Aristotle’s Politics 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 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.
