40

IN CONTEXT

MAN IS
IDEOLOGY
Democracy
FOCUS

BY NATURE
Political virtue
BEFORE
431 BCE Athenian statesman
Pericles states that democracy

A POLITICAL
provides equal justice for all.
c.380–360 BCE In the
Republic, Plato advocates
rule by “philosopher kings,”

ANIMAL
who possess wisdom.
AFTER
13th century Thomas
Aquinas incorporates
Aristotle’s ideas into

ARISTOTLE (384–322 BCE)

Christian doctrine.
c.1300 Giles of Rome stresses
the importance of the rule of
law to living in a civil society.
1651 Thomas Hobbes
proposes a social contract to
prevent man from living in a
“brutish” state of nature.

A
ncient Greece was not a
unified nation-state as
we would recognize
one today, but a collection of
independent regional states
with cities at their center. Each
city-state, or polis, had its own
constitutional organization: some,
such as Macedon, were ruled by
a monarch, while others, most
notably Athens, had a form of
democracy in which at least some
of the citizens could participate
in their government.
Aristotle, who was brought up
in Macedon and studied in Athens,
was well acquainted with the
concept of the polis and its various
interpretations, and his analytical
 ANCIENT POLITICAL THOUGHT 41
See also: Plato 34–39 ■ Cicero 49 ■ Thomas Aquinas 62–69 ■
Giles of Rome 70 ■ Thomas Hobbes 96–103 ■ Jean-Jacques Rousseau 118–25

People come together

to form households, The purpose of our lives
households to form villages, is to lead a “good life.”
and villages to form cities.

We have developed ways of
organizing city-states
in order to live a “good life.”
Living in a society
organized by reason, Anybody who lives
such as a city-state, is outside the city-state is
what makes us human. either a beast or a god.
Man is by nature a
political animal.
mind made him well qualified should be based on empirical data,
to examine the merits of the city- organized in the same way as the
state. He also spent some time taxonomy of the natural world.
in Ionia classifying animals
and plants according to their Naturally social
characteristics. He was later to Aristotle observed that humans
apply these skills of categorization have a natural tendency to form
to ethics and politics, which he saw social units: individuals come
as both natural and practical together to form households,
sciences. Unlike his mentor, Plato, households to form villages, and
Aristotle believed that knowledge villages to form cities. Just as some
was acquired through observation animals—such as bees or cattle
rather than intellectual reasoning, —are distinguished by their
and that the science of politics disposition to live in colonies ❯❯
Aristotle
The son of a physician to
the royal family of Macedon,
Aristotle was born in Stagira,
Chalcidice, in the northeast of
modern Greece. He was sent
to Athens at 17 to study with
Plato at the Academy, and
remained there until Plato’s
death 20 years later.
Surprisingly, Aristotle was not
appointed Plato’s successor to
lead the Academy. He moved
to Ionia, where he made a
study of wildlife, until he was
invited by Philip of Macedon
to be tutor to the young
Alexander the Great.
Aristotle returned to
Athens in 335 BCE to establish
a rival school to the Academy,
at the Lyceum. While teaching
there, he formalized his ideas
on the sciences, philosophy,
and politics, compiling a large
volume of writings, of which
few have survived. After the
death of Alexander in 323 BCE,
anti-Macedonian feeling in
Athens prompted him to leave
the city for Euboea, where he
died the following year.
Key works
c.350 BCE
Nicomachean Ethics
Politics
Rhetoric
42 ARISTOTLE
or herds, humans are by nature
social. Just as he might define a
wolf by saying it is by nature a pack
animal, Aristotle says that “Man
is by nature a political animal.” By
this, Aristotle means simply that
Man is an animal whose nature it
is to live socially in a polis; he is
not implying a natural tendency
towards political activity in the
modern sense of the word.
The idea that we have a
tendency to live in large civil
communities might seem relatively
unenlightening today, but it is
important to recognize that
Aristotle is explicitly stating that
the polis is just as much a creation
of nature as an ants’ nest. For him,
it is inconceivable that humans
can live in any other way. This
contrasts markedly with ideas
of civil society as an artificial
construct that has taken us out
of an uncivilized “state of nature”—
something Aristotle would not have
understood. Anyone living outside
a polis, he believed, was not human
—he must be either superior to
men (that is, a god) or inferior to
them (that is, a beast).
The good life
This idea of the polis as a natural
phenomenon rather than a man-
made one underpins Aristotle’s
ideas about ethics and the politics
of the city-state. From his study
of the natural world, he gained a
notion that everything that exists
has an aim or a purpose, and he
decided that for humans, this is to
lead a “good life.” Aristotle takes
this to mean the pursuit of virtues,
such as justice, goodness, and
beauty. The purpose of the polis,
then, is to enable us to live
according to these virtues. The
ancient Greeks saw the structure
of the state—which enables people
to live together and protects the
property and liberty of its citizens
—as a means to the end of virtue.
Aristotle identified various
“species” and “sub-species” within
the polis. He found that what
distinguishes man from the other
animals is his innate powers of
reason and the faculty of speech,
which give him a unique ability
to form social groups and set up
communities and partnerships.
Within the community of a polis,
the citizens develop an organization
that ensures the security, economic
stability, and justice of the state;
not by imposing any form of social
contract, but because it is in their
nature to do so. For Aristotle, the
different ways of organizing the life
of the polis exist not so that people
can live together (since they do this
Law is order, and
good law is good order.
Aristotle
by their very nature), but so that
they can live well. How well they
succeed in achieving this goal,
he observes, depends on the type
of government they choose.
Species of rule
An inveterate classifier of data,
Aristotle devised a comprehensive
taxonomy of the natural world, and
in his later works, especially
Politics, he set about applying the
same methodical skills to systems
of government. While Plato had
reasoned theoretically about the
ideal form of government, Aristotle
chose to examine existing regimes
to analyze their strengths and
weaknesses. To do this, he asked
two simple questions: who rules,
and on whose behalf do they rule?
In answer to the first question,
Aristotle observes that there are
basically three types of rule: by a
single person, by a select few, or by
many. And in answer to the second
question, the rule could be either
on behalf of the population as a
whole, which he considered true or
good government, or in the self-
In ancient Athens, citizens debated
political affairs at a stone dais called
the Pnyx. To Aristotle, the active
participation of citizens in government
was essential for a healthy society.

interest of the ruler or ruling class,
a defective form of government.
In all, he identified six “species”
of rule, which came in pairs.
Monarchy is rule by an individual
on behalf of all; rule by an
individual in his own interests, or
tyranny, is corrupted monarchy.
Rule by aristocracy (which to the
Greeks meant rule by the best,
rather than rule by hereditary noble
families) is rule by a few for the
good of all; rule by a self-interested
few, or oligarchy, is its corrupted
form. Finally, polity is rule by the
many for the benefit of all. Aristotle
saw democracy as the corrupted
form of this last form of rule, as in
practice it entails ruling on behalf
of the many, rather than every
single individual.
Aristotle argues that the self-
interest inherent in the defective
forms of government leads to
inequality and injustice. This
translates into instability, which
threatens the role of the state and
its ability to encourage virtuous
living. In practice, however, the
city-states he studied did not all
fall neatly into just one category,
but exhibited characteristics
from the various types.
Although Aristotle had a
tendency to view the polis as a
single “organism,” of which the
The basis of a
democratic state
is liberty.
Aristotle
ANCIENT POLITICAL THOUGHT 43
Aristotle’s Six Species of Government
Rule By
A Single
Person
True
Government
Monarchy
Corrupt
Government
Tyranny
citizens are merely a part, he also
examined the role of the individual
within the city-state. Again, he
stresses Man’s natural inclination
to social interaction, and defines
the citizen as one who shares
in the structure of the civil
community, not merely by electing
representatives, but through
active participation. When this
participation is within a “good”
form of government (monarchy,
aristocracy, or polity), it fosters the
ability of the citizen to lead a
virtuous life. Under a “defective”
regime (tyranny, oligarchy, or
democracy), the citizen becomes
involved with the self-interested
pursuits of the ruler or ruling class
—the tyrant’s pursuit of power, the
oligarchs’ thirst for wealth, or the
democrats’ search for freedom. Of
all the possible regimes, Aristotle
concludes, polity provides the best
opportunity to lead a good life.
Rule By Rule
A Select By The
Few Many
Aristocracy Polity
Oligarchy Democracy
Although Aristotle categorizes
democracy as a “defective” form
of regime, he argues that it is
only second best to polity, and
better than the “good” aristocracy
or monarchy. While the individual
citizen may not have the wisdom and
virtue of a good ruler, collectively
“the many” may prove to be better
rulers than “the one.”
The detailed description and
analysis of the Classical Greek polis
seems on the face of it to have little
relevance to the nation-states that
followed, but Aristotle’s ideas had
a growing influence on European
political thought throughout the
Middle Ages. Despite being
criticized for his often authoritarian
standpoint (and his defense of
slavery and the inferior status of
women), his arguments in favor
of constitutional government
anticipate ideas that emerged
in the Enlightenment. ■