy, in which the middle classes hold the preponderance of both wealth distribution and political power. Thus it is attainable through reform of either an oligarchy or a democracy, the most prevalent constitutions among the Greeks. Strikingly, his example of such a regime is Sparta: presented as a case of characteristically democratic distribution of education (among citizens only, of course) coupled with the characteristically aristocratic principle of election to offices rather than selection by lot (IV.9) (though to be sure, democracies such as Athens made use of the election for certain of the highest offices as well).

CONCLUSION

To fully grasp Aristotle’s thought one must consider his criticism in the Ethics of Plato’s comprehension of the good; examine his understanding of the activity or “being at work” of things, including the soul and its excellence, virtue; and explore the view of form, matter, motion, causality, and being that guides his Physics and Metaphysics. The proper study of Aristotle may occupy a lifetime, as it did many great medieval thinkers.

REFERENCES

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Matthew I. Nwoko, (1988). Basic World Political Theory: Ancient – Contemporary. Nekede, Owerri: Clarentian Press.

Rostovtzeff, M. (1941). The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World. Oxford.

Richard, Mc Keon, (1941). The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House.

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