Aristotle and the Common Wellbeing
Rule of the majority in the interest of the common good.
If we can talk about a peak in ancient political thought, it should be — Aristotle. He was a student and then a teacher at Plato’s Academy. However, he disagrees with his teacher’s political views. The words “Plato is my friend, but my greater friend is the truth” belong to Aristotle.
He defines the polis and man as “zoon politikon” (often translated as — a political animal, which Aristotle uses to describe mankind) remaining in history. The concept of polis occupies a central role in Aristotle’s work, but he is ambiguous.
First Homer gave the word polis three different meanings: 1- city settlement; 2 — political unit representing a country; or 3 — community of citizens. This is significantly preserved during the classical era and Aristotle’s definition: a political and social community that represents the basis of the ancient Greek world.
Aristotle believed that the polis was a product of natural development. The state belongs to those phenomena which exist by nature, and man by virtue of his nature is a political being (zoon politikon). He defines man as “a being who lives in the polis.” From here, he concludes that whoever lives outside the state is either an animal or a God. According to him, the polis is the result of a political unification of several villages.
One of the most criticized ideas of Aristotle’s Politics is that nature created people unequal. Thus some are born to be slaves and others to dominate. From his point of view, slaves and women are not zoon politikon. From this statement, Aristotle derives one of the first definitions of the concept of citizen.
This is the one who has the right to participate in the court and the national assembly, i.e. to direct the judiciary and the legislature. This definition applies necessarily and only to democracy. For this reason, he gives another interpretation of the concept of citizen. According to him, a citizen is the one who has the right to participate in the council (bullet) and in the work of the courts. In form, the state represents a multitude of such citizens.
Aristotle criticized Plato for seeking to make the state unified. According to him, the excessive unity of Plato’s state leads to its destruction.
“The goal of the state is the good life … And the state is a union of families and settlements in a complete and independent life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life”
“The political community exists for the sake of worthy deeds, not just for the sake of communication.”
Aristotle distinguishes correct and incorrect forms of state regulation. Correct forms of government are: monarchy, aristocracy and polity. To these, he opposes the incorrect, being: tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.
He makes this classification based on two criteria: first, in whose interest is the government, and second, the number of rulers. If the government is in the interest of the good of the polis and of those who enter it, we have a correct form of state regulation, if the rulers take care of their own good, an incorrect form of state regulation. Thus he defined aristocracy as the proper form of government — ruled by a minority of men in the interest of the common wellbeing.
The antithesis of aristocracy is oligarchy — an irregular form of government. It is built on the basis of a high property qualification, which deprives the majority of free citizens from exercising power.
He defines the police as the best state organization. It represents a mixture of the most positive sides of oligarchy and democracy but is freed from their shortcomings and extremes.
This is also my last article on the development of ancient political thought. In the following, I will pay attention to the development of political thought during the Middle Ages.
