Christopher Rowe, Aristotelian Constitutions [end of year Aristotle series]
‘Common interest’ or ‘common advantage’ clearly the prime object of calculation..
Christopher Rowe wrote:
Chapter 8
Aristotelian Constitutions
… [Aristotle] said that there are three 'correct' forms of constitution, namely kingship, aristocracy, and a form he calls, and says others call, politeia [i.e. polity], which is also, puzzlingly and often confusingly, the word in Greek usually translated as ‘constitution'. …
… [Although] Plato does use the term 'best' as well as 'worst' in his comparison between constitutions, his position on what Aristotle calls the 'deviant forms' is substantially the same as Aristotle's own: they are all ‘faction-states' rather than constitutions. However Aristotle's identification of three 'right' constitutions is a new departure.
For the Plato of the Politicus, the only constitution worthy of the name is the one ruled by knowledge in the shape of the ideal king or statesman. This would have the same name as, but would be quite distinct from, ordinary, law-bound, kingship - itself, of course, to be distinguished from tyranny, which is supposed to operate without laws. Rule by a few people which is strictly according to established law is called 'aristocracy', while if it pays no attention to law, it is simply 'oligarchy' (though in fact both are clearly treated as cases of rule by the few rich); between the two types of 'rule by many', i.e. the type under which law rules and the type under which it does not, there is no distinction of name, both being called 'democracy'.
Since under all six of these constitutions apart from ideal monarchy rule is exercised in the interests of the rulers (which is what Plato means by calling them 'faction-states', or stasioteiai), Aristotle proceeds in effect to lump each pair together, and contrast them with his three 'correct' constitutions, which are 'correct' precisely in that they do what constitutions are supposed to do. 'If a city is a kind of community [a koinonia, a group with something in common or shared, koinon, between its members], and if it is a sharing in common [koinonia again] by citizens in a constitution': Aristotle is plainly committed to both premises, and they provide the basis of his notion of 'deviant forms'.
It is therefore evident that all those constitutions which consider what is to the common advantage are correct constitutions, as judged in terms of what is just absolutely [i.e. as opposed to what is merely just according to some partisan notion of justice]; whereas those that consider only what is to the personal advantage of those in power are all mistaken, and deviant forms of the correct constitutions. For such deviant forms are despotic, and the city is a community of the free. (Aristotle 111.6,1279ai7-2i) …. [Rowe’s footnote: A 'correct' constitution, then, will be a just one …]
[MGH: Common advantage = common interest. The following must be same passage in translation I am using (Barnes’s ‘Complete Works’): “The conclusion is evident: that governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic …”.]
…. Nor can this 'best’ constitution be meant to be the same as polity, in that it, like kingship and aristocracy, distributes office on the basis of individual excellence, which polity does not. But that in itself means that there will be a radical difference between the first two and the third of the 'right constitutions. Aristotle seems to recognize this:
It remains for us to discuss what is called ‘polity’ and tyranny. We have located our treatment of ‘polity’ here [i.e. alongside tyranny] even though neither it nor the sorts of aristocracy we have just discussed [and associated with it] are deviant forms of constitution, because strictly speaking all these constitutions fall short of the most correct constitution, and so too they come to be counted with these [sc. deviant forms proper], and [at the same time] these [deviant forms] are deviant forms of them [sc. insofar as they are ‘correct']... (Aristotle iv.8, i293b22-6)
So polity, from another point of view, can actually be classed as ‘deviant’. The immediate task is to understand how the same thing can apparently receive both of two contrary descriptions.
… The starting point is that polity, broadly defined as ‘rule by the many which considers what is to the common advantage’, is both like and unlike the other two 'correct' constitutions. It is like them just insofar as they too, of course, are concerned with the common good (and actually realize it), but unlike them insofar as it does not distribute office primarily according to merit or ‘virtue’. …
… kingship and aristocracy, as they appear in the list of 'correct' constitutions, are probably ultimately to be treated merely as species of the absolutely best constitution, insofar as they possess both relevant features (distribution of power according to merit, and systematic concern for the quality of the citizens and their life) …
… [From] a different perspective, a polity is a ‘correct' constitution, just insofar as it 'considers the common advantage’. The goal or telos of the political community is the life of virtue; and according to one well-known Aristotelian principle, it is the telos of a thing which defines what it essentially is. In that polity falls short of this, it will fail to be a true political community (or will be 'deviant', in the literal sense of the Greek word parekbasis: it sets out, as it were, for the appropriate destination, but goes off the road). But Aristotle is unwilling to say this (it is not a deviant form, he firmly asserted in iv.8, even if there is a way in which, 'strictly speaking', or 'in truth', it is), just as he does not say, in the Ethics, that most human beings are not really human beings because they do not achieve the human 'end', even to the degree to which they are capable of it. For one thing, political science would then be in danger of becoming purely theoretical, and, as he declared at the beginning of Book iv, it is part of its business to say something which is practical and useful. But in any case, if it is true of a polity that it ‘considers', aims at, the common advantage, then it will genuinely overlap with the 'most correct' constitution; it can even in a sense be said to have the same aim as the best constitution ('the common advantage’), which it has simply misidentified. (Similarly, on the individual level, all human beings desire what is genuinely good, though most of us are satisfied with what merely appears so.) In this way, the identification of the city - and therefore of its constitution, as its mode of organization - with the achievement of ‘a good life' becomes a kind of limiting case, and the true 'deviants' will be just those constitutions that fail to live up to the idea of a community at all. A constitution can, then, be 'correct' while also 'falling short’. …
… [In] a long discussion of the question whether it is ever justified for a single outstanding individual to rule in place of laws … two important points … emerge … The first is that Aristotle generally approaches the notion of ideal kingship from his perspective on the city as a community of equals. From such a perspective, the outstanding individual may even be seen as problematic, even for 'correct' constitutions, namely those that ‘consider the common good'. [Rowe footnote: It is not clear how it could be a problem for kingship, or for aristocracy, since these are actually ways of handling exceptional individuals. What Aristotle means is presumably just that such individuals are generally problematic even for those constitutions that actually do 'consider the common good'; but … in any case kingship and aristocracy, as described in Book III, are ultimately types of only marginal importance in Aristotle's scheme] .… But the primary condition of the appropriateness of kingship and aristocracy is the presence of quite exceptional virtue in one or more persons; otherwise it will not be just. …
… Polity is 'correct' because it is true to the idea of a community. But as we have seen, a correct constitution is also a just one: '[i]t is therefore evident that all those constitutions which consider what is to the common advantage are correct constitutions, as judged in terms of what is just absolutely. … ’Absolute’ justice is here contrasted with the specific, and mistaken, conceptions of justice which are found in the ‘deviant' forms of constitution; it is the same sort of justice which dictated that if an individual or family of absolutely outstanding merit should be found, in a certain sort of community, they should be given kingship in that community. …
… Democrats and oligarchs thus have irreconcilable conceptions of justice. Aristotle, like Plato before him, treats the two forms of constitution as polar opposites. But in that case the difference between them cannot be merely - as their names suggest - that the one involves rule by the many, the other by the few; and indeed Aristotle goes so far as to suggest that ultimately number has nothing to do with it, except in so far as ‘oligarchy' is usually associated with rule by a minority, 'democracy' with rule by the majority. …
… The form of constitution called politeia ('polity') is clearly central to Aristotle's scheme. It is probably best described as an attainable ideal (of sorts), which has close connections with something people call, not wholly misleadingly, 'aristocracy'. It is introduced in a number of different guises, but between these there is a detectable family resemblance: if it is a mixture between democracy and oligarchy, or somehow in the middle between them, or equally capable of being called both, or neither, then it will not be wholly inappropriate to think of it also as a kind of restricted (hoplite) democracy. All such descriptions are probably of the notional type, 'polity'; as with the other types (kingship, aristocracy, democracy, and so on), actual varieties are probably best treated as species, or variant forms.
In any case, as we have seen, it stands for the 'correct' form of rule by many, where 'many' means at least considerably more than a few. For Aristotle, the natural state of affairs will be for the citizens to 'rule and be ruled', that is, for each to take his turn at ruling: a city implies a collection of citizens, who barring exceptional circumstances (i.e. the ones that call for ideal kingship or aristocracy, or else where people of insufficient quality happen to have acquired membership of the city) will be free and equal. 'A city aims at being, as far as possible, composed of people who are equal and alike...'. It is this idea that is probably captured by the name 'polity': in other words, it stands for 'citizen constitution’.
The usual way of taking the name is to associate it with the idea of 'constitution' itself, for which Aristotle himself gives some encouragement, in that he notices the fact that the two things share the same name: 'when the mass of the people govern with a view to the common advantage, the form of government in question is called by the name common to all the constitutions - politeia’. On the face of it ‘constitutional government', or something similar, seems appropriate enough as the name of the thing in question. This is, after all, supposed to be a ‘correct' form of constitution, by comparison with the deviant forms, which as deviant are hardly 'constitutions' at all. …
… [We] can fairly readily reconstruct some sort of argument based on the meaning ‘citizen-rule’: the name is apt for this kind of "mass-rule" in the common interest, because ruling in the common interest implies a certain quality … In the Greek, it will help that the words for 'city' (polis), 'citizen' (polites), and 'constitution' (politeia) are close together in derivation and sound, as only the first two are in English. …
The Source:
Christopher Rowe, ‘Aristotelian Constitutions’, in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, edited by Christopher Rowe* and Malcolm Schofield with Melissa Lane*, Cambridge University Press 2005
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.