Aristotle's Case for America First

Diplomatic History, 1999

Mensa Bulletin, 2022

Political division in the USA is reviewed and Aristotle's virtue ethics is proposed as a mitigating strategy.

Deependra , 2023

Aristotle's Politics is an investigation of how people live in political communities. It is both a practical study of the nature of real states and a theoretical exploration of the form of the best possible state. At the centre of both aspects of the work is the phenomenon of the polis, the self-sufficient political community, the state: and at the heart of the state is the concept of the citizen, for 'the state is an aggregate of citizens' (Politics I: ii, 59 1). Aristotle treats the state as he does other 'natural' objects which he sets out to study, basing his analysis on an examination of its constituent parts. The constituent parts of the state are its citizens, and it is their exercise of the responsibilities of citizenship which give the state its existence. Any explanation of the significance which attaches to citizenship in Aristotle's political theory must therefore examine both the basis of citizenship as a fundamental type of human function and the relationship between the fulfilment of that function and the form taken by the phenomenon of the state. The centrality of the citizen in Aristotle's conception of the state reflects his conviction that political society and the state are essentially one and the same. Aristotle begins his investigation of the state with three claims: first, that man is a 'political animal' (Politics I: ii, 59) with an innate impulse towards association with others; second, that the state 'exists by nature' as a result of that human impulse (Politics I: ii, 59); and third, that there are certain human faculties, such as the ability to reason about matters of good, evil, and justice (Politics I: ii, 60) which can only flourish through individuals coming together in political association. It is this intrinsic human drive towards the formation of political society which distinguishes man the political animal from all other animals, who possess no such political character. Clearly, if the origins of the state are so deeply rooted in the fundamentals of human

2023

Contemporary political philosophies, which are sometimes referred to with the expression Marx used for false justifications, “ideologies”, are social or political theories. Political parties and social movements have their own ideology, that is to say, their “vision of the world.” Contemporary political science aims at making a neutral analysis of political reality, or a theory. Regimes, constitutions, political parties, elections are observed impartially, “from the point of view of Mars,” as the French saying goes. It is fundamentally theoretical research. For this purpose, current political science sometimes coins new expressions (for example, a democracy can be either consensus or majoritarian; dominant values can be materialistic or “expressive,” etc.). Aristotle’s “political science” is different from ours, first of all, because it sees politics as citizens or rulers facing concrete issues. His view is not essentially different from the commonsense view: it goes further, but in the same direction. It does not observe “political phenomena” from outside. There are no new technical words in his political books alien to the practical knowledge of Greek citizens, nor does he use “scientific” terminology (and even less inferences from a “theory”). His description of ethics and politics is certainly not intended to be neutral and begins precisely by studying what “good” means. In fact, politics has only recently become a theoretical science, moving radically away from the Aristotelian methods and perspective. We borrow from his vocabulary, but, as modern men, we try to make it precise and scientific. One of the keywords we borrow is the concept of citizenship. We no longer live in self-governing cities, but the concept “civic” and the very word “politics” derive from civitas and polis. In translations of the works of Plato and Aristotle, polis is sometimes incorrectly translated as “State” (or at best, as “city-state”), but the difference between polis and State is very profound. The ancient city is different from the modern State because Greek politics did not consist, as it does today, in managing a population within a certain territory. The Greek “regime” is not opposed to “civil society,” as distinct from political organization. The ancient city is not spontaneously born out of anarchy, like the modern state. The city must be founded by men and ordered by legislators. The political authority of the ancient city, sometimes compared to a ship, does not seek to organize a sort of cruise, where passengers live their own private lives while everyone is taken along by the cruise. Neither is the ancient political authority a “sovereign” who manages everything that exists in a territory, like a guard who manages a forest park; the sovereign rules men and distributes offices. In the polis, the free part of the population is called to participate actively in a special “institution” that is the city, with a view to the excellence and goodness of its members. Ethical inquiry aims at attaining nobility or good, and political inquiry aims at the good of all members of the city. None of these inquiries are “neutral” because neutrality would obscure the main object of the noble life and the place where virtue or excellence (arété) flourishes. “Natural justice” is not about the right of man as man, but part of political right. What is just by nature is only understood and can only flourish in the environment of the polis. This thesis is diametrically opposed to the later theses of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, for whom the formation of civil society implies moving away from the state of nature and is, therefore, unnatural. Only with Stoicism and Christianity did the good of man come to be understood as, if not alien or indifferent, much more important than, and “separable” from, political life, making citizenship infinitely less important. This is why today we think that a “merely” political question is somewhat less serious and profound than a moral one. Even so, we have the feeling that Aristotle’s books Ethics and Politics are of great interest to us, both from the historical and philosophical viewpoints, and continue to be read today. They contain provocative discussions on issues that have not vanished nor been resolved such as: citizenship, or the relationship between the individual and political authority; distributive and commutative justice; political regimes; the causes and remedies for political change and revolutions; the importance of the moral education of the citizenry. But if we have this feeling of familiarity when approaching these sorts of questions, it is because the essential concepts that we use today are derived from the concepts that Aristotle took from commonsense vocabulary. However different our political knowledge and political concepts are from Aristotle’s own, they are derived from his political science and notions.

The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, 2013

The article aims to articulate and defend St. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of the transcendence of the political common good and argues against the new natural law theory's view of the common good as limited, instrumental, and ordered toward the private good of families and individuals. After a summary of John Finnis's explanation of the common good in Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, the article presents an analysis of the political common good in Aquinas's Summa theologiae and De regno. This analysis shows, contrary to Finnis, that for Aquinas the political common good transcends the private good of individuals and families, that it consists in the virtuous life of the political multitude, and that the family is insufficient to lead men to virtue apart from the civitas.

Problemos

The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of the best constitution given Aristotle’s account of human flourishing articulated in the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle claims that monarchy is the supreme form of constitution. A similar claim is repeated in Politics. The paper argues that these claims sit uneasily with Aristotle’s teleological accounts of the polis, the citizen, and his discussion of the virtues of the citizen and the good man in Politics. Given Aristotle’s philosophical definition of the state as “an association of equals for the sake of the best possible life” and his notion that “the best is happiness, and that consists in excellence and its perfect actualization and its employment”, and Aristotle’s argument on the relationship between the good man and the good citizen, this paper concludes that the best constitution is politeia. Yet, simply to argue so is not enough if we are to rescue Aristotle from his inconsistencies and his claims on “natural inequaliti...

Twenty-first Century Society, 2006

This paper addresses recent attempts in political theory to interpret Aristotle's account of the human good, eudaimonia, and uses it as a foundation for political philosophy. Nussbaum defends 'perfectionist political liberalism' on the following interpretation of Aristotle: the term 'human good' refers to the capabilities of each person, and conceptions of the good are incommensurable. For MacIntyre's 'tradition-dependent communitarianism', standards of rational action that direct us towards eudaimonia must be embodied in practices, and one can pursue the good only by conforming to practical standards of excellence. I describe Gadamer's position as 'radically undogmatic communitarianism'. He assumes that the human good is attained by openness to otherness and through suffering. This paper defends a fourth position, 'non-relative communitarianism', which is based on the idea that the human good is 'good without qualification for humans'. Community can be an arena in which to develop and exercise virtue, in particular, practical wisdom and justice. However, political philosophy must have a non-relative basis, and it must guarantee respect for persons. The concept of 'good without qualification for humans' provides a tradition-independent standard for the analysis of different communities, and also, experiences of harm.

Aristotle (384-322 bce) came to Athens as a young man to study in Plato's Academy. Upon Plato's death nearly twenty years later, Aristotle left Athens to spend time in Asia Minor and in Lesbos, returning in 343 bce to his home in Macedonia. In 335 bce he went back to Athens to set up his own school in the Lyceum, where he remained until the death of Alexander (323 bce) unleashed anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens and he was charged with impiety. He fled to nearby Chalcis where he died about a year later. Most of the works Aristotle wrote for publication are lost; what survive are later compilations of works written for use within his school. Aristotle's most influential political ideas connect human nature and its flourishing with political activity, ideally under a constitution in which virtuous citizens take turns at ruling and being ruled.

1991

My objective here is to reconstruct the plan of Aristotle's exposition of political science ipolitike) in his Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, and to show that this plan reveals certain fundamental but unnoticed features of his philosophical intention. First I demonstrate, on the basis of numerous programmatic but unfulfilled forward references in the extant Politics, that Aristotle planned to complete this work in certain promised "discourses on the regimes" (Pol. 1260b8-20) by reconsidering his accounts of moral virtue, education and household management from the perspective of the different forms of regime and the divergent ends each promotes. Secondly, I explore the philosophical intention of this plan of politike, arguing that Aristotle's enquiry remains fundamentally incomplete without this reconsideration. His aim of providing the statesman with the knowledge of "legislative science" necessary to apply the teaching on the human good presented in the ethical writings, I suggest, requires this promised account of the way in which the moral virtues vary according to the ends promoted by the different forms of regime. Our enquiry will help to clarify the philosophical significance of Aristotle's conception of "ethics," as tradition has come to know it, as political science.' *This paper has a long history: I first conceived many of the views here presented when I studied Aristotle's political thought with David O'Connor in 1984, and I remain indebted to him for much valuable discussion over the years. This paper was first presented at Duke University in December 1988, as part of a lecture series on Aristotle, and a subsequent version was read to the seminar in Traditional and Modem Philosophy at The University of Sydney in September 1990. I am grateful to these audiences, as well as to Michael Frede, Phillip Mitsis and A. E. Raubitschek, for helpful suggestions. Particular thanks are due to my late colleague in Chapel Hill, Friedrich Solmsen, who helped to shape my thinking on this subject through much stimulating discussion. It is an honor to dedicate the final result to his memory. In recent years three valuable studies on this subject have ap(>eared: E. Trepanier, "La politique comme philosophic morale chez Aristote," Dialogue 2 (1963) 251-79; S.