Malcolm Schofield, Aristotle's rational choice model
Introduction to Aristotle, whose analysis of the polis seems to be a rational choice theory..
Malcolm Schofield wrote:
Chapter 15
Aristotle: an introduction
3. Aristotle's analytical models
At its most general and fundamental level Aristotle's analysis of the polis is a highly abstract exercise in rational choice theory. He envisages a community of persons who associate because of their need to make a living, but who have as their goal the good life, i.e. a life of fulfilment exemplifying the characteristically human virtues. These persons are assumed to be free and equal: naturally free, that is, capable of determining strategies for living, and so (on his view) entitled to a status enabling them to exercise that capacity; and equal, in that their capacities for strategic thinking are all roughly equal. How should such a community govern itself? The form of rule appropriate to it is what Aristotle calls political rule, in contradistinction from despotic rule (suitable for the direction of slaves or naturally slavish persons) and monarchy (the right way to run e.g. one’s household).
Political differs from despotic rule in that (i) rule is exercised in the interests primarily of the ruled, not the ruler, and (ii) there is ruling and being ruled by turns. Aristotle says little to explain or defend (i), but its rationale is obvious: given the basic objects for which the community exists, the point of government must be to enable its members to achieve them. On (ii) he is more forthcoming. It would be better for the same persons to rule always, if that were possible - because ruling requires specific skills and virtues, and as in other spheres where this is true specialization is likely to be more efficient and produce better results. But given the hypothesis of the natural equality of all the citizens, and assuming it to be impracticable for them all to be in office simultaneously, justice (i.e. fairness) requires that all should rule, but taking turns - with everyone out of office, at any rate, in the same boat for the time being. This constitution, i.e. system of allocating offices, requires adoption of a norm: the principle that the law should rule, rather than any particular individual citizen.
Aristotle explores what he presents as a problem with this conception of political rule. The merit of political rule is that if government is conducted in the interest of the governed, all have the opportunity to develop and display the moral virtues - courage, moderation, and so on. The difficulty is that only a person holding office at a given time is in a position to exercise practical wisdom, or at any rate to exercise it in its most important sphere, for the good of the whole community. So it appears that the system of political rule does not after all enable citizens to achieve the good life, or at any rate not as fully as possible: the good citizen is not identical with the good human being. In Book VII Aristotle in effect offers a solution to this problem, by making all the mature citizens of his ideal aristocracy perpetual rulers, once they have served their apprenticeship in the subordinate positions naturally appropriate to younger men. This is an ingenious attempt to rework both democratic principles and the egalitarianism traditional in Greek aristocratic ideology into a single pattern.
But things do not stay so simple. The abstract model of what Aristotle calls the 'political community' gets elaborated by a variety of complications, which have the effect of making it much more nearly a model of the historical Greek polis, and at the same time of diluting its egalitarianism. The complications come in two main varieties. First, the issues of who should be admitted to membership of the citizen body and how participation in rule should be organized are in practice much contested. This comes about for reasons Aristotle connects together in an analysis which effectively involves the introduction of what we would call classes - primarily economic classes, but as well as the rich minority and the poor masses the well born (i.e. the hereditary landed aristocracy) and the virtuous (i.e. the true moral elite) are sometimes made parties to the argument.
The rich, for example, will say that they are not on an equality with the poor, and that their worth (axia) is such that they deserve more of the ruling positions or honours (timai) than them. The poor, for their part, will typically counter that the free (in this context the free-born) status common to all the citizens does or should make them equal in everything. And they foment unrest when they perceive an inequality between what they own and what the rich do - for while honour, the traditional goal of the political life, motivates the educated elite, what the masses are interested in is gain. Aristotle himself sees merit in these and many similar conflicting contentions about what he calls 'worth' or 'merit', but which we might diagnose as arguments about status and the claims to participation in rule they are designed to advance. And he suggests that it would be prudent for oligarchies to introduce more egalitarian features into their constitutions, and for democracies to restrict eligibility for some offices to those who satisfy a certain property qualification, or to allow such positions to be filled sometimes not by lottery but by voting.
Aristotle has here enriched his model by considerations drawn from a fairly elaborate, if often schematic and stereotyped, political sociology. The other main complication in his theory is introduced by a functional analysis, derived in its basic approach from Plato in the Republic, of what makes the polis - now interpreted as the society as a whole - a self-sufficient unit. The crucial distinction Aristotle draws is between the integral parts of a political community and functions that are merely necessary for its existence, although also important is his anti-Platonic idea that the city is made up of households, a sphere - below the threshold of political discourse proper - to which women and chattel slaves are relegated. The distinction between parts and necessary conditions is a shaky one, but Aristotle's point is that political deliberation and the exercise of jurisdiction are activities intrinsic to the pursuit of the good life, namely to the basic aim of political association, and a military capacity is clearly in the public interest. But farming and labouring, marketing and the practice of artisan crafts are neither - they simply supply the economic needs of the individuals who live in the polis. In his ideal aristocracy Aristotle would accordingly bar from citizenship those involved in subsistence farming, crafts and trade. These occupations make people small-minded and give insufficient leisure for political activity and the acquisition of virtue. They have no proper place in the exclusive club of the leisured exploiters of their labour which constitutes the citizen community. No wonder Aristotle's political philosophy both attracts and repels, combining as it does penetrating insight into both first principles and the dynamics of political struggle with proposals born of crude class interest. [END]
The Source:
Malcolm Schofield, ‘Aristotle: An Introduction’, in The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, edited by Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge University Press 2005
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.
Michael’s HELLER FILES quality tools for Social Science since 2022