What is a citizen? This question is answered primarily on a basis of fact - and of purely Hellenic fact. In other words, citizen- ship signifies merely the enjoyment of political rights, and a state is a group of persons exercising these rights. No part of the community not possessing such rights comes within the purview of politics proper.
But Aristotle raises the further question, Who ought to be citizens? Especially, Are me- chanics and laborers fit for inclusion in this class? His answer is negative. The prime qualification for citizenship is capacity both to rule and to be ruled, and the cultivation of this two- fold capacity is indispensable.
But those who must labor in 1 Both Plato and Aristotle attached much importance to friendship fOx1a as a social virtue. While in practice they have been admitted to citizenship in many states, this, Aris- totle thinks, has been justified only by the regrettable lack of true material. The state, then, which the philosopher must consider con- sists in a self-sufficing body of such citizens as he has defined. The general system of authority through which the functions of the state are performed is the constitution 7roXtreia.
Accordingly, where the people is the governing body the constitution is a democracy; where the few govern, it is oligarchy. With logic that has not been confined to ancient times and European lands, Greek governments had sought to repudiate debts on the ground that they had been contracted not by the state, but by the oligarchy or the tyrant. What, the philosopher asks, is the essence of the state, and when does it cease to be itself and become another?
And he answers: The essence of the state is the constitution, and the state changes its identity when the constitution changes, e. But, he hastens 1 III, iv and v. Jowett, Zeller, Susemihl. From his identification of the state with its constitu- tion the obvious inference would be that a democracy, for example, is not responsible for the engagements of a tyrant whom it has displaced. Either Aristotle here means by con- stitution something more than what he says in defining the term, or, not wishing to commit himself to the approval of the repudiation of contracts, he deliberately evades the logical dilemma.
Though the state arises from man's impulse to association with his kind, rather than from a deliberate search for mutual assistance, yet the advantages springing from political organization have a great influence in the maintenance of the social bond.
These advantages, then, should be common to all the citizens. All alike should profit by the capacity of each in either ruling or being ruled. Hence the constitution should provide for the service in office of each of the citizenis in his turn. Such at least should be the rule where the state is really a society of equal citizens. Quite different, the philosopher sententiously observes, is the actual practice; for, through selfish craving for the emoluments of public service, men seek for and cling to office as if their lives depended on it.
The Sovereign Power. Conceiving the essence of the state to be expressed in the constitution, and the crucial feature of the constitution to be the supreme or sovereign authority Tor KVplo , the question at once arises: On what rational principle is the abode of this 1 A third alternative, always to be presumed in The Politics, is that the text is corrupt or defective.
But there is no indication of such a condition in this passage. Controversy is particularly keen, Aristotle notes, between those who favor the principle of mere numbers and those who favor that of wealth and in- telligence.
The former, advocating democracy, claim that all who are equal in respect to freedom should be recognized as equal in political power, and that, accordingly, the sovereignty should rest in the general body of citizens.
Against these the advocates of oligarchy contend that superiority in wealth, or intelligence, or birth, should carry superiority in power and that the supreme authority should therefore rest in the few. Both these arguments, Aristotle declares, miss the precise criterion, which is to be found only after reaching a correct conception of the nature and end of the state.
The state is not an association for the acquisition of wealth, or for the mere maintenance of life, or, like an international alliance, for the promotion of definite political and commercial interests of the contracting parties. The end of the state is not that certain persons shall have a common dwelling-place, and shall refrain from mutual injury and shall be in habitual intercourse with one another.
The state embraces within itself associa- tions for all these and other purposes, but such associations are based on friendship 4t'Xa and look merely to living together. On the other hand, the state has for its end liv- ing well - living happily and nobly: it is an association not for mere life, but for noble actions. Virtue, especially that species called justice, is to be the crite- rion, rather than freedom or birth or wealth. Must sovereign power, then, be ascribed to the mass of the people, or to some limited class, or to some individual?
Primarily, Aristotle an- swers, to the mass of the people. For the aggregate virtue 2 1 III, ix. It connotes much more than strict moral excellence. Custom has confirmed the translation of dper4 by virtue, and I shall adhere to this, subject to the caution here noted. The same answer, indeed, would follow from a rigid application of the principle of wealth; for the whole is wealthier than any of its parts. But popular sovereignty, as thus conceived, is sub- ject to an important qualification.
In the controversies of Hellenic politics over oligarchy and democracy the underlying thought was that the people o 8,qios and the few oi oWXyoL in any given community constituted in fact two states, each existing or ceasing to exist, as the one or the other faction gained control. This idea had much justi- fication in the facts of the conflict. Democratic triumph in most cases meant the actual physical expulsion of the oligarchs from the community; while oligarchic triumph meant the exclusion of the mass of the people from all political rights, and hence from the state, in the sense in which Aristotle defined it.
But more commonly he conceives the sovereign power rather as the highest authority in the administrative hierarchy, or as that part of the administrative organization which deals with the most important questions of policy. In other words, he thinks of the sovereign as subordinate to the state, and of the state as existing apart from any particular possessor of the chief governmental power.
The latter conception of sovereignty is that which the philos- opher employs in deciding that the mass of the people must be sovereign.
This does not imply that either the people as a whole or every individual alike is best adapted to administer all the offices of the state; but that the greatest and most ulti- mate questions must be finally passed upon by the whole people. In practice this would mean, he explains, that the function of the popular body should be chiefly the election and censure of the officers of administration.
For such functions the people as a whole is eminently fitted. It may, indeed, be 1 SUpra, p. But Aristotle rejects this contention. The verdict of the general public is valid in politics, just as it is in musical con- tests and in banquets; not the musician and the cook, but they who hear the music and eat the dinner are best qualified to render judgment. The sovereignty of the whole people, therefore, subject to the qualification that it be manifested in the election of magis- trates and in holding them to account for their conduct in office, is the primary solution of the problem as to the location of ultimate power in the state.
This solution presumes, how- ever, that the citizens are on the whole not far from the same general level of virtue. Suppose, on the contrary, that among them is a small number, or even a single individual, whose virtue overwhelmingly exceeds that of all the rest, whether taken individually or collectively. In such a case, there can be, Aristotle holds, but one answer: the preeminently virtuous few or one is the logical sovereign. It is a consciousness of this fact, he explains, that has led democracies to devise the institution of ostracism.
An actual popular sovereign cannot tolerate in the body politic an individual who in any way em- bodies the possibility of becoming the ideal sovereign. Finally, above every form of personal sovereignty, whether of the one, the few or the whole people, must be placed, according to Aristotle, the sovereignty of the law vo',ot. Only where the law is uncertain or incomplete may the authority of man be conclusive.
Granting that, as some con- tend, the rigidity of law works frequent injustice; yet less injustice will spring from the prescriptions of customary law ol VIAOt ot ia'rl T'o Mos; than from the unchecked WILI of any man.
For such law is free from the influence of human passions. The rule of law, Aristotle finely says, is the rule of god and reason only; in the rule of man there appears in addition something of the brute. The Forms of Constitution. Aristotle primarily classifies constitutions, first, according to the mere number of those in whom sovereign power is vested and, second, according to the end to which the conduct of government is directed. The latter principle distinguishes pure from corrupt forms, for the end of the state is the perfection of all its members.
When the government is ad- ministered with this end in view, the state is pure; when the administration aims at the interest, not of all the citizens, but of the governing body alone, the state is corrupt.
The few. The whole people. In respect to this classification it is to be observed that the pure forms are based on an ideal which belongs to political science in its broadest and most abstract sense; 2 while the corruptions 7rapEKcI3does9 , so called because they deviate from the ideal, are what fall strictly within the field of politics in its practical and independent character. Aristotle's conceptions of royalty and aristocracy are hardly less idealistic and fanciful than Plato's.
Royalty is substantially the rule of the one per- fect man; aristocracy is the rule of the few perfect men, not easily to be distinguished in their attributes from Plato's "' guard- ians.
By transposition of the order of the books and by high-handed rearrangement of paragraphs, various plausible schemes have been devised in which coherency of development is pre- This content downloaded from Only in the case of the polity is an ideal brought into close relation with a pos- sible constitution.
The term woXmte a, which means constitu- tion in general, is applied by Aristotle also to the special form of democratic constitution. And polity, in this narrow sense, he views in some places as an abstract ideal, but in others as a system quite susceptible of realization through a proper tempering of actual democracy.
For monarchy the philosopher can find a rational justifica- tion only in the purely ideal case of an individual absolutely preeminent in virtue. To such an ideally perfect man may be ascribed the right to rule,' unrestrained by law. But for actual states the best possible law has a better ground for supremacy than the best possible man. And for the work of government subject to law, the capacity of an individual can never equal that of an aggregation of individuals.
The many is less easily corrupted than the one; and even though the one may have nominal supremacy, the physical impossibility of conducting the administration single-handed renders necessary a plurality in government which is not different in kind from a plurality immediately under the constitution. Aristotle's conclusion is, in fact, that monarchy not only is illogical, but also is practi- cally impossible.
For his detailed examination of the non-monarchic constitu- tions, Aristotle points out that the different forms rest upon a deeper foundation than that of mere number in the sovereign body.
Oligarchy and democracy signify, respectively, the dom- served. These are all ingenious, and most of them are scientific. Whether any of them is Aristotelian, no one can say. The great barbarian monarchies do not lie within his category of state 7roXtreta. But these two forms again require, according to Aristotle, further subdivision.
Democracies differ from one another, and the same is true of oligarchies; here again the various shades,' of which he enu- merates four under each form, have a close relation to social and economic facts.
In the detailed treatment of aristocracy and polity, the origi- nal character of the two is almost entirely lost sight of by Aristotle. Their relation to oligarchy and democracy appears no longer as that of the pure to the corrupt, dependent upon the end to which government is directed. On the contrary, the distinctions are made to turn upon the characteristic prin- ciple that determines participation in political functions.
The principles that are in conflict for supremacy in every com- munity, Aristotle says, are liberty, wealth, virtue and goo d birth evye'veta. Where the conduct of the government is assigned on the basis of liberty and equality, which is an essential element in liberty , the constitution is democratic; where on the basis of wealth, it is oligarchic; where on the basis of virtue, in the strictly ideal sense, it is aristocratic. When with these two virtue also is combined, the resulting form is entitled to, and generally receives, the name of aristocracy.
But this mixed aristocracy he carefully distinguishes from the pure and ideal aristocracy of which the principle is virtue alone. This criterion had been used by Plato. The full application of Aristotelian analysis thus gives a rather formidable aggregate of forms of constitution; and it is doubtful if the philosopher in his best estate could have assigned an actual government clearly and categorically to any one particular class.
Certainly The Politics, as we have it, is very far from clear in distinguishing each from all the rest. Polity and the mixed aristocracy are especially difficult to dis- entangle,' and various shades of democracy and oligarchy approach perplexingly near to both.
Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. The Politics. Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, 'The Politics' still has much to contribute to this central question of political science.
Aristotle's thorough and carefully argued analysis is based on a study of over city constitutions, covering a huge range of political issues in order to establish which types of constitution. The Politics of Aristotle. Books I-V. Third and Revised Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Reprinted by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN ISBN
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