Aristotle, who was a pupil in the Academy of Plato, remarks that “all the writings of Plato are original: they show ingenuity, novelty of view and a spirit of enquiry. But perfection in everything is perhaps a difficult thing.” Aristotle was a scientist rather than a prophet, and his Politics, written while he was teaching at the Lyceum at Athens, is only part of an encyclopaedic account of nature and society, in which he analyzes society as if he were a doctor and prescribes remedies for its ills. Political behavior is here regarded as a branch of biology as well as of ethics; in contrast to Plato, Aristotle was an empirical political philosopher. He criticizes many of Plato’s ideas as impracticable, but, like Plato, he admires balance and moderation and aims at a harmonious city under the rule of law. The book is composed of lecture notes and is arranged in a confusing way—a quarry of arguments and definitions of great value but hard to master. The first book, though probably the last written, is a general introduction; Books II, III, and VII–VIII, probably the earliest, deal with the ideal state; and Books IV–VII analyze actual states and politics. The treatise is thus, in modern terms, a mixture of political philosophy and political science (see also Aristotelianism).
Like Plato, Aristotle thinks in terms of the city-state, which he regards as the natural form of civilized life, social and political, and the best medium in which human capacities can be realized. Hence his famous definition of man as a “political animal,” distinguished from the other animals by his gift of speech and power of moral judgment. “Man, when perfected,” he writes,
is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice he is the worst of all, since armed injustice is the most dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and wit, moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.
Since all nature is pervaded by purpose and since humans “aim at the good,” the city-state, which is the highest form of human community, aims at the highest good. Like sailors with their separate functions, who yet have a common object in safety in navigation, citizens too have a common aim—in modern terms survival, security, and the enhancement of the quality of life. In the context of the city-state, this high quality of life can be realized only by a minority, and Aristotle, like Plato, excludes those who are not full citizens or who are slaves; indeed, he says that some men are “slaves by nature” and deserve their status. Plato and Aristotle aim at an aristocratic and exacting way of life, reflecting, in more sophisticated forms, the ideas of the warrior aristocracies depicted by Homer.
Having stated that the aim of the city-state is to promote the good life, Aristotle insists that it can be achieved only under the rule of law.
The rule of law is preferable to that of a single citizen; if it be the better course to have individuals ruling, they should be made law guardians or ministers of the laws.
The rule of law is better than that even of the best men, for
he who bids law rule may be deemed to bid God and reason alone rule, but he who bids men rule adds the element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even if they are the best of men.
This doctrine, which distinguishes between lawful government and tyranny, survived the Middle Ages and, by subjecting the ruler to law, became the theoretical sanction of modern constitutional government.
Aristotle also vindicates the rule of custom and justifies the obligations accepted by members of society: the solitary man, he writes, “is either a beast or a God.” This outlook at once reflects the respect for custom and solidarity that has promoted survival in primitive tribal societies, even at the price of sacrificing individuals, and gives a theoretical justification for the acceptance of political obligation.
Like Plato, Aristotle analyzes the different kinds of city-states. While states are bound, like animals, to be different, he considers a balanced “mixed” constitution the best—it reflects the ideal of justice (dikē) and fair dealing, which gives every individual his due in a conservative social order in which citizens of the middle condition preponderate. And he attacks oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Under democracy, he argues, demagogues attain power by bribing the electorate and waste accumulated wealth. But it is tyranny that Aristotle most detests; the arbitrary power of an individual above the law who is
responsible to no-one and who governs all alike with a view to his own advantage and not of his subjects, and therefore against their will. No free man can endure such a government.
The Politics contains not only a firm statement of these principles but also a penetrating analysis of how city-states are governed, as well as of the causes of revolutions, in which “inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior.” The treatise concludes with an elaborate plan for educating the citizens to attain the “mean,” the “possible,” and the “becoming.” The first implies a balanced development of body and mind, ability and imagination; the second, the recognition of the limits of mind and the range and limitations of talent; the third, an outcome of the other two, is the style and self-assurance that come from the resulting self-control and confidence.
While, therefore, Aristotle accepts a conservative and hierarchical social order, he states firmly that public power should aim at promoting the good life and that only through the rule of law and justice can the good life be attained. These principles were novel in the context of his time, when the great extra-European civilizations were ruled, justly or unjustly, by the arbitrary power of semidivine rulers and when other peoples, though respecting tribal custom and the authority of tribal elders, were increasingly organized under war leaders for depredation.
Both Plato and Aristotle had thought in terms of the city-state. But Aristotle’s pupil Alexander the Great swamped the cities of old Greece and brought them into a vast empire that included Egypt, Persia, and the Levant. Although city-states remained the locus of the civilization of antiquity, they became part of an imperial power that broke up into kingdoms under Alexander’s successors. This imperial power was reasserted on an even greater scale by Rome, whose empire at its greatest extent reached from central Scotland to the Euphrates and from Spain to eastern Anatolia. Civilization itself became identified with empire, and the development of eastern and western Europe was conditioned by it.
Since the city-state was no longer self-sufficient, universal philosophies developed that gave people something to live by in a wider world. Of these philosophies, Stoicism and Epicureanism were the most influential. The former inspired a rather grim self-sufficiency and sense of duty, as exemplified by the writings of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius; the latter, a prudent withdrawal from the world of affairs.
The setting for political philosophy thus became much wider, relating individuals to universal empire—thought of, as in China, as coterminous with civilization itself. Its inspiration remained Hellenic, but derivative Roman philosophers reinterpreted it, and Roman legists enclosed the old concepts of political justice in a carapace of legal definitions, capable of surviving their civilization’s decline.
Cicero lived during the 1st century bce, a time of political confusion in which the old institutions of the republic were breaking down before military dictators. His De republica and De legibus (Laws) are both dialogues and reflect the Classical sense of purpose: “to make human life better by our thought and effort.” Cicero defined the republic as an association held together by law; he further asserted, as Plato had maintained with his doctrine of Forms, that government was sanctioned by a universal natural law that reflected the cosmic order. Cicero expresses the pre-Christian Stoic attempt to moralize public power, apparent in the exacting sense of public responsibility shown by the emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century ce.
