Aristotle — the father of political science

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) turns political thought from ideal construction to the study of constitutions, citizenship, law and stability. Son of the physician Nicomachus, his cast of mind is diagnostic — cause, classification, cure. He is the father of political science and the leading realist of Greek thought, seeking the best possible state, not an unrealisable utopia. Politics is a master science — it concerns the ends of human life.

“State comes into existence for the sake of good life and continues for the sake of good life.”

Aristotle

Works & method

Major works: Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric — his political theory rests on the study of around 158 constitutions. Method: scientific and empirical (data, facts, observation), inductive (particular to general, against Plato’s general-to-particular), historical, comparative and teleological (every being has a telos — “nature does nothing in vain”). In Rhetoric, persuasion rests on ethos, logos, pathos.

Will Durant notes no philosopher was influenced by another as much as Aristotle by Plato; Michael B. Foster: “Aristotle is the greatest of all the Platonists.” Yet — “Dear is Plato, but dearer is truth.”

Theory of State

The state is a natural growth, not an artificial contract — an association of associations, self-sufficing, the highest of all communities. It grows like an organism towards the good life and is unity in diversity, not uniformity. The polis is at once state, community, government, school and moral order.

The state as natural growth towards the good life. Individual (bare survival) → Family (daily needs) → Village (wider needs) → State / Polis

State prior to the individual — not in time, but in purpose and completeness; the whole is prior to the part. A hand cut from the body is a lifeless fragment; one who can live outside the state must be “a god or a beast.”

“The state is by nature clearly prior to the family and the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part.”

Aristotle

William Ebenstein: “Aristotle’s state is a conception of moral sovereignty rather than of legal sovereignty.” What makes man political is logos — speech and reason, by which he distinguishes just from unjust. Hence: “Man is by nature a political animal.” The best possible state is great but not large — C. H. McIlwain: “neither too rich nor too poor; secure from attack … homogeneous, virtuous, defensible, unambitious … great but not large.”

Citizenship

Citizenship is not residence, descent, or mere possession of rights — it is a bond of active participation. A citizen shares in deliberative and judicial office; an active public role, not a legal label.

• Essentials: ability to deliberate and judge; leisure; freedom from manual labour; property; education; experience — the capacity to rule and be ruled.
• Excluded: women, children, the elderly, slaves, workers and tradesmen, aliens — on grounds of leisure, maturity and self-directing reason.

“Aristotle’s idea of citizenship is that of the economically independent gentleman who has enough experience, education, and leisure to devote himself to active citizenship …”

William Ebenstein

Narrow and exclusionary, not democratic in the modern sense — yet the lasting insight holds: citizenship is a duty, not merely a status. Unlike Plato’s sharper split, Aristotle’s citizen is both ruler and ruled at different times.

Slavery · Family, Women & Property

Slavery

Rests on natural inequality — the slave as an “animate instrument”; some fitted to rule, others to be ruled. He distinguishes the natural slave (slave by nature, fit for bodily use) from the conventional slave (enslaved by capture in war). Criticism: Kant — “each man is an end in itself”; MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor and Bernard Williams reject the anthropology. Michael B. Foster: “Aristotle justifies slavery on grounds of expediency”; Ernest Barker — “more a justification of a necessity than a deduction from … observation of facts.” By modern standards, indefensible.

Family & women

The family (oikos) is the first natural unit, an ethical community of “spousal philia” (love and friendship) — against Plato’s communism, “what belongs to many receives the least care.” On women he is deeply patriarchal — woman as “incomplete,” confined to domestic life; one of the weakest parts of his theory, exposed by J. S. Mill.

Property

Property is necessary and justified if honestly acquired — it satisfies the instinct for possession and makes generosity and liberality possible.

The rule: property private, its use serving common life. He opposes unfair acquisition such as interest, and warns against excessive wealth.

Theory of Justice

Justice is the heart of his politics — practical and institutional, not merely inward.

“When perfected, man is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.”

Aristotle

William David Ross: by ‘just’ we may mean “what is lawful or what is fair and equal.” Michael Sandel: “Justice is teleological … figure out the telos … of the social practice in question.” Equality: proportional, not numerical.

Aristotle’s formula of equality: “It is unjust to treat equals unequally. It is equally unjust to treat unequals, equally.” — the seed of his theory of revolution: grievance arises when equals get unequal shares, or unequals equal shares.

John Rawls later moves towards a more egalitarian position (veil of ignorance, justice as fairness); Michael Walzer‘s plural spheres echo Aristotle’s sensitivity to context. Plato vs Aristotle on justice: Plato — duty-oriented, moral, inward; Aristotle — rights-oriented, practical, institutional and distributive.

UPSC 2015

Comment on Aristotle’s conception of equality.

Rule of Law & Theory of Constitution

Rule of law — law is less arbitrary and fairer than personal rule; free of personal feeling; the collective wisdom of ages, superior to even the wisest individual ruler. This is the direct criticism of Plato’s philosopher-king.

“Law is a reason without passion.”

Aristotle

“The people, though individually they may be worse judges than those who have special knowledge, are collectively as good.” His defence of law is a foundation of constitutionalism.

Constitution is not a mere set of rules but a way of life that fixes the moral character of a state. Classified by number of rulers and purpose of rule:

The six-fold classification of governments

Polity — the best practicable government: The golden mean between oligarchy and democracy; a moderate democracy on a middle-class basis. The larger the middle class, the greater the stability — it knows how to command and obey as free men. In modern language, polity anticipates constitutional democracy.

Cycle of constitutional change. Monarchy → Tyranny → Aristocracy → Oligarchy → Polity → Democracy. Democracy gives way to monarchy and the cycle begins again. Modern critics note Aristotle often blurs government with the state.

Theory of Revolution

Revolution = any change in the constitution, rulers or political balance, big or small — even a democracy becoming less democratic. Aristotle is an advocate of stability, not a celebrant of upheaval. Causes run through a three-fold chain: a state of mind, an objective sought, and an occasion that triggers upheaval. The deepest cause is injustice and inequality.

“Everywhere inequality is a cause of revolution.”

Aristotle

Inequality may be real or imagined — relative deprivation matters as much as the objective kind. General causes: greed of rulers, concentration of power, fear of domination, class struggle for office, racial conflict, disproportionate growth of one part, corruption, maladministration, neglect of small changes, a weak middle class. Prevention: obedience to law, civic education in the spirit of the constitution, fair distribution of honour and wealth, short tenures, preventing any person or class from becoming too powerful, patriotic feeling, a strong middle class and mixed constitution.

Aristotle vs Marx: Aristotle is conservative — revolution means political change and leads to instability; Karl Marx is radical — revolution means total upheaval, the “locomotive of history,” driven by class exploitation towards communism. Criticism: the meaning is narrow, political and status-quoist; yet the central insight endures — perceived injustice is the most combustible material in politics.

Aristotle in the evolution of Western thought & modern democracy

Aristotle is the bridge between ancient ethical politics and later empirical, constitutional and comparative science.

Contribution to constitutional democracy: rule of law, constitutional (polity) government, mixed government anticipating checks and balances, middle-class stability, responsible citizenship and civic virtue, distributive justice and the common good — absorbed indirectly through later thinkers such as Montesquieu. Limits: slavery, exclusionary citizenship, patriarchy, preference for the small homogeneous polis prevent any direct identification with present-day democracy. Eduard Zeller: the Politics is “the richest treasure that has come down to us from antiquity.”

Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s idealism

Aristotle is both Plato’s greatest disciple and greatest critic — he continues the tradition by correcting it. Both belong to the Socratic line, give primacy to the state, accept natural inequality and distrust unqualified mass rule; yet Aristotle moderates and often rejects Plato.

“As Brutus loves not Caesar less, but Rome more, so Aristotle says, ‘Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth’.”

Will Durant

Ebenstein: “Plato found the corrective to his thinking in his own student.” The relation is often likened to J. S. Mill‘s to Jeremy Bentham — deepest disciple, strongest corrector. Aristotle’s critique does not destroy the legacy; it transforms idealism into political realism.