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A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT
A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT ARISTOTLE In an early dialogue of Plato's the Protagoras Socrates asks
Protagoras why it is not as easy to find teachers of virtue as it is
to find teachers of swordsmanship riding or any other art.
Protagoras' answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue
because virtue is taught by the whole community. Plato and Aristotle
both accept the view of moral education implied in this answer. In a
passage of the Republic (492 b) Plato repudiates the notion that the
sophists have a corrupting moral influence upon young men. The public
themselves he says are the real sophists and the most complete and
thorough educators. No private education can hold out against the
irresistible force of public opinion and the ordinary moral standards
of society. But that makes it all the more essential that public
opinion and social environment should not be left to grow up at
haphazard as they ordinarily do but should be made by the wise
legislator the expression of the good and be informed in all their
details by his knowledge. The legislator is the only possible teacher
of virtue.
Such a programme for a treatise on government might lead us to expect
in the Politics mainly a description of a Utopia or ideal state which
might inspire poets or philosophers but have little direct effect upon
political institutions. Plato's Republic is obviously impracticable
for its author had turned away in despair from existing politics. He
has no proposals in that dialogue at least for making the best of
things as they are. The first lesson his philosopher has to learn is
to turn away from this world of becoming and decay and to look upon
the unchanging eternal world of ideas. Thus his ideal city is as he
says a pattern laid up in heaven by which the just man may rule his
life a pattern therefore in the meantime for the individual and not
for the statesman. It is a city he admits in the Laws for gods or
the children of gods not for men as they are.
Aristotle has none of the high enthusiasm or poetic imagination of
Plato. He is even unduly impatient of Plato's idealism as is shown by
the criticisms in the second book. But he has a power to see the
possibilities of good in things that are imperfect and the patience
of the true politician who has learned that if he would make men what
they ought to be he must take them as he finds them. His ideal is
constructed not of pure reason or poetry but from careful and
sympathetic study of a wide range of facts. His criticism of Plato in
the light of history in Book II. chap v. though as a criticism it
is curiously inept reveals his own attitude admirably: "Let us
remember that we should not disregard the experience of ages; in the
multitude of years these things if they were good would certainly
not have been unknown; for almost everything has been found out
although sometimes they are not put together; in other cases men do
not use the knowledge which they have." Aristotle in his Constitutions
had made a study of one hundred and fifty-eight constitutions of the
states of his day and the fruits of that study are seen in the
continual reference to concrete political experience which makes the
Politics in some respects a critical history of the workings of the
institutions of the Greek city state. In Books IV. V. and VI. the
ideal state seems far away and we find a dispassionate survey of
imperfect states the best ways of preserving them and an analysis of
the causes of their instability. It is as though Aristotle were
saying: "I have shown you the proper and normal type of constitution
but if you will not have it and insist on living under a perverted
form you may as well know how to make the best of it." In this way
the Politics though it defines the state in the light of its ideal
discusses states and institutions as they are. Ostensibly it is merely
a continuation of the Ethics but it comes to treat political
questions from a purely political standpoint.
This combination of idealism and respect for the teachings of
experience constitutes in some ways the strength and value of the
Politics but it also makes it harder to follow. The large nation
states to which we are accustomed make it difficult for us to think
that the state could be constructed and modelled to express the good
life. We can appreciate Aristotle's critical analysis of
constitutions but find it hard to take seriously his advice to the
legislator. Moreover the idealism and the empiricism of the Politics
are never really reconciled by Aristotle himself.
It may help to an understanding of the Politics if something is said
on those two points.
We are accustomed since the growth of the historical method to the
belief that states are "not made but grow" and are apt to be
impatient with the belief which Aristotle and Plato show in the powers
of the lawgiver. But however true the maxim may be of the modern
nation state it was not true of the much smaller and more
self-conscious Greek city. When Aristotle talks of the legislator he
is not talking in the air. Students of the Academy had been actually
called on to give new constitutions to Greek states. For the Greeks
the constitution was not merely as it is so often with us a matter of
political machinery. It was regarded as a way of life. Further the
constitution within the framework of which the ordinary process of
administration and passing of decrees went on was always regarded as
the work of a special man or body of men the lawgivers. If we study
Greek history we find that the position of the legislator corresponds
to that assigned to him by Plato and Aristotle. All Greek states
except those perversions which Aristotle criticises as being "above
law" worked under rigid constitutions and the constitution was only
changed when the whole people gave a commission to a lawgiver to draw
up a new one. Such was the position of the AEsumnetes whom Aristotle
describes in Book III. chap xiv. in earlier times and of the pupils
of the Academy in the fourth century. The lawgiver was not an ordinary
politician. He was a state doctor called in to prescribe for an
ailing constitution. So Herodotus recounts that when the people of
Cyrene asked the oracle of Delphi to help them in their dissensions
the oracle told them to go to Mantinea and the Mantineans lent them
Demonax who acted as a "setter straight" and drew up a new
constitution for Cyrene. So again the Milesians Herodotus tells us
were long troubled by civil discord till they asked help from Paros
and the Parians sent ten commissioners who gave Miletus a new
constitution. So the Athenians when they were founding their model
new colony at Thurii employed Hippodamus of Miletus whom Aristotle
mentions in Book II as the best expert in town-planning to plan the
streets of the city and Protagoras as the best expert in law-making
to give the city its laws. In the Laws Plato represents one of the
persons of the dialogue as having been asked by the people of Gortyna
to draw up laws for a colony which they were founding. The situation
described must have occurred frequently in actual life. The Greeks
thought administration should be democratic and law-making the work of
experts. We think more naturally of law-making as the special right of
the people and administration as necessarily confined to experts.
Aristotle's Politics then is a handbook for the legislator the
expert who is to be called in when a state wants help. We have called
him a state doctor. It is one of the most marked characteristics of
Greek political theory that Plato and Aristotle think of the statesman
as one who has knowledge of what ought to be done and can help those
who call him in to prescribe for them rather than one who has power
to control the forces of society. The desire of society for the
statesman's advice is taken for granted Plato in the Republic says
that a good constitution is only possible when the ruler does not want
to rule; where men contend for power where they have not learnt to
distinguish between the art of getting hold of the helm of state and
the art of steering which alone is statesmanship true politics is
impossible.
With this position much that Aristotle has to say about government is
in agreement. He assumes the characteristic Platonic view that all men
seek the good and go wrong through ignorance not through evil will
and so he naturally regards the state as a community which exists for
the sake of the good life. It is in the state that that common seeking
after the good which is the profoundest truth about men and nature
becomes explicit and knows itself. The state is for Aristotle prior to
the family and the village although it succeeds them in time for
only when the state with its conscious organisation is reached can man
understand the secret of his past struggles after something he knew
not what. If primitive society is understood in the light of the
state the state is understood in the light of its most perfect form
when the good after which all societies are seeking is realised in its
perfection. Hence for Aristotle as for Plato the natural state or the
state as such is the ideal state and the ideal state is the
starting-point of political inquiry.
In accordance with the same line of thought imperfect states
although called perversions are regarded by Aristotle as the result
rather of misconception and ignorance than of perverse will. They all
represent he says some kind of justice. Oligarchs and democrats go
wrong in their conception of the good. They have come short of the
perfect state through misunderstanding of the end or through ignorance
of the proper means to the end. But if they are states at all they
embody some common conception of the good some common aspirations of
all their members.
The Greek doctrine that the essence of the state consists in community
of purpose is the counterpart of the notion often held in modern times
that the essence of the state is force. The existence of force is for
Plato and Aristotle a sign not of the state but of the state's
failure. It comes from the struggle between conflicting misconceptions
of the good. In so far as men conceive the good rightly they are
united. The state represents their common agreement force their
failure to make that agreement complete. The cure therefore of
political ills is knowledge of the good life and the statesman is he
who has such knowledge for that alone can give men what they are
always seeking.
If the state is the organisation of men seeking a common good power
and political position must be given to those who can forward this
end. This is the principle expressed in Aristotle's account of
political justice the principle of "tools to those who can use them."
As the aim of the state is differently conceived the qualifications
for government will vary. In the ideal state power will be given to
the man with most knowledge of the good; in other states to the men
who are most truly capable of achieving that end which the citizens
have set themselves to pursue. The justest distribution of political
power is that in which there is least waste of political ability.
Further the belief that the constitution of a state is only the
outward expression of the common aspirations and beliefs of its
members explains the paramount political importance which Aristotle
assigns to education. It is the great instrument by which the
legislator can ensure that the future citizens of his state will share
those common beliefs which make the state possible. The Greeks with
their small states had a far clearer apprehension than we can have of
the dependence of a constitution upon the people who have to work it.
Such is in brief the attitude in which Aristotle approaches political
problems but in working out its application to men and institutions
as they are Aristotle admits certain compromises which are not really
consistent with it.
1. Aristotle thinks of membership of a state as community in pursuit
of the good. He wishes to confine membership in it to those who are
capable of that pursuit in the highest and most explicit manner. His
citizens therefore must be men of leisure capable of rational
thought upon the end of life. He does not recognise the significance
of that less conscious but deep-seated membership of the state which
finds its expression in loyalty and patriotism. His definition of
citizen includes only a small part of the population of any Greek
city. He is forced to admit that the state is not possible without the
co-operation of men whom he will not admit to membership in it either
because they are not capable of sufficient rational appreciation of
political ends like the barbarians whom he thought were natural
slaves or because the leisure necessary for citizenship can only be
gained by the work of the artisans who by that very work make
themselves incapable of the life which they make possible for others.
"The artisan only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a
slave" and the slave is only a living instrument of the good life. He
exists for the state but the state does not exist for him.
2. Aristotle in his account of the ideal state seems to waver between
two ideals. There is the ideal of an aristocracy and the ideal of what
he calls constitutional government a mixed constitution. The
principle of "tools to those who can use them" ought to lead him as
it does Plato to an aristocracy. Those who have complete knowledge of
the good must be few and therefore Plato gave entire power in his
state into the hands of the small minority of philosopher guardians.
It is in accordance with this principle that Aristotle holds that
kingship is the proper form of government when there is in the state
one man of transcendent virtue. At the same time Aristotle always
holds that absolute government is not properly political that
government is not like the rule of a shepherd over his sheep but the
rule of equals over equals. He admits that the democrats are right in
insisting that equality is a necessary element in the state though he
thinks they do not admit the importance of other equally necessary
elements. Hence he comes to say that ruling and being ruled over by
turns is an essential feature of constitutional government which he
admits as an alternative to aristocracy. The end of the state which
is to be the standard of the distribution of political power is
conceived sometimes as a good for the apprehension and attainment of
which "virtue" is necessary and sufficient (this is the principle of
aristocracy) and sometimes as a more complex good which needs for
its attainment not only "virtue" but wealth and equality. This latter
conception is the principle on which the mixed constitution is based.
This in its distribution of political power gives some weight to
"virtue" some to wealth and some to mere number. But the principle
of "ruling and being ruled by turns" is not really compatible with an
unmodified principle of "tools to those who can use them." Aristotle
is right in seeing that political government demands equality not in
the sense that all members of the state should be equal in ability or
should have equal power but in the sense that none of them can
properly be regarded simply as tools with which the legislator works
that each has a right to say what will be made of his own life. The
analogy between the legislator and the craftsman on which Plato
insists breaks down because the legislator is dealing with men like
himself men who can to some extent conceive their own end in life and
cannot be treated merely as means to the end of the legislator. The
sense of the value of "ruling and being ruled in turn" is derived
from the experience that the ruler may use his power to subordinate
the lives of the citizens of the state not to the common good but to
his own private purposes. In modern terms it is a simple
rough-and-ready attempt to solve that constant problem of politics
how efficient government is to be combined with popular control. This
problem arises from the imperfection of human nature apparent in
rulers as well as in ruled and if the principle which attempts to
solve it be admitted as a principle of importance in the formation of
the best constitution then the starting-point of politics will be
man's actual imperfection not his ideal nature. Instead then of
beginning with a state which would express man's ideal nature and
adapting it as well as may be to man's actual shortcomings from that
ideal we must recognise that the state and all political machinery
are as much the expression of man's weakness as of his ideal
possibilities. The state is possible only because men have common
aspirations but government and political power the existence of
officials who are given authority to act in the name of the whole
state are necessary because men's community is imperfect because
man's social nature expresses itself in conflicting ways in the clash
of interests the rivalry of parties and the struggle of classes
instead of in the united seeking after a common good. Plato and
Aristotle were familiar with the legislator who was called in by the
whole people and they tended therefore to take the general will or
common consent of the people for granted. Most political questions are
concerned with the construction and expression of the general will
and with attempts to ensure that the political machinery made to
express the general will shall not be exploited for private or
sectional ends.
Aristotle's mixed constitution springs from a recognition of sectional
interests in the state. For the proper relation between the claims of
"virtue" wealth and numbers is to be based not upon their relative
importance in the good life but upon the strength of the parties
which they represent. The mixed constitution is practicable in a state
where the middle class is strong as only the middle class can mediate
between the rich and the poor. The mixed constitution will be stable
if it represents the actual balance of power between different classes
in the state. When we come to Aristotle's analysis of existing
constitutions we find that while he regards them as imperfect
approximations to the ideal he also thinks of them as the result of
the struggle between classes. Democracy he explains is the
government not of the many but of the poor; oligarchy a government not
of the few but of the rich. And each class is thought of not as
trying to express an ideal but as struggling to acquire power or
maintain its position. If ever the class existed in unredeemed
nakedness it was in the Greek cities of the fourth century and its
existence is abundantly recognised by Aristotle. His account of the
causes of revolutions in Book V. shows how far were the existing
states of Greece from the ideal with which he starts. His analysis of
the facts forces him to look upon them as the scene of struggling
factions. The causes of revolutions are not described as primarily
changes in the conception of the common good but changes in the
military or economic power of the several classes in the state. The
aim which he sets before oligarchs or democracies is not the good
life but simple stability or permanence of the existing constitution.
With this spirit of realism which pervades Books IV. V. and VI. the
idealism of Books I. II. VII. and VIII. is never reconciled.
Aristotle is content to call existing constitutions perversions of the
true form. But we cannot read the Politics without recognising and
profiting from the insight into the nature of the state which is
revealed throughout. Aristotle's failure does not lie in this that he
is both idealist and realist but that he keeps these two tendencies
too far apart. He thinks too much of his ideal state as something to
be reached once for all by knowledge as a fixed type to which actual
states approximate or from which they are perversions. But if we are
to think of actual politics as intelligible in the light of the ideal
we must think of that ideal as progressively revealed in history not
as something to be discovered by turning our back on experience and
having recourse to abstract reasoning. If we stretch forward from what
exists to an ideal it is to a better which may be in its turn
transcended not to a single immutable best. Aristotle found in the
society of his time men who were not capable of political reflection
and who as he thought did their best work under superintendence. He
therefore called them natural slaves. For according to Aristotle
that is a man's natural condition in which he does his best work. But
Aristotle also thinks of nature as something fixed and immutable; and
therefore sanctions the institution of slavery which assumes that
what men are that they will always be and sets up an artificial
barrier to their ever becoming anything else. We see in Aristotle's
defence of slavery how the conception of nature as the ideal can have
a debasing influence upon views of practical politics. His high ideal
of citizenship offers to those who can satisfy its claims the prospect
of a fair life; those who fall short are deemed to be different in
nature and shut out entirely from approach to the ideal.
A. D.
LINDSAY.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1831-70; Didot edition (Greek and Latin) 5 vols. 1848-74.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Edited by T. Taylor with Porphyry's
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De Anima: Torstrik 1862; Trendelenburg 2nd edition 1877 with
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1901; On Fallacies E. Poste 1866. Parva Naturalia (Greek and
English) by G. R. T. Ross 1906; with De Anima by W. A. Hammond
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