Copyright 2006 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Aristotle's Life in Brief Aristotle was born in 384 BC, fifteen years after the death of Socrates and about two years after Plato founded the Academy. He was born in Stagira, in Macedonia (Northern Greece); his father was a physician employed by the King of Macedonia, Amyntas II. Aristotle's natural destiny would have been the practice of medicine, but his father's death thrust him into a different course. Instead, he was sent to Athens to study in Plato's Academy, where he arrived in 367 BC.
The Academy, by this time, had established a system of general education that was based on mathematics and was postured in opposition to a school organized by Isocrates which offered a strictly rhetorical training. Aristotle's earliest works were written in his twenties while at the Academy. As one might imagine, these earliest works are strongly Platonic.
When Plato died in 348 BC, direction of the Academy moved to his nephew, Speusippus. Aristotle moved to Assos, on the coast of Asia Minor, where a branch of the Academy had been established earlier. The following period, from 348 to 342 BC was a time of rapid intellectual growth, for Aristotle, but it was also a time in which he became absorbed into the political future of Greece. The patron of this school was Hermeias, tyrant of Atarneus, who was politically wedged between the Persian Empire and Macedonia. Hermeias was evidently involved in a conspiracy with Phillip of Macedonia to invade Persia; at any rate, the Persians captured Hermeias and executed him. Aristotle fled to the island of Lesbos with the others associated with the school, including Hermeias' niece, Pythias, who became Aristotle's wife. Through the end of this period, Aristotle quietly engaged in scientific studies.
In 342 BC, Aristotle was asked to return to Macedonia to tutor Phillip's son, Alexander. Little is known about this period of Aristotle's life; though, given Alexander's later invasion of Persia and Aristotle's earlier connection with Hermeias, it placed Aristotle in a dangerous position. In 336 BC, Alexander became king of Macedonia and spent the next thirteen years expanding Greek influence throughout the region.
The period from 336 to the time of Alexander's death in 323 BC was the period of Aristotle's true creativity. He returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, which flourished as a center of both humanistic and scientific research. Unfortunately, by the time of Alexander's death, the Athenians moved to remove all Macedonian connections from their midst; Aristotle himself was put up for trial on a charge of impiety for some verses he had written, many years earlier, in praise of Hermeias' bravery. Aristotle's attachment to Athens was not as great as that of Socrates, however, and he fled to Chalcis, his mother's birthplace, where he died shortly afterward.
Aristotle's wife Pythias had died during the Lyceum years, and he had remarried (in some ill-defined sense) with Herpyllis. The latter union bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nichomachus. Hence, his "Nichomachean Ethics" represents a conversation between father and son on the subject of living well.
This work consists of eight books of which we are merely reading Books I and III. In outline, the whole work reviews (I) the origin of the polis out of households and villages, (II) various theoretical and actual constitutions, (III) the theory of citizenship and constitutions, (IV) actual constitutions and their varieties, (V) factual conflicts and constitutional changes, (VI) construction of democracies and oligarchies, (VII) educational principles as related to political ideals, and (VIII) the training of youth. Like so many of Aristotle's works, it is a comprehensive program based heavily upon observation and carefully making reference to historical, literary, and philosophical works of his time.
Like Plato, Aristotle sees a strong relationship between good states and good men; and the creation of good states has the specific purpose of making men good. Being a good citizen, on the other hand, is only the first step. Aristotle makes it clear in his Nichomachean Ethics that the habituation of good behavior in the polis must precede but does not complete the development of virtuous character and, hence, human happiness. Again, like Plato, Aristotle sees education and mental development as critically important in the development of citizenship and, hence, the promotion of good states.
This is not to say that Aristotle merely repeats Plato's ideas. Aristotle's "scientific" personality is clear from the beginning of this work and he goes to great extents to observe and understand all facets of the subject that can be seen in the surrounding world. In this work, Aristotle establishes most of the basic views and methods of political science. Also, his point of view is pragmatic or practical; it is clear that not all societies of men are prepared for the best of constitutions. The level of citizenship must be suited to the development (culture) of the people and the constitution of the state must be adapted to the possible levels of citizenship --- a position that was emphasized again in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract.
In Book I, after a brief introduction, Aristotle takes up the management of households; this is central to politics because political society begins in the household. There are three kinds of relationship within households --- the master and slave, the husband and wife, and the father and child. Is slavery natural or unnatural? In Aristotle's mind it is natural, expedient, and right. His reasoning is based on the natural and right rule of soul over body, or of reasoning over the purely mechanical. We can observe easily that the reasoning capacity occurs to different degrees in different people and that the balance of reason over body is different. We can also see that life is better managed when a competent soul rules. Thus, for Aristotle, it is possible to rank people and animals in a hierarchical order, and it becomes clear that for some men to be slaves, mastered by others, will be best for all interests. A form of slavery that is unnatural and not right is that brought about by conquest or legal action. Here it is possible that the natural superior could conceivably come to be mastered by his inferior. That would neither be expedient nor right.
There follows (chapters 8-11) a very interesting discussion of the role of gaining wealth in household management. The natural mode of gaining wealth consists of a man's natural and necessary activities in fishing, hunting, agriculture, and animal husbandry. These all lead toward the provision of what a household requires for its welfare. In primordial family life, this activity consumes most of the master's time and the distribution of this natural wealth within the family is a simple matter of sharing. As families grow into villages, specialization begins to occur and the redistribution of natural wealth becomes somewhat more complex and leads to a system of barter. Aristotle sees the origin of coinage, as most people do, in the complexities of the modern marketplace where barter is no longer convenient. But coinage has an unnatural side to it, in the fact that coinage can be accumulated without any natural bounds. There is a second mode of gaining wealth, then, and it is the unnatural and unlimited accumulation of coinage. There is even the thoroughly unnatural and perhaps reprehensible possibility of earning coinage by the lending of coinage! Coinage wealth is, of course, the ultimate medium through which men acquire land and power in excess of other men. Without coinage this would be impossible.
Aristotle's discussion of wealth is timeless and has been reflected in the thinking of many followers in political philosophy. Plato himself thought the problems of property and wealth to be so significant that he designed his ideal republic as a communist society in which wealth was held by the community at large. Plato saw wealth as a corrupting institution and a medium of unnatural division. Plato even went so far as to recommend that children be separated from their parents and brought up in schools where their natural talents could be properly nurtured independent of the abuses of wealth. (See his Republic.)
The ability to achieve a radically unequal distribution of wealth through the accumulation of coinage sets many political problems for Western Civilization. In early periods, wealth was mostly held by kings, noblemen, and churches. However, the modern era began as wealth was being acquired increasingly by merchants and a rising middle class. Issues in modern political philosophy revolve increasingly around wealth and property and the role(s) of government in the protection of personal wealth and property. If property is a right, as many modern political societies suppose, then does this mean that government is required to help individuals gain superiority over others by accumulation of excess wealth? Obviously, Liberalism and Capitalism argue these causes. But by the 19th Century, problems with the distribution of wealth had become so great that the justice of such systems was questioned thoroughly.
Book I concludes with a discussion of the other household relations. The superiority of father to children is a natural relation of mastery, the child having much to learn. The superiority of husband to wife, however, is viewed as "constitutional," that is, a mastery as "first among equals." Man and woman are viewed as adult equals; yet, the male is still superior to the female, in Aristotle's mind, and deserves to be master of the household.
In Book III, Aristotle takes up the concept of citizenship and the classification of constitutions. There are three constitutions --- monarchy, aristocracy, and polity --- and there are three corruptions to these --- tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. The basic difference lies in the rule of one, of a few, or of the many. The corruptions lie in the way power is grasped and by whom. An aristocracy, for instance, can represent a few wise men (Plato's "philosopher kings"); but an oligarchy merely represents power wielded by wealth.
Of greatest interest, perhaps, is Aristotle's discussion of citizenship. Who is a citizen and what is the good citizen? It is by no means obvious that every person in a society should be a citizen; indeed, in Aristotle's Athens only land-holding native-born males were citizens. Ultimately, Aristotle settles on the idea that seems natural to him, that "he who has the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state is . . . the citizen of that state." (#1275)
Of special significance, is Aristotle's sense that one can become a good citizen and yet fail to become a good person. Being a good citizen depends upon fulfilling the obligations of citizenship as defined within the polis. This in turn depends upon the constitution of the polis. If the constitution is corrupt, then it misses the mark of promoting the best course of human life, and that is the telos of political society. Man is a political animal, born to live in political society, and the polis is intended to provide the best atmosphere in which both to habituate good behavior and to develop its practice as a deliberate activity rooted in one's character. Only the ideal society can be a happy society in which individuals can truly become happy people. Human happiness as individuals, outside of an ideal society, is improbable.
Updated on November 14, 2005; click here to return to My HomePage or here to return to Course Index Page.