Great Books: Aristotle's Politics Book One (Part 4)

The first three parts of this essay can be found here, here, and here.

So, if the acquisition of property for the purpose of maintaining a household is a good thing, what, in Aristotle’s mind, makes wealth-getting (acquiring beyond the needs of the household) so bad? He cites a commonly held belief that coin is a mere abstraction of tangibly useful items and that, in some minds, makes it useless in and of itself. Expanding on this idea, he rightly points out that a person may be, in fact, surrounded by unlimited wealth yet die of starvation, “like Midas in the fable, whose insatiable prayer turned everything that was set before him into gold.” Wealth-getting seeks only further accumulation whereas the maintenance of a household employs a wider set of goals and, as Aristotle would have it, a better kind of life. Those who seek only wealth, “are intent upon living only, and not upon living well; and as their desires are unlimited they also desire that the means of gratifying them should be without limit” [451].

This seems to be the fundamental paradox for seeking wealth for its own merits. As it is insubstantial, the enjoyment of it can only come in what pleasures one might purchase with its excess. In effect, the act of purchasing/acquiring these pleasures becomes more important than the pleasure itself and develops into a kind of feedback circuit where only the quest for new pleasures and new levels of wealth bring any joy whatsoever. However, because this is Aristotle, we are then informed that even within the realm of unadulterated wealth-getting, there are some kinds of wealth-getting that are more deleterious than others. The art of transforming shrewd purchases into retail success is bad enough, but the art of transforming coin into more coin through lending and interest, or usury is worse yet. Aristotle defends this argument by sketching out a continuum of strategies for accumulating wealth, from the virtuous to the despicable.

Certain activities, like managing livestock or engaging in agriculture, are drawn, he supposes, directly from the lessons of nature; ie. Nature exists to provide all with their basic wants and, as humanity is the finest animal, she provides for it best. When human activity departs from these basic principles, it descends into the nether realm of fruitless wealth-getting, a category which itself he then divides into three concerns: Basic commerce, usury, and, finally, service for hire. In these he finds a progression towards depending less on Nature for one’s needs and a trend towards artificial means of generating property, resulting in activities that are “the meanest in which the body is most deteriorated, the most servile in which there is the greatest use of the body, and the most illiberal in which there is the least need of excellence” [453]

Though there may be sentiments contained within this argument that are easy to applaud, Aristotle’s reasoning, again, seems to be butting up against the realities of the world in which he lived. He chastises these lower forms of wealth-getting as “arts in which there is the least element of chance” [453] as if there were some intrinsic value to placing one’s wellbeing into the vagaries of weather, soil, and sun. While this may be more pious (especially if you consider those variables to be governed by gods), it doesn’t exactly harmonize with his supposition from before that the maintenance of a household is the highest good. If one’s household suffers because of being left to the kindness of strange fortune, then, it follows, that one has failed in the art of maintaining that household, regardless of the purity of intent that went into the effort.

Closing in on the end of Book One, Aristotle comes back around to the two other relationships that occur in a household; the relationship of husband to wife and that of father to child. He described that of master to slave as either natural rule when necessitated by the character of the participants or unnatural when mandated by the force of law. The mechanism by which the man rules over the other members of his household (and it is his household as all these relationships hold him in common as a focii) first and most importantly differs from that over his slave in that his wife and children are presumed free. His rule over his children is “royal, for he rules by virtue both of love and of the respect due to his age” while noting that “a king is the natural superior of his subjects, just he should be of the same kin or kind with them” [454]. Whether or not this is true, this idea has certainly maintained its place in common wisdom over the millennia, from the top to the bottom of nearly every measurable social class.

His description of the husband’s rule over the wife, which Aristotle describes as “constitutional” is more an enunciation than an argument. But watch what happens to that enunciation as Aristotle defends its rationale.

For although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female, just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature. But in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all. Nevertheless, when one rules and the other is ruled we endeavor to create a difference of outward forms and names and titles of respect…The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the inequality is permanent. [454]

Even as Aristotle is insisting that the sovereignty of man over woman is essentially constitutional in nature, he is describing a type of rule that is something else. A constitutional dictatorship. Women are first made equal to children, by comparing their subjection as that of a youth to an elder and then reduced, at least by logic, to slavery by virtue of an inequality that is innate, intrinsic, and apparently irrefutable. It is tempting to read this as a failure of reasoning on Aristotle’s part, as his being more beholden to the conventions of culture than to the truths produced though the revelation of logic. Another reading, however, might recognize this inconsistency as one that Aristotle could identify but not reconcile with the world of which he was a part. If women’s relative low status had come about by what Aristotle would have seen as natural means, how could the relationship dictated by that discrepancy be anything but natural, and therefore, good itself? Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, Aristotle then equates this natural good with the highest good in governance he can imagine, namely a constitutional democracy and allows the dissonant metaphor to stand, defended not by logic but by the status quo.

Great Books: Aristotle's Politics Book One (Part 3)

The first two parts of this essay can be read here and here.


Though the opinions espoused in favor of slavery appear to be Aristotle’s own, it is to his credit that he includes an entire section dedicated to rebutting the argument that slavery is natural and, in so doing, adds a good deal of ambiguity to the binary supposition of the previous section. He argues that the premise of an objection to slavery is rooted in the idea that slaves are, more often than not, taken by force. Tying us right back into Socrates’ debate with Thrasymachus in the Republic, the act of slaving seems to reinforce the notion that the greatest might equals the greatest right while virtuous people would prefer to place it on a loftier pedestal. Expanding on Thrasymachus’ argument, Aristotle suggests that the greatest virtue ought to be the source of the greatest power, therefore the greatest power would also imply the greatest justice. While Aristotle agrees with the idea that slave taking is a lawful part of waging war, but he also asks the question, “What if the war is unjust?” [448].

In order to reconcile these conflicting views on slavery, Aristotle segregates the idea into two ideas: Slavery by Nature and Slavery by Law. Unable to get around the very real fact that keeping slaves has always been part of the Greek tradition, he notes that Greeks are loathe to take other civilized people (described within as Hellenes) for this very reason. That fate is then reserved for barbarians (people living outside of civilization) as they are slaves by nature, whether under the absolute rule of a king or in service to a Greek household. Not able to leave his own patchwork explanation alone, Aristotle acknowledges that this creates a strange scenario in which some people are freeborn no matter where they are (the Greeks for example) but some are more free in one place than they are in another though slavish by their nature. This all climaxes in an irreconcilable paradox that closes out the sixth section of Book One.

We see then that there is some foundation for this difference of opinion, and that all are not either slaves by nature or freemen by nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the one to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing obedience, the others exercising authority and lordship which nature intended for them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and a slave is part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true. [449].

Where the first half of Book One is focused on the three relationships that make up a household, the second is about the management of that household and what relationship the acquisition and accumulation of wealth has to it. From this jumping off point, Aristotle considers the different means and reasons that one might acquire wealth as well as in what combination such action might be considered virtuous. Writing, myself, from a century in which the ebb and flow of abstracted money rules the globe more completely than Alexander could ever have imagined, Aristotle’s careful examination of the relationship between the household and wealth exposes a deep chasm between the ancient and modern mindset in regards to money.

Wealth, Aristotle notes, is a type of property though there are, of course, many others. Detailing a number of traditional methods for providing the basic necessities of life (shepherd, husbandman, brigand, fisherman, hunter), Aristotle notes that “property, in the sense of a bare livelihood seems to be given by nature herself to all” [450]. This places all plants, all animals, and even “men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit” at the disposal of human beings to fulfill their wants and needs. It is the art of a household management then to “either find ready to hand, or itself provide, such things necessary to life, and useful to the family or state, as can be stored” [450].

Aristotle reasons that because the amount of property needed to meet this criteria alone is not without limit then the art of acquiring property that goes beyond those aims is something else entirely. That art, in his terminology, is wealth-getting. While it shares roots with the natural acquisition that is part of maintaining a household, its ambitions range far beyond the virtuous ends of providing adequately for one’s family and seeks wealth for wealth’s sake in a manner that Aristotle deems most unnatural. He takes the reader on short tour of the development of human economics until finally, he notes, “men agreed to employ in their dealings with each other something which was intrinsically useful and easily applicable to the purposes of life, for example, iron, silver, and the like”—an invention better known as the coin. In the coin, Aristotle argues, the natural art of wealth-getting (restrained to meeting the needs of the state and finite in its nature) transformed into something unnatural, giving rise to the bugbear identified in whispered tones as retail.

For natural riches and the art of wealth-getting are a different thing; in their true form they are part of the management of a household; whereas retail trade is the art of producing wealth, not in every way, but by exchange. And it is thought to be concerned with coin; for coin is the unit of exchange and the measure of limit of it. And there is no bound to the riches which spring from this art of wealth-getting. [451]

Great Books: Aristotle's Politics Book One (Part 2)

The first part of this essay can be read here.

It is ironic that Aristotle posits speech as integrally linked to the uniquely human virtues of good and evil/justice and injustice and asserts that an “association of living beings who have this sense [of speech] makes a family and a state” [446]. In singling out speech as the virtue that gives humanity the knowledge of good and evil, Aristotle leaves us with the impression that the first, speech, was developed in order to facilitate the development of the family and then the state. Contemporary research does suggest that human speech developed, among other reasons, as a social lubricant between the males and females of a particular unit. Women, armed with the knowledge that sex could lead to childbirth which might very well itself lead to death, had to be as sure as they could that potential partners would exhibit the requisite character traits to nurture and not abandon her children.

State-building, on the other hand, was probably the last thing on the primitive human mind that developed and perfected speech. If anything, the complexity of ideas allowable through the development of speech (abstract thinking) made the evolution of ever-more complex social and political systems possible. One of the key factors that unify people in a particular culture is a shared language. With it, even geographic proximity is unnecessary while without it, that same proximity often led to outright violence.

Having established to his own satisfaction the relationship of the household to the development of the State, Aristotle returns to his “three relationships” argument and begins to break them down, one-by-one, beginning with that of master to servant. It is clear from the outset that Aristotle is arguing that a) slaves are an integral part of a household and that b) slavery is natural and therefore, in principle, good. Still, he concedes early on that “others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is unjust” [447].

Just as the family is composed of man, woman, child, and slave, so is the household the whole of which property is a part. In this sense, acquiring property is part of managing a household. Property, he says, “is an instrument for maintaining life” and a slave, he argues, is “a living possession…that takes precedence over all other instruments” by virtue of a slave's ability to be trained. Inanimate property he describes as instruments of production and living property as instruments of action. If repulsed by his logic, one cannot fault the precision with which Aristotle takes stock of the world around him, and, indeed, the world for many centuries to come. The existence and economy of a leisure class was, is, and will forever be predicated by the existence of a slave class, regardless of the label we attach to it. The idea of ruling and the ruled, for Aristotle, is a cold mechanism of existence built into the ways that humans think and understand the world. “For all things,” he writes, “which form a composite whole and which are made up of parts…a distinction between the ruling and the subject element comes to light” [447].

Aristotle then defends his argument that slavery is natural by examining three presumably natural relationships in which an inequity in power is clear. He cites, first, two aspects of the human experience that show clear dominion over others, even if the nature of that rule differ in some respects. The Soul, he suggests, rules over the body as a king would his subjects; that is, with absolute monarchical authority. Similarly, the Intellect rules over the Appetites but does so by constitutional authority, segregating various impulses into two camps; those which may be indulged without punishment and those which must be resisted by threat of punishment of death. Both of these relationships are natural and therefore good because, in both cases, when the players are co-equal or inverted in their authority, the person is said to be corrupted.

Though we may quibble with his language, Aristotle’s argument here is fundamentally sound. His second, Humanity’s dominion over Nature gives some cause for pause. “Tame animals,” he argues, “have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man” [448]. While a statement like that may have been perfectly reasonable (if ill-founded in its anthropocentrism) in Aristotle’s time, I sincerely doubt that the species dying off in record number in our time due to human intervention into the cycles of nature can be said to be better off from our “rule.” The same would apply to the innumerable exotic animals shipped to various parts of ancient Rome for public slaughter in the name of games. Dogs and cats are still getting the better part of the bargain, at least in the West, but they are part of a lonely segment of the animal kingdom that benefits greatly rather than suffers profoundly from our intervention into their lives.

Finally, Aristotle caps off his arguments defending slavery by examining his interpretation of the natural relationship between a man and a woman where the latter is ruled by the former. This is such a foregone conclusion (“the male is by nature superior and the female inferior; the one rules and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind” [448]) that it only merits only line in the section and receives such scant attention in addressing a contrary position that we can only believe that Aristotle couldn’t imagine one! Based then on these three natural precedents for Slavery, Aristotle concludes his argument by restating it.

When then there is such difference as that between soul and body or between men and animals…the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. [448]

Great Books: Aristotle's Politics Book One (Part 1)

Politics (Book One)
Composed by Aristotle presumably between 336-323 BCE
Place: Athens, Greece

The complete text of Benjamin Jowett's translation of the first book of Aristotle's Politics may be found online at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html

There is a cold certainty to Aristotle’s writing that encourages the reader to believe that he believes that what he is saying (dictating, writing) is unassailably true and beyond criticism. Given all the learning that has accumulated since his time, there are facts of which he is absolutely certain that are, in fact, not true. His beliefs are, in some ways, alien to the modern reader though less so than many of his contemporaries by virtue of his profound influence on Christian dogma and doctrine. In Politics, however, Aristotle’s worldview proves the greatest obstacle to gleaning the truths that are still evident some 2300 years later from the ideas that will either repulse or comfort the modern reader depending on their own view of the world and how it might work best. Even within his own, critically impervious arguments (arguments that deem women to be naturally inferior and slavery to be virtuous among others), Aristotle seems to wrestle with the reconciling of a frank appraisal of the world in which he lived and his unwavering dedication to reason that often contradicts those realities.

Politics begins philosophically at the same place Plato depicts Socrates as occupying when he engages in abstract state-building of his own in The Republic. Consider the relationship between these two passages:

From the Republic:

Justice, which is the subject of our enquiry is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

True, he replied.

And is not a State larger than an individual?

It is.

Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them. [316]

From Politics:

Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good…But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. [445]

The difference is that Aristotle is not satisfied with the individual functioning as a metaphor for the State. Though a State is composed of individuals, the relationship between them is, as Aristotle will later say, that of master to servant. Though cars may be composed of steel or plastic, neither steel nor plastic can be said to have the properties of a car. Aristotle reasons that it is better to compare social system to social system, devolving the State into its “simple elements or least parts of the whole” [445].

The beginnings of the State, according to Aristotle, reside in “a union of those who cannot exist without each other, namely male and female, and that the race may continue” [445]. Once having fulfilled this basic urge of biology, the compact takes on two more passengers, the slave and the offspring. This fundamental unit is called the household. In this simple equation, Aristotle illustrates clearly a number of fundamental ideas that define his worldview in a very specific way.

The basic unit of social structure, the household, is made up of three relationships: Man to wife, Master to Slave, Father to Children. Notably, each relationship is defined as that between a man and his inferior (Women by virtue of their sex, Slaves by virtue of their character, and Children by virtue of their inexperience). While wives and offspring are elevated in their submission above the slave, this same relationship presumably extends down into the slave population where women and children occupy a place below their male family head. In peering below this invisible line in Aristotle’s thought process, we then see how new slaves are indoctrinated by being raised in an environment where they occupy the lowest rings of the underclass.

Though slaves are an integral component of the household, only the wives and children are necessary to complete a family. “The family,” Aristotle supposes, “is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s every day wants” [445]. When extended families unite their efforts in order to fulfill needs that go beyond the self-sufficiency of a single family, this larger union becomes a village and it is from the extension of these family bonds that a king rules over the village just as the male rightly rules over his family. Finally, Aristotle posits, as multiple clans or villages are united into a single culture, the State develops and, “if earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state for it is the end of them and the nature of a thing is its end” [446].

However reasonably considered it may sound, there is very little that is historically defensible about Aristotle’s description of the development of the State. The family unit of man, woman and offspring (recognizable in the archeological record back about 50,000 years) was a substitution for a profoundly different system that saw men living separate but coexistent lives alongside a community of women and their children. The leader of one of these groups was not a king but a chief and his rule would have been based on its efficacy not on its supposed connection to some kind of familial role. Kings were a much later development, tied specifically to the rise of cities, standing armies, and slaves produced by conquest.

Thus, it is civilization (a human invention) which demands the household (and thus the slave), not the family and certainly not nature for nowhere else in it will we find this kind of behavior. If it can be said to be natural, it is only in explaining civilization as the development of social processes uniquely fitted to the exploding consciousness of our species though it may equally be argued that the State, in fact, represents the fulcrum on which the transition from living in nature to living apart from it pivoted.