Aristotle's "Best Regime"

Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law

Clifford A. Bates

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780807152386
• eBook ISBN: 9780807152393
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The collapse of the Soviet Union and other Marxist regimes around the world seems to have left liberal democracy as the only surviving ideology, and yet many scholars of political thought still find liberal democracy objectionable, using Aristotle's Politics to support their views. In this detailed analysis of Book 3 of Aristotle's work, Clifford Angell Bates, Jr., challenges these scholars, demonstrating that Aristotle was actually a defender of democracy.
Proving the relevance of classical political philosophy to modern democratic problems, Bates argues that Aristotle not only defends popular rule but suggests that democracy, restrained by the rule of law, is the best form of government. According to Aristotle, because human beings are naturally sociable, democracy is the regime that best helps man reach his potential; and because of human nature, it is inevitable democracies will prevail.
Bates explains why Aristotle's is a sound position between two extremes -- participatory democracy, which romanticizes the people, and elite theory, which underrates them. Aristotle, he shows, sees the people as they really are and nevertheless believes their self-rule, under law, is ultimately better than all competing forms. However, the philosopher does not believe democracy should be imposed universally. It must arise out of the given cultural, environmental, and historical traditions of a people or its will fall into tyranny.
Bates's fresh interpretation rests on innovative approaches to reading Book 3 -- which he deems vital to understanding all of Aristotle's Politics. Examining the work in the original Greek as well as in translation, he addresses questions about the historical Aristotle versus the posited Aristotle, the genre and structure of the text, and both the theoretical and the dialogic nature of the work. Carting Aristotle's rhetorical strategies, Bates shows that Book 3 is not simply a treatise but a series of dialogues that develop a nuanced defense of democratic rule.
Bates's accessible and faithful exposition of Aristotle's work confirms that the philosopher's teachings are not merely of historical interest but speak directly to liberal democracy's current crisis of self-understanding.

I
THE CITY, THE CITIZEN, AND THE REGIME

ATHENA:
Come, and sped beneath the earth,
By our awesome sacrifices
Keep destruction from the polis,
Bring prosperity home to Athens,
Triumph sailing in its wake.
—AESCHYLUS, Eumenides

“Therefore, though the best is bad,
Stand and do the best, my lad;
Stand and fight and see your slain,
And take the bullet in your brain.”
—A. E. HOUSMAN, A Shropshire Lad

Community is a concept, like humanity or peace, that virtually no one has taken the trouble to quarrel with; even its worst enemies praise it.
—WENDELL BERRY, Home Economics

IN ONE SENSE, Politics 3 is the real beginning of the Politics. It is where Aristotle develops and explains, in a comprehensive manner, the concept of the regime, or politeia. Book 3 is, as W. L. Newman says, “the centre round which the whole [work] is grouped” (Newman 1973, 2:xxxi).¹ Although one must admit that Book 3 provides the conceptual core of the whole work, it is still only the third book of the Politics. The first two Books of the Politics are, to some degree, false starts (Mansfield 1989, 31–3; 1987, 227).

Book 1 gives an analytic account of the parts of the city that seems to focus solely on the household. Yet even in its emphasis on the household, Book 1 focuses even more narrowly on slavery and acquisitions, or on economics. Thus, in many respects, it does not give a satisfactory account of the household, especially its most basic element, the relationships of husband and wife, parents and children.

Book 2 presents not only earlier political philosophers and their understandings of the best regime, but several accounts of the best regime in both theory and practice. In Book 2, although one is left with the impression that the previous accounts of politics are inadequate, there is no attempt to develop an adequate alternative conception of political life. The failure to present an alternative understanding of the political is shown when, in Book 2, Aristotle merely gives alternatives—both in theory and practice—to the best polis; he, however, does not present a proper framework in which one may properly address the question of what type of regime is best for the city.

Neither Book 1 nor 2 offers a satisfactory introduction to politics or human action—hence the need for the introduction and the full development of the concept of the regime, politeia (see Mansfield 1987, 226–7). But before we attempt to address the regime, we must come to terms with two other concepts that are said to play key roles in Aristotle’s political theory: the city and the citizen. In many respects, the city and the citizen are generally understood to be more central concepts in Aristotle’s political thought. It is fitting, therefore, that we deal first with them and then with the regime. But Part I argues that both the city (polis) and the citizen, in fact, point to the importance of the regime, in that one cannot properly understand either the city or the citizen independent of the regime.

1
THE CITY

THE BEGINNING of Politics 3 addresses the issue that both Politics 1 and 2 attempted to deal with, the city or the polis.¹ Thus Book 3 is a return to the beginning of an inquiry into politics. Concerning this inquiry, Aristotle in Book 3, chapter 1 states what is clearly the object of his investigation:

For one investigating the regime … virtually the first investigation concerns the polis, to see what the polis actually is. (3.1.1274b32–33)²

Thus the first question of Book 3 that Aristotle requires us to address is “what is the polis?” or, as Carnes Lord translates it, the city.³ Yet if we look for this investigation in the following paragraph of Politics 3.1, we encounter no clear discussion of the city.

The sentence following the first sentence of Politics 3.1 argues not about what the city is but rather addresses the debate about who is responsible for certain political acts, the city or the rulers of the city (3.1.1274b34–35). Although the third sentence claims that the “entire activity of statesmen (politikos) and legislators is concerned with the polis,” the sentence then goes on to discuss the regime as “a certain arrangement of those who inhabit the polis” (3.1.1274b35–38). Thus we get no discussion of what the first sentence says is the proper question: What is the polis?

Given that Aristotle suggests it is required to address the question—what is the polis—yet in the immediate context he fails to do so. It is thus fitting, before we go on to the other issues raised by Politics 3, to address this question. Is the polis merely the Greek city of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.? Or is it the proto-organization of the modern nation-state?

THE POLIS AS STATE?

Leo Strauss and Harry Jaffa have addressed at length this question and argue that both state and city-state are inadequate and unhelpful translations of polis, so it is only necessary to refer the reader to them (see Strauss 1977, 30–3; 1989, 37–50; Jaffa 1975, 9–13). Also, the state is a product of modern political philosophy. The term “the state” is a creation of Machiavelli (see Strauss 1936, xv; de Alvarez 1989, xii–xvii, xxxii–xxxiii; Mansfield 1983, 849–57;Hexter 1956, 113–38; also see Strauss 1989, 39–55). The modern state—and its contemporary embodiment, the modern liberal state—as we know it, although conceived by Machiavelli, is the child of Thomas Hobbes. Although Hobbes does not explicitly define the state, it is nevertheless a conceptual product of this understanding of political community (Strauss 1936, xv).

The term Hobbes uses to specify the political community is the commonwealth. For Hobbes the commonwealth is the political entity within which human political behavior will be actualized. The real force of Hobbes’s commonwealth must be understood in the expression of the sovereign power toward the subjects of the commonwealth. For Machiavelli the state is the articulated will of the prince—an actual person. Hobbes takes this concept of the state and argues that it is not to be specifically the will of a prince or actual sovereign.

What is the sovereign power in Hobbes’s political thought? It is the articulated will of the social compact that gives legitimacy to the commonwealth. The reason the sovereign power arises out of a social contract is that, for Hobbes, a political community is not by nature, but is rather a humanly made construct. Thus, for Hobbes, political community is an artifact, and as such its political expression is the abstracted will of that which forms the political community (see Strauss 1953, Manent 1994a, 1994b). Yet the term political community is no longer appropriate for the political entity that is being constructed; rather, such a community is referred to as “the body politic.”

The body politic is a term or, more correctly a metaphor from medieval political thought, which attempts to explain the relationship between a king and the realm he rules (See de Piza 1994, Kantorowicz 1957). Hobbes’s use of the term sovereign has long led readers to think he is speaking as if the sovereign will were a single human ruler, a king or a monarch. Hobbes is not referring to an actual human sovereign; he is using the term as a metaphor to describe not a person but the embodied will of that which authorizes the body politic. The sovereign is thus no longer the body of the sovereign, i.e., the king or prince, but the abstracted will of the whole body politic.⁴

The notion of the state is further developed along Hobbesian lines by both Rousseau and Kant. Rousseau shows how the state is a product not only of human construction but also of human rationality.⁵ Kant shows that all moral action is an act of the will—e.g., the categorical imperative, rather than an outcome of natural predispositions, and makes explicit that the state is a disembodied will (see Kant 1991).⁶ Thus, the modern state is no longer understood as the articulated will of any specific ruler.

The concept of the modern state reaches its intellectual peak in Hegel’s articulation of it.⁷ The history of the concept of the state entails a rejection of Aristotle’s understanding of political community as a natural condition (that is, environment or habitat) for human beings. Rather, “the state” offers a human construct that is nothing but the disembodied will of the body politic.⁸ Thus translators of and commentators on Aristotle’s works, who insist on construing the polis as the state, fail to see how that construction does not fit at all with what Aristotle means when he talks about the polis. First, the concept of the state was not developed until the Renaissance (Viroli 1992, Mansfield 1983, de Alvarez 1989, xiii–xviii). The state is an artificial construct that represents the disembodied will of the body politic, whereas the polis is a natural form of human association. Therefore, when scholars construe Aristotle’s use of the word polis to mean the state, they commit an egregious anachronism that obscures, as well, what “the state” implies conceptually.

WHAT IS THE POLIS?

So what do we call the polis? Carnes Lord, who is a student of Strauss, in his translation of Aristotle’s Politics translates polis, as we have mentioned earlier, as the city.⁹ But is this fitting or correct? There is a problem with translating polis as city, just as it is problematic to translate it as city-state or as state.

In English there are two ways to understand city: as an urban area with a large aggregation of peoples from a multitude of diverse backgrounds, and as a political community, entity or unit. The double meaning of the English word city leads us to a skewed understanding of the polis. Calling it the city, one tends to conceptualize it as commercial, cosmopolitan, and urban, rather than as rural and agrarian (see Hansen 1995).¹⁰ Yet as long as we realize that Aristotle is only referring to the polis as a political entity and is not describing it either in sociological terms or as an urban unit, one could provisionally translate polis as city—since it is the best of the given translations. But is there a better translation?

The best translation of polis ends up being the term that is used to define it. The definition of polis turns out to be what Aristotle uses to clarify the term polis at 1.1.1252a5–6; he says that the polis can be called the political association, or koinonia.¹¹ Or another way to make the political association would be to render it simply as the political community.¹² To call the polis the political community, rather than the city, is closer to what Aristotle intends to describe—a unity of political organization.¹³

THE POLIS

Now let us look closely at Politics 1.1 regarding the question of the polis. Politics 1.1 starts off with a conceptualization of what is the subject matter of politics: the polis. This arrangement is seen by Aristotle’s original definition of the polis:

Since we see that every polis is some sort of association (koinonia), that every association is constituted for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what is held to be good), it is clear that all associations aim at some good, and that the association that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others does so particularly, and aims at the most authoritative good of all. (1.1.1252a1–6)

Thus, the polis is the association or community that embraces all other associations or communities (see Wilson 1980, 80–96). It is also the community that aims at the most authoritative good. Aristotle then goes on to distinguish the type of rule that arises out of the polis, political rule. He argues that political rule is different in kind from the rule of the household and the rule of slaves (1.1.1252a7–9; also see Arnhart 1990, 477–92). Aristotle goes on to argue that ruling a polis is not the same as ruling over a large household, that household management and politics are different in kind and not merely in terms of the size of the association (1.1.1252a9–13).¹⁴

In Politics 1.2, Aristotle then speaks of how the polis comes into being from the household (oikos)—which is formed from the associations dedicated to sexual reproduction and the rule of the foresighted over those lacking foresight—and later the village—an extension of the household by virtue of comprising several households (1.2.1252b10–30). Yet in some ways the polis is more than merely a sum of the numbers of villages or households within it.¹⁵ The central role of the polis in human life is even more emphasized by the claim that the polis is by nature (1.2.1252b60–31).

A complete understanding of the polis as the political community necessitates a turn to Politics 3. As I have argued earlier, it is not only the third beginning of Aristotle’s inquiry into politics, but it is the one that frames the rest—as well as the earlier specific discussions—of his Politics. Now, as I have argued, Politics 3.1 does not at any length discuss the polis as political community. In fact, the next place in Book 3 that discusses the polis is Politics 3.3,in the context of a debate about who is responsible for an action done in the name of the polis: the rulers of the polis or the polis itself (3.3.1276a6–9). This question is raised following the discussion in Politics 3.2 where Aristotle deals with the possible extension of citizenship following a revolution.¹⁶ Thus the issue of who is responsible is directly related to another question, whether it is just or unjust to make people who were not citizens citizens.¹⁷ But the initial issue addressed in chapter 3 is not the justice or injustice of the act but who is responsible and whether the polis is the same polis or a different one depending upon who rules it.

To repeat: the question turns out to be “who is responsible when a revolution occurs?” Is the old ruler responsible for the acts of the polis, after they are disposed with a new ruling body? Also, Aristotle asks, given that a revolution has occurred, should the polis be spoken of as being the same as it was or is it somehow different (3.3.1276a17–19)? Because Aristotle has yet to introduce the concept of the regime, the discussion of revolution will be addressed elsewhere (i.e., Politics 5). These questions pose the framework in which the polis is brought up in Politics 3.3.

WHAT IS THE POLIS? REVISITED

Concerning the polis and the way it is brought up in Politics 3.3, Aristotle suggests a way to understand the term:

Now the most superficial way of examining this question [about whether the polis remains the same after a revolution] concerns the location and the human beings [constituting a polis]; for the locations and the human beings can be disjoined, with some inhabiting one location and others another, and it will still be a polis. (3.3.1276a19–22)

Aristotle argues that a superficial understanding of the polis merely deals with its location and its human inhabitants. It is superficial to understand the polis in these two senses, because, as he says, locations can be different and the human inhabitants could be “disjoined” and it could nevertheless remain a polis. This problem is clear from his comment that to understand the polis only in those terms is mistaken. He says of location:

The question in this form is to be regarded as a slight one, for the fact that the polis is spoken of in several senses makes the examination of such cases easy. (3.3.1276a22–24)

He next speaks of the question of the inhabitants. He says of this issue, “And similarly in the case of human beings inhabiting the same location, [if one asks] when the polis should be considered [as] one [entity]” (3.3.1276a24–26). The question here is “what makes a polis a polis?”

In addressing what mak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. The City, The Citizen, and The Regime
• II. The First Peak: Popular Rule
• III. The Second Peak: The Three Logoi of the Pambasileia
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index