CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA
THE ROLE OF THE GOOD AS FOUNDATION OF A POLITICAL COMMUNITY IN ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS: An Introduction
with application to Uganda’s Context
A Thesis Submitted to the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the M.A. Degree in Philosophy.
Presented by
Rev. Ssemugooma Kawere Angelo O.S.B
Moderator
Rev. Dr. A. Fornasari MCCJ
Consultant
Mr. Ochieng’ Odhiambo F.
Nairobi, November 1994
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN AFRICA
THE ROLE OF THE GOOD AS FOUNDATION OF A POLITICAL COMMUNITY IN ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS – AN INTRODUCTION WITH APPLICATION
TO UGANDA’S CONTEXT
A Thesis presented to the department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy
By
Rev. Ssemugooma Kawere Angelo O.S.B
Approved by:
…………………………….
Rev. Dr. A. Fornasari MCCJ
Moderator
…………………………….
Mr. Ochieng’ Odhiambo F.
Consultant
Nairobi, November 1994
Friendship Empowers Other Political Goods
TABLE OF CONTENTS
There are so many people whom I am indebted for their insights, influence, suggestions both in my education and in this thesis. Firstly, to late Prior Magnus Rau O.S.B (RIP) who offered me the opportunity to pursue higher studies and assisted me in every appropriate way to the end. Secondly, to Rev. Dr. A. Fornasari, my moderator and Mr. F. Ochieng’ Odhiambo, my consultant. Their provision of time, books, class notes and encouragement eased my doubts and hesitation. Thirdly, the entire staff of the department of philosophy in C.U.E.A., especially Dr. L. Mattei IMC and Dr. E. Beyaraza, whose devotion and commitment made our philosophical formation possible. Finally, I register my thanks to all my confreres, especially Fr. Joel Macul O.S.B., and friends for their deeds and kindness to me during this period of studies. For this moral and material support, I am indeed grateful.
By
Rev. Ssemugooma Kawere Angelo O.S.B
I declare that this Thesis is my original work and has not been submitted to any University for academic credit.
Signed
…………………………………………
Date
…………………………………………
This work is dedicated with gratitude to:
My Parents Matia Wagaba (RIP) and Felicity Nansubuga (RIP),
my Brothers and Sisters and my friends
who assisted me top develop
the art of inquiring.
De an De Anima
DE IN De Incessu Animalium
De Motu De Motu Animalium
De C De Caelo
De Pa De Partibus Animalium
De Ge De Generatione
E.E Eudemian Ethics
ME Metaphysics
N.E. Nicomachean Ethics
Phy. Physics
Pol. Politics
Rep. Republic
Rh. Rhetoric
Cf. Confer
Ed. Edited, edition or editor(s)
Ibid. ibidem = in the same place
i.e. id est = that is
op.cit. Opere Citato = in the work cited
Vol. Volume
Trans Translated or translation
The common good is a controversial philosophical notion. Its understanding depends on one’s basic philosophical point of view. Some philosophers objectively accept it whereas others are so skeptical as to deny its reality. It is for this reason that I have chosen to investigate the origin, nature and role of the common good (relative to any particular situation) in the creation of a political community.
I further want to demonstrate that the constitutional document containing the accepted vision of the political society is necessary but not sufficient by itself to assure the security and the efficacy of a political society. It would seem that what is further required is, first, the intentional and competent participation of the citizens in the common efforts to realize the values and goals of the society. Secondly, to secure the allegiance of all the citizens to the constitution in the processes of bringing into existence the king of political society envisioned in the constitution. This calls for a public educational program.
Aristotle employs a substantive approach when he talks about the good. For him, eudaimonia is not mainly ontological but existential; that is, man finds happiness in a certain mode of life: This mode of life is shaped for him by his social environment, by the laws, practical science, studies not merely what happiness is, but how it is to be achieved, for happiness is not a product of action, but itself consists in activity of a certain sort. Hence, it is a mode of life.[1]
There are basic reasons why Aristotle was singled out in the treatment of this particular subject, the common good. First and foremost, Aristotle as a classical philosopher is an authority; secondly, he is pioneer in treating the notion of the common good, as it is indicated in the first lines of the Politics (1252a1ff); thirdly, his works, especially that of the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, still offer relevant standards in our daily life as individuals and as a political community.
There are some specific works of Aristotle which will be used extensively in this research. For Aristotle, politics was part of ethics, or vice versa. Both ethics and politics are practical sciences, and are interrelated.
Politics is regarded as the supreme practical science, and it deals with man’s good or happiness; that is, it has to discover two things: in what mode of life man’s happiness consists; and by what form of government and social institution that mode of life can be realized? Ethics deals with the individual’s good or happiness. For that reason, ethics is linked to politics because the study of the individual’s good must be connected to the study of the good of the society. It is fore this reason that the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics will be used in this research.
Whenever further clarification is judged necessary, other works of Aristotle will be employed. For example, the ethics of Aristotle is influenced by his science, especially his psychology (when he deals with the notion of the soul), and his metaphysics (when he deals with the notion of TƐλOS or end). This is why works like De Anima and Metaphysics will be quoted.
While dealing with the Politics, I chose to use the translation of T.A. Sinclair (1962), revised and re-presented by Trevor J. Saunders (1981) because it is one of the most recent translations and is readable. It is also accurate because the translator used recognized texts.
He used the text of O. Immisch, and he even included those passages which were bracketed by Immisch, though Immisch’s bracketing insertions of isolated words have been respected.
The Politics has often before been translated into English, but the only version which has been at all times beside the present translator in that of his early teacher, H. Rackman (Leob Library). It will be evident that the present translation is of an entirely different character. It aims at offering to English readers the politics as a whole. [2]
Despite the qualities (recent and readable) of T.A. Sinclair’s translation, I could rely on it for literally quotation because it is not easy to cite specific-line numbering from the text. For that reason, I generally opted to use the standard text of B. Jowett for literally quotations[3] from the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics because it is easy to cite specific-line number; and because of the reasons stated below regarding Jowett’s text. Jowett: (a) presents the argument stripped of digressions and additions; (b) brings out the important and throws into the background the unimportant points; (c) distinguishes the two sides of the discussions, where they are not distinguished by the author; (d) supplies missing links, and omits clumsy insertions; (e) takes the general meaning without insisting too minutely on the connection[4].
However, he admits that he cannot dream of reconstructing an original text which probably had no existence, yet he leaves out the interlineations, making the difficult book easier.
Any mere translation of Aristotle’s Politics in many passages, necessarily obscure, because the connection of ideas is not adequately represented by the sequence of words. If it were possible to present the course of thought in a perfect, smooth and continuous form, such an attempt would be too great a departure form the Greek[5].
One major difficulty for a modern reader of Aristotle is to understand the terms that Aristotle uses and the meaning he gives them. The problem is not merely a matter of literally translation: it remains even after a critical text ha been established and modern English terms are used to read Aristotle’s text. The distance in time and social-cultural climate is immense. The danger is always present to read into Aristotle’s terms the common understanding we give them today. So the proper transposition of terms should be done.
The term ‘state’ has an equivocal meaning today. First, the ‘state’ is a commonwealth of persons or citizens. In this case, the ‘state’ implies human beings living in one community. Secondly, the ‘state’ means the constitutional form of such a commonwealth or abstract system of social organization. This ‘form’ can be ‘democracy’, dictatorship or monarchy. Thirdly, the ‘state’ means the actual institutions of government that are erected under this constitution; that is, the governing machinery: it is a question of the number of ministries etc. Fourthly, the ‘state’ means the authorities or the rulers – individual persons who staff the system[6].
So, to translate the Greek word polis by our word ‘state’ leads to a distortion of its essence in the translation. Polis and state are not even logical equivalents. The polis or political community is the community which includes all other human communities, while it is itself the one, supreme community.
By the polis is meant a radically different relationship of the political community to human gregariousness than is meant by these contemporary terms. The polis can not be simultaneously church and state because the definition of the polis implies a quasi-organic relationship between the subordinate associations within the polis to the super ordinate function of the polis, a relationship which excludes the very idea of what we understand by either church or state[7].
With that view, in this thesis, the word state, city-state, political society will be used interchangeably to mean polis. The word polis generally means civic republic, or the city which is in its heart. However, the meaning given to the word polis is a result of a process. The Greeks had a special word for the city as a place of residence, namely, asty. And the word polis originally meant the citadel (or acropolis, as it was called at Athens) at the foot of which lay the asty. Later, the word polis came to mean the whole organized political community, including both the residents in the asty (and any magistrates or other in the citadel) and the country-dwellers around the asty who frequented it for business and politics.[8]
It is the political community taken in its living activity. Even when some parts are directly mentioned, such as rulers, or judges, they are mentioned as a group of persons in and through which the political community (which is also the primary meaning of the term “constitution”) carries out its “sovereignty”. They are taken to be as the community acting in and through them.
It should be noted that the word “state” printed with capital “S”, implies nation-State. However, the word “state” printed with a small “s” may mean nation-State only when it occurs in a literally quotation whose context implies nation-State.
This study considers the following terms to be basic.
(a) The term “common good” has two meanings;
i. A benefit to the civil society as a whole. It is the good desired by all citizens as they actively participate in the political society. This implies the obligation of each member toward the political society.
ii. A benefit to each of its members. It involves the good of each citizen individually. The political community promotes the common good only by creating the universal conditions for the growth and exercise of virtue.[9]
Note that, in this study, the first meaning of the term common good will be employed.
(b) “Foundation” means the act of establishing or creating.
The method which is utilized in this thesis comprises an expository and textual analysis of the apposite facts especially from the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. We own that the study of Aristotle’s teleological view of the polis could be understood if this method is used. Note that some quotations within this research can be used as references in relation to other notions, but in this case, their meaning may be limited within the context to the thesis. Besides the above mentioned method, the thesis will be bases also on books about Aristotle’s ethical and political ideas.
Our work is progressive, consisting of five chapters and a conclusion. Chapter one is an exposition of the influences that formed Aristotle’s thought and methodology. It is meant to offer the background to the Politics which is the main text we had used. Our main aim begins with chapter two which is an inquiry into Aristotle’s understanding of the purpose and nature of the polis. Chapter three is an investigation between the types of good that are present in the polis and that are unified by the common good. Chapter four is an inquiry into Aristotle’s understanding of the nature and role moral education in the political community. Chapter five (which is an application in relation to Uganda) is the evaluation of some of the applications as a possible remedy to Uganda’s crisis of lack of true political community. Finally, we draw our own conclusions.
Little is known about the childhood and basic education of Aristotle, but he could proudly call Athens his intellectual home. He was born in 384 BC at Stagira, east of modern Salonika, and died in 322 BC at Chalcis.
His father, Nicomachus, was a court physician to King Amitas III of Macedonia. Both parents of Aristotle were of Ionian origin. Two facts related to this parentage may have affected the method and direction of his future studies:
(a) The Ionians[10] had a tendency to preoccupy themselves with the scientific investigation of nature and its physical elements and living types. This may give some light on Aristotle’s empirical approach of inductive method. The very first words of the Politics (1252a 1 ff) imply that he had an inductive habit of mind, and he always turned to the observable actual facts and concrete evidence.
(b) His father was a doctor, practiced in the art of dissection, and probably versed in the writings of the school of Hippocrates. This may have helped to turn his attention to biological studies, which he certainly began to pursue about 345 BC, and on which he wrote and lectured after 335 BC. This may also explain the biological and medical trends (observation of symptoms of disease and solution or remedial treatment) in Books IV – VI of the Politics, that is, classifying the types of constitutions and offering solutions where infirmities occur.
Watching his father practicing his art of medicine, living within the mental outlook of the Ionian “physicists” must have helped the young Aristotle develop a sense of curiosity, interest and wonder at physical nature and its works. His interest in the biological forms of life, must have further perfected Aristotle’s careful, logical and methodical mind and his approach to the inquiry into nature, his testing of claims by some who asserted they had discovered the principles of both mere biological beings and the human being: the “political animal:. For in all these manifestations of life, the mere vegetative substances, the mere sentient animals and the animal capable of wonder, inquiry, and happiness, Aristotle came to see the same nature that was at work. And “Nature”, Aristotle, will repeat, “never does anything in vain.”
(a) The apprenticeship (367-347 BC) spent in Athens in Plato’s Academy: The Academy Period.
(b) The journey-man period (347-335 BC) spent in traveling and collecting material: The transition period.
(c) As a founder and master of his own school (Lyceum) in Athens (335-322 BC): The Lyceum period.
His active life corresponds to his intellectual development which is reflected in his works from different points of view and was affected by various contexts. Nevertheless, philosophers quote from his works indiscriminately as if they had all been written from one and the same perspective and as if they were all of equal value.
In W. Jaeger’s book – Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934) the speculative growth of Aristotle as deduced from his writings (including the fragments) was presented in its three chronological stages – namely, the period in the Academy, the period of transition, and the period of his activity in the Lyceum, that is, the stage of maturity as regards his philosophical enterprises.[11]
The first and second periods of Aristotle’s philosophical development were demonstrated by his preoccupation with metaphysical and epistemological problems. The third period was mainly devoted to what he called the organization of research.[12]
Aristotle arrived in Athens at 17 years of age and entered the Academy. The Athens which Aristotle found in 367 BC was an Athens defeated in the Peloponesian war (404 BC)[13] and humiliated under Sparta’s governance. Thus Athens was in a situation of reconstruction. However, it was still a socio-economic and educational, cultural and recreation centre.
…the trade-centre and the money-market of Greece, where Aristotle could study the problems of maritime trade, money and interest…the general culture-centre of the Greek-speaking world – the home of the book trade for all Greece…the home of a nascent University frequented by the Greek world… The nascent University of Athens was interested in many studies, and not least in the study of politics.[14]
Aristotle’s say in the Academy certainly influenced his work of Politics and his Nicomachean Ethics. He was preoccupied then with research work.
We may perhaps best conceive the position of Aristotle in Plato’s school as that of a research student, who gradually grew into a research assistant.[15]
The researches in the Academy covered a large area of life and covered it in depth. The study involved research into ‘ideas’ in the Platonic sense of the word, and in the Platonic way of inquiry, ‘which meant the eternal realities or archetypes behind and beyond the world of sense’. The study of the ethic of human life involved also an inquiry into the ideal state and the ‘good life’.
That inquiry was twofold. It was practical as well as theoretical. (Politics was always, to the Greeks, an ‘art’ as well as a ‘science’.) On the practical side of the Politics, Plato was deeply concerned – and we may imagine that the members of the Academy would share his concern – in the current politics of Syracuse.[16]
The Academy was a school of political training; it was concerned with legal studies. From school graduated statesmen and legislators.
In his last years as a researcher, Plato composed the twelve books of the Laws. The book had a large inductive basis on the general records of Greek history and the body of current Greek law. And we may fairy guess that Aristotle, with his inductive mind and his natural bent for collecting and cataloguing records, may well have joined in the preparation of this large collection. The influence of the Laws can be traced in various passages in the Politics especially in Book seven, e.g. Plato, Laws, 647a, 673c, 698b, 699c ff. = Aristotle, Politics, 1331a 30ff.
To this period, is also ascribed the development of Aristotle’s view of justice, of equity and of law, which are found in the Ethics (N.E.III, IV seem to be echoes of Plato, Laws, 661c) the Rhetoric and the Politics.
There is also some Platonic influence in the period. On the death of Plato, Aristotle and Xenocrates left the Academy and moved to Asia Minor. They intended to join two other Platonists – Erastos and Kariskos, from Scepsis – who had been at the Academy and left before 350 BC. In the meantime, they (Erastos and Kariskos) imitated their master (who took interest in the affairs of Syracuse), and started to influence the tyrant Hermias of Atarneus whom they attracted to Platonic studies, and especially the study of the art of politics.
At first, Aristotle and Xenocrates settled in Assos, near Troy, where they joined their fellow Platonists who had moved from Scepsis. Aristotle stayed in Assos for three years. During his stay in the city, he opened a school and enjoyed the protection of Hermias (who was Aristotle’s fellow student, and had once been a slave but was now a successful businessman) the monarch of Assos. In his school he might have discussed politics with his students during his lectures. At any rate various views and ideas in the Politics are indebted to this period. His encounter with Hermias certainly contributed more empirical knowledge in politics apart from the theories which he had learnt at the Academy, such as the importance of foreign relations and foreign policy which Plato had omitted.[17] Hermias had foreign connections as far as Macedonia. It gave Aristotle a direct insight into the successful management of economic affairs within and between states.
Aristotle not only enjoyed the protection of King Hermias but he also marries Hermias’ niece.
After marriage, he moved to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos for two years (344-342 BC). This influenced the study of biology and especially marine biology.[18]
In the last years of this period (342-336 BC), Aristotle was summoned by Phillip II of Macedonia to be a tutor to his son Alexander who was then 13 years of age. In 341 BC his father-in-law, Hermias, was treacherously captured by a Persian general, taken to Sus, and executed.
The effect of the fate of Hermias on his ideas and his teachings may perhaps be traced in passages of the Politics which suggest that the ‘barbarians’ are the natural subjects of Greeks, and in a fragment of an epistle or exhortation addressed to Alexander, in which he advised him to act as ‘leader’ of the Greeks but as ‘master’ of the ‘barbarians’.[19]
Scholars still debate about what influence Aristotle’s association with Alexander had on writing of the Politics.
…whether, for example, the discussion of absolute kingship, at the end of Book III of the Politics, and the figure of the king who is so transcendent in Arete that he is like god among men, are merely theoretical reminiscences of Platonic discussions in the Academy or actual memories of Alexander at Pella…[20]
Aristotle remained at court probably till 336 BC when Alexander ascended to the throne after the murder of his father. Nevertheless, it is evident that Aristotle had almost no influence, if any, on Alexander.
It is extraordinary that this association of the greatest ruler and general of his era with the greatest philosopher of his time should have produced so little result. It lasted six years, but neither man seems to have influenced the other in any marked degree. It was the role of Alexander the Great to replace the polis, so beloved by his tutor, with a word state, to treat as equals the conquered Persians, regarded by Aristotle as natural slaves. Aristotle’s writings, on the other hand, give no evidence that he recognized that a new day was drawing in which national monarchy would replace the autarchic polis.[21]
In 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a school, the Lyceum, under the protection of the Macedonian statesman and proconsul, Antipater. Note that Greece had become a Macedonian protectorate after the battle of Chaeronea.[22] Antipater wished to stand by the propertied classes (oligarchy) in order to avoid any threat of social upheaval. The new situation of Athens may have reinforced Aristotle’s distinction between the viruses of the good-man and the viruses of the good-citizen (of pol. Book III, IV).
Antipater’s clear ideas and skilled policies must have had some influence on Aristotle’s life and perhaps affected the development of his political views and theories. When Aristotle advocates a moderate polity which would do justice to the properties classed, this reflects the general trend of Antipater’s policy.[23]
However, he was also concerned with and sympathetic to the current movement of Athenian democracy during his last years in Athens. This was expressed in his teaching in the Lyceum. At the same time he was writing a work on the constitution and the constitutional history of Athens. Even in the Politics, there are references which demonstrate that he was aware of the measures and the reforms of the contemporary Athenian statesman Lycurgus. Some of the measures could not go unnoticed by Aristotle, and most probably they influenced his suggestions as regards the ideal state (Politics Book VII, IV) and the course of compulsory military training which is desired in his constitution of Athens.[24]
Following the death of Alexander in 323 BC, brief but bitter ant-Macedonia agitation broke out in Athens.[25] The Athenians were mainly against Antipater. Nevertheless, Aristotle became involved because of his Macedonian relations. Though this was a political offence, he was instead accused of impiety as was the case with Socrates. Aristotle fled from Athens and took refuge in Chalcis, a city on the island of Euboea, where Macedonian influence was strong. In 322 BC, Aristotle died at the age of 62 and was buried at Chalcis.
Subsequent important developments in the political life of Athens show the influence of Aristotle’s political thought on Athens’ political life. Note that the development of Aristotle’s political thought was result of this methodology which allowed for ‘dialogue’ with his contemporaries.
In determining the purpose of the state, and the definition of the state and the citizens, Aristotle follows a method of exhaustion of possibilities.
- These possibilities are not mere logical possibilities or possibilities deduced form an “ideal form” of the state. They are real possibilities, presented in the forms of actual existing city-states.
- They are inherent genetic possibilities i.e. possibilities that are manifested by things in their growth.
- These possibilities are critically analyzed in two ways;
a. On the basis of consistency and effectiveness in relation to the existing form of the state.
b. On the basis of the capacity of the given form of the state, to realize the end on any state; i.e. happiness consisting in the exercise of a life that is truly good and beneficent to human beings.
As in other departments of science, so in Politics, the compound shall always be resolves in the simple elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether any scientific result can be attained about each on e of them. He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them.[26]
The phrase ‘resolved in the simple elements or least parts of the whole’ implies the use of the analytical method. That is, analysis proceeds form a whole (what is actually and concretely existing) to parts; from effects to causes. So what is last in the order of analysis is the first in the order of genesis, and what is first in the order of analysis is last in the order of genesis.
This method is important for philosophy because it involves breaking a complex whole into parts or simple elements, that is, principles. Since analysis implies getting to the root of things or the causes of things, it reduces the effects into causes or principles (demonstration quia[27]), and that is philosophy. The phrase ‘considers things in their first growth and origin’ implies that; (a) One sees or observes things clearly, (b) and finds out how things originate. Hence, one principle of the method is to study the origin of things and their development. The method deals with concrete date or events. For without the actual things, the methods would be futile.
There is justification that it is a good method for politics because it is basically descriptive. It is an analysis of empirical date involving analysis and comparison. It examines the data of politics, looks at the origin and development of states, looks at constitutions as they exist now or have existed in the past. Then it seeks to draw conclusions about the way they are likely to develop. It does not aim at describing an ideal state or at determining what kind of constitution is best. This descriptive method derives principles of human behavior from the ways in which men do in fact behave. All this makes it a good methodology for politics.
From the method and encyclopedic character of the work, we can understand how Aristotle defines politics as a certain knowledge (gnosis) derived from the descriptive study of history and the phenomenology of political events (historic), rather than a true science.[28]
Aristotle realized that the study of social life ends with change, with the possibilities of development within the polis, where the particular ends of the citizens coincide with the common good. Hence, it is not easy to examine the dynamic frame work which animates the life of a community. It deals mainly with the human community whose component entities are not mere robots but rational beings.
By virtue of Aristotle’s methodology, a new aspect of politics comes to the light. His writings present a problem different from that of Plato’s Dialogues. Aristotle is not writing for the general public as it is evident that his extant works[29] save fragments of early popular writings, are for the most part notes used mainly in his teaching. Though some were written before the Lyceum was opened, they were not complete and ready for publication. In the Lyceum, he and his students conducted extensive projects of research such as the investigation of constitutional history of a hundred and fifty-eight Greek cities, of which the Constitution of Athens (discovered in 1891) is the only surviving example.
The researches were not philosophical but rather historical or empirical investigations, which required constant revision and additions. That being the case, the Politics cannot be regarded as a finished work of Aristotle, and even the sequence adopted today might not have been done by Aristotle.
Werner Jaeger’s hypothesis that the Politics was written in two stages affirms the empirical investigations of Aristotle. In fact the two stages in Aristotle’s political thought are a reflection of the transition period and a departure from the influence of Plato, and the establishment of Aristotle’s political thought.
…in the first place, a work dealing with the ideal state, and previous theories of it. This includes Book II, a historical study of earlier theories and chiefly notable for the criticism of Plato; Book III, a study of the nature of the state and of citizenship but intended to be introductory to a theory of the ideal state; and Books VII and VIII on the construction of the ideal states mainly democracy and oligarchy, together with the causes of their decay and the best means of giving them stability, which makes up Books IV, V and VI. This Jaeger assigns to a date after the opening of the Lyceum, supposing that it represents a return to political philosophy after or during the investigations of the hundred and fifty-eight constitutions… Finally, Jaeger believes, Book was written last of all as a general introduction to the enlarged treatise, though it was joined hastily and imperfectly to Book II.[30]
However, around the time he opened the Lyceum, that is, Aristotle’s second Athenian period, he conceived an enlarged horizon of the science or art of politics. Politics should deal with both actual and ideal forms of government, and it should teach the art of governing or organizing states of any sort in any desired manner. This means that this new science of politics was partly empirical and descriptive, and partly independent of any ethical purpose since a statesman might need to be expert in governing even a bad state. So the science of politics included the knowledge of both the political good, relative as well as absolute, and also of political mechanics employed perhaps for an inferior or even a bad end. Book I, which is a general introduction exposes Aristotle’s view about the philosophical problem upon which he and Plato had been engaged, that is, the distinction of nature from appearance or convention.
He asserted the concept of nature on which he based his political reflection.[31]
This chapter is an investigation into Aristotle’s conception of the purpose and nature of the polis. The study will follow this order: the definition of the state, Aristotle’s concept of “Nature” and “by Nature”, the nature of the state, the origin of the state, what gives unity to the state, the formal constituents of a state, who is the citizen, and finally, the purpose of the state.
The Greek city-states were scattered all over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Greeks’ understanding of a state was that it was some kind of association with a constitution. Aristotle does not dispute this. However, he still questions, not its nature and its purpose, but whether a state is “by nature” or by mere “convention”. Connected with these issues was the question of “what”, that is, the question of the formal cause of the state was discovered.
Aristotle also argues against those who consider essential parts as making the state, rather than the whole making a state as a whole and what role some individual citizens (like the legislator or statesman) perform in a state.
Some say that the state has done certain act; others, no, not the state, but the oligarchy or the tyrant. And the legislator or statesman is concerned entirely with the state; a constitution or government being an arrangement of the inhabitants of a state. But a state is composite…[32]
Neither the document of the constitution nor the government apparatus makes a state because these are just formal clauses of the state. They are not its efficient cause. The efficient cause of the state is the citizens’ property constituted in one community. With this view, the principle – ‘the whole is greater than its parts’ applies. Aristotle says also that the whole of the city – state is, not just the sum of the parts, but is “greater” than their sum. Aristotle intends to demonstrate that confusion originates when people fail to see that the state is a composite of many, that is, these parts may have important roles in the state, but do not make the state. The parts “share” in the unity of the state which then exists “prior” to the parts. Aware of the possibility of being understood as holding to the state ass an entity in itself, separate from its “parts”, Aristotle affirms that the state is the citizens[33] that compose it. “But a state is composite, like any other whole made up of many parts, these are the citizens, who compose it”.[34]
In Aristotle’s philosophy, the form is the principle of sameness of difference of the state. He intends to clarify some of the confusion existing in the various claims about what makes a city-state. One is the confusion between a mere biotic unity (bees, ants) and a human association based on language, consciousness and intentionality. This is the error of those who make “same” race or ethnic group the essential requirement for being a citizen. Others confuse living in the same territory and in sufficient proximity to one another, which is a necessity for a state, but not the form or formal cause. Others consider it to be opportunity for the development of trade and the possibility of mutual security. These, Aristotle says, are partial and dependent goals. They are not the final goal: nor are they the formal cause of unity, for, the final cause is related to the formal cause.
Aristotle states his argument as follows;-
If a polis is a form of association, and if this form of association is association of citizens in a policy or constitution, it would seem to follow inevitably that when the constitution suffers a chance in kind, and becomes a different constitution, the polis also will cease to be the same polis and will also change its identity.[35]
For Aristotle, the sameness or difference of states is not based on location or race, but mainly on the form of government or constitution. Hence the sameness and difference of the state is to be determined by the changes in the form of government. It is certainly radical change in the way in which citizens are constituted as citizens that shows that there has been a change of constitution, not a change of creation or ethical composition.
The state is a political community whose aim is to seek the attainment of the highest good.[36] “[F]or mankind always acts in order to obtain that which they think good.”[37] The state is not merely a way of getting together, but a union which, in order to achieve its good engages in serious deliberation in order to make a good choice. The state is a community in choice of action which entails two activities, namely, (a) to deliberate the good for the community; (b) to decide on how to organize themselves to achieve that good. “[A] community of equals, aiming at the best life possible.”[38] This denotes that a state is not merely a community but a unique community whose members consider themselves as equals. This is a unique characteristic of the ideal polis, and also its conscious purpose which it ought to achieve in actuality and not as an abstract idea. The purpose of the state is not the promotion of trade, the providing of security, the dispensing of justice and the carrying out of transactions (Pol. 1280b 32). While these are properties deriving from the essence of the state, they are not its essence or purpose. And in the philosophy of Aristotle, it is possible to speak of the essence, of the purpose of the state, without explicitly referring to its properties, or vice versa without making the essence, or the properties separate entities.
Thus the state can be defined as a composite political community of equals which is self-sufficient and whose end is the supreme good of man, his moral and intellectual life.[39] Having arrived at the definition of the state, there is need to determine whether a state is a “conventional” or a “natural” entity.
The preposition “by” has a variety of meaning: It is used to indicate the person responsible for a creative work; it implies via, through; if it is followed by a gerund it indicates extent after a comparative.[40] Because of the purpose of this research, the preposition “by” is being used to indicate the agent responsible for a creative work.
The term ‘nature’ is used in various contexts in Aristotle’s works. These texts below are applicable to this research.
We must first presuppose that in nature nothing acts on or is acted upon at random, nor may anything be made form anything else at random unless we assume that it is accidental.[41]
This implies that as far as nature is concerned, things or events do not occur by chance but follow a given order.
Nature is accustomed to avoiding the infinite, for the infinite lacks an end and nature always seeks an end.[42]
This is the teleological meaning of the term nature in that it is that which effects something with a purpose.
From the combination of the meaning of the term ‘nature’ in both texts form Aristotle, it can be concluded that:
‘Nature is that which acts according to a given order and for a specific purpose or end. Nature does nothing in vain (DE IN – 1.290a31). In this context the term ‘by nature’ implies that it is that which is responsible for a creative work or an event according to a given inherent order and for a specific purpose or end.
However, with reference to the state, can the term ‘by nature’ not mean more? With reference to the phrase “we will begin the natural beginning of the subject”[43], it can be implied hat Aristotle tries to make a distinction between what exists by nature and what is conventional. Does it exist by nature or by mind? Is it a combination of ‘by nature’ and ‘by mind’? is it something generated by nature which has a soul as mind, and is it generated with a conscious purpose?
For Aristotle the phrase ‘the state is by nature’ necessarily implies a combination of two things;
(a) by the nature of being considered; (b) by the nature of human mind.
Note that both the nature of the being considered and the nature of the human mind are within the confines of Nature.
Nature is considered as the inner principle of operation.
Nature is called one way, the production of things that are by Nature…and in another, as that from which, as being inherent, that which is being naturally produced is primarily formed.[44]
This implies that Nature is an activity that generates things and directs their growth within and form Nature. Through it, things such as the state, come into existence.
The first principle of motion, in those things that by nature subsist, is Nature, inherent as a first principle in a manner either potentially or actually.[45]
Nature is not an idea, but the concrete cosmos seen as the totality of physical substances. Aristotle criticizes Plato’s theory of ideas. For Plato, metaphysics is of extra-real, ideal essence, i.e., of the world of separate ideas, of archetypes separate from things. They are logical entities which give logical but not real explanation of things. On the contrary, for Aristotle, metaphysics is of the intra-real, real existence, i.e., it must be understood as being in its totality[46], for the form or intelligible element is immanent in things.
The real-existence or physical substances are interacting and unified in and by their interaction, possessed of an inner teleology. That is, there are laws which guide the intelligible connections in an orderly manner within Nature as it tends towards its goal.
These elements are natures, laws, intelligible connections and necessities which we must discover and which we can discover under the flux of contingent modifications.[47]
The motion, chance, becoming or the activity of generating things and guiding their growth is possible but orderly. “Nature makes nothing in vain but always the best possible in each kind of living thing according to its essence.”[48] According to the references with this section, I therefore conclude that;
Nature means the totality of physical substances (the concrete cosmos) with all its inherent, orderly activity of generating things and directing their growth, from potentiality to actuality, within and from Nature itself.
“By Nature” means that Nature, as the inner principle of operation, is the agent responsible for the actualization of what is potentially inherent in it.
The City-state was widely regarded as a natural institution. But tradition held that cities were of divine origin. For Aristotle, instead, the city-state has earthly origin. The city-state is the highest expression of Nature’s teleology. Besides, Nature works in and through human beings: who then by science and art construct the city-state.
When several villagers are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence… And therefore, if the 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.[49]
The phrase ‘a single complete community’ means that the movement that brought about families, villagers is one movement of which the generation of families and villages are specific parts. The generation of the complete community, the political community, being the goal of one single movement, is also in some real way the goal for the other communities which are, in this sense, incomplete. The polis is regarded as a complete entity if and only if it is a whole and lacking nothing; and that which is complete has nothing beyond it. Hence it is an entity which is supreme in relation to the others. These which ought to be inferior to this single complete community are the earlier forms of society.
The state is an entity which is formed of several villages. If there are no villages whatsoever, then there is no possibility for the coming into existence of a state. Assuming that the formation of such villages is natural then even the state which is being formed is necessarily a result of nature. If the assumption is true, and the villagers are regarded as natural, which is the case, then the state which is formed of several villages ought to be regarded as natural. To refer to the state as unnatural would imply a contradiction in terms. Aristotle’s argument about the nature of the state is basically a reaction to the common belief that caused a general controversy[50] in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The Sophists (or even any unreflective or non-philosophic person who had not analyzed the polis and its parts) held the view that the state was an ‘artificial’ or a ‘conventional’ creation.[51] This was also the view of the “democrats”.
Against them Aristotle affirms that the state is a natural entity.
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without state, is either a bad man or above humanity.[52]
To say that man is by nature (i.e. in virtue of his essence as a rational animal), a political animal is the same thing as to say that it is by which man produces families and then villages, not as the mere use of his body, but also the use of his mind. For man is designed by nature to be one single unit, composed of mind and matter. Thus the state comes into existence as an entity created according to man’s nature.
If man is a political animal, and the only political animal there is, then the need or capacity ‘to live in the polis’ is intrinsic to man alone: it reveals man’s nature. If it is a property of man, and man is regarded as natural, then also his intrinsic property is natural and only to him. Thus man creates the polis by acting according to his own nature[53] since he ought to live in the polis; and man effects the polis by virtue of the property intrinsic in him. With that view, it can be asserted that that state is a natural and only natural to man in so far as it is created with a conscious purpose and according to man’s nature.
Ernest Barker believes that there are three points which support the natural character of the state (a) It is natural as the result of a process of human development, wrought by the agency of Nature (though with the co-operation of man); that is, the end of the process is more particularly ‘by nature’ because what anything is, when the process of its development is ended, is called (not only its end, but) its nature. (b) It is natural, because it is the best possible – it is a product of nature as ‘Nature always works for the best’. The self-sufficiency which man attains in the State is his summum bonum; the state is, therefore, the best form of life to which he can aspire. (c) It is natural, because Nature, which works by purpose, and not idly or in vain, gave man speech, and thereby destined him for political life.[54]
From the Latin Middle Ages to the late twentieth century, Aristotelians of many different orientations have been able to agree at least on the naturalness of political life to human existence. But in very recent years, some scholars have questioned Aristotle’s formulation and defense of the political naturalist thesis.[55]
There is a debate among recent Aristotelian scholars whether the statement – “Man is ‘by nature’ political” (Pol. 1253a 30) has any consistency; and whether there are apparent contradictions between the Politics and other of Aristotle’s authentic writings.
Nonetheless, contemporary studies of Aristotle’s political naturalism are in agreement that his position is philosophically coherent, and requires only more careful interpretation to illustrate its internal consistency. But Keyt thinks the contrary.
David Keyt claims that there is a ‘blunder’ at the very root of Aristotle’s political philosophy. The ‘blunder’ stems from the alleged irreconcilability of two facets of Aristotelian teaching that (a) the formation and perpetuation of the polis depends upon the education of citizens by a lawgiver or statesman as well as by the laws themselves. This would seem that the “art” of ruling implies that the polis itself is an artifice; (b) in Physics 192b 9-193b 21, he explicitly contrasts ‘nature’ with ‘artifice’ – for that which is natural has within itself its own source of change, that is, motion or growth, and for that which is ‘artifice’ the cause of alteration is characteristically external to it.
So to determine whether an entity or phenomenon is natural of artificial, we must discover the location of its principle of change.
Keyt’s argument is that if it is the case, as it appears that the polis, being a creation of the instruction and the practical wisdom of its leaders, has its source of motion or growth outside its citizens, then men cannot be political animals and the polis is not itself natural. For Keyt refers to this contradiction of Aristotle as the core of his blunder.
Note that Cary J. Nederman acknowledges that Keyt is not the first scholar to notice this contradiction. Scholars like A.C. Bradley and Ernest Barker realized it and tried to resolve it by understanding Aristotle to posit a latent human impulse which requires active stimulation from an external human source to be realized and acted upon.[56] Cary J. Nederman also owns that Keyt is quite correct to reject the above interpretation as inadequate. However, Keyt also does not resolve the apparent conflict between nature and artifice. Nederman admits that it would be necessary to argue that Aristotle had weakened in the Politics the teleological conception of nature which he proposed in his other writings; but there is no convincing evidence that he altered his formulation. Nederman further observes that though Keyt’s dismissal of Aristotle’s political naturalism may be philosophically defensive in some version like on a weaker, less-teleological view of history, such as was adopted by Cicero and some medieval Ciceronians who proposed that artifice and natural can be seen as compatible and mutually inclusive. Yet such views have to be criticized as adequate.
Fred Miller argues that Keyt’s position fails to take into account the depth and scope of Aristotelian teleology. He says that Keyt has identified only an apparent inconsistency. In fact, the development of the polis required the cooperative contribution of both Nature and human beings. Granted his teleological framework, his account is coherent and plausible.[57] However, Joseph Chan pointed out hat Miller’s defense leads to a contradiction alleged by Keyt:
I cannot see how the approach can resist the conclusion that the polis is therefore partly natural and partly conventional, a conclusion that does not fit the conceptual categories in Aristotle’s Physics and would certainly be regarded by Aristotle as an incorrect description of the nature of the polis.[58]
Chan himself proposes that a clarification of that issue: In his view, we ought to distinguish between the so-called type-character of the polis (that is, those essential features which make a polis a polis, such as some constitutional structure) and the form of the polis (that is, the particular constitution and laws which a given polis, such as Athens contrasted with Crete, adopts). Chan asserts that Aristotle must have regarded the polis as natural in so far as wee refer to the ‘type-characteristic’ of the polis, arising from a principle internal to man. On the contrary, he must have regarded the polis as artificial if we refer to the specific organization of any given polis.
Note that Chan’s interpretation mainly depends on upon a ‘distinction’ which is not, however, explicitly made by Aristotle.[59]
Chan may have found a possible solution to the dilemma of Aristotle’s political naturalism, but it does not seem to be a solution that Aristotle himself offered or would have recognized as such. And Miller is certainly correct in thinking that we should not assume without some compelling evidence that Aristotle was unaware of the premises and implications of his own arguments.[60]
Chan’s interpretation is regarded as ‘external’ because such interpretation is not derived directly from Aristotelian texts; but from Aristotelian Principles, because intelligence, language and co-existence of a plurality of non-equal persons and groups is, in Aristotle’s doctrine, the work of Nature. He also made little attempt to figure out how the Aristotelian notion of Nature applies to human nature.
Nederman’s contribution to the debate is the “internal cause interpretation”. He relates the Aristotelian notion of ‘nature’ to ‘human nature’. To achieve this, he raises the questions:
What does it mean to say that human beings are the source of their own change? Does the answer to this question have any impact on our understanding of the political nature of making and of the consequent naturalness of the polis?[61]
Nederman’s contribution is based on Aristotelian texts like the De anima, the De motu animalium and the Nicomachean Ethics. He applies the argument form ‘voluntary action’ to prove that the polis is natural.
If for something to be natural it must have in itself a source of motion and of rest (Physics 192b 13-19), and if only the animal itself originates its locomotion (Physics 253a 14-15), then it is natural. Note that locomotion originates form a desire towards a goal or result outside the animal (De an. 432b 16). The goal stimulates desire, and it is apprehended by sense-perception, imagination or thought, that is, the ‘nous’. Then the animal is impelled to move (De motu 701a 29-701b 1).
Since desire plays an integral role in the process, and animal is not physically compelled to move by some external force, the animal may be said to ‘move itself’ or ‘originate its motion’. This is the sense in which locomotion is natural to animals; through the desiring and intellective faculties of the soul, the animal is endowed with agency, that is, the ability to move itself in accordance with and in relation to a desired object.[62]
The ‘man’ in the lower animals is confined to the realms of perception and imagination (De an. 429a 1-9) that is why they neither have thought nor rationality, but imagination (De an. 433a 10-12). Besides possessing perception and imagination, man possesses the intellect which is the ‘nous’ in its full and proper sense.
So the unique characteristic of the human action is that it occurs on the basis of knowledge, as a result of a rational process. For in human beings, there is both intellect and desire:
But of these then are capable originating local movement, mind and appetite: (1) mind, that is, which calculates means to an end, i.e. mind practical (it differs from mind speculative in the character of its end): while (2) appetite is in every form of it relative to an end: for that which is the object of appetite is the stimulant of mind practical; and that which is last in the process of thinking is the beginning of the action.[63]
This question indicates that man has both practical intellect (capable of ‘praxis’) and theoretical intellect (capable of theoretical wisdom). As regards praxis (practical wisdom), practical intellect is employed in that human beings calculate rationally the best means to achieve the ends they desire or to realize their desires goal.
The human beings’ practical intellect, which is natural to them, directs the natural principle of change, namely, voluntary choice. By the very fact that people make choices (voluntary choices) then their motion can be traced back to themselves. We choose or exercise practical intellect in accordance with our ‘hexeis’, that is, the dispositions of our soul acquired through training and practice. Thus moral education is necessary for human beings because voluntary choice, which is a defining mark of human nature, is based on our learned qualities that compose our moral character. For only in the polis can men live a fully moral life because the polis, under the guidance of the lawgiver and statesman, is a prerequisite for choosing well, and living well is a consequent of choosing well.
If man is a moving principle and he is the author of his own actions, but is unable trace his conduct back to any other origins than those than those within himself, then his actions which originate form within his soul depend on him and are voluntary (N.E. 1113b 17-21), then we can assign praise and blame to him (N.E. 1109b 3 31-33).
What Aristotle terms ‘voluntary’ acts in the Nicomachean Ethics are precisely those actions which arise ‘naturally’, that is, as the result of a principle of movement that lies within the agents.[64]
In his criticism of Keyt’s position, Nederman observes that if those voluntary actions which are most natural to man arise as the result of moral disposition acquired and fashioned through training and practical activity, then the equation (embraced by Keyt and apparently accepted by his critics) of his distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘artifice’ with a distinction of ‘nature’ and ‘nature’ is fundamentally misguided.
For Aristotle, an ‘unnatural’ human action is an involuntary action and (for the most part) unchosen, and it is precisely that action for which we cannot be held responsible. It is ‘artificial’ to the agent exactly because it is not a matter of choice, but is external to his control and volition.[65]
The distinction which Aristotle seeks to uphold is not a simple-minded one which differentiates ‘inborn’ from ‘acquired’ qualities or traits. Instead, it is a far more sophisticated division between those actions which spring form the characteristic state of mind (whatever their source) of the agent and those movements which are accidental or externally caused. No one can be said to be author of his own actions if such a state of mind is not present; they are not his own acts, that is, natural to him.[66]
Nederman asserts the consistency and coherence of Aristotle’s political naturalism. Aristotle’s claim that man is a political animal implies that the human choice in accordance with the good (that good which is truly so and thus productive of happiness) requires political life whereby the legislator and statesman plays the role of facilitating the process by which this aim – which human beings recognize to be a proper object of desire and choice – is realized for citizens, it should be noted that to misconceive the roles of legislators and statesmen as ‘an external force’ or artifact, would lead to the assertion (which is not the case) that the polis is artificial. However, the lawgiver and statesman, through education, simply provide conditions conducive to the best and most effective realization of the citizen’s aim. So public moral education provided uniquely within political societies is natural to mankind in that it is internal and originates from man’s voluntary choice (i.e. rationally self-moving and responsible action).
Since the very purpose of the polis is to provide laws necessary for citizens to live well (i.e., in accordance with the good), the polis itself exists by nature. Certainly ,this claim is true in the ‘teleological’ sense of ‘natural existence’ identified by Fred Miller, namely, that ‘all things which come to be for he sake of something’… are said by Aristotle to ‘exist by nature’. The polis, likewise, because it exists for the sake of the kind of ‘natural’ self-movement distinctive of human beings through their choice, can be said to exist by nature in this sense.[67]
This is ratified by Aristotle when he asserts that the political society exists for the sake of noble actions, not merely for common life (Pol. 1281a 3-4). Hence, if human beings would live according to their nature if and only if there is a political life, then the polis is natural.[68]
The above assertion is important because establishing the nature of the polis as natural and not conventional, will consequently lead to the explicit assertion that its foundation which is the purpose of its being, namely, the common good, is natural.
The state results from the union of entities which cannot exist without each other. However, the nature of this interdependence is different in kind from the nature of the interdependence that Plato proposed. In the latter’s view, ideas are real, and their interrelations are real. Aristotle saw that this kind of interdependence, even if it were true, would be useless in the world of natural forms or essences, generated by Nature, in the process of tending towards its final goal. Aristotle speaks of the physical process: that is, birth and continuation of life or development to full actuality.
The phrase ‘that the race may continue…not a deliberate purpose’ is a differentia which makes this union unique. For the purpose of the family union, that is, male and female, is propagation of race (not a political union like the state). The purpose of a family union is not an outcome of a choice made, but it is inherent to the nature of the union.
The phrase ‘natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved’ implies that though the household union also belongs to the genus (common elements) of those who cannot exist without each other, yet it is unique by virtue of its differentia which ‘being preserved’, that is, its form is essentially ‘to be preserved’.[69] It should be noted that the phrase ‘by exercise of mind’ indicates that the master transcends what mere nature provides in order to make a choice for a solution which would lead to ‘being preserved’. The master caters for the well being of his slaves because they both complement each other[70] as it is indicated that they have the same interest. But still it is not yet a political union.[71]
As regard the union of several families, that is, the village, the phrase ‘aims at something more than the supply of daily needs’ signifies the differentia of this form of union. It is quite different from the family even though it is a sort of an external family.
To refer to the village as the first society denotes that it is a social union which has a deliberate purpose.
However, it is not a political union yet.
Concerning the state, the phrase ‘a single compete community’ signifies its uniqueness in relation to other kinds of communities as is further shown in the phrase ‘for the sake of a good life’ which also indicates the nature of its origin which is teleologically deliberated.
The preposition ‘man is by nature a political animal’ implies that if man is a political animal then man’s natural end or purpose ought to be the deliberation and formation of a union which is in accordance with his nature, namely, a political union, a state. For he who is by nature or by mere accident without state, is either a bad man or above humanity (Pol. 1253a 3-4). This denotes that man as man is necessarily a citizen of a given state. (Pol. 1253a 22-24).
[T]hat he can only exist so long as he discharges a function which consists in contributing to the State; and that, finally…the State is prior to the individual. This ‘priority’ is, of course, consistent with posteriority in time: in time the individual comes before the State, through philosophically the State is to-day a prior and presupposed condition of his definition and very existence.[72]
This emphasizes that the state is an organic unity[73] and it must be present as a prior condition if the part (citizen) is to exist at all.[74]
By virtue of the individual’s incompleteness without the state, Aristotle assumes that he stands to it as would an organ to the body. That is, the citizen, like the bodily organ, is insufficient without the State or body respectively, to which he or it belongs (Pol. 1253a 25-27).[75] This means that the members of the State absolutely depend upon if fro the full and self-complete existence which they can only attain by participation in its life.
Ernest Barker states that Aristotle, like Plato, recognizes certain limitations and qualifications of the organic theory of the State. He shows that though Aristotle stressed that the individual is a member, and nothing but a member, of the body politic (which mainly characterizes the opening of Politics (1253a 1-3 and also Book VIII, 1337a 27), yet he later rehabilitates that view as it is shown in Book III of the Politics concerning the good man and the good citizen. If man can only be defined and can only exist as a citizen, it seems difficult to understand how any question can arise of the difference between a good man and a good citizen.
Barker further indicates that Aristotle is aware of the individual’s self-love which demands an expression and needs to property for its expression: he knows that the individual is a member of other groups than the state, and a part of other ‘organisms’ than the political.[76] This denotes Aristotle’s view that the state is not fully organic.
But the normal and regular Aristotelian doctrine stops short of being fully organic: it does not lose the individual’s life in that of the State, though it fully recognizes the necessity of the State to the individual’s life. Man, as having his nature supplemented by the State, rather than the State as controlling man’s very faculty, is the pivot of his thought. The State is an organic growth – but man cooperated in the growth, and man can modify its character: Man is inevitably knit to man, and to the whole society in which he lives – but it is for the achieving of his own ‘independence’ that he becomes dependent on others.[77]
This dependence on others is still a reflection of the organic theory of the state as the state belongs to the union of those entities which cannot exist without each other. Hence the origin of the state is an evolution process[78] comprising four successive stages (under the guiding principle of ‘those who cannot exist without each other); from the family (of the pairs’ of husband – wife); the household (from the ‘pairs’ of husband – wife, and master – slave); the village (from a coalescence of households); and the culmination in the state (from a coalescence of villagers). According to Aristotle, there is nothing beyond this stage.
Aristotle arrives at the discovery of the unity proper to the state by showing that it cannot be the unity proposed by Plato. Plato thought that the greater the unity of the state the better. Aristotle’s answer is that Plato’s view of the unity of the state destroys the state rather than uniting it.[79]
The first critique is expressed in the quotation below,
The argument of Socrates proceeds, ‘that the greater the unity of the state the better! Is it not obvious that a state may at length attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state? – since the nature of a state is to be a plurality, and in tending to greater unity, from being a state, it becomes a family, and from being a family, an individual.[80]
Aristotle’s critique begins with showing that there are many kinds of unity. Associations cannot be pure unities: they are a unity composed of many and different parts. Not only number, but difference is essential for the unity of the political community. The polis is a union of unlike people or people with varying activities, and various attitudes, capacities and virtues corresponding to the various activities.
If there are differences in their forms, as it is the case, then why is the state a unique unity in relation to the other unions?
The phrase ‘the principle of compensation’ refers to the form of unity which the state ought to have. That is, political reciprocity. It is not mathematical equality but proportion. If individuals, families, villages came together for the purpose of forming a state, then there are different needs which ought to be satisfies: and this is effected with proportionality.
But in the association for exchange this sort of justice does hold men together: reciprocity is in accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of precisely equal return. For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together.[81]
Apart from the principle of political reciprocity, the principle of ‘governing in turn’ makes the unity more orderly and effective as it is indicated in the phrase ‘one partly rules and the others’ critique is that
This extreme unification of the state is clearly not good; for a family is more self-sufficing than an individual and a city than a family, and a city only comes into being when the community is large enough to be self-sufficing. If then self-sufficiency is to be desired, the lesser degree of unity is more desirable than the greater.[82]
In this text, Aristotle employs his ‘doctrine of the mean’ to argue that any extreme unity such as having wives and children in common would not be good. So the unity of the state would be good if and only if it did not lack moderation.
He also claims that the purpose of good laws is to make governing easy; and that the unity of the state is also hinged on friendship. So the communality undermines these two factors which are also necessary for the unity of the state.[83]
It can be concluded from all the above critiques that communality[84] does not give the necessary unity for the state. What gives it unity is the formal cause which is basically political reciprocity or proportionality.
The nature of unity further determines Aristotle’s conception of the state, that is, the state as an ‘association’ or compound. As Aristotle discusses the issue of unity of the sate, his main concern is the general question of the relation of universal to particular.
Shall the one be destructive of the individual existence of the many, or shall the many retain that existence, while yet sharing a common existence which ‘blends, transcends, them all’?[85]
As in Metaphysics, where Aristotle holds that the one does not exist above and beyond the many, but it is in and among all its individual constituents in so far as it is predicted to all, likewise, in the Politics, the state does not subordinate the individual in that it negates his individual self, but it is an association of individuals bound by a common goal, namely, a common life of virtue, while yet retaining the individual of separate properties and separate families.
As any other entity, the state must have parts without which its proper existence is not possible. For Aristotle states that:
We must see also how many things are indispensable to the existence of a state, for what we call the parts of a state will be found among the indispensable.[86]
There are six functions of a state. The first caters for food; the second caters for arts; the third is in charge of arms in order to provide internal security and prevent external invasions; the fourth deals with the revenue of the state; the fifth or rather first, caters for religion, namely worship; the sixth, and most necessary of all, deals with decision making concerning the public interest and terms of justice. All these services for the state of being self sufficient (1328b 6-19)
The term ‘indispensable’ means necessary or requisite. If ‘necessary’ or ‘requisite’ is applies in relation to the coming into existence of something, the ‘requisite’ can either be a ‘condition’ or ‘cause’ to the being of that thing. By condition, in the strict sense of word, we mean something which does not exercise any positive influence upon the ‘to be’ of an effect, but is a prerequisite for the action of the cause.[87] A cause is an ontological principle which exerts (exercises) real and positive influence upon the ‘to be’ of a state, whereas ‘condition’ would correspond to what we call ‘non-parts’ of a state because of their dispositive influence upon the ‘to be’ of a state. (The citizens are the efficient and material causes of a state).
With reference to the text, the phrase ‘indispensable’ is the genus whose species necessarily vary. In this genus, there are two species of parts of a state, and the species of ‘non-parts’ of a state. Aristotle employs the principle of demarcation to discern which are the ‘parts’ or ‘formal constituents’ of a state and which are ‘non-parts’ or ‘non-formal constituents’ of a state, by investigating the functions of a state.
So if not all indispensable conditions to its existence must be regarded as parts of a state, then the state is referred t o only in the strict sense, i.e. mainly its essence . in this case, Aristotle’s view concerning members of a state is exclusive.
However, why are ‘non-formal constituents’ or ‘non-parts’ still regarded as essential? From the phrase ‘that the community can be absolutely self-sufficient’ it can be concluded that Aristotle treats his whole issue of the state from a teleological point of view. So these parts arte intended by nature as necessary components of the state. A state is self-sufficient if and only if ‘non-formal constituents’ are taken into consideration; because they are partly a means to the end of a state.
Note that the above main text simply indicates that ‘parts’ of a state and ‘non-parts’ of a state, both correspond to the functions of a state. But it does not differentiate clearly to which of the two species each of these functions belongs; save the fifth and sixth functions, if one is to interpret the terms ‘rather first’ and ‘most necessary of all’ respectively, to imply ‘priority’, then it can be implicitly asserted that these two functions, probably, are performed by those who belong to the ‘parts’ of a state.
The above text so far does not give us an explicit answer to the question – what does Aristotle use demarcate which functions are performed by ‘parts of a state and which by ‘non-parts’?
The criterion he uses for this demarcation is virtue.
That in the state which is best governed and possesses men who are just absolutely, and not merely relatively to the principle of the constitution, the citizens must not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble, and inimical to virtue. Neither must they be husbandmen, since leisure is necessary both for the development of virtue and the performance of political duties. Again, there is in a state a class of warriors, and another of councilors, who advise about the expedient and determine matters of law, and these seem in (sic) especial manner parts of a state.[88]
The above text demonstrates that the citizens should not involve themselves in occupations which curtail their leisure which is a prerequisite for the development and acquisition of the virtuous life and the performance of political duties. In this text, the explicitly ‘parts’ of a state are classes of warriors and councilors. If one relates their two classes to any of those six functions, it can be claimed that the classes of warriors and councilors do perform the functions involving arms and power of deciding what is for the public interest respectively. Note that, the fifth function, namely worship, is basically a function for the citizens only.[89]
From this analysis, it can be asserted that there are three functions which do not curtail the virtuous life and correspond to the ‘parts’ of a state; and there are also three functions which do not curtail the virtuous life[90] and correspond to the three ‘non-parts’ of a state.
The three ‘parts’ of a state are basically its essence; whereas the three ‘non-parts’ of a state are just ‘means’ owned by a state or are ‘properties’ which flow form the essence of a state.
There would not be trades, craftsmen, slaves, agricultural workers if and only if there were no citizens, that is, a state. The citizens are intrinsically the essence of a state, whereas tools or its property have an intrinsic relation to the essence of a state.
In so far as we refer only to the essence of a state (its citizens) then we are bound to think of the state as something which is in potency or in the process of becoming, but not yet a state. The actualized state is that which is composed of its essence and the ‘properties’ that flow from its essence. Hence, the citizens are formal constituents of a state. How then do they manage the state effectively? Who ought to do this assignment and not that?
The effective organization and management of a state is based on the criteria used in separating the parts of a state according to their functions.
Aristotle gives these criteria:
The first criterion is nature, i.e. a principle of ‘conformity of merit’
It remains therefore that both functions should be entrusted by the ideal constitution to the same person, not, however, at the same time, but in the order prescribed by nature, who has given to young men wisdom. Such distribution of duties will be expedient and also just, and is founded upon a principle of conformity of merit.[91]
The second criterion is the principle of ‘governing in turns’.
And also a rest provided in their services for those who from age have given up active life, to the old men of these two classes should be assigned the duties of the priesthood…and these are distinguished severally from one another, the distinction being in some cases permanent, in others not.[92]
The phrase ‘in others not’ is used in reference to how the functions of the citizens are distinguished from one another. The functions of the citizens are not permanent, that is, they govern in turns. The parts of a state are separated from each other by turns, in that a ‘young’ soldier eventually becomes an ‘old’ deliberator, and lastly he becomes a priest.
Hence the criteria for separating parts of a state are by nature, and by mind, that is, it is by something generated by nature which has a soul as a mind. The human mind transcends what mere nature produces.
Having demarcated what are the ‘formal constituents’ and the ‘non-formal constituents’ of a state, then let the focus be put mainly on the ‘formal constituents’ – that is, the citizens.
Aristotle does not search for an abstract noun (such as citizenship which is the form) as Plato would, but deals with actual people whom he observes in that he is able to ask the question – who is the citizen and what is the meaning of the term?
Aristotle’s claim is that being a citizen is an analogous term depending on the forms of government.[93]
He uses the “aporetic” method (the method that proceeds by exclusion) in order to establish who a citizen is (Pol. 1275a 7-21). The method requires that the strict sense of ‘citizen’ be determined. Then one judges the persons in reference to the definition as the standard. The citizen proper is one:
…who shares in the administration of justice, and in office…. This is the most comprehensive definition of citizen, and best suits all those who are generally so called.[94]
A citizen (a) is not one who lives in a certain place because even women, children, slaves and foreigners also do; (b) is not one who has no legal rights say that of suing and being sued because this provision is open to any person who is covered by a commercial treaty; (c) is not a foreigner who possesses partially the provision of suing and being sued; (d) is not a child (not yet old enough to be enrolled) and old person who has retired; (e) is not a deprived citizen or exiled citizen.
These are not citizens proper without any qualification.
Nevertheless, the kind of government moderates the making of the term ‘citizen’.
Now we see that governments differ in kind, and that some of them are prior and that others are posterior; those which are faulty or perverted are necessarily posterior to those which are perfect.[95]
The two differences which are significant are: (a) those which imply no defect in the definition of citizens but have different constitutions; (b) those state which are defective in the definition of citizens and are defective constitutionally.
Aristotle’s preoccupation is ‘who ought to be’ but not ‘who is considered’, and he is in favor of a functional definition other than a formal or legalistic criterion of citizenship. His main concern is that a citizen fulfils his role of sharing in the deliberative and judicial office. If that is the case, one is referred to as a citizen irrespective of his parentage or the manner in which he came to exercise the required functions. Even though a person may come to exercise the functions unjustly, this is immaterial and does not disqualify him from actually being a citizen in practice.[96]
As most things exist for a given end, the polis also ought to have a purpose for its being.
Our purpose is to consider what form of political community is best of all for those who are most able to realize their ideal of life. We must therefore examine not only this but other constitutions, both such as actually exist in well-governed states, and any theoretical forms which are held in esteem; that what is good and useful may be brought to light. And let no one suppose that in seeking for something beyond them we are anxious to make a sophistical display at any cost; we only undertake this inquiry because all the constitution with which we are acquainted are faulty.[97]
The purpose of the state is the realization of the virtuous life for all who are capable of it. The phrase ‘consider what form of political community is best of all’ signifies that Aristotle’s main concern is not merely any kind of political community but the best form which should be sought. But whom? The phrase ‘for those who are most able to realize their ideal of life’ denotes that there are those who have the capacity, that is, those subjects who use their rationality or mind effectively and positively.
It is this fact of having a mind that enables the human subject (unlike animal) to envision the ideal[98] or something different and judge it as good or best of all and try to realize it.
How is the state to realize its ideal? Or what methodology is required to discern and to realize the ideal?
The phrase “Examine not only this but other constitutions, both such as actually exist in well-governed states, and any theoretical forms which are held in esteem’ indicate that there is an alternative of examining what actually exists (by nature) whether well-governed or not well-governed and of examining what is theoretical, not existing but envisioned (by Plato in the Laws, and Republic). Another possible alternative (though not explicitly mentioned in the text) is the combination of what exists by nature and by mind. The mind conceives and presents a good for realization. So the ideal of the life should be realized if and only if the mind which, however, is in physics (not separated) affects its activity of judging what is good or bad, and its exercise of inquiry is in nature (what is actually existing).
Is the ideal an impossibility? Aristotle’s answer to this issue is implicitly found in the phrase ‘we only undertake this inquiry because all the constitutions with which we are acquainted are faulty’. This implies that the mind detects the faults discovered in nature’s actual realizations. The very fact that the human mind transcends what mere nature produces. Thus as a the state is generated or brought about by nature not mere nature but a subject in nature which includes the mind, then also the purpose of the state, that is, the ideal of life is generated not by mere nature (to be regarded as conative) but by a subject with a human mind, not separated from nature.
The ideal of life should be regarded as normative. Hence the purpose of the state is not merely conative but normative. To realize the ideal of life implies the use of our rationality (not separated from nature) or a complete realization of our nature as subject with a human mind but not simply a mere realization of what is given by nature in the constitutions.
If the purpose of the state is the realization of the ideal of life then the ideal of life is happiness (eudaimonia) or peace. Eudaimonia achieved through the convergence of the various related virtues is the telos, the aim of the political society. Aristotle does not tire to repeat this: the purpose of the state (to en zeu) is to live a happy and virtuous life (pol. 1280a 31; 1280b 6-8; 1328a 35-38)
Though happiness is the aim of the state, yet there are some further questions; whose happiness? That of each citizen or that of all citizens taken distributively? Or is there also a happiness of the city as a political unity?
Aristotle’s response to these questions is explicitly asserted in the statement that ‘happiness of the citizens in the same as that of the city’ (Pol. 1324a 5-1325b 32).
Peace is a good in itself whereas war is only a means to peace.
Plato, in Laws, I, 628C had stated that neither war nor revolution can be considered ‘best in the state’. Best in the state is the absence of both, a situation achieved by mutual accord and peace.[99]
War works in the political body in a way analogous to the way medicine works in the physical organism: it is a means to restore health, and for the political body health is peace.
This principle should form the basis of all sensible politics, anyone who does not subscribe to it will never rise to the top of the legislative profession; preoccupied only with the external battles, far from organizing the war with an eye to peace, he will subject peace to war ([Laws], 628D)[100]
Aristotle picks up Plato’s ‘ideal’ and presses beyond Plato. ‘War for the sake of peace and not for the sake of war. Note that this view is Aristotelian, but it was plainly inspired by Plato.
Aristotle corrects Plato’s restriction of limitation or what one can do in war to Greeks alone. For Aristotle, the humanitarian principles are valid also in waging war with Barbarians.[101]
This is corroborated by Aristotle in that the guardians should not be fierce towards those whom they do not know because a lofty spirit is not fierce by nature except when excited against evil-doers (Pol. 1328a 7-10)
For Aristotle, military service and political affairs are unleisurely and are only obstacles to calm intellectual mediation. His claim is that the speculative life that leads to happiness demands peace and leisure (N.E. 1177b 4ff). It is wrong to present war and conquest as a desirable state policy, though it is a policy exposed by many states. These states, such as Sparta, Crete, Scythia, are those who are far from existing in a state of nature, exist in a political organization that distorts, corrupts, rather than realizes the basic intention and movement of nature. Bu nature, the state ought to aim for peace.
It is certainly Aristotle’s view that war should be subordinate to peace. Not only does he lay claim to such a view, he accepts its material consequences. He approaches the problem of war with a depth and thoroughness foreign both to the Republic and the Laws.[102]
Aristotle raises two objections against ‘war’ and ‘capacity for war’ as the purpose of the state. He asserts that such a view is an ‘absurdity’ and indicates the disposition of ‘ignorance’ or of ‘falsehood’ as regards ‘excellence’. For the state’s aim is the realization of ‘excellence’ in rational activity.
Peace is not a state of inactivity:
It is noted that external actions, that is, actions on others, are not the highest form of activity or cannot be the whole of activity. The evidence is the universe (cosmos) and God, who do not act on others outside themselves, yet they are far from being ‘inactive’ or passive, dormant substances. On the contrary, it is possible to conceive a state in a situation of total isolation from others, thus with no activity on them, yet with sublime and peaceful activity in itself.
Not that a life of action must necessarily have relation to others, as some persons think, nor are those ideas only regarded as practical which are pursued for the sake of practical results, but such more the thoughts and contemplations which are independent and complete in themselves; since virtuous activity, and therefore a certain kind of action, is an end, and even in the case of external action the directing mind is most truly said to act.[103]
Therefore, war or war-making is not the final end of the state; it is, however, a ‘necessity’ imposed by the situation of states having proximity and relations to each other, which are not completely ruled by reason. Being a ‘necessity’, the city must be prepared, and the citizen must be willing to participate in military and political affairs in so far as they are a means to peace.
What nature began to generate with the natural relation of marriage, and the natural association of the family and the need of farmers and artisans, is brought to “perfection” (not the absolute perfection of an idea) but in the relative, limited, real association of an intended, chosen community of solidarity between free citizens who choose to will and do each other’s good.
SUMMARY
It can be concluded that Aristotle does not dispute the Greeks’ view that the polis is a kind of association with a constitution. Nevertheless, he establishes that it is not only the document of the constitution or the government apparatus (the formal cause of the state) but also the citizens (the efficient cause) who are properly constituted in one political community. The polis is a composite in two senses: First, it is a composite in a narrow sense in so far as it is made up of many citizens (Pol. 1274b 39-40); secondly, it is made up of formal constituents and non-formal constituents (Pol. 1328b 36-1329a 4), therefore making it a composite in a wider sense. The polis is also natural in two senses: First it originates from the union of entities which cannot exist without each other by nature; also natural in as much as man is by nature political (Pol. 1253a 1-3) and he must live in a polis which exists by nature (Pol. 1252b 30)
Consequently, the natural, composite political community takes the principle of political reciprocity, but not mere commonality of life, as the basis of its unity. It is also through reciprocal participation of the citizen that the purpose of the state, that is, self-sufficiency or supreme good of man or peace, is actualized.
[1] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1,8.
[2] Trevor J. Saunders, introduction to Politics by Aristotle, trans. By T.A. Sinclair (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 27.
[3] When I quote from another translation, I will indicate the translator.
[4] B. Jowett, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle (London: Claredom Press, 1885), p.x.
[5] B. Jowett, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle p.xi.
[6] Jeremiah Newman, Studies in Political Morality, (Dublin: Scepter Publishers Ltd., 1963), 283-284.
[7] Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsy, History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1966), 66-67.
[8] Ernest Baker, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1946) 1xv.
[9] Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London: Macmillan Press, 1982), 77.
[10] Martin J. Walsh, A History of Philosophy (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), 3-4.
[11] Note that though I use Jaeger’s claim, it is not yet accepted by all the Aristotelian scholars.
[12] G.E.R. Illoyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 20.
[13] Frank W. Walbank, “Ancient Greek Civilization”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (1982) vol. 8:361.
[14] Ernest Barker, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle, p.xii.
[15] Ernest Barker, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle, p.xii.
[16] Ibid., xii.
[17] Aristotle, Politics II, VI, 1265a 20-25
[18] Ernest Barker, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle, p.xvi.
[19] Ibid., xvii.
[20] Ibid., xviii.
[21] Donald Kagan, The Great Dialogue: History of Geek Political Though, From Homer to Polybius, (New York: Free Press, 1965), 197
[22] Walbank, op.cit 368.
[23] Aristotle, Politics, IV, 1295b 19ff.
[24] Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, 42. 2-5.
[25] Anselm H. Amadio, “Aristotle”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (1982), vol. 1:1164
[26] Aristotle, Politics, 1, 1253a 20-25.
[27] St Thomas Aquinans, The Division and methods of the science, ed. By Armand Maurer (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 17.
[28] Dario Composta, History of Ancient Philosophy (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1990), 288.
[29] Cf. Brentano Franz, Aristotle and His World View (London: University of California Press, 1978), 7. The works include not only the extant ones but also some lost works.
[30] George H. Sabine and Thoman L. Thorson, A History of Political Theory, (Illonians: dry den Press, 1981), 96-97
[31] Ibid., 97-98.
[32] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1274b 34-38.
[33] Note that in declaring what a state is, Aristotle starts with the material cause, that is, the citizens themselves, because it is that which he observes, what nature gives and not Platonic forms.
[34] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1274b 39-40.
[35] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1276b 11-13
[36] Strauss and Cropsey, op. cit., 104
[37] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252a 3.
[38] Ibid., VII, 1328a 37.
[39] H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1957), 75
[40] Collins English Dictionary (3rd edition), (Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 221.
[41] Aristotle, Physics, I, 188a 31-34.
[42] Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, I , 1715b 14-16
[43] Aristotle, Metaphysics, 4.1014b 16-18.
[44] Aristotle, Metaphysics, 4.1014b 16-18.
[45] Ibid., 4.1015a 17-19.
[46] Jacques Maritain, Philosophy of Nature (New York: Philosophy Library, 1951), 8.
[47] Jaques Maritain, Philosophy of Nature, p.10
[48] Aristotle, De Incesus Animalium 2.704b 15-17.
[49] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252b 27-32
[50] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York: Russell and Russell Inc., 1950) 272-273.
Destructive, consciously or unconsciously, of these minor-Socratic, Aristotle is also rebutting, again it may be unconsciously, the teaching of the Radical Sophists. The State is no artificial construction, whereby the weak have defrauded the strong of the right of their might, and defeated Nature’s intentions; it is the natural supplement of the weakness of us all, which has grown inevitably out of our needs and instincts. Its laws are no covenant securing for men their natural and pre-social rights against one another, as Lycoiphron had taught; nor are they the maxims of deceit by which the weak juggle the strong into submission, as Plato had made Callicles argue in the Gorgias: they are the expression of the reason that is in man, enforced, as against the passion that is also within him, by the association into which he has grown.
[51] L.A. Barth, “Sophists”, in New Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington: The Catholic University of America, 1967), vol. 13:437-438.
[52] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1253a 1-4.
[53] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p.270-271.
According to Ernest Barker, the argument form speech is notable for the light which it throws on Aristotle’s conception of the state. By nature, it is speech which differentiates men’s associations from the flocks or herds. Man has a communion in moral ideas, communicated by speech. For speech is the voice of reason. That being the case, then to make speech the bond of the state is to make the state cohere in virtue of a principle or reason. So the state bases on reason, which is the highest part of man, denotes that man can only be truly united in a life of reason, which is the highest part of man, denotes that man can only be truly united in a life of reason. However, Barker acknowledges further that according to human nature man is born with faculties like speech, which prudence and virtue should employ, yet which vice may wrest from their grasp to use for opposite ends. That being the case, then man’s capacities for evil make a state indispensable to prevent their consequences – this view of human nature is expressed by Machiavelli or Hobbes.
[54] Ernest Barker, The political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 269-270
[55] Cary j. Nederman, “The Puzzle of the Political Animal: Nature and Artifice in Aristotle’s Political Theory, “Review of Politics” 56 (1994): 283.
[56] Nederman, op. cit., 285.
[57] Fred D. Miller, Jr., “Aristotle’s Political Naturalism”, Apeiron 22 (December 1989): 216.
[58] Joseph Chan, “Does Aristotle’s Political Theory Rest on a ‘Blunder’?”, History of Political Thought 13 (Summer 1992): 201.
[59] Nederman, op. cit., 286.
[60] Ibid., 286.
[61] Nederman., op. cit., 288.
[62] Ibid., 288.
[63] Aristotle, De anima, 433a 13-16
[64] Nederman, op.cit., 290.
[65] Ibid., 296.
[66] Ibid., 296-297.
[67] Nederman, op. cit., 302-303.
[68] John Locke, Of Civil Government Second Treatise, with Introduction by Russel Kirk (Chicago: Henry Renery Company, 1964), 13. Even John Locke embraces the view that the state is natural when he asserts that, “…we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others; this was the cause of men’s uniting themselves as first in political societies.”
[69] Ernest Barker, The Political Though t of Plato and Aristotle, 266. Though the household may be primarily meant for mere life, yet it also secures good life. It has a moral use since the father has a moral influence over his children, and the master over his slaves.
[70] Irwin H. Terence, Aristotle’s First Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 411. A master is a slave’s master, but does not belong to the slave, while the slave belongs to the master in the way the master’s parts or tools belong to him. Cf. Politics, Politics, 1, 1254a 8-16.
[71] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 267. But with all the various facets which it presents, the household is not sufficient for man. It is absolutely necessary to him, Aristotle confesses: it must not be rejected, as it was by Plato, in favor of the larger association of the State: it must be rejected – but as part of a larger whole.
[72] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p.278.
[73] Ernest Barker acknowledges that: To Plato the state was an organ in a higher and universal scheme. That view does not occur in Aristotle, for he rejects the Platonic Idea of the Good, and regards the scheme of human life, directed towards the human good, as self-subsistent and ultimate. He further states that the idea of God as the Final Cause, if pushed to its consequences, would involve the Platonic conception: the state would become an ‘organ’ to God.
[74] Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII, 1035b 23. “For they cannot even exist if served from the whole.”
[75] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p.227. Newman points out that the degree of dependence of the individual upon the State is by no means necessarily the same as that of the member upon the body. The equality of the two dependencies (Pol. 1253a 27) is simply assumed.
[76] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p.280.
[77] Ibid., 281.
[78] Stanley Munsat, “What is a Process?”, in American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969): 79-83. Every process consists of four parts or stages – namely, an initial stage (or object or stuff – the things that undergo a process), an event or activity, an episode, and lastly, a product or result (which is sometimes a state). To ascertain that the process is natural, there are necessary characteristics which should be fulfilled: that is, it is a process in so for as it connotes the concepts of ‘leading to’, ‘culminating in’ – which are understood in terms of casual principles or institutional procedures (as opposed to ‘ending when’) and it involves a very definite direction in a special or a peculiar manner toward a specific end. Thus ‘process’ is a teleological concept. For energeia in is actualization.
[79] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 232.: Cf. Okwudiba Nnoli, Introduction to Politics (Ibadan: Longman Nigeria Limited, 1986), 23. Aristotle combats Plato’s conception of Political unity, (i.e. oneness), and then he suggests his own. Note that both Plato and Aristotle embrace the view that the state is a community of a union or co-operation of unlike members who, because of their differences, are able to satisfy their needs by the exchange of goods or services, i.e. that the state depends upon a division of labor. However, Aristotle differs from Plato because he distinguishes several types of communities of which the state is only one, though being the highest.
[80] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1261a 15-22.
[81] Nicomachean Ethics, V, 1132b 32ff.
[82] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1261b 11-32.
[83] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1262a 40ff.
[84] Sabine and Thorson, op.cit., 99. Aristotle’s rejections of communism show that the ideal state of the Republic was never entertained by him as an ideal. His ideal was always constitutional rule which requires both parties – ruler and ruled – to be free men, and this demands a degree of moral equality.
[85] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p.232.
[86] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1328b 2-3.
[87] G.F. Kreyche, “Causality”, in New Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington: The Catholic University of America, 1967), vol. 3:342-343
[88] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1328b 36-1329a 4.
[89] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1329a 28-29. No husbandman or mechanic should be appointed to be a priest because the gods should receive honor form the citizens only.
[90] Ibid, VII, 1329a 20-21
[91] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1329a 13-16
[92] Ibid., VII, 1329a 33-34, 38-39.
[93] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1275a 2.
[94] Ibid., III, 1275a 23-34.
[95] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1275b 24.
[96] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1275b 24.
[97] Ibid., III 1275b 34ff.
[98] It is not something existing only as an idea, but is a possibility which one seeks to achieve with a deliberate conscious purpose.
[99] Maurice Defourny, “The Aim of The State: Peace” Articles on Aristotle, vol. II, Ethics and Politics, ed by Barnes Jonathan, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sarabji (New Yrok: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 196 -197. Though Plato states his ideal of peace, he speedily casts is aside. For his envisaged ideal sate is one ideal state is one of guardians living in a training camp, and civil life except a favored few. He based peace on a full-scale military organization.
[100] Ibid., 196.
[101] Ibid., 197. Plato permitted any atrocity in case of war against the Barbarians. However, in a war between Greeks, the combatants should behave like gentlemen as the Greek states together form a kind of great republic.
[102] Defourny, op.cit., 197.
[103] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1325b 16-23
After dealing with Aristotle’s notion of the purpose and nature of the polis, we will make investigation into the types of goods present in the polis which are unified by the common good. The order of our enquiry will be as follows; first, the problem of the human good; then moral knowledge as both theoretical and practical wisdom; analogical knowledge; practical goods; the chief, final and common good; the constitution and the common good; and lastly, the political activity and the common good.
The problem that Aristotle is dealing with in all his philosophical reflection is not the idea or the theme of good or goodness. It is a problem that arises from what we observe and experience of the world everyday. All people, observation shows us, want to be happy. The same people, again observation shows, call good those things through the attainment of which they expect to be made happy. And by good they mean that the things form the attainment of which they expect happiness are worthy of the hard work and the struggle required for obtaining them. This implies that happiness or the good life is an activity. But once again experience shows us that there exists the greatest confusion and disagreement on every aspect of the question because of the very fact that people do not deal with real issues.
It is the philosophical approach and methodology that Aristotle followed which allowed the problem to come forth. Not everybody saw the issue as a problem. Some saw it as a problem but thought they had found the answer[1]. Aristotle was not satisfied with either.
Central in Aristotle’s anthropology is that the human being is a true cause of its own moral development: of the kind of person each one is. Aristotle puts forward the thesis that as a starting point of the enquiry, the struggle to become good men, including the discussion about it, is good, and it arises from the people. That is the fact from which Aristotle starts his first principle in the order of enquiry. And his first assumption is that ethical action cannot be justified form outside, but finds justification from the conditions of the human moral agent itself.
“The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does [the acts of goodness]; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts and choose them for their own sakes and thirdly his actions must proceed form a firm and unchangeable character”[2]
The choice of a life’s content and a life’s character is a personal matter in the sense that both the choosing and the attaining is within the responsibility of each person. This was also Plato’s teaching. “Everybody is responsible for his own choice.” (Rep., X, 618e; Cf. also 617e). Yet the teaching of Aristotle is not quite the same. Plato’s statement was rather an indictment of the situation of the human soul in an earthly body. Goodness or badness was a matter of possession or not possession, of perfection, respectively. Unless you are perfect, you are not responsible. On the contrary, for Aristotle, the good is already found in an incomplete but real way in the actual striving for it through repeated actions.
The whole important condition is that these actions originate from the will of the agent and are not from outside. This implies a process of becoming. If an action is done in mere subservience from and to outside command, without an understanding of it, a deliberation and choosing of it, that action cannot be called a moral action. (Plato could not call one’s actions moral because they were not perfect but mixed). But his thesis of Aristotle was far form being accepted by all.
At the time of Aristotle, various types of fatalism were popular. The early Stoic philosophers, such as Carneades, held that nobody can be considered guilty of so-called wrong doing or can be praised for acts of so-called right doing. Acts of injustice, murder, adultery, or their opposites, should be attributed to the celestial bodies, and ultimately to God himself. The human society seems to be quite helpless. A slightly mitigated variation of the above belongs also to the Stoic philosophers, Chrisippus and Philipater. According to their cosmology the universe and its own development, of which the human beings are part, is a rigid concatenation of causes and effects with no room for decision and no need for deliberation. All human actions, including judgment and assent being an act, are determined by the higher power. (On this Cf. D. Amand, Fatalisme et libertè dans l’antiquitè grecque, Louvian, 1945, pp 41-68). A third kind of fatalism came from some sages of Egypt. According to their teaching, in their doctrine what happens in the world, man inclusive, is ruled by the movement of the heavenly bodies. Events, however, can be somewhat modified not by wise and moral action, but by prayers and sacrifice to the gods. A fourth type of fatalism came form some of the wisest men among the Greek philosophers also belonging to Stoa. According to these philosophers human free initiative and choice is possible, but the outcome of it is ruled by fate[3].
In Aristotle’s perspective, a good action cannot be chosen because it is commended by God. In Aristotle’s doctrine the Divine Substance does not issue command.[4] Aristotle’s response to this popular doctrine was that happiness is not a matter of luck or fate or caprice of the gods. It is not by chance that some people are happy while others are not. Nor is it by the goodwill of higher beings. Aristotle rejects all these opinions in virtue of his metaphysics according to which the first act does not know the world of human beings; this perfect substance and pure act only knows his own thinking activity (ME., XII, 9,1074b 33-35). Aristotle saw Cosmos and Nature as teleological realities. His rational justification of this interpretation of nature and of the Cosmos lies in his doctrine of the first act who is at the same time the first Separate Principle of the Cosmos and Nature. According to Aristotle’s metaphysical doctrine, the first act causes the world’s existence in the manner of final cause engendering in the universe an efficacious love for it. Consequently,
Everything is oriented toward the good: all things tend toward what is perfect: the First Act is loves by all things: the movement of the universe is a constant aspiration toward the highest good.[5]
The relation between knowledge and the moral good has various aspects and refers to different levels. We are interested in two of them. First, what knowledge is required in order to become good? Second, can we know what is good? In Aristotle’s doctrine, the two questions are aspects of one more fundamental question which embraces both of them and connects them. The more fundamental question is: How does one become in actuality the human political animal that Nature intended him to be and for which Nature endowed him with specific potentialities and a soul? The question can be abbreviated in the “imperative”: Become what you are. The imperative, however, must not be interpreted in the light of the Kantian Categorical imperative.[6] It is more appropriate to interpret the imperative as an Aristotelian version of the motto on the portal of the temple of Apollo in Delphi, the religious centre of the confederacy of Greek cities. For Aristotle both statements are true and related. One cannot know himself in the actual striving through activity to become himself. And also, in order to become himself he must know what is the self he must become. Aristotle never tires of repeating that one learns to know what the good is in the action through which he shrives to be good.
[A]s a condition for the possession of the knowledge [that is not acquired through form the reflected experience of this life] has little or no weight… It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these would have even a prospect of becoming good.[7]
He never tires of repeating that mere theoretical knowledge especially if it is the knowledge of separate ideas or forms, is not sufficient for enlightening and guiding our ethical conduct and forming our moral character. For both moral character and conduct refer to our existence in this contingent, material world made up of particular things that are also composed of things and in continuous change. Unchangeable and pure ideas are of no use for this task. The two questions: what kind of knowledge is required in order to become good and how do we achieve this knowledge can be studied together by enquiring into the origin and nature of moral wisdom.
In moral knowledge, Aristotle distinguishes between the general knowledge of right and wrong and the actual ethical judgments considering the ethical quality of particular acts in the complex and variable situations of life. Both are part of self-knowledge. And self-knowledge, according to Aristotle, is achieved through a progressive process that requires sense-experience. It is in the activity in and for the world that man discovers his own being and becomes aware of the world and of himself. In this process, he discovers his own nature the permanent inclination towards the good. He comes to an increasing understanding of the nature and goal of his internal longing.
There is first the “general intuition” of right and wrong in the form of ethical idea to which humans are called. This ethical idea coincides with the full development of man’s natural capacities in which happiness consists. (It is the attraction of nature towards a goal which is not explicitly known at first. “Nature” knows it, and Nature inscribes this implicit knowledge in the aspiration or urge to become oneself). At this stage, the issue is not the ethical character of some human actions, but the more general question of the character of one’s life. At issue is the worth and capacity of human conduct to attain and realize that ethical idea.
Next to the general knowledge of right and wrong there are the concrete judgments concerning the ethical quality of particular acts. There is neither theoretical nor practical technical know-how. If a person has developed moral virtues sufficiently, that person’s insight into the moral quality of a situation and of an action will not be misled by passions and emotional impulses. That person’s ethical intuition can reliably be taken as right. In Aristotle’s opinion, only a virtuous individual has that capacity because only a virtuous individual can perceive in the concrete situations of life what is really of value and of worth in them (N.E. VI, 1144a 34-b1; III, 1113a 29-33).
A virtuous man is able to formulate correct moral judgment in all situations; everybody assesses what is good and pleasant according to his habits. An individual with moral habits will valuate rightly what is good; he is like a rule and a criterion in these matters.[8]
Sometimes, this capacity is called the moral sense, moral intuition or moral wisdom. Aristotle would agree with these appellations as they describe as it is an intuition which is the actualization of the natural sense of right and wrong. This intuition is acquired through long experience, training and discipline in the active participation of human life in the political community. In this sense, and only in this sense, would Aristotle accept a similarity between moral virtue and technical skills: both are learned as a result of repeated actions, and both are possessed when they have become permanent dispositions (N.E. VI, 1139a 33-34)
The highest perfection and the true happiness of man does not consist in sensible pleasure; though it includes it, nor in honor and political power, though it includes also these. “It decidedly consist in, moral virtue and intellectual contemplation, which represents the highest performance of which an individual is capable. (N.E.,X, 1177a 12-18). In this way the end of life is a reflection of divine perfection and resides in permanent self-contemplation” [9]
In Aristotle’s doctrine, happiness is connected with the highest power present in the human being. It is the faculty which enables man to grasp what is good and divine. Aristotle does not identify it completely with the mind, but he never mentions any power higher than the intellect. What Aristotle is sure of is that it is the most divine power present in man (N.E.,X 1177a 12-18).
Aristotle’s ethical investigation is a constant effort to disclose the true nature of human happiness. In his view the goal can only be reached through the practice of the moral virtues (Pol. VII, 1332a 7-9) and particularly through the full development of the mind, in other words, through contemplation.[10]
Moral decision is a complex activity. It is not simply a conclusion from general principles. That is why
Deliberation is not an immediate and sudden intuition: it is a slow and gradual process, based on former experience and practice, concerning the polis, deliberation is mainly administered by the elders (cf. p.36, footnotes) with a view to uncovering and valuating the components of a project.[11]
Deliberation is done by the leading principle, the hegemonic principle, of the soul. The term “hegemonic” has two connotations: It refers to the power of ruling over the passions, but, even more importantly, it refers to the fact that the human agent is master of his own action. “A deliberation, (as Verbeke points out), will come to end when an agent, after a process of reflection, returns to himself the authority or power of deciding. As long as the deliberation continues, the agent is in a state of hesitation and uncertainty.”[12]
According to Aristotle, deliberation leads to a choice (proaiesis). Sometime, as in Book III of Nicomachean Ethics, ‘by choice’, Aristotle means a choice of means to an end. At other times as in Books II, and VII of Nicomachean Ethics, he designates the moral intention of the human agent.
Aristotle shows a particular care in clarifying the nature of moral wisdom. Its permanent character does not mean that it is a static reality, but with a stable disposition and capacity of the human being to judge morally human conduct in situations that are constantly changing and of various complexity. In this sense, moral wisdom does not coincide with scientific or technical knowledge.
[It] belongs to the opinative part of the soul [tou doxastikou]. In Aristotle’s teaching moral wisdom is a virtue: it is an abiding habit allowing an individual to formulate right judgments about the way to behave in concrete situations.[13]
It is important to note also that the certitude implied is not an absolute end. It is relative to the kind of knowledge that is possible and required by the fact that it is the knowledge of a human being of contingent matter, in contingent situations. It belongs to the moral wisdom not to expect more, nor to be satisfied with less.
Through the contemplation not of separate ideas but of the intelligible essences as they reveal themselves in and through their activities in the world, the human person is enabled to take his place in the teleology of nature. It is enabled to “become in actuality what is in potentiality”. And in and through this process of self-realization by the human being, nature achieves what it has desired to achieve, to bring into existence a world that is an ethical reality. This is why Aristotle judges the perfect and constant activity of human reason to be the highest degree of perfection of man and the universe and, consequently, the highest degree of happiness can only be found in the performance of an activity in which not only the chosen human goals are achieved, but in and through nature’s teleology finds competent expression. There are activities which aim at an end which is not just any end but that which is intended by nature. These kinds of activities will be not only of a determinate type, but will be characterized by a specific form and thus be intelligible. Happiness then will also require that nature’s intentionality and kind of activity be known. This knowledge and this capacity and permanent disposition are attained in and through the virtue of moral wisdom. Thus happiness is not an illusion but a real possibility for persons who are capable and willing to let nature lead them to their telos and nature can be relied upon if nothing else, because the attainment of his telos by nature’s human ergon which is the good of and for man, is at the same time the good of and for the nature.
In Nicoamchean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle intends not only to write a personal essay but also to expound a science. It is the science of living a life that is worthy of human beings. In a sense the “supreme” good that there is, is not just opinions but a scientific knowledge of life in the polis. The Metaphysics begins with the statement “Every man, by nature, desires to know.” And:
Every art and every inquiry and similarly, every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good: And for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.[14]
Joseph Owens makes the following comments on these words:
This assertion strikes the key-note of the whole Aristotelian ethical doctrine, just as the opening sentence of the Metaphysics expressed the motif of the primary philosophy.[15]
Aristotle is not taking for granted notions like the universal finality of the good, the subordinateness of the different sciences and arts, the possibility of the pursuit of the life that is “good and beautiful”, the identity of the objective individual good with that of the Greek city-state. The notions were familiar to and accepted by Aristotle’s students. They were the core of the Greek Paideia, and this acceptance was further strengthened by the convictions of the superiority of Greek life over the life of the “barbarians”. “The presumption that this Platonic background is operative in the hearers throughout the entire first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, and will make itself felt sufficiently in the following books, is quite clearly indicated.”[16]
Within the Platonic background, Aristotle raises a very important question. It is not enough to claim dialectically, the objective existence and possibility of the scientific knowledge of the good life. It must be shown that this possibility refers to the actual life lived in the actual Greek cities where life is lived in the midst of particularity and change. It is necessary but not sufficient to indicate the existence of political science as a regulative science and the existence of the city-state as the evidence of possibility of the “good and beautiful life.” For the same cities were providing even more “convincing” evidence that there is no science of life or of politics and there were enough “teachers” and political parties that were pointing that out and were operating accordingly.
“As entire separate good like the Platonic idea, even if it existed, could not function as the good sought in human action.”[17] The science must show that the good is also the good for men, is guiding every human action by which men seek to be good. In other words, it must show that the objective principles of the “good and beautiful” life exist in the mind of actual human being living in a polis, that it governs their activity and that this activity is efficacious. This science and art of existing in the mind of the citizens and properly ordered in and by the constitution is not only a good, but in a relative but very real sense, the supreme good.
For Aristotle to say that something is a good is to say that is has the capacity to elicit the desire of itself in a being capable of desire. Correspondingly, it is also say that any existing being endowed with mind is capable of desiring that which is. This capacity is native in it, it belongs to its essence. It is not an addition to being, but an elucidation of it. Consequently the good accompanies being in all its manifold expressions. The philosophical tradition has given the name of transcendentals to such categories as good, true, one etc.
For the rational being that man is, knowledge is such a good. And, as we have seen above, it is, in relative but real sense, a supreme good because it originates the capacity to desire and governs it. Goodness shares with being the characteristics of being one and many. Actual existence are many in number and extremely different in kind. To be truly good, knowledge must do justice to this characteristic of being. Our knowledge of being involves similarity and diversity.
Our prediction of being involves similarity/ diversity. When directed to God or this man, his act of existing, and his portrait, ‘real’ or ‘being’ has a meaning which is neither completely identical nor totally different, but which weds diversity and similarity.
In brief, actual beings, or knowledge of them as beings, and our affirmation for being concerning then are all characterized by similarity/ diversity. How can this characterization of being common to those three distinct areas be conveniently described? By the single term ‘analogy’. Actual existent are analogous to one another: our metaphysical knowledge of them is analogous, our predication concerning them is analogous.
In each case the adjective simply points to that situation of similarity/ diversity in actuals, in knowledge, in predication.[18]
Observation, Aristotle says, shows that the good cannot be a Platonic idea. In fact it is not even an object that appears identical in all its instances. “Goodness, rather, is an object that varies as it is seen in the useful, in pleasure, in honor, in wisdom and so on. It has a different definition in each of these cases. It is not something that corresponds to one single idea. It functions as an Aristotelian equivocal, and seems to be analogical in its different instances.[19]
The definition of honor and prudence and pleasure are different and distinct under the very aspect of being good. Therefore the good is not something common in the way of an idea. How then are they called good? They surely do not seem like things equivocal by chance. Are they then called good because they are from something one, or because they are all ultimately directed towards something one? Or are they good rather by analogy? For just as sight is good in the body, so is the mind in the soul, and similarly another thing in something else.[20]
In the text, the analogous term is sharply distinguished from the mere equivocal. Equivocal are things that have only the name in common but different definitions in so far as they are denoted by that name. we can and do say “this is a living” referring to a real person and to a painting. But we know that, in the example given, “Living” has not the same definition as it has when we say that both the horse and the rider are living things (cf. Categories, I, 1a 1-6).
Aristotle intends to provide solid foundations for the existence of one of the good for man. To do this he has to do justice to two requirements that seem to contrast with one another: that of particularity and difference and that of unity and sameness. He does so by identifying the real entity which primarily and in itself realizes the predicate and to which the predicate belongs primarily and in itself. Then he gathers in the extension of the predicate so determined, all other items that are in some real way related to the primarily entity as the cause of all their sharing in the being defined in the predicate and possessed property in the original entity. In this way, Aristotle thinks he has provided the real, ontological foundation to the capacity of the rational; animal, that is, man has to think and to speak about goodness and the goodness for man. He is convinced that he has provided the basis for a real science of the good-life-for man.
Good is, in Aristotle’s philosophy, a metaphysical category, one of the transcendentals, i.e. one of the categories that accompany being wherever being is and in whatever forms it is in. Therefore, like being, it is not a genus, or a definition in the strict logical sense of the word. It is a metaphysical term expressing an ontological symbol. In book IV of Metaphysics, Aristotle writes:
There are many senses in which a thing may be said to ‘be’, but all that ‘is’ related to one central point, one definite kind of thing (physics), and is not said to be by a mere ambiguity. Everything which is healthy is related to health, one thing in the sense that it preserves health, one thing in the sense that it produces it, another in the sense that it is a symptom of health, another because it is capable of it.[21]
Our inquiry into Aristotle’s Ethics or Political Philosophy must indicate the actuality (it must be an actuality because actuality originates potentiality not vice versa) to which the various realities called good are related and in what way and in which order they are related.
The best point from which to investigate Aristotle’s meaning of good is to investigate it in what he considers the highest expressions of the good and at the same time the highest ergon (work) of nature: the Political Community. The gods we will investigate even if very briefly are: the constitution not as legal document but in its primary political expression which is the political community itself; the law (general or legal justice); equity (particular justice) and friendship. The first two [the constitution and the law] form the world of normal justice whereas the second two [equity and friendship] form the world of higher justice.
a) The Constitution
Aristotle defines constitution as: “the organization of a polis with respect to its offices generally, but especially in respect to that particular office which is sovereign in all issues.”[23]
And again:
An organization of offices in a state by which the method of their distributions is fixed, the sovereign office is determined, and the nature of the end to be ensured by the association and its members is described.[24]
There are two ways of looking at a constitution: considering the document (Aristotle had collected 158 of them if non Greek constitutions are not counted) or considering the living political community. The term is used in both meanings and thus creates some confusion. To understand Aristotle’s ethical and philosophical standpoint, while both types of consideration are required, the second is the primary and fundamental: the first needs to be placed within the context of the second.
Note that “sovereignty” is either referred to as a strictly political category in the sense of an objectified and legitimized organization of political power and constitution or as a more fundamental social category that stands at the origin and foundation of the political community including its structure of organization and power. The second meaning is primarily and fundamental because the sovereign creates obligation, not only for himself, but it is the basis for others’ good being normative, creating obligation and rules.
b) The Law (general law or legal justice) as an irreplaceable factor of moral formation:
Aristotle believes that positive legislation aims at the conscious articulation of Nature’s teleology as this finds expression in the human being who is the highest achievement of Nature. Nature’s intentionality does not show itself in the isolated individual but rather the human being actively and competently participating in the life of the polis. For the polis is what Nature aims to achieve: “the polis exists by nature and…it is prior to the individual.” That is why: “there is an immanent impulse in all men towards an association of this order.”[25] “Nature”, according to our theory, “makes nothing in vain.” The main point of these words of Aristotle is not only to empathetically deny the very possibility of the existence of a human being who is not at the same time and in virtue of his being human a member of the community but there is also the intention to stress the difference between human associations from non-human associations. As Ernest Barker comments:
Aristotle here concedes and indeed argues, that in saying that the state is natural he does not mean that it ‘grows’ naturally, without human volition and action. There is art as well as nature, and art co-operates with nature: the volition and action of human agents ‘constructs’ the state in co-operation with a natural immanent impulse.[26]
That is why Aristotle adds to the words quoted above the following words: “But the man who first constructed an association was nonetheless the greatest of benefactors.”[27] Unlike in the case of non human associations, there is science and art in the making of the human polis. The science and art that Aristotle mentions in connection with the statement that nature makes nothing in vain is the science and art of speaking: “and man alone of the animals is furnished with the faculty of language.”[28] Language is more than instrument. It is that gift of nature in and through the exercise of which nature’s native endowment in the human animal gradually becomes actualized into the human political community. Legislation is a significant instance of the act of speaking, of the act of saying what things truly are and above all what the human being truly is. Language belongs to the constitutive factors of the sovereignty that governs the generation and growth of the human being, it belongs essentially to its constitution.
“Where the laws are not sovereign there is no constitution. Law should be sovereign on every issue, and the magistrates and the citizens should decide about details.”[29] The point of citizens deciding about the details is explained in connection with Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus of Miletus, a man who “without practical experience of politics…attempted to handle the theme of the best form of constitution.”[30] The points that Aristotle makes in this critique are: First, laws are not made by an individual or even by a single generation. They are the work of a people taken as one whole across generations. Furthermore law-making is not an exercise of pure reason or of pure craftsmanship. It involves the whole political body. The sovereignty of the law is in the nature of the power of bringing about the external and internal conditions for the generating of moral wisdom and moral character in human beings.
Moral education, especially of the youth, is caught up in what appears to be an impasse. Moral education depends on knowledge, namely it depends the intuition of what is good or bad in particular and changing situation. But the capacity to perceive the moral character of a person or the moral quality of a situation depends on the existence of a moral character and insight. One has to behave morally, Aristotle teaches, in order to be able to grasp what is truly good or bad. “It is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good.”[31]
And, again, “Socrates…thought that virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, all of them, forms of scientific knowledge), while we think they involve knowledge.”[32] Furthermore, Socrates thought these “scientific principles were already in the soul, whereas, Aristotle thinks they are learned through experience, training and long practice. “Practical wisdom is not the faculty, but it does not exist without this faculty.” “It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue.”[33] The wisdom which those in need of moral education lack is provided in large manner by the laws. The laws are expression of the wisdom and moral character which the polis has accumulated through the reflected experience of generations.
Also for Aristotle, laws do have a compulsory force and must be enforced on the morally immature. But this aspect of the law is not sole nor its primary function. Laws are not merely rules of conduct imposed from outside. They do not aim merely at the correct behavior, but at generating the good and moral person and the good and moral community. They are “rational” rule. They come from a personal loving and rational insight into the good and just and they go to the soul of the youth and they generate not an obedience of compulsion or mere obedience to the law. They go into the soul of youth to generate a rational and loving insight into the good and just of their own.
Laws are a significant manifestation of the relation between moral competence and character and political society. They are a significant manifestation of the teleology of nature. This complex, contingent, changing and confused world is the original situation if the human being for it is the situation intended for him by nature. Principles, criteria, definitions, categories of what is good and right are formed in and by the human intellect. And this formation depends on and originates from the experience of an active participation in the life of the political community.[34] It is by means of articulated language[35] that man is enabled to discuss with other individuals about moral values, moral principles and moral criteria; that he is able to develop intellectual and moral virtues and thus to come to possess the moral habits, the moral competence of his own that will make him an adult moral person. Laws have an irreplaceable education function. Because they contain and communicate not only theoretically but also practically the moral character and knowledge in the school of life in the city, but not necessarily in the formal setting of a school. Unlike the capacity to perceive and accept moral values, which presupposes the existence of moral wisdom in a person, ethical insight depends only on our moral conduct guided by the moral knowledge of others. From the personal experience of our objectively moral action, our moral knowledge and character is gradually formed.
With the call of equity as a legal category providing the efficacious parameters and framework within which equality is judged and justice administered, Aristotle intended to ensure that equality and justice is realized within legislating wisdom. However, he does not think that the task of realizing true justice and equality in the political society is not yet completed. Something more and different is needed to complement the legal wisdom and the legal apparatus. This realization leads to consideration of higher order of justice. The issue here is that of transforming the rendering of justice with the right equality, which is a good and a very great but incomplete good, into a complete good.
The “higher order of justice” must be understood as referring to an order that is different from the normal order of justice or one that will replace it. Far form replacing the normal order; it assured its proper existence and functioning. It does so by freeing the normal order of justice from excessive demands that it cannot meet without distorting itself by becoming an order of justice.[36] It is not a legal reality, but a “spirit" (Pol. 1283a 22) that must invest the whole legal order in order to restore to the normal order of justice the ethical character and at the same time the social rather than the strictly political character.
a) Equality, justice and equity
Equality is an equivocal term. An “empty principle”, and “abstract and vague principle”, are the terms that W. Von Leyden uses in his study of Aristotle’s understanding of justice and equality and their use in political life. He concludes the chapter on “The definition of Equality” in Aristotle with the following statement: “Equality is a common term and as such stands for a pervasive concept, it does not per se indicate common features or refer to what is common to all parts given.”[37]
Equality is a term that refers to many things and in many ways. “Equal and unequal have as many senses as there are categories, and in this respect, they are to be treated like the other ‘common terms’ which he analyses in the Metaphysics.”[38]
The reference is to Aristotle’s distinction between forms of “equivocal terms”. Within them there is the predication according to analogy, which is a term that names different things from the standpoint of something to which all are in reality related in some way. Proportional equality or Equity: In connection with the causes of the destruction of constitutions, Aristotle makes this statement:
We must first assume, as the basis of our argument, that the reason why there is a variety of different constitutions is the fact…that while men are all agreed in doing homage to justice, and to the principle of proportionate equality (in which it issues), they fail to achieve it in all practice.[39]
Aristotle has two formulations of equality (particular justice). Both are formulated in connection with “distributive justice. “This first he calls “absolute” because in this understanding of equality, benefits or burdens are distributed in the exact amount, with “numerical” equality, regardless of any substantive relevant differences in the parties concerned, or any disproportion between what is required or given on the one side and the capacity or merit on the other. This understanding of equality is generally called ‘right to equal treatment.’[40] The second is the ‘right to be treated as equal’[41] which is the right not to receive the same honor, office or amount of resources regardless of significant difference one has, but to be treated with the same respect as any one else. Significant and relevant differences are constitutive of the self. To ignore the differences, which, considered in each person are not differences but are part of the sameness that qualifies that person, is not to be just but unjust. The principle of proportional equality, then, can be formulates as: treat equals equally and treat unequal unequally but in such a way that in each case justice is done between what is given and what is deserved or owned. Doing justice in accordance to proportional equality is connected by Aristotle with the very purpose of the state, which is good life or good actions. To have a correct understanding and to do justice correctly is central to the purpose for which the state has been constructed. And to have such construction is the reason why, in justice, gratitude and praise should be given to the constructor.
b) Friendship and the loyalty to the spirit of the constitution
Aristotle speaks of the spirit of a political community, of the concrete political community unified in the collective striving to ensure the existence of a good and just city. This is the primary meaning that Aristotle gives to the term “constitution”. What is being constituted is not a juridical document, but the concrete human reality envisaged in the juridical document. It is this reality, not the document, which is most “godlike”. “Friendship and love play an essential role in marriage, family life and other communities, particularly in political societies.”[42] For Aristotle, friendship is more social than a political virtue and relation because it is found in all kinds of societies.
Friendship as a political good. It empowers other political goods, or provides security in the possession of all other goods.
After what we have said (about goods of living), a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view of living. For without friends one would not choose to live, though he had all other goods.[43]
There is no incompatibility between friendship and political life. For on the one hand, Aristotle says that a state aims at being as much possible, a society of peers and equals (Pol. 1295b 25-26); so friendship ought to foster true mutual loyalty among members. (N.E. 1156b 6-12). On the other hand, Aristotle thinks that the relation of friendship can exist between master and slave if a slave is a slave by nature and not originated by man-made regulation or violence. For in that case, a community of vital interests can create a communion of life. A real love relationship can be born between them; and a true mutual loyalty to each other’s good. (Pol. 1255b 12-15).
Loyalty as political good: There is a clear reference to the Politics Book IV, chapter 12, where loyalty is described not as mere external or mechanical obedience to the laws and institutions of the polis, but requires a conscious and intentional cherishing of the maintenance of the constitution by the citizens. Loyalty implies the quality of their soul, of their mind and will. So the citizen must intend and will with sincerity and competence the values present in a given constitution. For mere mechanical conformity, even perfect conformity, which is a mere mechanical conformity to the letter of the law, will not satisfy Aristotle’s concept of ‘loyalty to the spirit’ of the constitution.
There is no profit in the best laws, even when they are sanctioned by general civic consent, if the citizens themselves have not been attuned, by the force of habit (i.e. by the force of virtue) and the influence of teaching to the right constitutional temper…
Happiness is in the moral activity of the good man. Human activity that originates, maintains and develops the political community is the activity that originates, maintains and develops the highest good, which is also the chief good. It is the good that is most God-like.
If all communities aim at some good, the city-state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embrace all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.[44]
Aristotle sees the city-state as an association of men who, with their families and clans, have joined together for the efficacious realization of justice and goodness.
The end of the state is the good life… Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions…[45]
It is in virtue of the efficaciousness of its activity that it is also “the happy city”, the city in which one “acts rightly.” And “neither individual nor state can do right actions without virtue and wisdom.”[46]
In saying that the good of all, or of political society, is more divine that the good of the individual (N.E. 1094b 6-10), Aristotle, like all classical thought, directs the individual in all of his aspects to this more divine good.[47]
This god-like good alone has the characteristic of “self-sufficiency” in the sense that, on the one hand it lacks nothing of what it needs for which it exists. As a consequence, it makes what is needed by the members for their activity, available. It is also “complete” not in the sense of not developing further, but in the sense that nothing can be added to it from the outside. All development is from within, and, in each stage of the development, this god-like good is complete. These three characteristics that belong only and exclusively to the good, that is the political society, makes the city-state also the “most sovereign good”. The political society has the capacity to cause the availability, the completeness and the limited but real sovereignty of all other goods that are in it.
One of the more important activities of the political community is moral character. And moral education is the foundation of the existence of moral persons as:
a strong personality, who because of adequate ethical knowledge and constant training gradually effects the full perfection of his being, which coincides with happiness.[48]
Moral education, in Aristotle‘s mind differs from the teaching or learning of technical skill. It is a gradual process (Pol. 1336a 3 – 1337a 7). We are in the order of making. What is changed is the matter used to make the thing, not the maker. Moral education aims at changing the quality of the person, of giving a determinate character to a person. The change is in the order of psychology but not of anthropology. It is in the line of forgiving the whole being of political animal so that the whole being of a person is in symphony with the noble, the admirable and the just. Forgiving requires vigorous and continuous action from the outside, but the form that the forged piece takes is from within and it becomes the form of the thing itself. We are not in the other order of making but of becoming and being. (I am relying on class notes by Dr. Fornasari, on the topic ‘Conscience and Politics’). And, Aristotle states, ‘these (the question of the morally admirable and of the just) are the subject matter of political science.’[49]
A contemporary disciple of Aristotle puts it in this way:
[E]thics also is precisely and primarily (‘formally’) practical because the object one has in mind in doing ethics is precisely my rearing in my actions the real and true goods attainable by a human being and thus my participating in those goods.[50]
The fundamental virtues that produce a character required for the kind of activity that leads to the attainment of the admirable and the just are what tradition has called the cardinal virtues. Character is “something that grows by habit”.[51] The essential element of character is the unshaken presence of purpose in one’s life. “For in purpose lies the essential element of virtue and character.”[52]
For “It is…from man’s choice that we judge character, that is, from the object for the sake of which he acts, not from the act itself.”[53]
For against fatalism, Aristotle shows the fundamental importance of character and the weight that the choices that a person makes has on the person’s character. Analogously this is true also of the political community.
In Eudamian Ethics we find the phrase: Zoon Koinonikon which would lose its full meaning by the literal translation of the “political animal”. This is because we have largely lost Aristotle’s meaning of the polis and consequently that of the adjective Koinonikon. Zoon Koinonikon should be translated as the animal which in virtue of the gift of speaking and listening is contributed in its individual perfection as a human being by the internal relations with all other human beings of the polis. Man is constituted in his freedom, moral character, virtuous (in the double sense of good and efficacious) activity. The common good is not the same as the common interest of modern liberal philosophy.[54] In fact the common good also perceived as the common interest and pursued as a community of character, depends on the moral quality of a person and a political community.
The words Koinonos, companion, partner, and Koinonia, communion participation, and the verbs Koinoo, to have a share in, to communicate, and Koinoneo, to possess together, have a share, join oneself, are very ancient. They are found from Mynenan Greek onward.[55]
“In the Greek and Hellenic world Koinonia was a term which meant the evident, unbroken fellowship between the gods and men.”[56] “Koinonia also denoted the close union between men. It was taken up by the philosophers to denote the ideal to be sought.”[57] Aristotle would agree with all the meanings, with serious doubt, however, about the communion between gods and men.
The type of unity expressed in the terms mentioned above is the exclusive characteristic of human beings. It is made possible by the capacity to speak and listen. With language, man can do things that other natural beings cannot do. Language can articulate and communicate meanings and values, create civilizations. But in these instances, language is only an instrument to be used. The point of the Koinonia and Koinonos is being generated when language is used, meaning and values are expressed and communicated. Why communicate values or meaning at all? What is being born or, if born, what is enabled to grow is that reality which nature has been at work into existence beginning with marriage and the family and finding full realization in the political community. And since Aristotle is not enquiring into ideas but the facts of nature, Aristotle is speaking about the activity of the subject that is brought to birth (Nature means to bring to birth, to generate and to make grow), he is talking about social activity: the entelechy proper to the human being.
Aristotle’s affirmation of the nature of the human good coupled with his theory that the good of the individual and the good of the state are identical will necessarily lead to the assertion of the existence of the common good. This will be the good desired by all citizens as they actively participate in the polis as well as the good of the polis that possesses self-sufficiency in act. “For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve…”[58] For if the end is the same for an individual and for a state (N.E. 1094b 7), then both ought to have the same nature and the same purpose.
If the good is unconditionally complete, and it is also an essential unity,[59] and it is affirmed that the good of the individual and the state is the same (N.E. 1094b 7), then it necessarily follows that the common good is also an essential unity in that it is not a mere good of each of the citizens, but the common good, i.e. the good that is realized in the political community (N.E. 1094 68). This further structure gives the common good its unique nature which enables it to direct the unity of the state. While the individual’s good, i.e. that which is attained by the individual, is, for Aristotle, characterized by a continuous passive striving towards the goal, and is essentially conative. The good realized in and by the political community, while also being conative, is also, in a proper sense normative: and generative of normality for the good of the individual citizens.
When does the good become a common good for a given political community? To answer that question, we have to ask which of the two, the common good or the state, exists first? Is it the goal of the state that exists first or is the state itself that exists first? The teleologist would think that it is the goal which directs the course of events that eventually unfold in order to actualize the goal “Moreover, that for the sake for which things are done… “[60] On one hand, what is last in the order of actualization or realization is first in the order of genesis because it is the cause, in an agent acted upon, of the desire to attain the form of goodness (that is the envisioned good for oneself) causing, from within agent, the movement toward realization, i.e. as generated activity. On the other hand, what is fist in the order of realization is last in the order of genesis: It concludes the movement towards it and it fulfills the desire of it. In other words, the good which is the goal of the state is potentially in existence prior to the state in that the good can be desired by the state as it comes into existence. (However, it can be debated, what causes a political society to succeed in its desire for the common good, thus giving origin to a true political society? In most cases, it should be education of character which would help the citizens to realize their potentialities endowed by nature.) There is a presupposition that it is not possible to desire that which is not in existence. For that which motivates the intellective consciousness of the citizens and becomes a volitional choice for its own sake, must be something which is in existence (though potentially) prior to the formation of the political community. So the end or the goal (which is the common good) is the “first” cause in the order of intention in so far as it is that which we are directed towards, and consequently it is prior (though potentially) to the state.
The end is “last” in the order of execution or realization. This implies that the state is first in the order of actualization whereas its end ought to be realized throughout the life of the state since the good for man ought to be for the entire life (N.E. 1098a 16-17)
Nevertheless, the good becomes the good of the whole political community or a common good of a particular political community at the very moment when the intellective consciousness of the citizens is realized and becomes a volitional choice for its own sake, which is gradually realized through conscious active participation of all citizens. Conscious active participation presupposes moral consciousness and collectivity, as moral agents. It should be noted that a state becomes a true political community at the very moment when its citizens consciously choose its purpose (the common good).
4. The common good as good life
The good is the aim of every community without the exception of the state. For as the state embraces all the associations, then it aims at the highest good (Pol. 1252a 1-6), namely, the common good for the whole political community.
This issue for political philosophy is to determine whether the good life pursued by any political community is indeed the best life possible. Common good in this context would refer to the good life, which is the good desired by all citizens as they cooperate in the polis. From his Ethics this good life could be further specified in terms of audaimonia, usually translated as happiness, or faring well. This is a common good, in that all desire the ultimate good, what is desired for its own sake and not as means to anything else.[61]
The common good is ‘greater’ than the good for one man:
For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for cit-states.[62]
In what sense does the end for the state or of the state ‘greater’ and more complete than the end for a single person?
The text acknowledges that the end is the same for the state and for a single person. ‘Greater’ does not mean subordinate of the end of the individual to that of the state. If Aristotle by ‘end is greater’ meant to subordinate, could he have said that they are the same? Those who affirm this ignore the first statement of the text. It does not mean that the end of the individual is subordinate to the end of the state.
In this text the exact meaning for the words ‘more godlike’ or ‘greater’ etc. is to be determined later on, but it does not mean subordination.
The good of the state is nobler because the individual as such does not belong to himself, but he is just part of the state in that his good as such should be part of the good of the whole political community which is its aim (Pol. 1337a 27-30); and furthermore the individual citizens cannot be complete and self-sufficient unless he is in the state (Pol. 1261b 10-15; 1263b 29-35). For the state is the complete community achieving the complete human good (good life).[63] But the complete good is there as a source that make possible the good life of individuals.
For Aristotle the issue of politics and political community is essentially inseparable form a moral life, as its goal is the good life. The political society is not only an ethical reality but the very condition for the possibility of individual persons to be ethical. That is, it is part of the ‘goodness’ of the political community precisely to make possible to the citizens to be just and good. In other words, the common good of the political community would necessarily be discerned and valued from the point of view that it provides conditions for physical, intellectual and moral actualization of the citizens as they participate in the life of the polis.
Just as the formation of citizens in virtue is necessary for the realization of the common good, it is also necessary for the political community to be ethical. Some people may object to that view and claim that to be ethical is a burden because it is imported from outside. However, Aristotle indicates that practical achievement is one’s realization of basic internal potentiality and ‘inteleky’ or ‘dynamics’. According to Aristotle, the very conditions for ‘individual persons’ and ‘individual families’ to achieve their self-realization as they participate in the polis is directed by the constitution which expresses the common good envisioned by the political community.
The constitution and the common good are necessarily interrelated.
Will not the knowledge of it (the chief good), then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not…be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art.[64]
The text implies that the goal of the human being is not automatic and the movement toward it is not of necessity; but the goal must become sufficiently known and properly willed for it is the formal cause of the constitution. The citizen must also be able to see it concretely so that he can aim at it. What kind of state? For whom? What kind of constitution gives that goal? It is concrete, that is why Aristotle criticizes Plato for looking for universal good. Aristotle realizes what is good for the human beings, and even more particularly what is good for the Athenians. Who is going to decide? How will they decide? They do not decide in abstract, but will decide as the kind of human beings with rights and obligations, responsibility and freedom during the process of choosing the goal. However, these would remain as theory not constitution unless they become a commitment to achieve that which brings together the citizens of that time. It is an ethical commitment. That is, solidarity does not consist merely in each individual committing himself to the realization of that goal for oneself, but rather members adopt a mutual commitment to one another so that together they bring about a social and political organization that will make it concretely possible to realize the vision or common good as it is expresses in the constitution and in proportion to their potentials.
With that in view, still many issued concerning the constitution are to be resolved: What ate they? Do the varieties of constitutions occur at random or is there a criterion which governs such varieties? Why are some constitutions good while others are bad? According to Aristotle, the answer to such question is that it is the conception of happiness (the common good) which acts as a criterion for discerning the good form the bad constitution or state.
Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many forms of governments: for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.[65]
The text denotes that it is the conception or misconception of the good for the whole political community which leads to the nature of the constitution or state. ‘For different men can seek after happiness in different ways by different means’ indicates that there are a variety of conceptions of the nature of happiness (common happiness) through which means you attain that conceived happiness (common good). Note that happiness is the end of the state, and it is the formal cause of the constitution, whereas the constitution is the formal cause of the state. That being the case, any misconception of happiness or common good (Pol. 1317b 1-3) can necessarily lead to an erroneous constitution and also to the characteristic defects of a non-ideal state. If the end (which is the sake for which the state exists) is not clear then the conception of the state itself cannot be clear (Pol. 1323a 16-19). It is only when there is a correct conception of happiness that we expect the state to strive towards the actualization and attainment of the human good or common happiness as a good of the whole community.
For a correct conception of happiness shows how a particular type of state promotes the human good, and gives a virtuous person reason to care about it for its own sake, but also shows what the right sort of state must be like, and why many states cannot make this claim on the virtuous person’s concern.[66]
For if the people explicitly conceive that the purpose of the political community is the common good, then their conception of it directs their formulation of a constitution to meet the expectation of the whole political community.
However, if the people mistake happiness (the common good) for gratification of appetite or honor (N.E. 1095a 19-23) or for mere amassment of external goods (N.E 1168b 15-19), then their constitution will necessarily be based on an erroneous assumption and consequently an erroneous constitution will lead to the existence of non-ideal political community.
It should be marked that perversions of constitutional government such as tyranny, oligarchy and democracy (Pol. 1289a 28 – 1289b 5) are due to the misconception of happiness.
In an oligarchy, happiness is thought to consist in wealth (Pol. 1280a 25-31), and one’s participation in the political community is expected to be proportioned to an individual’s property. With such an erroneous view of happiness, an erroneous constitution and consequently a non-ideal state necessarily arises in that the common good cannot be attained.
The mistaken conception of happiness also affects democratic constitutions. On condition that happiness consists in al life of liberty, of living as one likes (Pol. 1317b 12-13), then it would lead to bad democratic constitution that makes it impossible for the realization of the common happiness in that particular community. However, if happiness consists in life of liberty which implies an equal sharing in ruling (Pol. 1280a 24-25; cf. 1317b 2) then it will lead to a good democratic constitution that will create provision for the realization of the common happiness of the whole political community.
It is therefore, either the conception or misconception of happiness (common good) which would explain the difference in the constitutions, states, and also in the activity of the citizens as they realize their potentialities while they participate in the attaining of the common good of their particular political community.
If the good for men and the state is the same (N.E. 1094b 7) and the good for man is for the entire life (N.E. 1098a 16-17) which means that it is ‘energeia’ or process, then the common good for the state is also a process which is envisaged in the education or conscientisation of the citizens. For while man lives in the polis, by the fact of his very nature (Pol. 1253a 2), he ought to actively participate in it through his political activity so that all the citizens together realize the purpose of their political community, i.e. the realization of the good life or the common good: “the action of the statesman…aims…at all events happiness, for hi, and his fellow citizens…”[67]
However, there are some constitutional arrangements which seem to raise only the question of efficiency. For instance the oligarchic constitution esteems mostly wealth (Pol. 1280a 25-31), and the democratic constitution esteems mostly freedom (Pol. 1317b 12-13); they may need another kind of evaluation, namely, the intrinsic value to political activities. For if a particular sort of political activity is itself part of the human good, then the citizen’s act in the state cannot be purely instrument or matter of efficiency. With this in view, Aristotle demarcates what kind of living is expected in the state.
In the first place, he uses the aporetic method by discerning ‘what living in the state is not’ in two ways. First, the state is not a community merely for the sake of staying alive (survival) by safety, or natural protection, or the safeguarding of what justly belongs to each person (Pol. 1280b 8-23). This is merely a protective role of the state and it is its instrumental function, but not its purpose. Secondly, the end of the state is not merely living together as it is advocated by friendship (Pol. 1280b 38-39) which is even present in smaller groups than the state (Pol. 1280b 36-39) for friendship is a political good. It not only empowers other political goods or provides security in the possession of all other goods (N.E. 1155a 3-6) but is also a means to maintain efficiency in the state as different members contribute something different in order to make a self-sufficient and complete life possible (Pol. 1261b 10-15). A citizen, like any rational agent, seeks reciprocity of character.
After discerning ‘what living in the state is not’, Aristotle deals with ‘what living in the state is’
The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it… Our conclusion then is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence those who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.[68]
The form of living required by the political community is living happily and finally. It is more than a protective role, for it is basically a promotive role through the mutual participation with a conscious intention of attaining the common good of the political community. This living together involves sharing in deliberation and choice about the beneficial and the just (Pol. 1275a 23), provided this shared activity is essential to the state and its aim, the good life. Note that for Aristotle, there are levels of participation and degrees of “quality” character as the political activity is exclusively for the citizens who participate in the realization of the common good. Though the state aims at living well, yet not everyone who contributes efficiently to that end is automatically a member of the state who ought to share in the political activity.
…the citizen must not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignorable and inimical to virtue. Neither must they be husbandmen, since leisure is necessary both for the development of virtue and the performance of political duties.[69]
Note that slaves and animal (Pol. 1280a 31-34) and even artisans, merchants and farmers are of unity to the state as they are instrumental means to happiness, but they are not parts of the life of the state. Provided that they do not participate in virtue, in decision making or political activity, as it is so, and participation in virtue and political activity is essentially part of happiness, then they are incapable for sharing in happiness (the common good)
It is the existence of virtue in political activity which leads to the actualization of the agent’s good. On condition that the agent’s good is realized, he subsequently participates in the political life with his fellow citizens ruling each other in turn (Pol. 1325b 3-14), then this achieves the common happiness (common good) that is the aim of the community.[70] From the outset, the political activity is teleologically directed to the attainment of the common good; for without this goal, the political activity would be in vain. The criterion for political activity is to bring about virtuous character which gives rise to the good man, who must realize the good for man. Is there a difference between the good man and the good citizen since each one has to perform the political activity?
There is an assumption that the good man and the good citizen are distinct. For the completely good man will have the virtues of the ruler, but the good citizen only needs the virtues of the subject; hence he needs only true belief, not wisdom (Pol. 1277b 25-32), and will be a good citizen without being a good man. This denotes that a good citizen in this context will only have a part of virtue, namely obedience, since he is expected to have only the virtues of the subject. Note that this kind of distinction is found in a non-ideal state.
This distinction will not apply, however, to the ideal state, where each citizen is expected to rule and to be ruled (Pol. 1278a 40 – 1278b 5). Here, the good citizen will necessarily be the man without being a good citizen and without having the relations to others that make the full range of virtuous actions possible and reasonable.
…the good man and the good citizens are one and the same, or at all events they ought to be, and the end of the state is to produce the highest moral type of human being.[71]
It there is no ideal state, there is no possibility of having a good man or a good citizen because a good man or a good citizen is a property of the ideal state. (Pol. 1276b 27-31). Is it possible to have good men who do not fit into that political system as good citizens? It would be impossibility because “…the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.”[72] Aristotle’s view being that the good man and the good citizen must be identical (Pol. 1288a 32 – 1288b 2), then he recognizes that the political activity ought to be a virtuous activity, and that the good citizen in the ideal state is not merely doing what is instrumentally necessary for his good, but he realized himself in his political activity itself as he participates in the attainment of the common good for the whole political community.
Yet, is there a good with a higher sovereignty that helps in the formation of the morally good polis?
I include this section in this chapter for the following reasons. First, Aristotle’s philosophy is a philosophy of existence, of the act of existing. The existence, in question, is the existence of political communities which are ethical realities inhibited by members who “construct” these states and do so because they themselves desire to be good men. So far the chapter has connected the goodness of the individual with the goodness of the state through the commonality t hat human activity exhibits. The same activity through which the individual person attains moral goodness is the one through which the human being attains the full actualization of his human nature.
Secondly, the activity through which human beings form communities that are analogous but real “bodies” in the sense of constituting a new natural physical compound characterized by completeness, availability, and sufficiency to the point of having given birth to a “God-like good” which is “the most sovereign good of all” is only that activity by which each family and each individual works to attain the family’s good and the individual good. This is the meaning of the term “common good”. It refers to the existence of a concrete complex that is a vital and dynamic act of existing originated by and maintained and developed by an act for participation in one, really one, good: proper because activity, that is technically competent and, more to the point, moral or virtuous activity.
However, the efficacy of the activity of the polis and of the concrete morally good man is explained by Nature. But what are the actualities that give Nature a real existence and its teleological aspect?
There is need to explain the existence of nature as an expression of connected intelligible, teleological activities. The whole universe is animated by an internal teleological dynamism that orients it towards the supreme good. This good, however, will never be attained (M.E. XII, 1072b 3). This complex of dynamic and teleological activities is not explained by the universe itself. The explanation is found in the Divine Substance, Pure Act who is the final cause of the universe. Thus this Divine Substance is the absolute and sufficient principle in that it does not depend on a superior principle. This Pure Act or first cause, being without potency, is at the origin of the becoming taking place in the universe. For all subordinate caused are dependent upon superior caused in the exercise of their activity. However, the Pure Act is not an efficient cause but a final cause.
According to Aristotle, the first principle moves the universe, not, however, as efficient, but as a final cause: the author declares that Pure Act is an object of love.[73]
It is a spontaneous tendency toward the good.[74]
Divine Substance is Pure Act, whereas man is always both act and potency. By nature, man is oriented toward the good, toward the highest perfection, and he wants to contemplate the fullness of goodness or the Pure Act which represents the supreme good, the ideal of life. It is an Aristotelian notion that God (and the world) exists from eternity. This notion of God excludes providence; and divine knowledge and understanding is confined within itself. But reciprocal knowledge is a prerequisite for personal relationship and friendship. That being the case, is friendship, which is a political good, possible between God and man if man cannot attain divine knowledge? The Aristotelian view is that man and God will have a friendship of unequal levels. Man can be loved by God in so far as man attains the highest level of perfection.[75] So it is only when man strives to the perfection of the Divine Substance that he can but only gradually actualize his hidden capacities.
…man also will remain part of the universal evolution and will never reach the level of Pure Act. Nevertheless, this dynamism is not in vain, since things can attain a limited perfection corresponding to their proper structure.[76]
Since man attains his perfection (though limited in some sense if it is seen in the light of Pure Act or supreme perfection) by his participation in the polis then man’s action is a movement toward the good set by Nature.
If Nature is also striving toward the Pure Act, since the potentiality of Nature is explained by it, and by nature the purpose of the polis is the attainment of a good life, then it necessarily follows that the polis through the process of attaining its purpose is also participating in the grand process of striving toward the Pure Act. This ultimate, first principle (Pure Act) rationalizes Nature as its final cause. So God as a Pure Act is of vital importance in the polis because all activities in Nature are oriented toward the Pure Act which represents the supreme good or the ideal life. This confirms that there is another good with a higher sovereignty that helps the in foundation of the polis. God, as the final cause, is the sovereign good who ultimately contributes to the good of the polis. By this fact, Aristotle goes beyond Nature when he affirms the existence of the first cause.
SUMMARY
The good of the political society has three characteristics; that is, it is god-like, self-sufficient and complete. It is complete not in a sense of not developing further, but in the sense that development is from within and nothing can be added to it from the outside. It is the god life desired by all citizens as they actively participate in the polis as well as the good of the polis as possessing self-sufficiency in act. It is the most-sovereign good in that it has the capacity to cause the availability, the completeness and the limited but real sovereign of all other political goods that are in it. However, the good of the polis and the concrete morally good man or citizen is explained by Nature whereas Nature is also teleologically directed to the Pure Act as the final cause of its real existence. So Aristotle goes beyond Nature when he affirms the existence of the first cause. For that reason, if the good of the polis is explained by Nature, and Nature’s goal is the Pure Act, then also the good of the polis is teleologically directed to the Pure Act.
[1] Plato thought that good was in the realm of the Forms, Cf. N.E. I, 1096a 11-12
[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II, 1105a 30-35
[3] The whole story can be read in the work of a Christian author, Nemesius of Emesa, living at the end of the fourth century who wrote a book entitled On the Nature of Man, translated into Latin in the middle ages and three times in the renaissance period. Beside the Latin translation there is an Armenian, Arabic and Georgian translation.
[4] Gerald Verbeke, Moral Educarion in Aristotle (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press 1990), 232-233
[5] Verbeke, op. cit., 15; cf. N.E. I, 1094a 1-3
[6] The reading for Aristotle through Kantian Categories has produced a number of misleadings of Aristotle and a number of false problems.
[7] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II, 1105b 2-13
[8] Verbeje, op.cit, 52, footnote 40; also 233.
[9] Verbeke, op.cit.,52
[10] Verbeke, op.cit., 211.
[11] Ibid., 116.
[12] Ibid., 116, footnote 37.
[13] Verbeke, op.cit., 120.
[14] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a 1-3.
[15] Joseph Owens, History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1959), 335.
[16] Ibid., 335.
[17] Owens, op.cit., 340.
[18] Leo Sweeney, A Metaphysical of Authentic Existentialism (Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 1965), 142-143.
[19] Owens, op.cit., 340.
[20] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1096b 23-29.
[21] Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 1003a 33-38.
[22] N.B. The quotations from the Politics in this section of political goods is based on Ernest Barker’s translation.
[23] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1278b 9-10.
[24] Ibid., IV, 1289a 15-17.
[25] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1253a 26, 30.
[26] Ernest Barker, Introduction to Politics, by Aristotle, p.7, footnote 1.
[27] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1253a 30.
[28] Ibid., I, 1253a 13.
[29] Ibid., IV, 1292a 17-18.
[30] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1267b 21-22.
[31] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1144a 36.
[32] Ibid., VI, 1144b 28-29.
[33] Ibid., VI, 1144b 30-31.
[34] This should be regarded as contributive justice.
[35] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1253a 8-9, Man is the only animal whom Nature has endowed with the gift of speech.
[36] Exaggerated justice may amount to an exaggerated injustice (“Summun ius summa iniuria”).
[37] W. Von Leyden, Aristotle on Equality and Justice, His Political Argument (London: MacMillan, 1985), 40.
[38] Ibid., 38.
[39] Aristotle, Politics, V, 1301a 25-27.
[40] This should be regarded as distributive justice.
[41] This second aspect of “distributive justice” should be transposed to commutative justice.
[42] Verbeke, op.cit., 140.
[43] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1155a 3-6.
[44] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252a 3-5. (Translation by J. Maritain).
[45] Aristotle, Politics, III, 1280b 39 – 1281a 3
[46] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1323b 30-36. (Translation by Maritain).
[47] Jaques Maritain, Moral Philosophy and Critical survey of the Great Systems (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 44.s
[48] Verbeke, op. cit., 42.
[49] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1097b 14-17.
[50] John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington D.C. Georgestown University Press, 1983), 6.
[51] Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, II, 1220a 23.
[52] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1168a 23.
[53] Aristotle, Eudamian Ethics, II, 1228b 2,3.
[54] Sabine and Thorson, op.cit., 535. Jean Jacques Rousseau’s view is that a society must have common possessions, like common language, common interest and well-being. It is that common interest which draws equal men together.
[55] J. Schatternman, “Fellowship”, in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology ed. by Colin Brown (Exeter: Pater Noster Press, 1975), 639.
[56] J. Schatternman, op.cit., 639.
[57] Ibid., 639.
[58] Aristotle, Politics, I, 1094b 7-8
[59] J.A. Mann and G.F Kreyche, Reflection on Man (New York: Harcoutret, Bruce and World Inc., 1966),
24. An essential unity or whole is one in which the parts have lost their indentity precisely as parts and are subsumed by the whole.
That whole is more than the mere sum of its parts; for it assumes new characteristics that were not present in the parts from which it came to be. In case of a chemical compound such as water; water is a new and different reality from hydrogen and oxygen. Although it comes from two elements, it possesses characteristics or properties of its own. That is, it exists normally in liquid state; it freezes at 32F; it boils at 212F. note that neither hydrogen nor water oxygen has these characteristics, for both elements have their distinctive properties. That being the case, it is asserted that a chemical compound is a true essential unity whereas a colloid is a mere aggregate whole.
[60] Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 1363b 16-17.
[61] S.J. Patrick Riordan, “Is There a Common Good”, Landas 4 (1990): 70.
[62] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1064b 7-9.
[63] Illod, op.cit., 270.
[64] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094a 22-27.
[65] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1328a 38 – 1328b 2.
[66] Terence, op.cit., 407; cf. Aristotle, Politics, II, 1271b 6-9.
[67] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 1177b 14-15.
[68] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1280b 39; 1281a 8
[69] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1328b 39 – 1329a 2.
[70] Terence, op.cit., 404.
[71] Sabine and Thorson, op.cit., 97.
[72] Aristotle, Politics, II, 1276b 30-31.
[73] Verbeke, op.cit., 193.
[74] This implies that it is not chosen after a careful consideration and deliberation. It is an object of spontaneous striving.
[75] Verbeke, op.cit., 62.
[76] Ibid., 193.
Aristotle’s view of education calls for personal responsibility.
In a democratic state where the principle of non interference is esteemed, happiness is conceived as liberty(freedom), and to live a good life is to be free from coercion and living as one pleases (Pol. 1307a 34; 1317b 40; 1317b 1). Such conception of happiness curtails the possibility of having a moral education system.
After our investigation into Aristotle’s understanding of the purpose and nature of the polis and the investigation between the types of “good” present in it and unified by the common good, we will in this chapter enquire into Aristotle’s understanding of the nature and role of moral education in the political community. First, we will look at Aristotle’s thesis that education is a fundamental factor in the political society, then we will study his definition of moral education, the purpose of moral education, its principles, its strategies and their respective contents, friendship as a special factor of education. We will then make a summary of the chapter.
In and trough the polis nature achieves the highest good for man. The human polis is a concrete expression of “logos”. In his book on Ethics, as in all his writings, Aristotle is engaged not only in academic teaching. He also engages in an argument that was going on in Athens. The controversy centered on the possibility of a “science” and an “art” of the good, the true, the just as these issues converged in all the comprehensive and related questions of the good man and the good political society.
Aristotle calls the person who first brought the polis into being, even though still in its rudimentary but true form, “the greatest benefactors” (Pol.1253a 30)
Only in the community (of equal and free persons that is the political association) does the individual reach his completion and only in the community is the good realized on a grand scale. [1]
Since man is intended by nature not to be isolated, and to be neither a beast nor a god, but a political animal, then there is also a natural impulse in all men towards an association of this order. For without justice and law, which are inherent to the polis, man would not attain his perfection (Pol.1253a 26-3). So it is the obligation of the polis to help man attain perfection.
Aristotle perceives that the essence of eudiamonism and hence, the principle of the moral good is the perfect exercise of human nature.... if man does justice to his nature and to the duties inherent in it, and thus fulfils the purpose of his existence, we can say that he is both good and happy.[2]
Unlike Plato’s, Aristotle’s epistemology, locates the road to truth and goodness in this physical world, specifically in the polis. In the polis or body politics, language, which connotes speech or reason, is a body and operates as a body. It is a cause of effects. It brings into being what would never be brought into being, as the highest work of nature, and is the highest work of nature, and is the highest ethical reality which is a political society through which the formation of moral character is realized. Man is destined by nature to be a moral animal. Moral attitudes, relations, actions are not imported or impressed from outside, but are inherent in man’s nature. The term “destination” means a movement from within, towards a realization. The movement is itself a sign of our being participants within nature.
There is natural tendency in each individual moving towards the perceived good which is not its own creation, but Nature’s creation. It is a kind of universal love anima ting all beings and driving them towards Pure Act.[3]
For Aristotle, naturally, every action and pursuit aims at some good. “The good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”[4]
Aristotle starts off his discussion on politics with the assertion that there needs to be an art and science which coordinates and orders all other arts and sciences and directs them in the complex and arduous activity to attain the good of “self-sufficiency” from which all attainments of other needed goods of individuals and smaller groups depend. The master art is that which has the responsibility for the “master end” and needs to have “master sovereignty”. Since as observation shows, all associations aim at some good,
We may also hold the particular association which is the most sovereign of all, and includes all the rest, will pursue this aim most, and will thus be directed to the most sovereign of goods. This most sovereign and inclusive association is the polis as it is called, or political association.[5]
To avoid misunderstanding of what Aristotle says, we must always keep in mind the meaning that the term polis has in Aristotle’s writings. Note that the polis is a supreme community.[6]
The most important exercise of sovereignty is carried out through education. The political community caries out its all important task of education in a three fold way. Aristotle writes, “…with regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know but we must try to have and use it”[7]. Only the political community, Aristotle believes, can offer this kind of training.
First as a living commu8nity it educates through the living experience of the values and character that its life activity expresses and communicates and which the young man experiences. This process begins ion what is, according to Aristotle, the closest of natural reality, the family and continues through the education in and by the political association. The reason for this is found in Aristotle’s understanding of nature’s teleology and the place that man has in it. This place is that of the highest work of nature, that in which nature intends to bring into being its final goal in the “good and just man” who is as a consequence also the “happy man.” Moral education presupposes the existence in man of natural orientation to the good, the just, thee true. It pre supposes them, however, not as innate entities, or as separate ideas, but as perfected or perfectible forms of man, embodied in each man and in the political body. The human being and the political body are both composite and contingent beings. So moral life as Aristotle was convinced is not an intimation of transcendent immutable patens; it is the gradual [and not infallible nor necessary] actualization of man’s capacities through virtuous conduct.”1[8] education is for Aristotle primarily the process whereby the perfected humanity of good men contributes in the development of the potential for being human that nature has endowed every human being with.
Second, there is the education through the laws as we have in the section on political goods, the primary purpose of the laws is the handover to the youth of that wisdom accumulated through generations. It begins to do this, first replacing their lack of experience and wisdom with that present in the laws, but it does this, in a way that the students are awakened to the good and just present in the laws, but it does this, in a way that the students are awakened to the good and just present in the law, perceive it and desire to posses it.
Thirdly, there is the political responsibility for a system of the public education for all its citizens. For the Greeks, the system of education ought to create conditions whereby the individual citizens realize their physical, intellectual and moral potentialities as they participate in the life of the polis.
The Greeks thought of the polis as an active, formative thing, training the minds and characters of the citizens; we think of it as a piece of machinery for the production of safety and convenience. The training in virtue which the medieval state left to the church, and the polis made its own concern, the modern state leaves to God knows what.[9]
For Aristotle, the polis is the only complete community within which man, who is made to live in a polis, can fully realize his spiritual, moral and intellectual capacities.[10] So the educational program as a whole is to inculcate the virtues needed for the proper employment of leisure in cultural, intellectual(speculative virtues) and political activities(practical virtues) (Pol. 1334a 16-18).
At the end of book VII of the Politics (1337a 3-6), Aristotle raises three questions, namely, should we have some system of education? Should responsibility of education be public or private? And what regulations should govern education?[11]
In book VIII, of Politics, Aristotle addresses the first two of the three questions by asserting that we should have a system of education which ought to be public since children who are the future citizens and also future rulers of the state need to learn to be citizens and rulers respectively as would as craftsman needs to be trained in his particular skill.
Since man is a political animal (Pol. 1253a 2ff) and no citizen belongs to himself but is part of the state (Pol. 1337a 27-30), so he ought not to be educated privately in private tastes and standards. For education of citizens depends on the type of the state and the kind of life desired to lead as it is expressed in the constitution (Pol. 1310a 12-13).
No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all the education of the youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he live.[12]
Aristotle’s view of education calls for personal responsibility.
The man who is to be good must be trained and habituated, and go on to spend his time in worthy occupations and neither willingly do bad actions, and if this can be brought about if men live in accordance with a sort of reason and right order.[13]
Through his education is viewed in relation to the state with its systematic programme, Aristotle regards it as primarily as an individual process[14] (energia) that leads to self actualization(Pol. 1333a 12-16) that is education is to make a good citizen who participates in worthy activity that is intended to lead him to the good life of the state. If it is so then education should mainly foster virtue among the citizens as happiness is proportioned to virtue (Pol. 1332a 9).
Do all the education systems of various states esteem moral education? If not, what is the criterion that leads to the difference- that some esteem moral education whereas others refrain from public moral education? The criterion is the conception or mistaken conception of happiness. Aristotle claims that if a state’s conception of happiness necessarily leads to the essence of its political system (Pol. 1317a40-1317b 17), then its conception of happiness also is reflected or mirrored in its attitude to education.
Note that some states do mistaken, misconceive or misjudge the means to happiness (such as wealth and liberty incase of an oligarchy and democracy respectively) instead of happiness its self which is living well or the good life.
In a democratic state where the principle of non interference is esteemed, happiness is conceived as liberty(freedom), and to live a good life is to be free from coercion and living as one pleases (Pol. 1307a 34; 1317b 40; 1317b 1). Such conception of happiness curtails the possibility of having a moral education system.
Non ideal states do not recognize that happiness consists in virtuous action, and so they can not have the right reasons for undertaking moral education; they undertake it for, at most, instrumental reasons to make their citizens fit the constitution better, not because the result will in itself be good for citizens.[15]
In an ideal state, happiness is conceived as the good life of the citizens which results from the good and just activities of the citizen (Pol.1280b 12) as they participate in the polis . With this in view, public moral education is embarrassed in such a state where the virtuous person ought to perform the virtuous action for its own sake based on his rational principle and a volitional choice, rather than mere habit or fear of social pressure.
If the human being and his polis are intended by nature for the purpose of realizing Nature’s intention for human beings, for its perfection and happiness, then it is in the interest of the citizens and of the polis to chose an organization of its life in a way that allows nature to bring about what it intended to bring about. So if the whole state has one common end, then it shall also have one common system of education that realizes it.
For the exercise of any “faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue. And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one the private ...when every one looks after his own child separately, and gives the separate instruction of sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all.[16]
If the end of each individual consists wholly in his contribution to the end of state, even his private or personal education should be considered in the light of the interest of the state. The good of the citizens is the good of the state as the state is the living political community.
The moral good is the end of the state and of its citizens who freely chose what is good: this inner capacity to chose is precisely what moral education aims at achieving. What constitutes a difficulty for modern persons is that they intend the freedom of the individual, as (1) inherent in the individual, separate from anyone else, (2) consisting in doing what one chooses independently of others. For Aristotle, an individual’s freedom; (1) is engendered through capacity to see and will the good and freedom of the other and(2) is found in self-deposition, in the choice one makes to be the source of good for the other and reciprocally, together with the other. Aristotle argues that if for the sake of a common good all citizens should be virtuous, then the public education would not be a kind of slavery. These are actions that would otherwise be menial but are not menial if a citizen were to do them for himself or for a friend (Pol. 1277b 5-7; 1337b 17-21).
Each citizen, therefore, wants his fellow citizen to be virtuous and each wants all of them to share the common moral education that makes all of them virtuous. A common moral education is not a disagreeable constraint or an arduous burden. Virtuous citizens welcome it as part of the good that they chose for the ideal state. Hence it does not violate the conditions that make leisure more choice worthy than necessity.[17]
Where there is a deficiency of systematic moral training, people tend to exaggerate and adapt the prevalent habits and characters of their political system (in his case, non-ideal state) that consequently do harm to the citizens individually and to the political system at large as it lacks a common denominator (public systematic training) that would actualize their virtuous potentiality of being just and responsible to others when their inherent evil tendencies are brought under control by the practice of virtue (Pol.1318b 39-1319a1; 1319b27-32).
The right to non-interference harms citizens since their potentiality to become virtuous is not realized, and this would be possible in an ideal political community where there is appropriate upbringing and habituation (Pol. 1334b 6-17). On condition that it is the individual citizens who benefit from the systematic public moral education, then it is not easy to justify the call for non interference on the ground that public moral education prevents and hinders the choice of the individual citizens. So the accusation that the education system of Aristotle advocates totalitarianism has no firm ground, if at all it has any.[18]
The system of education, therefore, should not be regarded as interference, but as part of the system that a citizen rationally chooses when he identifies his own interests and potentialities to be actualized with a common interest (common good) of a political community in which he fully participates. How ever, though the ideal political community ought to cater for public education, yet if it is neglected in some cases (which is not always the case), each man or good citizen ought to help his children and friends towards virtue.
Now it is best that there should be a public and proper care for such matters; but if they are neglected by the community it would seem right for each man to help his children and towards virtue, and that they should have the power, or at least the will to do this.[19]
The importance of education for the Greeks was symbolized in the motto engraved on the temple of Delphi, that is, “Know thyself”. However the nature and purpose of education was disputed. Socrates’ death was due to his defense of education. To him it was critically moral education: “The unexamined life is not worthy living.” (Cf. Plato’s Apology, 38). And the life that needs examining was not the life of the individual but that of the Athenian society. There was argument between the Socrates, Plato and Aristotle on two points; the absolute necessity of a critical examination of life to ascertain that it is a life enlightened by the light of the true and the good, and also, through with significant difference, that it was the duty and to the dignity of the political community, to provide the concrete possibility of a life worth living.
A statement falsely attributed to Plutarch says, “Of all things that are in us education only is immaterial and divine.”[20] This denotes that education is merely abstract. But such view is refuted by Aristotle.
Abstract philosophical reflections on virtue, justice, eudaimonia, the good and the good for man, the nature of the state and of laws are found in the Nicomachean Ethics.
Towards the end of that book Aristotle clearly states that theoretical philosophical truth by its self makes neither the good man nor the good ruler, nor the good citizen nor the good city. For good citizens to make a good city, good statesmen to make good laws, there need to be human beings who posses the respective science and art and the respective virtues, expertise and experience. This leads Aristotle to speak of the necessity of education (N.E.1179a33ff). He makes a distinction between theoretical teaching of principles and rules of education. At the end of a philosophical treatise of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle moves to writing of Politics with the intention of moving from mere discovering of definition, principles, and criteria, of the discovering truth, to the principles, criteria of the realization or living, of the truth. He does that in Politics. However it should be marked that both Ethics and politics deal with the same issue from different points of view which are mutually inclusive.
Ethics is more theoretical of the two and deals with the question, ‘what is the good for man?’ the politics on the other hand discusses rather the practical problem of realization of that good by the agency of the state. As is only natural, however, the two questions cross each other at innumerable points.[21]
Education is both a science and an art. And on both grounds, education has an “end” or a purpose, or “completion”. Completion refers not merely to the course of studies, but to the development of mind and character of the student: the transformation of “potentiality” for being a good and just man, to actually being a good and just man. John Burnet, reminds us that “Aristotle was first and foremost a biologist, and this conception, like others, naturally took a biological form in his mind. All becoming and motion-activity is a form of motion-was to him a process from matter to form.”[22] And Burnet continues, “We have never got the right interpretation of the passage where Aristotle speaks about ‘ends’ till we have seen in what sense the end in question is the completion of a process.”[23]
Life with his father, a physician familiarity with people like Hermes, a slave who became a successful business manager and head of state, could only confirm Aristotle in the teleological character of all activities: those actualized directly by Nature, and those, actualized mediately by science and art: by will and character, but still ultimate by nature.
Education is supremely part of the science and art of politics. It is the science and master art of politics (N.E.1094a30-1094b6) for education is especially meant for better living, in the polis as the citizens participate in the process (energeia) of effecting its purpose, the good life.
Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with intellectual or with moral virtue. The existing practice is perplexing…should the useful in life, or should virtue, or should higher knowledge, be the aim of our training…[24]
Aristotle is making a critique on the existing system of education and trying to find out which of those three opinions is best. He does not commit himself in this text to state explicitly what ought to be aim of education. Instead, latter proposes, implicitly, the aim of education using the subjects of instruction as the point of reference. He claims that subjects of instruction should lead partly to a liberal and partly to an illiberal character (Pol.1337b21-22). This implies that education should lead to moderation in character, namely, virtue. Virtue is attained through the process whereby art and education fill up the deficiencies of nature (Pol. 1337a1-2).
First and fore most, education is necessary t supplement habit since man learns some things by habit and by instruction. It ought to create harmony in the citizen’s nature, habit and rational principle as he participates in the polis. In other words it is meant to arouse awareness of the citizen by indicating the supremacy of the rational principle. Though nature and habit offer something in the learning process, yet they are subjected to the rational principle as it ought to govern the citizen’s political activity while he participates in the polis (Pol.1332b5-10).
Note that it is the combination of both qualities, namely, intelligence and courage that leads to virtue (Pol.1327b 36).
Whereas, those who care for good government take into consideration virtue and vice in state, whence it may be further inferred that virtue must be the care of a state which is truly so called…for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart.[25]
The text demonstrates that education in a state is geared toward the information of character of the citizens. If the state is concerned about good laws and good order (which are implicitly expressed in the consideration of virtue and vice of the state) then its education aims at formation of the character of the citizens. ‘ cater for virtue’ , as the end of the state, is a distinct characteristic that differentiates the state from any other alliances or the rest of communities, for the state’s main duty is to cater for the character of the citizens and not merely to be concerned with the avoidance of injustices[26] (Pol.1280a40-1280b8).
Non- ideal states seem not to have conscious programme of public education, and are not concerned with virtue as the end of the state (Pol.1293b12-14). For such states, education is directed to an exclusive and one part of virtue only, namely, courage (Pol.1338b9-15; 127161-10; cf. Plato, Laws, 1, 625, 630).
For an ideal state, instead, the legislator establishes the education system in such a way that it delineates the role of military training. Courage is necessary if the military is to fulfill its roles, namely, first, providing against the enslavement of the citizens, and secondly, obtaining the state for the good of the governed and not for the sake of exercising a general despotism save for those who deserve to be slaves, and thirdly but most important, the provision of leisure and the establishment of peace (Pol.1333b 37-1334a 10). This implies that also during military training the issue of formation of character in the light of virtue, not as a part but as a whole, is catered for. Those who serve in the military when they are young, later on are expected to administer justice in the state.
Education should be special for the ruler who exercises his rule over freemen and equals by birth, this should be a constitutional rule. In an ideal state education has to deal with this issue-how a man is to be educated for leader for citizenship. In other words how is a man to be made morally and intellectually fit to hold office in his turn and behave himself when it is not his turn. This denotes that education as such is meant to conscientize the citizens that such an an alternation will satisfy the demand for equality, that is, the citizen will obey and he will also learn to command well, for the good citizen ought to be capable of both (Pol.1332b42-1333a2; 1277b8-15).
The Aristotelian scholar Gerald Verbeke sums up the Aristotelian view of moral education in the following words.
From all these considerations it follows that moral education is a process, involving many aspects. It requires an adequate knowledge of human individuals which discloses the true perfections and happiness of man. It further involves practical wisdom, and ethical training, which are the origin of enduring moral habits. This development is only possible in the political community.[27]
Moral education deals with the concrete issues pertaining to life experience and its goal is attained gradually. “Thus it is clear that education should be based on three principles- the mean, the possible, the becoming, these three.”[28] The ‘mean’ as a doctrine, is a principle of virtue without which we can talk of any virtuous action (N.E. II. 1106b27-28). It is this principle which gives a specially moral tone to Aristotle’s proposed systems of education. ‘Possibility’ in this context implies that Aristotle does not entertain utopianism but his proposed system of education is meant to offer the ideal in concrete situations. the principle of ‘becoming’[29] in this context denotes that education is meant to be a process to improve the citizen’s well being, but it ought not to be by sudden or radical change, nor by restructuring everything anew to effect a completely new start. The education program is meant to be a gradual process[30] which is like a kind of ‘social engineering’ effected with the consent of the citizens of the state concerned.
However besides being the art of making good citizens for a given constitution, education ought to cater for the whole life which is divided into two parts- namely, practical life and speculative life. So education should aim at leisure as its end (Pol. 1333a30-1333b5).
Aristotle’s education process is linked to the two parts of the soul, namely, the rational and irrational part. Leisure being in his mind the aim of education, affects mainly the rational part. Note that leisure [31] is not schole, that is, not rest and recreation or ‘play’ (paidia) but mainly the undistracted opportunity to devote oneself to something worth while: the pursuit of citizenship and ‘statesmanship’ in time of peace.
Aristotle has indicated that the education of the best regime will indeed be in some sense an education in ruling. But it will also be something more important, for peace; it must prepare not only for the ‘occupation’ of war and politics but also, and more important for leisure. The education of the best regime will surely be an education in things necessary and useful; it will be an education also, and above all, in things noble or beautiful (takala) or, as Aristotle also suggests, it will be an education for ‘happiness’ (Cf. 1332a 7-27)[32]
The capacity and exigency come from nature, but the actual presence of moral virtue is obtained through practice and assiduous exercise.
Of all things that come to us by nature we must first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity… but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g.… we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.[33]
Moral behavior, (comments Verbeke), is not a mere gift, something that belongs to man’s natural equipment; it is as a result of both fundamental natural prosperity and potency and personal effort and assiduous practice.[34]
The reason for Aristotle’s view, he finds it in the fact that a human being as an individual, and the polis as a whole, is a wo0ork of nature: the citizens art and science have not introduced teleology in Nature; they have interpreted it in their science and re-expressed it in their activities aimed at the construction of the polis.
Education is necessary because the human potentiality is not like that of a seed to become a plant. In the human condition, action from other humans is necessary for the awakening of youth to its true potentiality and for the practical knowledge of its “form”. This he receives from others. This is the result of Nature’s having provided humans with language: with the gift of speaking.
Man is gifted with the capacity of speaking: he is a speaking animal, able to communicate with other individuals by means of language. A dialogue includes at one acts of speaking and of listening. In Aristotle’s perspective dialogue is necessary, since a political society is not possible without a consensus of the members upon basic principles of moral conduct: these principles or rules ought to be expressed and formulated in laws.”
Note that the law extends the dialogue throughout the generations.
Aristotle sees the moral person as:
… a strong personality who because of adequate ethical knowledge and constant training gradually effects the full perception of his being, which coincides with happiness.[35]
Moral education is necessary to supplement the deficiencies of nature in a person (Pol. 1337a 1-2). The fundamental virtues that gives a moral character to a person are the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance which Aristotle calls “the virtues of character” (N.E. 1111B6), and te constancy he has in the pursuit of a life of goodness. Aristotle explains why choice is the decisive criterion for an assessment of a person’s character. In the earlier work Eudemian Ethics in book II, he says that by the acts of a person (E.E. 1219B11), character is judged.[36] Aristotle expressed the same doctrine in Nicomachean Ethics and he gives an explanation.
The essence of character, which is purpose, is in the choice. The essential essence of character is the presence of a conscience and intentional purpose of life. “for in purpose lies the essential element of virtue and character.”[37] Character is “something that grows by habit.”[38]
According to Aristotle’s Ethics, that sis the science and art of forming, educating good men good citizens is the philosophical discipline. It must be distinguished from mere technological training. This training teaches how to do things well. Doing things well is also part of moral education. But moral education is a kind of wisdom. It teaches how to live; how to order one’s activity so as to attain the final goal of a good and beautiful life.
One can say that the whole life of Aristotle was concerned with and dedicated to education. When at the age of 17 he arrived in Athens there were two schools of two different understanding and methods of education. One was the school of Isocrates. “ the training in this school was above all technical and practical in view of attaining an influential position in society. [39] There was no major concern in investigating the true nature and purpose of political society. Society was accepted as a given fact. The school trained students to “succeed” in society rather than change it. The school of Plato, which Aristotle joint, was totally concerned with investigating the true nature and the real purpose of the state. Society was investigated in view of human life and of life in the political community.
For Plato moral education aims at making the human re-discover the ideas existing in it. The mind does not produce them. For Aristotle, the human mind with the help of an intellective active principle is able to grasp universal forms in particular sensible objects and re-express them in the concepts that it has produced.
1. Aristotle rejects the, then, common beliefs that blind fate determines that course of human events or the common opinion that men’ happiness depends upon the arbitrary will of some higher being. Aristotle rejected the latter opinion in virtue of his metaphysical doctrine of the First and Pure Act. The pure act does not know the world of human being. His perfect substance knows only its own thinking activity. (ME. 1074b 33-35). He rejected the first opinion in the light if his interpretation of Nature and the Cosmos as firmly teleological. Everything is internally oriented towards the good; all things are moved by an inner principle, that is, a work of Nature to tend towards what is perfect and in the process to “perfect” themselves (Cf. N.E. 1094a 1-3). “The first act is loved by all beings; the movement of the universe is a constant aspiration towards the highest good”[40]
2. The human being is made by Nature with the potentiality to determine his own life. This potentiality is transformed into “capacity” through education. Happiness, which coincides with the moral life, depends on each individual subject. It is a matter of attaining the appropriate science, art, and of making the require choices.(N.E.1098a16-20); Cf. also De Partibus Animalium, 639a 4-8).
3. Education is not a private matter, but it is, of necessity, of public concern. (Pol.1337a21-27). This doctrine of Aristotle is a corollary of his understanding of a necessity for a human being to be really a human being, to be an active participant of a political community. It is connected also with Aristotle’s view of the nature and purpose of the political community, and, ultimately also with the view that happiness lies in the active participation in maintaining and improving the political community of which one is part.
So the state cannot be neutral or tolerant, because it belongs to the very nature of the political community that people agree with each other on fundamental values, such as the idea of justice and mutual respect. According to Aristotle this argument is neither arbitrary nor artificial: moral values are actually the same for all humans [at least for Greeks], since human nature is the same for all individuals.
Education belongs to the essence of the political community and has to be governed by the authority of the state. Private initiative cannot ensure the unity of views that is required in this respect.
4. Education can not be merely acquisition of theoretical knowledge of the good, the just, ethics and political society. It must go together with strenuous and prolonged activity. This activity is not aimed at “being moral in specific sense”, like, being sincere, being honest, being kind, etc. this practice would still be an abstraction from the real participation of the life of the polis. The activity in question is the activity involved in being a man and a citizen. In a way that corresponds to the given situation where the three factors that contribute to the development of moral life, namely, nature, knowledge and training, are actualized. Like the political society, the moral man is both by nature and by science and art. Moral virtue is personal achievement. There are no innate ideas for Aristotle, and no innate “abilities” as distinct from potentiality. The ability to distinguish right from wrong and to commit oneself to do right, is learned through moral exercise moral exercise and guided practice (N.E.1144a34-1134b13).
5. Education requires the careful choice of the kind of activity on engages in and to keep in mind the need to know how to be “active” in leisure.
6. The primary goal of education is the formation of the humanly complete man and the man of moral character.
7. Education must be for responsibility and loyalty to the spirit of the constitution.
8. Education must also be for the worth of life, because every thing in the universe is oriented towards the good. The whole world participates in the teleology of Nature, in which every thing strives towards the attainment of the appropriate good. And Nature does nothing in vain. (N.E. 1094a1-3; Cf. Pol. 1252a1ff).
9. The ideal moral life is not the privilege of a small group of selected individuals but a way of life and conduct to which all humans are oriented and spontaneously [that is to say by the inner inclination with which each human being is endowed by nature] inclined. (Pol. 1339b22-31). The principle remains true even if it happens that not very often men reach their full perfection. The justification of this principle is found in the fact that man is a work of nature. Man is made by nature not only to be a political animal but also a moral animal. The two aspects are like the two sides of a coin. (Cf. Pol. 1253a1-4). Thus, “Everybody is called to the perfection of ethical life, since moral conduct corresponds to the essential structure of a person.”[41]
10. The most decisive influence with regard to moral education is the rule of law in a political community contextualized by the virtue of equity.
11. The highest end, ultimately the decisive factor for the promotion of the political community and its excellence and unity is the education to friendship.
12. The outcome of an adequate education is that people take pleasure in doing good and suffer pain when they do wrong.
Aristotle subdivides the education programme into four main stages[42] (Politics, VII, 17); 1-5 years of age; 5-7 years of age; 7-14 years of age; 15-21 years of age. His classification is based on the nature because education ought to supplement the deficiencies of nature.
[B]we should observe the decision made by nature; for the deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up.[43]
Censorship is necessary in the education of children because te children have to be prepared to be citizens of a given political community, and as citizens they ought to contribute responsibly to the common good of the political community through there political activity.
There is nothing which the legislator should be more careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the light utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful actions.[44]
In the first stages of children’s life, a healthy diet, getting accustomed to cold, movement in order to avoid body deformity, are the major concerns. But there is no formal teaching. All these are meant to be achieved in a gradual process through which a child learns endurance (Pol. 1336a 17-22). From the preliminary stage of life, a person is prepared to be capable to render service to the political community as he participates through his political activity, in the realization of the common good.
The first main stage of education lasts up to five years (Pol. 1336a23), though Aristotle does not mention the exact time when it should begin. (Most probably, if the beginning of this stage is to be natural, it should be after weaning). Although education at this stage still takes place at home, the directors of education have to censor it for the good community to the extent that children should not have too much contrast with slaves (Pol, 1336a 40-42).
For all such things are desired to prepare the way for the business of later life, and should be for the most part initiations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest.[45]
However Aristotle leaves some room for change.[46]
In the second stage of education- from 5 to 7 years of age, mainly visual methods may be used. But, improper pictures and statues and plays should be avoided.
In the last two stages, namely, from 7 to 14 years of age, and from 14 to 21 years of age, censorship in education is very vital in that children do not involve them selves in matters pertaining to mature persons[47]who are citizens, such as worshiping in the temple on given festivals (Pol. 1336b 15-19).
There are various stages of education. But there are mainly three forms of education or training that makes it complete. These are demarcated into two essential parts – namely, the training of the body and desires. (These are the first forms of education. They concern the irrational part of the soul and the education of this part is most by way of habituation). The training of the mind is the third form of education and is concerned with the rational part of the soul, is a process of education by way of speech or reason. The two educations must agree or harmonize in the most perfect manner and they will not do so if their natural order or sequence is disagreed.[48] It is this fact which prompted Aristotle to ask whether the earlier education of the young is to be an education in ‘reason’ or in ‘habits’ (Pol. 1334b 6-9).
His argument is that birth is our beginning, and reason and mind our natural end.[49]with that in view, the training of the body must of all precede that of the soul; then comes the training of desire; but the training of desire is for the sake of mind, as that of the body is for the sake of the soul (Pol. 1334b12-28; Cf. 1333a 16-30).
Just as the lower is ‘for the sake of the higher’ so the education of the lower must proceed and prepare for the education of the higher. Note that, during the first seven years education is concerned with birth or with the “rearing” (trophe).[50]
The education proper to the period from seven to puberty is primarily of the body and it must be undertaken ‘with a view to’ or in preparation for, the period that follows. From puberty to twenty-one, it is primarily an education of desires of the rational part of the soul.
The education of both is an education by a way of habituation, that is, education of the irrational part of the soul must it self be undertaken ‘with a view to’ or in preparation for, an education of the ‘mind’ through speech or reason which will follow the age of twenty-one.
For Aristotle says that by the age of twenty-one a certain kind of education will have been completed.[51] The education in question would seem to be the education of the lower irrational part of the soul in moral virtue. It is precisely by habituation to the practice of virtue that the soul’s desires or “passions” are tamed, trained or educated.
Aristotle makes clear that twenty-one is an age of crucial importance in the physiological development of the individual. It is also evident that he regarded it as crucially important for the development of ‘mind.’[52] This denotes ‘learning’ as such does not presuppose the full development of mind, and suggests that education of the mind or of the rational part of soul is appropriate only for mature persons.[53]
Though in the ideal state the legislator caters for the education of the youth, yet for the “democrats” it is a private affair. The “democratic” freedom leaves the citizen with a realm of private life under his control. However, “democratic” education curtails some of the citizen’s possibilities to realize himself as a good man. Remember the “democrats” do not believe that the state exists by nature that its aim is to achieve the realization of the “good man” as nature intends it. The “democrats” understand the “good” to be decided by each one as one pleases. Remember that the ideal education aims at bringing man to find pleasure in that which is good and noble, and, to foster the virtue of friendship.
By nature man is oriented to the establishment of friendship. For, by nature man is inclined to meet other subjects and communicate with them other than be locked within his own being.
Man constantly transcends the boarders of its own being in order to meet other people: this openness towards others is a characteristic future of human consciousness.[54]
For Socrates, a friend is a lover of someone’s noble and worthy a component of the human soul, and not of his body or other accidental or external elements.(Alcibiades, 133b-c).Aristotle share the same view with Socrates but he transcends Socrates’ view. He states that friendship is a virtue because it can not be practiced without virtue. “perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and are like in virtue…”[55]it has a moral meaning in so far as it is a steady and benevolent relationship between two persons whereby one is conscious of his own true self and is aware of the real self of other individuals. That is, it is based on what they are in themselves, and their moral goodness. Fro Aristotle, friendship is more of a social virtue and relation than a political one because it is found in all kinds of societies.
In Aristotle’s teachings friendship is a communion; it is actually achieved when friends live together and communicate to each other: in the sense friendship is important for all kinds of societies, particularly for political communities.[56]
Friendship helps t enhance a communion that will be steadily actualized in common activity. There is no incompatibility between friendship and other political goods since friendship empower other political goods (N.E. 1155a 3-6).
If friendship is based on what people are in themselves and their moral goodness, and the purpose of moral education is the formation of character, then the factor of friendship is indispensable in education. Friendship which empowers other politics goods should be cultivated more for without it the good life will not be achieved.
SUMMARY
It can be concluded that moral education is indispensable in the moral community. Whose purpose is to attain the supreme good. For the Greeks, education was symbolized in the motto, “know my self”, which was engraved on the temple of Delphi. Socrates himself summarizes moral education in the phrase “the unexamined life is not worthy living” (Cf. Plato, Apology, 38); and there was also an argument between Socrates , Plato and Aristotle that the life that needs examining was not only the life of an individual but that of the Athenian society. By that very factor the type of education required by the political community as envisioned by Aristotle, is characteristically moral. The political community(as it is the highest Ethical reality in so far as its purpose is to attain the supreme good) is the only one which can offer this kind of training which is not primarily academic teaching but aims at the formation of moral character of a good man and a good citizen for a good political society. For Aristotle, moral education is basically public and it involves four main stages. This process begins with family and continues through the education in and by the political community. The polis carries out this systematic program in threefold way. First, it educates through the living experience of the values and character that is life activity expresses and communicates and with the young person experiences. Second, it educates through the law, for the primary purpose of the law is the handover to the youth of that wisdom accumulated through generation. By that wisdom the students are awakened to the good and just present to the laws. Third, it has the political responsibility of system of public education for all its citizens. Moral education is primarily the process whereby the perfected humanity of good men contributes to the development in the potential of being human that nature has endowed every human being. Though education is viewed in relation to the state wityh its systematic programs, yet Aristotle regards education primary as an individual process that leads to self actualization (Pol. 1333a12-16) in so far as it aims at making a good citizen who participates in worthy activity that should lead him to a good life and eventually to the good life of the state. Note that education is pivoted in the political community’s conception of happiness or the good life.
[1] Johannes Hirschberger, The History of Philosophy vol. 1 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing company, 1958), 206.
[2] Ibid, 189
[3] Verbeke, op.cit., 50; cf. N.E. 1094a 1-3.
[4] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094a 3.
[5] Aristotle, Politics, I, 12521 3-5. (Translation by Ernest Baker).
[6] Cf.page 4-5 (introductory chapter)
[7] Aristotle, nichomachean ethics. X,1179b.2
[8] Verbeke, op.cit., 170.
[9] Kitto, op.cit., 75.
[10] Ernest Barker, the Political thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 268-269. the citizen does not realize himself as a solitary being. In the state man broadens that self to an extension which is ultimate by cultivating as many interests as possible, and by presenting as many facets to life as possible. He then attains all things, namely, life, society (common life), morality (good life). The state gives complete satisfaction, that is, it is the terminus ad quem of man’s whole development. However, not that one’s full actualization is mainly the moral life which is the real truth of the state and its essential purpose.
[11] Aristotle, Politics VII, 1337a 3-6. Let us then first inquire if any regulations are to be laid down about children, and secondly, whether the care of them should be the concern of the state or of private individuals, which latter is in our own day the common custom, and in the third place, what these regulations should be.
[12] Aristotle, Politics, VIII, 1337a 10-14;cf. 1310a 12-36
[13] Aristotle Nicomachean ethics, X, 1180a 14-18.
[14] Daniel N. Sifuna and James E. Otiende, An Introductory History of Education (Nairobi, Nairobi University Press, 1992), 64. for Aristotle regarded education as an individual process of self realization other than a mere social engineering. Education mainly aimed at producing virtuous men who were in harmony in body, mind and spirit.
[15] Terence,op.cit., 418.
[16] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1337a 19-27.
[17] Terence, op.cit.,421.
[18] Cf. footnote 2, page 121
[19] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 1180a 28-32); cf. Ernest Barker, the Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, 425.
[20] Verbeke, op.cit., 1.
[21] Aristotle, Aristotle on Education, trans. And ed. By John Burnet (Cambridge University Press, 1967), 11; Cf.W.L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle, vol. II (London;The Clarendon Press, 1950), 385.
[22] Aristotle, Aristotle on Education
[23] Ibid., 2.
[24] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1337a38-1337b1
[25] Aristotle, Politics, III,1280b 5-8.
[26] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought Of Plato And Aristotle , p.271. Ernest Barker makes some observations concerning the purpose of education for the state by comparing John Locke and Aristotle. John Locke’s view is that the need of an impartial judicature, administering a uniform law with the aid of a strong executive, dictates the creation of the state. However, Aristotle would regard such view as the negative or punitive aspect of moralizing influence of the state rather than its positive and educative work. For Aristotle, man is naturally born with a disposition of virtue. So the work of the state is to train te disposition in habit of regular action. Thus the function of the state is positive and educative work: it exists not much to repress evil as to encourage good; it is a school rather than a court of Law; it is an association of friend mutually provoking one another to virtue, rather than a union of repressive rulers and rebellious ruled.
[27] Verbeke, op. cit, 215.
[28] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1342b 32-33
[29] Becoming’ means an on-going process towards a given end. That being the case the education system is regarded as a conscientizing gradual process, subject to revision provided there is a necessity as generations go by.
[30] Jacques Barzum, “European Culture since 1800”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. (1982), vol.6:1078. the Fabians’ social theory has its principle as the inevitableness of gradualism which implies gradual ‘social engineering.’
[31] Carnes Lord, Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle, (London: Cornell University Press, 1982) 40-41
[32] Ibid., 41
[33] Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics, II, 1103a26-1103b2.
[34] Verbeke, op.cit, 42; Cf. N.E. 1103a31-1103b2.
[35] Verbeke., op.cit., 42.
[36] Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, II, 1228b2,3. it is… from man’s choice that we judge his character…that is from the object for the sake of which he acts, not from the acts itself.
[37] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1163a23.
[38] Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, II, 1220a 39-1220b1.
[39] Verbeke, op. cit., 6.
[40] Verbeke op.cit.,15.
[41] Verbeke, op. cit., 44.
[42] These four stages of education which are subject to censorship to a certain extent are mainly concerned with the training of the body and desires. It is just a part of the education and not the whole of it.
[43] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1337a1-2.
[44] Ibid., VII, 1336b4-6.
[45] Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1336a 30-34.
[46] Aristotle, Politics, trans. by T.A. Sinclair revised and re-presented by Trevor J. Saunders, p. 444. Plato’s educational proposals in the Laws imply the polemic against change. Plato wished to preserve the same education programme in perpetuity, even down to small details like children’s games, such as in Laws, 797aff, on the ground that novelty makes for social instability. However, Aristotle is a less ‘utopian’ thinker than Plato. He shows no desire to “freeze” society permanently into one particular form. Perhaps his detailed study of the constitutions and left him too impressed by their mutability to think it realistic to seek any kind of permanence as an ideal.
[47] Aristotle, politics, VII, 1336b 20-23). The legislator should not allow the youth to be spectators of iambi or of comedy until they attain the age of sitting at the public tables and to drink wine. For by then education will have armed them against the evil influences of such representations.
[48] Lord, op. cit., 42.
[49] Ibid., 42.
[50] Ibid., 46.
[51] Lord, op. cit., 46.
[52] Ibid., 47.
[53] Aristotle, Politics, trans. By T.A. Sinclair, Revised and Re-presented by Trevor J. Saunders, P. 437. Aristotle’s view of the development of human faculties is reasonable enough though the distinction between appetite/emotion and reason may seem over-simple; subject to the caveat, his recommended sequence in education is similarly reasonable; but his imposition on all this of a value judgment about the natural superiority of reason and the intellect is perhaps the ‘gentleman scholar’ of the latter age is an aspiration civilized and superb; but Aristotle’s arguments for it is good enough? If they are, do we have to conclude that those who do not attain to it are morally inferior.
[54] Verbeke, op. cit., 58.
[55] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1156b 6.
[56] Verbeke, op. cit. 61-62.
Despite the fact that there has been an expansion of civilization and the spread of technological advances, the growth of political power in all parts of the world has emphasized the problem which Aristotle intended to solve twenty three years centuries ago: how can citizens be constituted into a political society? Or how can men best live together? Since this has been Uganda’s persistent and prevalent problem, we have opted to dialogue with Aristotle on this matter. The order of the chapter is as follows; the background of the problem, a study of some of the Aristotelian principles in dialogue with Uganda’s current situation.
Uganda is grappling with the problem: what would be the best kind of political society for Uganda? This question is similar to the question Aristotle aimed at solving the 4th century BC in the politics. So it would be suitable therefore, to employ some of Aristotle’s political principles as a paradigm or a lesson for the situation of Uganda today. The substratum of Uganda’s problem is that it is not a true political community. From the time of her independence she has not been unified in commitment to one political community. The issues which would have been raised, but were not raised in the sixties are: how do we form a political society with a true socio-political consciousness despite the fact of ethnic differences? Uganda has about 50 ethnic groups.[1]how do we constitute the whole of Uganda into a constitutional state? Or how could Uganda be made into a state whose constitution would reflect the common identity sand interest (common good) or her citizens so that there would allegiance, and not lack of respect, to it by most of its citizens?
The state as an institution is a recent creation in Africa before the scramble of Africa most peoples were under the governance of a king, where kingdoms existed, or the paramount chief or elders in the absence of a kingdom. It would have been necessary to create, first, a true social political consciousness among the would be citizens of any given state. However most states in Africa, it was not the case.[2]
The most important political development in Africa over the last one hundred years has not been fragmentation but the huge process of unification. Whereas there were once a thousand or latent political systems in Africa, by independence (of Uganda in 1962) these had been reduced to a mere 50 and so. That process has never the less entailed social and political difficulties ensconced in an arbitrarily concocted new state”.[3]
Uganda being one of the new states has been faced with a deep crisis. The crisis eventually made the country’s political system of the time to collapse into tyranny, anarchy and then civil war. However this phenomenon is not generally the norm, even though there exists an absence of a smoothly functioning democracy.
In the case of Uganda, there were four steps or turning points which led to that disaster. The first consisted of events that gave the country its revealing name which was related to the kingdom of Buganda. Early discussions left the country with a crucial imbalance. The protectorate of Uganda was divided into four provinces namely eastern, western, and central provinces. But it is believed that the three provinces of the protectorate which were ethnically and politically fragmented did not earn a privileged relationship with its British overloads as did the fourth or central province which consisted of a single, close-knit society that was born a linguistic and a traditional political unit.[4]
The second turning point was the Kabaka crisis, the Kabaka opted for a separate independence of his kingdom. Sir Andrew Cohen however who had come to Uganda with unclear and radical aims to effect the transition process to independence, was displeased within the Kabaka whom he regarded as an obstacle to his project. He thought that to eradicate the kingdom would make hiss work easier. So in 1953, the Kabaka was deported to London. This developed into a crisis for Cohen underestimated the forces of resistance he would encounter. He thought he was breaking the power of a conservative in order to open the way to progressive nationalism. On the contrary, it was the servants of the protectorate (aspirants sub-elites –the clerks and teachers and traders and successful farmers) rather than the monarchy (the chiefly hierarchies) who were in support of the kingship.[5]
The third great turning point was an abrupt granting of independence the social political forces within the country were not well prepared to manage their affairs as they had not yet gained reasonable consciousness of what a state is.
Though the Baganda crisis had quickened political consciousness through the protectorate the nationalist movement was in its infancy, and the idea of a Ugandan nation had hardly began to enter consciousness of the vast majority.”[6]
The decision to turn the existing administrative units into a state was imposed. The existing social- political forces had no choice other than to accept the offer despite the fact that there was no feasible arrangement as regards power sharing among them. They made the hereditary ruler of one part of the country president of the unitary republic or a constitutional head of state. However, as it was the case such an arrangement was obviously going to collapse in a very short time.[7]
Sovereignty did not evolve from the people but was externally imposed by the colonial power. Te colonial social-economic and political and cultural institutions were imposed and supervised from outside. It is not then surprising then that not only during the colonial era but even after independence Uganda has had very few attributes of what could constitute a modern nation-state and in particular, reasonably permanent common residual values.[8]
According to Christopher Wrigley, the decision which guaranteed Uganda’s immediate independence was taken in London. It is not yet clear when and how the decision was taken because the archives are not yet open. However it was part of the great review of Britain’s place in the world. Due to Suez fiasco of 1956. Though after World War II, eastern Africa and Middle East had a key role in Britain’s struggle to remain a world power, yet her strategy was mainly based on Egypt which she eventually lost.[9] With that in view, it might have been the case that Britain had no more to keep Uganda as a strategic factor for controlling the Nile.
The fourth turning point was the army mutiny of 1964. The responses of the mutiny of this political force had an indelible effect on the future evolution of Uganda. Instead of suppressing the armed forces and cutting them to their proper size, they were given power and a salary increment.
But in Uganda the mutineers were bought off with lavish pay increase and promotions instead of being suppressed. Obote resorted to the personal allegiance of the troops. He knew that once the democratic Party had been defeated there would be no further reasons for the alliance between himself and Muteesa; and that once the lost countries problem was out of the way the kingdoms were likely to make common cause with another and wit other elements hostile to himself. So he needed to have in reserve the instrument of armed force. But when he had thus made himself dependent on the soldiers it could hardly be long before they took power into their hands.[10]
Due to such a background of imbalance among social-political forces, the state was consequently led into a situation of civil disorder.
The social political framework had been disjointed. Besides there was no consensus to resolve political conflicts which resulted from various political traditions such as monarchism, liberalism, republicanism. This clearly indicates that Uganda as a state is without a true social-political unity, neither of conscious nor of commitment. The reasons for this lack of real political unity are to be found in the fact that the colonial state-building mechanisms based not the values of the local population but on colonial ideology and colonial value. This implies that the establishment of the state of Uganda was not based on the common interests or values of its people as a whole. This fact, however, was a necessity also to the British authority because there had not been developed common interests and values during the British administration.
This situation of absence of common values and interest continues in our days. Even more the Uganda elites continue to ignore the situation.
While Ugandan elites reflect various political traditions - monarchism, liberalism, republicanism, and so on – they have not outgrown the local social forces they purport to represent. Ugandan elites have worked out political formulas not as means though which conflicts can not be resolved for the ultimate good of the political system as a whole, but as tactical weapons for taking care of interests peculiar to them selves or social forces they purport to represent.[11]
Some political elites regarded the political formulas as obstacle to their advancement and catering for the interests of their social forces. These political elites felt disadvantaged through the constitution formulas, and they devised means to violet them because they thought that there was inequitable allocation of resources under the colonial rule. So during the crisis which exacerbated in 1966, Obote suspended the constitution fashioned at independence.
The period between 1962 and 1966 was one of relative peace, not necessarily because the leaders were committed to the ‘politics of reconciliation’ but because non of the leaders and the forces they represented felt strong enough to question the constitutional arrangement decided at the time of independence. The major antagonists – Obote supporters, the anti- Obote group in UPC AND THE Kabaka’s supporters discovered in the last two years of this period that there interests could not be taken care of by normal constitutional procedures.
The anti- Obote group and Kabaka’s supporters therefore vied for the support within the army. The physical shut down was resolved in favor of Obote’s faction, which dictated its own rules in 1966. But the net effect of the new political formulas was to alienate Baganda and other groups, which initially legitimized the Amin coup of 1971. Ami9n was therefore not behaving eccentrically when he introduced rules only intelligible to himself and his cronies.
It is worthy noting that even that constitution which was designed at independence was not a composition of the contributions from all social political forces within the country save the Ugandan political elites who adhered to the political formula as o far as they serve their immediate interest. For that reason the interests for all the people were not well represented, if they were represented at all. The constitutional formulas in this case were almost mere decrees imposed by either the colonial rulers or the Ugandan political elites.
So the people of Uganda as a whole when they are becoming a state did not choose a common interest which had to be actualized. In view of this consideration, Aristotle’s political principles would act as a paradigm to re-orientate Ugandan so that they could chose a common interest they should aim at.
The constitution as a political good is the basis for the organization of the polis. This exposition of the solution or a lesson to Uganda’s problem is based on Aristotle’s principle of political thought (which are transposed in order to suit Uganda’s situation) in conjunction with the constitution document for Uganda. The constitution document is a result of the people’s contribution from concrete situation from which they made a critical diagnosis of society in order to discover why peace and stability, democracy and development have been out of reach for the past thirty years. “Recalling our history which has been characterized by political and constitutional instability, recognizing our struggle against the force of tyranny, oppression and exploitation committed to building a better future by establishing a social-economic and political order. Through a popular and durable national constitution based on principle of unity, peace, equality, democracy, freedom, racial justice and process…”[12]
However, the constitution document must be seen as a comparative study of constitution of other countries.
The people’s view agreed that Uganda can not be studied in isolation from other countries. Constitutional arrangement of other countries can greatly contribute to the solutions Uganda is searching for… the commission made a comparative study of the constitution of numerous countries both of the developing and developed nations…The aim was not merely to copy this or that but to discover how each nation came to its constitution solutions and the purpose they have served.[13]
Note hat this is really the methodological approach which Aristotle employs in the politics. So in our case we are employing Aristotle’s principle of political thought in a transposed form.
Aristotle’s purpose of the state, as I ought to be for Ugandan, is the attainment of the good life or peace. So the new constitution should aim at achieving this.
Given the country’s turbulent and unstable history the destructiveness associated with it, the over riding objective of the new constitution should be to create a firm foundation for peace and stability in the country. Systems, institutions and arrangements for governance under the constitution must be directed towards sustaining peace and stability without which development and orderly life are not possible.[14]
The constitution which is the concrete human reality envisaged in the juridical document ought to orientate the state. The three main organs of the state- namely, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary have been widely abused in the past. So the new constitution must cater for this problem to avoid such an abuse with curtail stability and equitable development.
In the final analysis, what people are interested in is not simply principles, but more so that government translates those principles into reality and governs effectively and delivers services and delivers services and goods to them.[15]
In the past the executive just like the armed forces, has tended to abuse and misuse its power. Now the armed forces which were trained mainly according to the colonial values of suppressing rebellions have to be re-educated and re- orientated to the new values of an independent Uganda in order to avoid such abuse of power.[16] It should be trained to secure the territorial integrity of the country and to learn to participate in the development of the country in the time of peace. (cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 209).
It is an irreplaceable factor in the formation of moral character which essential for the attainment of the good life for the polis. Now this has not been the case for Uganda. The state control over the judiciary has hampered the rule of law, so the “independence of the judicially should be guaranteed to ensure effective maintenance of the rule of law and constitutionalism so that there is no necessity or justification for resorting to extra-judicial means to solve problems. It should deal with concrete situations not mere abstract principles, for the people are interested not in mere principles but I the fact that judicially translates these principles into reality and works effectively.
The new constitution should put in place a judicial system that is assessable, relevant and simple enough to effectively resolve conflicts in society, taking into account that Uganda is basically a simple and peasant society. The general system of administration of justice must deliver and be seen to deliver justice according to the perceptions of the ordinary people of Uganda.[17]
Though laws are indispensable in moral formation, Aristotle does not mean that order in the state will be attained if there is merely an impartial judicature. This has a negative or punitive aspect of moralizing influence o the state, and this might still be the case of Uganda. But for Aristotle law as a political good has a positive and educative work towards virtue, and the state is a school rather than a court of law.[18] So Uganda should adopt this important aspect from Aristotle.
In this school the law or the legal justice is very necessary in regulating the political activity of every citizen in that each one fulfills the obligation of contributing to the protection, preservation, regeneration and argumentation of the common good. However, in the context of Uganda, (like in any other political community or society) since all citizens cannot participate directly in the decision making at all levels, the legislature is elected to smoothen the process of effecting and directing the political activity.
The legislature’s role in governance should be respected as they are elected representatives of the people. Legislature will have some control over the presidency.[19] At that time Aristotle could not think of independent organs that were to check on accountability as it was not necessary but in our age such controls are very necessary.
…provisions for independent organs other than the three traditional organs of state which should keep the three main organs in check by ensuring their accountability, such organs to include an inspector general of government, a human rights enforcement body and an Auditor General.[20]
3. Consensus and Sovereignty of the People
Aristotle’s view of the state, though exclusive, is wider than the three organs. The state is a political community, that is, the citizens who are free men serve in the military and rule in turns. In Uganda’s case due to lack of moral education and advanced administrative skills, we can not achieve Aristotle’s ideal that we entrust each citizen with the duty of ruling. Then the three main organs are necessary, but still he citizens should be educated so that they are competent and responsible as they participate in decision making. In the past history of Uganda, the issue regarding the state as subjected to the people was unheard of. The people had marginal participation, if any, in maters that affected their destiny. so the new constitution should ensure that people are equipped, educated and organically integrated validly and trust fully into the decision making process of the political, economic and social life of the state. It is a duty for every citizen to participate in the political activity that leads to the preservation and promotion of a good. The states decision must be the expression of the people’s “common ground” (common good) derived from a synthesis of their concerns, values, interests, demands and aspirations. in this way the endemic instability when the gun, rather than the people, is the arbiter, should be avoided.[21]
However if the people are to effectively exercise their sovereignty, they must be equipped ad organized to do so. in this respect they must be armed both with the necessary political and military training to handle public affairs as demanded in many memoranda. Further, they must be assisted to build economic capacity so that they are not unduly compromised because of want or deprivation.[22]
Both consensus and sovereignty of the people pre suppose the existence of unity of the political community. For Aristotle the unity of the polis is guided by the principle of political reciprocity or proportionality, but within a city- state. In our case however, there must be a dialogue between cultural and social groups so that they can form a nation-state. Like Uganda rather than a closed-in small city state.[23] But dialogue ( it ought to involve 50 ethnic groups, as regards Uganda) should be guided by reciprocity and ever more so by friendship and this should eventually lead to self-sufficiency generated by the enrichment provided by each of these ethnic groups. Ethnicity is a principle social factor. It shapes the identities of the people of Uganda and how they relate to each other. Recently it has shaped political behavior and many leaders have exploited it to undermine national cohesion and unity, whereby some groups have considered themselves central to the Uganda political process[24]people should be bought to realize that culture is dynamic, and the differences between culture values should not be a factor bringing dis-unity, but each group should realize the cultural values are always subject to change if contemporary demands for a common good, human rights, morality, development and nation building are to be achieved.[25]
The unity we need today, especially for Uganda, is that which not only accepts but wills the others to be with their differences in so far as the differences are not evil. If nature is teleological, and the Greeks are part of Nature, then the Greeks must achieve their goal of being citizens of the polis as intended by Nature. And if non-Greeks and women, who are also part of nature which is teleological, remain non citizens (in the exclusive sense) as it is intended by nature, does it mean that nature intends them to be that way and they could never be citizens of any polis among the Greeks? If that is the case, Aristotle’s criteria for citizenship would be an obstacle to the unity of a norm state like Uganda. For we should regard marginalized ethnic groups and women [26] as equals if unity of the state is to be consolidated.
The new constitution should aim to consolidate and enhance national unity and consciousness and consequently stability, peace and development. For the state of Uganda was not formed as a unity at the time the country attained independence.
The people are also demanding that the new constitution should consolidate our national unity and generally our consciousness of each other as people of Uganda. The reality is that, to date, Uganda still remains largely a territorial shed with various ethnic groups living in it… the colonial regime encouraged and even accentuated the differences among the people of Uganda through their policy of divide and rule. Many post colonial leaders also negatively exploited differences based on ethnicity, religion and other sectarian practices to acquire and retain power.[27]
It should be noted that it is after achieving our national unity that we can effectively enter into dialogue with other nations as international relations are indispensable in our contemporary age. Self-sufficiency cannot be achieved fully in an isolated state.
Proportional equality or equity as a political good will be necessary for Ugandans. Proportional equality necessarily implies “distributive justice” in both aspects namely, “rights to equal treatment” (transposed as distributive justice) and “the bright to be treated as an equal” (transposed as commutative justice on respect of human dignity of individuals or groups of individuals). Distributive justice deals with relations of political community as a whole with its citizens. It refers to what a political community (or society) owes to each citizen. In Uganda’s context, as it would be for any society, it demands respect for individual’s rights and a fair distribution of benefits and duties (the so called “national-cake”) among all citizens. though Aristotle’s political thought does not mention explicitly that issues like land be distributed justly yet in Uganda’s case (like any other nation) distributive justice should be the arbiter in such matters concerning possession, transfer or acquisition of land by individuals or groups of individuals. So amazement of blocks of land by a few individuals be it in Uganda or anywhere else, is contrary to distributive justice. The same should apply to the distribution of duties to the citizens of the political community. And in this case, distributive justice should be complemented by the principles of ‘conformity of merit’ and ‘governing in turns’. For the “right to be treated as an equal” (commutative justice) is very vital for Uganda which is a heterogeneous community. The people should be conscientized to treat others as equals despite their differences. The state will achieve its purpose only if its citizens are able to exercise equity between each group.
Every person should have the right to enjoy, practice, profess, maintain and promote any culture, language, tradition, or creed or religion but subject to the provisions of the constitution and to the condition that the rights so protected do not offend against the rights of others or the national interest.[28]
Friendship is a political good which empowers other political goods. The people of Uganda ought to be made aware that without friendship as a political good between the various groups within the State, the political goods, and especially the purpose of the State (the common good) will not be achieved. However, all the above mentioned political goods including friendship are hinged on the nature of education fostered by the state.
First, the state is an ethical reality in the sense that on the one hand it needs persons with moral character and conduct, and on the other it generates persons, domestic and social groups that have moral character and goodness. The state’s role is mainly the formation and direction of the moral life, and not merely the maintenance of the necessary conditions of moral life as it is today. Therefore Uganda ought to adopt a national education system which does not only maintain necessary conditions of moral life but which aim at forming and directing moral life.[29] It should not merely tolerate but allow private education as Aristotle maintained. (N.E. X 1180a 28-32)
Second, the unity of the polis requires an education that can generate the understanding of the nature of that unity and generate the love and loyal commitment necessary for the preservation of that unity. This requires training the character of the citizens. For Aristotle education as a political aim is concerned with training and development of moral character which calls for a citizen’s conscious, responsible and competent commitment and participation in the state so that harmony, integrity and stability in other words, the common good of the state is preserved. Though he considers it a necessity for the state, it is not his political aim that the young be instructed in the past history of their state, its present politics, the aims of its parties, and how to vote in the assembly carefully and judiciously.[30] The education al programme in Uganda should adopt Aristotle’s political aim of education so that Uganda’s unity and common good are achieved.
Third, education should make the people aware and equip them with the capacity to discern that equity is a fundamental political good which empowers the effective unity of the state. With proper education, various types of inequality including conflicting understanding of the nature and purpose of polis itself which would destroy the constitution ought to be avoided. Uganda should ensure that its educational system conscientize the people that equity is of vital importance if they are to become a real State with a purpose or common good.
All the above can be addressed only by a common understanding of the nature of the state, the nature and goodness of its unity[31] and continuity, and that only the polis can ensure understanding, love of and commitment to this common good. It is education which empowers the citizens with a proper common understanding of them.
To date, love of, and competent and loyal commitment to, the common good implies on the one hand the participation in the realization of peace in the State with reference to the human beings, and on the other hand the participation in the preservation of the stability of the environment. Uganda should aim for both so that the generations yet to come also live in a good environment.
It should be the duty to the State and citizens alike to protect, conserver and restore landscapes, sites and monuments of historic, artistic and aesthetic value to the country… The central as wells as local governments should create and develop parks, reserves, and recreation areas so as to ensure the conservation of natural resources, including animals and plants and promote the rational use of natural resources and safeguards their capacity for renewal, regeneration and the stability of the ecology.[32]
SUMMARY
As philosophy is a way of life, and Aristotle’s philosophy intended to establish standards of social behavior, both the conduct and of the individual and the society, then Aristotelian principles are still relevant to us today in so far as we are to build a well organized, true political society with clear and distinct vision. That being the case, Uganda can use Aristotle as a paradigm to solve her crisis. The constitution crisis can be dealt with provided that the constitution as a political good is a result of the people’s consensus. It primarily requires a change of attitude. The people of Uganda should be conscientized that the law as a political good is an irreplaceable factor in moral formation not as a negative and punitive aspect of the moralizing influence of the state but as a positive and educative work towards virtue; in that the state is a school rather than a court of law. By that very fact, the role of the State of Uganda in its public education ought to be mainly the formation and direction of the moral life, and not merely the maintenance of the necessary condition of moral life as it may be the case so far.
As regards the unity of the State of Uganda which has been fragile sense independence in 1962, the principles of political reciprocity and proportional equality would be relevant unifying factors of a heterogeneous society composed of about 50 ethnic groups. This unity would be enhanced firmly by the political good of friendship which empowers other political goods. Therefore, if Uganda strives to become a true political community with a possible and relevant common good, then it should have the capacity and will to embrace, though not wholesale, the political goods and principles recommended by Aristotle. However, it should be noted that there are many pertinent and salient issues which could be regarded as elements of the common good today yet they were not explicitly hinted on by Aristotle since he was a child of his own time. The following contemporary issues would be included when one considers the common good today: multiculturalism, regional cooperation, refugees rights and duties, children’s rights and duties, economic independence, women emancipation, ect.
What we can conclude from the treatment of this subject is that for Aristotle “goodness” qualifies a relation between subjects. Furthermore the relation is founded on Nature’s teleological character. It is founded on the fact that everything in the cosmos and all things, including the state, are works of one and the same Nature. Everything then exists as a concrete act of participation in the same Nature. This participation, in its turn, is the consequence of Nature being present, in a peculiar, measured way, in every one of its works as its internal principle of operation, that is, as its essence. Thus for Aristotle Nature is not a mere abstract category or idea or form existing in itself. It exists distributively and according to or in order of promotion in each and all the things of the cosmos. Nature then is both the inner principle of being and of acting in all things of the universe and at the same time it transcends each and all of them and unifies them in a totality of beings. Nevertheless, Nature itself is teleologically directed towards the Pure Act as its final cause. God, as the final cause, is the sovereign good who ultimately orientates the good of the polis. For the good of the polis is greater than that of the individual person because it is god-like.
Analyzing the statement that ‘the good of the citizens and the good of the state are identical’, from the point of view of Aristotle’s metaphysics and cosmology, we can conclude hat: the good for each citizens is the attainment of its perfection through a sufficiency of goods and at the same time a security in possession of the gods. That being the case, on the one hand, the state at one level is a good for the citizens individually and collectively in so far as the state, having in Aristotle’s view self-sufficiency, can provide both the sufficiency of goods and security in the possession of them. On the other hand, from the stand point of the state, the presence in it of the good man and good citizen (that is, man with character) is good for the state. Also, the intentional, competent, committed and wise contribution by the citizens to the experience of a good polis is the good for the citizens and the community. For Aristotle, the state needs the same character of virtues (cardinal virtues – temperance, justice, fortitude and wisdom) as the citizens. So, to identify the goodness of the citizens with the good of the polis can be seen as a consequence of the existence in the political community of the character of virtues. This “moral character” of the political community results from the life-communion of the citizens that make the political community.
The state can truly be called good for its members if and only if it has its foundation the good and its citizens are good men without sound moral character. For all aspects of the polis are pivoted on the search for the common good. That is, the unity, the educational system, the constitution, the law, equity, justice, friendship and loyalty, the political activity, are all realized or actualized in the light of the common good, i.e., the purpose of the state.
Even after 23 centuries, it is important to note that Aristotle’s notion of “good as the foundation of a political community” is a universal and not a particular since it is also relevant and applicable to Uganda as a nation-State. Uganda’s political crisis will be solved if it adopts the politics of unity based on the good which is neither ethnic, tribal, nor mere economic and military. The good as a foundation of a political community is not merely a theoretical notion, but it is a cardinal principle on which a nation-State with a “moral character” ought to be established.
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[1] Uganda Constitution Commission, The Report Of The Uganda Constitutional Commission- Analysis And Recommendation (Entebbe: UPPC, 1993), 60.
[2] Sometimes struggle or painful experience against injustice can produce a good thing, like in South Africa, it has produced black – consciousness among the youth with Steve Biko, and a ‘south African- consciousness’ with Nelson Mandela.
[3] D.A. Low, ‘The Dislocated Polity, In Uganda Now, ed. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, 1991) 36.
[4] Christopher Wrigley, “background to crisis-four steps towards disaster”, in Uganda now, 29.
[5] Ibid., 30.
[6] Wrigley, op. cit., 32.
[7] Ibid., 34.
[8] Uganda constitution commission, op., 76.
[9] Wrigley, op. cit., 32.
[10] Wrigley, op. cit., 34.
[11] Dan Mudoola, “political transitions since Idi Amin: a study in Political Pathology,” in Uganda now, 295.
[12] Uganda constitution commission, op. cit., 92.(cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, p.1)
[13] Uganda constitutional commission, op. cit., 26
[14] Ibid. 92. (cf. constitution of Uganda, p.3 stability.)
[15] Ibid., 95 (constitution of the republic of Uganda, p.5)
[16] Ibid., 95-96.( cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, articles 126-151).
[17] Ibid., 95-96.
[18] Cf. footnote 2 page 110(ch.4).
[19] Uganda constitutional commission, op. cit., 95. ( cf constitution of the republic of Uganda, p.8; and article 163-164).
[20] Ibid., 95.
[21] Uganda constitutional commission, op. cit., 92-3. (cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 255, article 43).
[22] Ibid., 61. (cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 17).
[23] Ernest Barker, the political thought of Plato and Aristotle, 226. Despite the fact that the state is a development and an organism, the teleological view is enemy to progress as it does not indicate that there is a development still to come. To regard the state as a completion of political progress was, for Aristotle, to shut his eyes to the universal empire.
[24] Uganda constitutional commission, op. cit., 61. (cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 21.)
[25] Ibid., 170. ( cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 246).
[26] Ibid., 173. women should be accorded full and equal dignity, and the same respect and status of persons as men are accorded in all the laws of Uganda. ( cf. constitution of the republic of Uganda, article 32).
[27] Uganda constitutional commission, op. cit., 96.
[28] Ibid., 170. (Cf. Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, article 21)
[29] Ernest Barker, The Political thought of Plato and Aristotle, 230.
[30] Ibid., 423-424.
[31] There is a problem that Aristotle has been understood to favor a totalitarian state and impose one homogeneous culture on the citizens. [Cf. K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. II The High Tide of Prophesy: Hegel, Mark, and The Aftermath (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1945), 20-24.] However, for Aristotle, the State is a composite. This unity presupposes and requires the existence of differences. So the allegation of a totalitarian state does not hold any ground.
[32] Uganda Constitutional Commission, op.cit., 707. (Cf. Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, article 245)
