EXCERPT’S ARTRICLE- PLATO’S “REPUBLIC” AND ARISTOTLE’S “POLITICS” – THE RULE OF LAW AND ILLEGITIMACY OF
TYRANNY- AND ESSAY PROMPT.
(STANDARD 10.1.2. Trace the development of the Western political ideas of the rule of law and illegitimacy of tyranny, using selections from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics. )
(INSTRUCTIONS: STEP 1: AS A CLASS, WE ARE GOING TO UNDERLINE OR HIGHLIGHT ANY MENTION OF THE RULE OF
LAW OR ILLEGITIMACY OF TYRANNY – WHICH MEANS THE IDEA THAT ONE MAN IN CHARGE DOESN’T WORK WELL ).
STEP 2: USE THIS ARTICLE (WHAT YOU UNDERLINED), YOUR “INTRO AND THESIS” PACKET, YOUR NOTES ON THE
REFORMATION AND RENAISSANCE, YOUR VOCAB JOURNAL, AND COMPLETED HW (PG. 12-17 Q’S AND XWORD ON
PGS. 4-11) TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION WITH A 5 PARAGRAPH ESSAY (INTRO, 3 BODY PAR.’S AND
CONCLUSION): HOW DID JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE IDEAS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHERS PLATO AND ARISTOTLE
CHANGE PEOPLE’S IDEAS OF HOW A SOCIETY SHOULD BE GOVERNED?
ARISTOTLE’S “POLITICS”:
All associations are formed with the aim of achieving some good. The Greek city-state, or polis, is the most
general association in the Greek world, containing all other associations, such as families and trade
associations. As such, the city-state must aim at achieving the highest good. Aristotle concludes that “man
is a political animal”: we can only achieve the good life by living as citizens in a state. In discussing the
economic relations that hold within a city-state, Aristotle defends the institution of private property,
condemns excessive capitalism, and notoriously defends the institution of slavery. Before presenting his
own views, Aristotle discusses various theoretical and actual models current at his time. In particular, he
launches lengthy attacks on Plato’s Republic and Laws, which most commentators find unsatisfying and off
the mark, as well as criticizing other contemporary philosophers and the
constitutions of Sparta, Crete, and Carthage.
Aristotle identifies citizenship with the holding of public office and
administration of justice and claims that the identity of a city rests in
its constitution. In the case of a revolution, where the citizenship and
constitution change, a city’s identity changes, and so it cannot be
held responsible for its actions before the revolution.
Roughly speaking, there are six kinds of constitution, three just and
three unjust. A constitution is just when it benefits everyone in the city
and unjust when it benefits only those in power. When a single person
rules, a constitution is a monarchy if the ruler is good and a
tyranny if the ruler is bad. When a small elite rules, a constitution
is an aristocracy if the rulers are good and an oligarchy if the
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rulers are bad. When the masses rule, a constitution is a polity if they rule well and a democracy if they rule
badly. Aristotle acknowledges that giving full sovereignty to either the governing body or the laws might
make room for abuses of power and suggests that a polity is probably least susceptible to corruption,
especially when the laws are given higher authority than the governing body. He proposes a principle of
distributive justice, saying that benefits should be conferred upon different citizens differently, depending
on the contribution they make to the well-being of the state.
In Books IV to VI, Aristotle turns from his theoretical speculations to a practical examination of political
institutions as they exist in the Greek world. He observes that the needs of city-states vary greatly
depending on their wealth, population, class distribution, and so on. He examines the different varieties of
states and constitutions and makes a number of general recommendations. The greatest tension in any
state is the mutual resentment between the rich and the poor. Consequently, a strong middle class keeps a
state in balance and guards against corruption and oppression. The three branches of civic government are
the deliberative, which makes the major political decisions of the state; the executive, which runs the dayto-day business of the state; and the judicial, which oversees the legal affairs of the state. Though it is not
necessary to give everyone equal access to public office, it is never wise to exclude entirely any group from
power. Constitutions are usually changed by a large, dissatisfied faction that rises up against the people in
power. To preserve a constitution, Aristotle recommends moderation, education, and inclusiveness. The
interests of the rich minority and poor majority can be balanced by allowing both factions a roughly equal
amount of power. In such an arrangement, each individual rich person would have more political power
than each individual poor person, but the poor and the rich as groups would be balanced against one
another.
Books VII and VIII return to the question of what the ideal state would be like. The good life consists
primarily in rational contemplation, so even though political action is admirable and necessary, it is only a
means to the end of securing the ultimate happiness of rational contemplation. An ideal city-state should be
arranged to maximize the happiness of its citizens. Such a city would be large enough for self-sufficiency
but small enough to ensure fellow feeling. It should be located by the water to allow for easy sea commerce.
Young citizens serve in the military, middle-aged citizens govern, and older citizens take care of religious
affairs while noncitizen laborers take care of farming and crafts. Education is important to ensuring the
well-being of the city, and Aristotle prefers a public program of education to private tutoring. He
recommends that care be taken to breed the right habits in children from the time they are in the womb and
that when they mature they learn to hone their reason. His recommended curriculum consists of reading
and writing, physical education, music, and drawing. This education will help citizens make the most of
both work and play, as well as the leisure time in which to pursue the good life.
Aristotle’s discussion of politics is firmly grounded in the world of the Greek city-state, or polis. He
assumes that any state will consist of the same basic elements of a Greek city-state: male citizens who
administer the state, and then women, slaves, foreigners, and noncitizen laborers who perform the
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necessary menial tasks to keep the city running. Citizenship in the Greek world was a much more involved
responsibility than it is in modern representative democracies. All citizens in a Greek city-state take part in
government and hold various public offices, which is why Aristotle takes public office as a defining feature
of citizenship. Because citizenship involves an active role in running the state, a citizen identifies strongly
with the city-state to which he belongs, to the point that the Greeks consider exile to be a fate worse than
death. The tight bond between citizen and city-state also explains why Aristotle considers active citizenship
as a necessary feature of the good life. He insists that we can only fully realize our rationality and humanity
as citizens of a city-state, and so he concludes that fully realized humans are, by necessity, political
animals.
Aristotle’sPolitics is sometimes classified as “communitarian,” because it places the well-being of the
community as a whole above the well-being of the individual. Aristotle calls humans “political animals”
because we cannot be fully human without active participation in a city-state, and his recommendations
regarding justice and education bear in mind only what will make for the strongest state. Absent entirely is
the concern of modern liberalism with individual freedoms and the protection of a citizen’s private life from
the public eye. Aristotle does not fail to discuss the tension between individual liberty and the demands of
the state so much as he does not live in a world where this tension exists. The idea of a private life would
seem absurd in a Greek city-state. All the highest aims in life, from political debate to physical exercise,
take place in the public sphere, and there is no conception of a “private persona,” which differs from the
face people present in public. Consequently, the interests of the individual and the interests of the state are
equivalent in Aristotle’s view. His prioritizing of the community above the individual, as well as his warnings
about the dangers of unrestrained capitalism, had a strong influence on the work of Karl Marx.
While Aristotle’s conception of distributive justice gives a clear indication of his own aristocratic leanings,
much of Aristotle’s discussion of justice remains relevant to this day. Distributive justice is the idea that
honors and wealth should be distributed according to merit, so that the best people get the highest
rewards. Though Aristotle insists that “best” is a matter of merit, he seems unconcerned that the rich have
much greater opportunities for achieving merit and that noncitizens, women, and slaves have no
opportunity at all. Effectively, he condemns them to the lowest rung of the social ladder by insisting that
benefits be accorded to those with merit and defining merit in terms of qualities that their low status bars
them from. Despite these aristocratic leanings, however, Aristotle has a keen sense of the dangers of power
abused. In book III, he discusses at length the difficulties of ensuring that all citizens are accountable. He is
not the first to recommend that the written law have greater authority than the ruling class, but he makes
the argument forcefully and it is largely thanks to his influence that we take the primacy of the law as a
given in the modern world.
One of the less attractive features of the Politics is Aristotle’s endorsement of slavery, which, not
surprisingly, rings hollow. His argument rests on the claim that everyone needs to be ruled and those who
lack the rationality to rule themselves need to be ruled by others. Aristotle opposes the enslavement of
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other Greeks because he believes that all Greeks are at least somewhat rational beings and so their
enslavement would be unjust. However, in typical Greek fashion, Aristotle regards all non-Greeks as inferior
barbarians, many of whom can only live productively in a state of slavery. However, he also argues that
slaves need sufficient rationality to understand and carry out the orders of their masters. This argument
contradicts the argument that slaves deserve their lot because they lack rationality entirely. If we follow
Aristotle’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, we can argue that slavery is always wrong because those
who make capable slaves necessarily have a level of rationality that renders their enslavement unjust.
Unfortunately, Aristotle himself was too caught up in the prejudices of his own time to recognize that his
argument refutes itself.
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PLATO’S “REPUBLIC”
Why do men behave justly? Is it because they fear societal
punishment? Are they trembling before notions of divine retribution?
Do the stronger elements of society scare the weak into submission in
the name of law? Or do men behave justly because it is good for them
to do so? Is justice, regardless of its rewards and punishments, a good
thing in and of itself? How do we define justice? Plato sets out to
answer these questions inThe Republic. He wants to define justice, and
to define it in such a way as to show that justice is worthwhile in and of
itself. He meets these two challenges with a single solution: a definition
of justice that appeals to human psychology, rather than to perceived
behavior.
Plato’s strategy in The Republic is to first explicate the primary notion
of societal, or political, justice, and then to derive an analogous concept of individual justice. In Books II, III,
and IV, Plato identifies political justice as harmony in a structured political body. An ideal society consists
of three main classes of people—producers (craftsmen, farmers, artisans, etc.), auxiliaries (warriors), and
guardians (rulers); a society is just when relations between these three classes are right. Each group must
perform its appropriate function, and only that function, and each must be in the right position of power in
relation to the others. Rulers must rule, auxiliaries must uphold rulers’ convictions, and producers must
limit themselves to exercising whatever skills nature granted them (farming, blacksmithing, painting, etc.)
Justice is a principle of specialization: a principle that requires that each person fulfill the societal role to
which nature fitted him and not interfere in any other business.
At the end of Book IV, Plato tries to show that individual justice mirrors political justice. He claims that the
soul of every individual has a three part structure analagous to the three classes of a society. There is a
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rational part of the soul, which seeks after truth and is responsible for our philosophical inclinations; a
spirited part of the soul, which desires honor and is responsible for our feelings of anger and indignation;
and an appetitive part of the soul, which lusts after all sorts of things, but money most of all (since money
must be used to fulfill any other base desire). The just individual can be defined in analogy with the just
society; the three parts of his soul achieve the requisite relationships of power and influence in regard to
one another. In a just individual, the rational part of the soul rules, the spirited part of the soul supports this
rule, and the appetitive part of the soul submits and follows wherever reason leads. Put more plainly: in a
just individual, the entire soul aims at fulfilling the desires of the rational part, much as in the just society
the entire community aims at fulfilling whatever the rulers will.
The parallels between the just society and the just individual run deep. Each of the three classes of society,
in fact, is dominated by one of the three parts of the soul. Producers are dominated by their appetites—their
urges for money, luxury, and pleasure. Warriors are dominated by their spirits, which make them
courageous. Rulers are dominated by their rational faculties and strive for wisdom. Books V through VII
focus on the rulers as the philosopher kings.
In a series of three analogies—the allegories of the sun, the line, and the cave—Plato explains who these
individuals are while hammering out his theory of the Forms. Plato explains that the world is divided into
two realms, the visible (which we grasp with our senses) and the intelligible (which we only grasp with our
mind). The visible world is the universe we see around us. The intelligible world is comprised of the
Forms—abstract, changeless absolutes such as Goodness, Beauty, Redness, and Sweetness that exist in
permanent relation to the visible realm and make it possible. (An apple is red and sweet, the theory goes,
because it participates in the Forms of Redness and Sweetness.) Only the Forms are objects of knowledge,
because only they possess the eternal unchanging truth that the mind—not the senses—must apprehend.
Only those whose minds are trained to grasp the Forms—the philosophers—can know anything at all. In
particular, what the philosophers must know in order to become able rulers is the Form of the Good—the
source of all other Forms, and of knowledge, truth, and beauty. Plato cannot describe this Form directly, but
he claims that it is to the intelligible realm what the sun is to the visible realm. Using the allegory of the
cave, Plato paints an evocative portrait of the philosopher’s soul moving through various stages of
cognition (represented by the line) through the visible realm into the intelligible, and finally grasping the
Form of the Good. The aim of education is not to put knowledge into the soul, but to put the right desires
into the soul—to fill the soul with a lust for truth, so that it desires to move past the visible world, into the
intelligible, ultimately to the Form of the Good.
Philosophers form the only class of men to possess knowledge and are also the most just men. Their souls,
more than others, aim to fulfil the desires of the rational part. After comparing the philosopher king to the
most unjust type of man—represented by the tyrant, who is ruled entirely by his non-rational appetites—
Plato claims that justice is worthwhile for its own sake. In Book IX he presents three arguments for the
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conclusion that it is desirable to be just. By sketching a psychological portrait of the tyrant, he attempts to
prove that injustice tortures a man’s psyche, whereas a just soul is a healthy, happy one, untroubled and
calm. Next he argues that, though each of the three main character types—money-loving, honor-loving, and
truth-loving—have their own conceptions of pleasure and of the corresponding good life—each choosing
his own life as the most pleasant—only the philosopher can judge because only he has experienced all
three types of pleasure. The others should accept the philosopher’s judgement and conclude that the
pleasures associated with the philosophical are most pleasant and thus that the just life is also most
pleasant. He tries to demonstrate that only philosophical pleasure is really pleasure at all; all other pleasure
is nothing more than cessation of pain.
One might notice that none of these arguments actually prove that justice is desirable apart from its
consequences—instead, they establish that justice is always accompanied by true pleasure. In all
probability, none of these is actually supposed to serve as the main reason why justice is desirable.
Instead, the desirability of justice is likely connected to the intimate relationship between the just life and
the Forms. The just life is good in and of itself because it involves grasping these ultimate goods, and
imitating their order and harmony, thus incorporating them into one’s own life. Justice is good, in other
words, because it is connected to the greatest good, the Form of the Good.
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