A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle

Peter L. Phillips Simpson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807853573, 9780807823804
• eBook ISBN: 9780807864500
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism

The Politics, Aristotle’s classic work on the nature of political community, has been a touchstone of Western debates about society and government. In this volume, Peter Simpson presents a complete philosophical commentary on the Politics, an analysis of the logical structure of the entire text and each of its constitutive arguments and conclusions. Unlike other contemporary works on the Politics, Simpson’s philosophical commentary is not, save incidentally, a discussion of philological and historical questions, a speculative elaboration of Aristotle’s arguments, or a comparison of the philosopher’s ideas with those of other ancient and modern theorists. Such treatments, argues Simpson, must be grounded in a thorough understanding of the philosophical content of the work — a point that underscores the need for this thorough and accurate analysis. Keyed to the ancient Greek text as well as to Simpson’s own innovative translation of it (UNC Press, 1997), this book will stand as a valuable commentary on the philosophical argument in the Politics and will serve as a sound basis for future study of Aristotle’s political thought.

Book 1: The Primacy of the City

Chapter 1
THE PRIMACY OF THE CITY

1252a1 The topic of investigation for the Politics (as the last chapter of the Ethics has just shown) is legislation and regimes. But what legislation legislates and what regimes arrange is the city (for the regime is the way the city is arranged with respect to rule and the city is arranged by its laws). Consequently the city must be the focus of the present study since it is the object of both legislation and regimes (see 3.1.1274b32–38). But Aristotle has just argued that anyone who wants to educate to virtue among his friends and family or in his own household, when the city fails to perform this task, must learn the same art of legislation as is needed also for legislating in a city. It might seem, therefore, that the focus of the present study could as well be the household as the city. Partly perhaps to counter this supposition, but partly also to prove, and not merely to assume, that the city is the proper focus of political study, Aristotle begins by showing the primacy of the city.

He argues as follows: since (1) the city is a community, and since (2) every community aims at some good, it is clear that (3), while all communities aim at some good, the community that has most control and embraces all the others is aiming at the most controlling of goods; (4) this community is what is called the city. From (1) and (2) it follows that (5) the city aims at some good, and from (3) and (4) it follows that (6) the city aims at the most controlling of goods.¹ This last conclusion is evidently the one that Aristotle is aiming at, since it proves that the city, and not some lesser community, must be the focus of political study. For if the aim of this study is legislation for the sake of the life of virtue, as the Ethics has just proved, and if the life of virtue is the highest human good, which includes and controls all other goods, as the Ethics has also proved (in 1.1–2, 7–10), then, if the city is the community that aims at this highest and all embracing good, as has just been proved here, the city must be the focus of political study. Thus even if, because of defective cities, the city’s task of legislating for the sake of virtue may have to be carried out in the household, yet this task belongs by its nature to the city and only by default to the household, which is properly a subordinate community with a subordinate good (hence someone who wishes to legislate for his household must learn political, and not household, science, for the science he must learn is proper to the city).

Of the premises used in this argument, (1) is evident to observation and (2) is proved by the parenthetical remark that everyone does everything for the sake of some good (whether real or apparent), for as communities are just people sharing together, communities must be just people who, through their sharing, are pursuing some good together. It also seems clear that these premises, and their accompanying but unexpressed conclusion (5), are introduced to prove (3) and therewith (6). They will indeed prove (3) and (6) but only on the assumptions that communities can include each other and that there is some community which includes all the others. For then, if all communities aim at some good, as (2) asserts, a community that includes other communities must be aiming at a good that includes and controls the goods of these other communities; and if, further, the city is a community and so aims at some good too, as (1) and (5) assert, and if this is the community that controls all other communities whatever, as (4) asserts, the city must have the most controlling good of all as its aim, the good that measures and determines the pursuit of all lesser goods (see Ethics 8.9.1160a8–29).

It is true, of course, that cities can also be included in, and feel themselves to be included in, larger groupings and associations, as in leagues or alliances or even broad national linguistic and cultural families. But not every inclusion in a larger group is inclusion in a larger community or under a more controlling good. Cities, for instance, that combine to celebrate some festival or other, as the Greeks did to celebrate the Olympic games (and as we do still in imitation of them), are not combining under a greater or more controlling good. Rather they are combining to share in some lesser good, relaxation or defense, that is subordinate to the higher and more controlling good, happy and noble living. Thus the fact that cities can themselves be members of larger associations does not mean that these associations must therefore be communities that are more controlling than the city.

1252a7 Still, however that may be, the assumption that communities can include and thereby exercise control over other communities is obvious enough, for there are many examples of it (wherever, in fact, there is a chain of command descending from those who control the whole to those who control the parts, as in armies, business companies, schools, and so on). But what seems particularly controversial, for Aristotle’s contemporaries as for us, is that there is one community that controls all the others and that this community is the city. We ourselves may, perhaps, be prepared to attribute final control to the state. But the state is huge in comparison with Aristotle’s city and we also think its authority should be limited and not all-inclusive (although it usually ends up, nevertheless, exercising the sort of control Aristotle attributes to the city; Ethics 1.2.1094a26–b11).² As for the state’s size, Aristotle would regard that as a serious defect in our political arrangements, since such excessive size must hinder the pursuit of the good life (4(7).4); and as for the state having limited authority, he would perhaps regard that as desirable if the state is to be so large, but he would certainly not regard it as desirable that what is de facto the final authority in our lives should take no care for virtue.³

The opponents whom Aristotle himself directly considers also maintain that the city is not the controlling and superordinate community.⁴ What they assert is that there is no difference between ruling the city and ruling other or lesser communities, as ruling household and slaves, and that skill in ruling one is the same as skill in ruling another. The difference lies rather in how many people are ruled over and not in the kind of good aimed at. But this view too, like our own today, must be false if the city really is the controlling community and all others are subordinate to it. Accordingly Aristotle turns to prove this assumption, or in other words to prove proposition (4) in his argument above, and therewith to confirm that the city, and not also some other community, is the proper object of political science. The proof, however, turns out to be very extensive, for it requires a detailed examination of each community. It expands, indeed, to occupy the whole of book 1 of the Politics.⁵

The method to be followed is that of dividing the whole into its parts. This method applies in the case of any whole (for if the parts are not understood neither will the whole be that is made from these parts), but it applies particularly here. For if the city is the whole of which the other communities are parts, then to divide the city into its parts will be both the way to see how these parts do in fact differ from each other and from the whole (whether in size only or also in kind), and the way to get a proper understanding of their respective kinds of rule or rulers.

Chapter 2
THE CITY AND ITS PARTS

THE HOUSEHOLD

1252a24 Dividing a whole into its parts may be a necessary step to understanding the whole but getting to the parts cannot be enough. One must also see how the parts come together to form the whole, for otherwise one will have the parts but no whole and, indeed, one will not have the parts either as parts, since parts are parts in view of a whole.⁶ Accordingly, Aristotle speaks of understanding the parts of the city, or the other communities, by looking at how they grow or develop naturally from the beginning, that is, at how they come together into the city.⁷ For thus the precise nature of their relationship to the city, whether they differ from it in size only or also in good aimed at, should become very clear.

The beginning in the case of the community must be the smallest community possible, the community before which there is no other community. This community is evidently the community of two (one person cannot be a community), and the first such twos that are necessary must be those who cannot be if they are not two. Thus the initial communities are, first, the community of female and male. For these cannot be, at least not as female and male, without each other, since the point of the sexual difference is generation and both are needed for that. Second, no one at all can be without seeing ahead what preservation requires and carrying out what is thus foreseen. So there must also be a coupling of foresight with bodily exertion, that is, of a ruler that commands what is foreseen and a ruled that carries out what is thus commanded, and this is the pairing of natural master and natural slave. Such a master and slave have necessarily, therefore, the same interest, since the preservation of the one is the preservation of the other. These two couplings are thus necessary and the first that are necessary (for, in the case of things that are not individually eternal, their continuing existence includes both preservation of the individual, hence master and slave, and the leaving behind of like offspring, hence male and female).

Aristotle says about both couples that they are natural or by nature. About the first, female and male, this claim would seem obvious and uncontroversial, but not about the second, master and slave. Yet there is for Aristotle a difference between the naturalness of the two couples. The first is said not to be by choice and to be common to plants and animals. The second is said to require what can see ahead with its mind and hence cannot be common to plants and animals and must involve choice. What Aristotle says here about mastery and slavery contains in outline what he says and defends in detail in chapters 4 to 7 (where it also becomes clear that the naturalness of mastery and slavery, unlike that of female and male, seemed as false to some of Aristotle’s contemporaries as it does now to us).

1252a34 That female and slave belong to different natural couples devoted to different functions already suggests that they are naturally different. But the two functions could perhaps be served by one and the same thing, in which case female and slave would not differ and the female would by nature be there to serve the male in both respects. Against this supposition Aristotle presents the following argument: (1) nature makes nothing in niggardly fashion but one thing for one thing; (2) if female and slave do not naturally differ, nature would have made something in niggardly fashion; (3) therefore female and slave naturally differ. The crucial premise (1) is proved thus: (4) nature does what is noble; (5) instruments are made nobly when they are made for one thing; (6) therefore nature makes instruments for one thing and not in niggardly fashion.

One might wonder about this argument, if it is indeed true that nature makes nothing in niggardly fashion, why this truth is not applied to male and ruler to show that they must be different too.⁸ But male and ruler are evidently to be compared rather to craftsmen who use instruments (for they use women for generation and slaves for preservation), and craftsmen, unlike instruments, are more perfect and more noble the more instruments they can use and use well, for thus they show the excellence of their art. Nevertheless nature has made some instruments to serve more than one function, as the tongue for taste and speech. But these are perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule.⁹ Nature makes no tools having more than one function if she is not prevented, or if the several functions interfere with each other (which, of course, they will do in the case of the functions of female and slave.) As for nature doing what is noble, one might say the same here too, that she does what is noble unless prevented. But this claim is evidently an empirical one and to be tested by appeal back to observation (though it may find some theoretical support in the modern idea of evolution, which also stresses that what naturally continues to exist is what is best adapted to its purpose, and such good adaptation is the nobility or beauty Aristotle is talking about).

There is, then, a natural difference between females and slaves because of their different function (and hence rule over slave cannot be the same thing, or require the same science, as rule over wives). The fact that no such difference exists among barbarians is because female and male are both slaves together and treat each other as such. None of them is naturally able to rule. They are fit, therefore, to be ruled by those who can rule, and these, say the poets, are the Greeks. But while Aristotle quotes the poets to this effect, he can evidently only agree with them to the extent it is true that the Greeks are natural rulers and barbarians natural slaves. For he has just said that the distinction between slave and master is by nature, not by nation, and is based on the presence or absence of foresight by thought. So if some Greeks lack the necessary capacity of thought and some barbarians have it, these barbarians should rule these Greeks instead. At all events it cannot simply be true, as the poets suppose, that to be a barbarian and a slave are by nature the same thing (a point Aristotle returns to more openly later in chapter 6).¹⁰

1252b9 The two couples of male and female and of master and slave are the first necessary communities. But as human survival is survival of both individual and species, these two couples must unite. The household is their necessary union. The household is the first self-subsisting community, as it were, for the other two only subsist by being fused into it. They are thus, properly speaking, parts of the household, not parts of the city. The names Aristotle quotes from Charondas and Epimenides neatly emphasize the origin of the household in the two couples: its members are fellows, that is, sprung from the same stock, and fellows in food, that is, partners in physical survival.

In quoting Hesiod in this passage (and earlier Euripides) Aristotle is following his practice of using the poets in support of his conclusions. But he often quotes selectively, as he does in this present instance. For Hesiod goes on to say in the next line of his poem that the woman he is talking about is a slave.¹¹ Hesiod is thus in conflict with Aristotle’s argument since Aristotle has just said that female and slave are by nature different. Some commentators are accordingly inclined to think that Aristotle intends his better readers to notice the conflict and to conclude that his real teaching is something other than what is contained in his express arguments.¹² But in reply it may be noted, first, that Aristotle does not think that the poets always speak the truth (see 1.8.1256b31–37). So it is perhaps as or more reasonable to suppose that Aristotle, aware of the unreliability of poets, only quotes from Hesiod the part that is true and omits the part that is false. Second, an appeal to poetic authority could hardly be sufficient to overthrow Aristotle’s express arguments, which have a rigor and conviction of their own. Third, poets would seem to be quoted for the sake of weaker, not stronger or better, readers, that is, for readers who need poetic quotations and are not convinced by reason alone.¹³ Fourth, Aristotle would have special reason not to continue this particular quotation. Drawing attention to the fact that Hesiod was a Greek thinking like a barbarian might cause needless offense.

1252b15 The household is a community sufficient for the needs of every day. But it is obviously better...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Analytical Outline of the Politics
• Introduction to the Politics: Nicomachean Ethics 10.9
• Book 1: The Primacy of the City
• Book 2: Regimes Said by Others to Be Best
• Book 3: Definition and Division of Regime
• Book 4: The Best Regime
• Book 5: Education in the Best Regime
• Book 6: Division and Description of the Other Regimes
• Book 7: Destruction and Preservation of the Other Regimes
• Book 8: Addendum on Setting Up the Other Regimes
• Bibliography
• Index