Aristotle

1

• Part I
• Aristotles thesis
• From this it is clear that that the polis
  exists by nature and that the human being is by
  nature a political animal. 1252b32
• o anthropos phusei politikon zoon.
• Now, that man is more of a political animal than
  bees or any other gregarious animal is evident.
  1253a10

2

• 1. Zoon
• ???? transliterated as zoon includes all
  living beings, men, animals and Gods.
• zoon/zoe is not pejorative.
• It means ensouled being or living being in a
  wide and non-pejorative sense, which excludes
  only plants, but includes animals and Gods.
  (Animal by contrast, in the Roman and Christian
  traditions is pejorative.)

3

• Hans Jonas puts it
• ???? does not mean animal ( bestia), but
  every ensouled ( living) being, excluding plants
  but including demons, Gods, ensouled stars,
  indeed the ensouled universe as the greatest and
  most perfect living being itself. (Hans Jonas,
  Zwischen Nichts und Ewigkeit. Zur Lehre vom
  Menachen cited in Günther Bien, Die Grundlegung
  der Politischen Philosophie bei Aristoteles,
  Freiburg, Karl Alber, 1973, p. 123.)

4

• Zoon mans natural existence, or the social
  existence of the polis existence by nature
  where this expression does not refer to (but
  specifically) excludes the teleological meaning
  of nature.
• The instinctual basis of the polis desire for
  companionship.
• The metaphysical/reproductive basis of the polis.
• The drive for self-preservation.
• The economic and material basis of the polis.

5

• Martin Heidegger interprets the phrase
  politikon zoon as a reference to mans animal
  existence.
• Martin Heidegger, On Humanism, 1949, p13
• We must be clear that human beings in the final
  analysis are enclosed in the sphere of animal
  being (animalitas), even if he is not equated
  with beasts, but is given a specific difference.
  In principle one must always think of the homo
  animalisthis positioning is a kind of
  metaphysics.
• So Heidegger thinks that mans status as a zoon,
  marks him out as an animal.

6

• Politikon
• It is commonly claimed that Aristotle define the
  human beings as a Zoon Politikon.
• A. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality vol.
  III, p. 188
• Ever since Aristotle defined man as a
  political animal modern man is an animal
  whose politics calls his existence as a living
  being into question.
• B. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer p. 2
• It is true that in a famous passage Aristotle
  defines man as a politikon zoon (Politics 1253a4)

7

• C. Hannah Arendt
• Aristotles definition of man as a zoon
  politikon was not only unrelated and even opposed
  to the natural association experienced in
  household life it can be fully understood only
  if one adds his second famous definition of man
  as a zoon logon ekhon.
• Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago,
  1954, p. 27

8

• Still Arendt implies that Aristotle has several
  definitions of man/human being/ and she is right
  about this.
• Man is the only animal who can speak.
• Man is the only animal who can deliberate and
  decide.
• Man is the only animal who can act.
• Man is the only animal who can count.
• Man is the only animal who can remember.
• Man is the only animal who can do science.
• These are much better candidate definitions of
  man.

9

• For in his biological writings, Aristotle allows
  that there are several different kinds of
  political animal.
• In History of the Animals he distinguishes
  between gregarious animals ton angelaion and
  solitary animals ton monadikon. Some gregarious
  animals are political animals
• Animals that live politically are those that
  have any kind of activity in common, which is not
  true of all gregarious animals. Of this sort are
  man, bee, wasp and crane. Aristotle, (HA 1.1.
  487 b33ff)

10

• Political is a biological attribute and
  differentium of a small sub-class of gregarious
  animals, including human beings but not limited
  to them.
• Look again at Aristotles supposed definition
  of man in Book I of The Politics
• It is clear that man is a political animal more
  than any bee or any gregarious animal. Aristotle,
  (Politics, 1253a7)
• This cannot be a definition because it does not
  distinguish man from other animals, and therefore
  does not define the human being

11

• The specific difference that determines the
  genus of political animalsis that human beings
  have logos man is the only animal who has
  speech/reason logon de monon anthropos ekhei
  ton zoon (1253a9).
• Through reason he works out his advantage, and
  what is just/unjust and good/evil.
• The shared collective endeavour that marks human
  beings out as political animals is organized on
  the basis of the reason for the end of
  justice.This is peculiar to humans, and makes
  them the most political among animals.
• For, the virtue of justice dikaiosune is what
  is political, and justice dike is the basis on
  which the political association is ordered, and
  the virtue of justice is a judgement about what
  is just. (1253a33-5)

12

• Part II Aristotles Critique of Platos Republic
• Republic Book IV 420c
• Suppose while we were painting statues some one
  should approach us and find fault with us for not
  applying the most beautiful colors to the most
  beautiful parts of the body, because the eyes,
  which possess the highest beauty, were not
  painted in purple but in black, I think we should
  make a reasonable reply to him by saying, My good
  sir, do not imagine that we must make the eyes so
  beautiful that they would not appear to be eyes,
  or that we should do the like to the other parts
  but observe whether by giving to the several
  parts what rightly belongs to them we make the
  whole beautiful. Therefore do not now compel us
  to bestow upon our guardians happiness of such a
  kind as shall make them anything but guardians.

13

• Plato Statesman 259b-c
• Str. And the householder and master are the
  same?
• Soc. Of course.
• Str. Again, a large household may be compared
  to a small state-will they differ at all, as
  far as government is concerned?
• Soc. They will not.

14

• Republic book V 462
• Or that again which most nearly approaches to the
  condition of the individual as in the body,
  when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole
  frame, drawn towards the soul as a center and
  forming one kingdom under the ruling power
  therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all
  together with the part affected
• Very true, he replied and I agree with you that
  in the best-ordered State there is the nearest
  approach to this common feeling which you
  describe.
• Shall they be a family in name only or shall
  they in all their actions be true to the name?
  For example, in the use of the word "father,"
  would the care of a father be implied and the
  filial reverence and duty and obedience to him
  which the law commands

15

• Then in our city the language of harmony and
  concord will be more often beard than in any
  other.
• Is this the attempt to make the class of
  guardians into one big family trying to
  transform the fellow felling between the members
  of a meritocratic elite into thick relations of
  affection and kinship.
• Well known device for strengthening political
  unity. Arranged marriages.

16

• Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you
  are brothers, yet God has framed you differently.
  Some of you have the power of command, and in the
  composition of these he has mingled gold,
  wherefore also they have the greatest honour
  others he has made of silver, to be auxillaries
  others again who are to be husbandmen and
  craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron and
  the species will generally be preserved in the
  children. But as all are of the same original
  stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a
  silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
• the fostering of such a belief will make them
  care more for the city and for one another.
• Just so, he said. Republic III 415b-d

17

• This has been taken to imply a very illiberal
  view of citizenship, and even implicit
  totalitarianism.
• Further, the polis is by nature clearly prior
  to the family and to the individual, since the
  whole is of necessity prior to the part for
  example if the whole body be destroyed, there
  will be no foot or hand, except homonymously, as
  we might speak of a stone hand for when
  destroyed the hand will be no better than that.
  But things are defined by their function and
  power and we ought not to say that they are the
  same when they no longer have their proper
  quality, but only that they are homonymous. The
  proof that the state is a creation of nature and
  prior to the individual is that the individuaol,
  when isolated, is not self-sufficing and
  therefore he is like a part in relation to the
  whole. But 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, he is
  no part of the polis. (1253a19)
• the whole is naturally superior to the part.
  1288a25.

18

• For these reasons Plato has been called a
  totalitarian, famously by Karl Popper in The Open
  Society and Its Enemies, 1945
• "The identification of the fate of the state
  with that of the ruling class the exclusive
  interest in this class, and in its unity and
  subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for
  breeding and educating this class, and the strict
  supervision and collectivization of the interests
  of its members." OS

19

• What is meant by totalitarian
• Those regimes in which the political power is
  concentrated in one bloc, and the ruled have no
  alternative.
• Those regimes that exercise propagandistic
  control over the values and interests of the
  ruled.
• Any regime that has an extensive or almost total
  reach over individual live, that regulate every
  area of individual conduct.
• Any régime that governs by systematic deception.

20

• Part III Aristotles Critique of Plato.
• (There is no form of the good, there are only
  various things that are good.)
• Communism is unworkable and undesirable.
• Note Aristotles alternative (1263b1).
• The idea of a community of women is
  impracticable, against nature, and a misguided
  attempt at forging social soldarity/unity.
• 2.1.It is a unity of the wrong kind because the
  state is not a family write large. (1252a8-16
  1261a1)
• 2.2 The polis is not an individual a person
  writ large.

21

• Plato/Socrates claims that it is best for the
  whole polis to be as unified as possible. Is it
  not obvious that a polis may at length attain
  such a degree of unity as to be no longer a
  polis? sine the nature of a polis is to be a
  plurality/multitide, and in tending to greater
  unity, from being a polis, it becomes a family,
  and from the family and individualSo that we
  ought not to attain this greatest unity even if
  we could because it would be the destruction of
  the polis. (1261a16-25 1263b31-35)

22

• 3. Plato deprives the guardians of happiness.
• But the whole cannot be happy unless most, or
  all, or some of its parts enjoy happiness. In
  this respect happiness is not like the even
  number principle in numbers, which may exist only
  in the whole, and not in either of the parts.
  (1264b19)

23

• Part IV Aristotles totalitarianism?
• Jonathan Barnes, Richard Mulgan, David Keyt,
  C.C. Taylor, Giorgio Agamben among other have all
  implied that Aristotles also has totalitarian
  tendencies.
• Evidence
• the city is prior by nature to the household
  and to each of us, since it is necessary for the
  whole to be prior to the part,,,So that the city
  both exists by nature and is prior to each
  individual is clear. (1253a-19)
• One ought not even to consider that anyone of
  the citizens belongs to himself, for they all
  belong to the polis and are each of them a part
  of the polis1337a27-30.

24

• Aristotle recommends that the statesman legislate
  on questions like
• The health and physical fitness of its citizens.
• Who may marry?
• The age at which men should cease siring
  children?
• The behaviour and manners of its womenfolk.
• Punishments for adultery
• What should be done to deformed or weakly
  children they should be exposed, hardened.
• Book VII and VIII
• Is this totalitarian?

25

• But there was no private realm/private life in
  ancient Greece.
• The polis was a small a face to face, society,
  Mediterranean society, and almost every aspect of
  life was open to public scrutiny and government
  regulation
• M.I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, p.
  82.
• All private actions were submitted to a severe
  surveillance. No importance was given to
  individual independence neither in relation to
  opinions, nor to labour, nor, above all to
  religion.Among the Spartans, Therpandrus could
  not string his lyre without causing offence to
  the ephors. In the most domestic of relations the
  public authority again and again intervened. The
  young Lacadaimonian could hardly visit his new
  bride freely The laws regulated customs, and as
  customs touch on everything, there was hardly
  anything that the laws did not regulate.
• Constant, The Liberty of the ancients compared
  with that of the moderns in Constant Political
  Writings, p.311.

26

• What is meant by totalitarian
• Those regimes in which the political power is
  concentrated in one bloc, and the ruled have no
  alternative.
• Those regimes that exercise propagandistic
  control over the values and interests of the
  ruled.
• Any regime that has an extensive or almost total
  reach over individual live, that regulate every
  area of individual conduct.
• Any régime that governs by systematic deception.

27

• Calvert, B. 'Plato and the Equality of Women',
  Phoenix xxix (1975) 231243
• Saxonhouse, A.W. 'The Philosopher and the Female
  in the Political Thought of Plato', Political
  Theory iv (1976) 195212, reprinted in (8) 95113
  
• Annas, J.E. 'Plato's Republic and Feminism',
  Philosophy li (1976) 30721, reprinted in (33)
  26579
• Lesser, H. 'Plato's Feminism', Philosophy liv
  (1979) 11317
• Vlastos, G. 'Was Plato a Feminist?', Times
  Literary Supplement 4485 (17 March 1989) 276,
  2889, reprinted in (34) ii 13343 and in (8)
  11528
• Cohen, D. 'The Social Context of Adultery at
  Athens', in P. Cartledge, P. Millett S. Todd,
  ed. Nomos essays in Athenian law, politics and
  society (Cambridge University Press, 1990)