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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by George J. Irbe
Introduction Up to now I have read closely only three of Aristotle's works: the Nicomachean Ethics, On the Soul (De Anima), and Politics. I have also read Book XII of Metaphysics. My selection of these particular books will immediately indicate to the knowledgeable that my intent has been to learn from Aristotle, not necessarily of his logic which he is renowned for, but rather about his understanding of the "human condition." Of course, it is to be expected that through works on topics like ethics, politics and metaphysical conjectures the author will, perforce, reveal his or her own personal beliefs and values, and even something about his own character. It is thus that I feel I have come to know -- deductively, from his turn of phrase -- some things about Aristotle the man, and I am quite confident that my impressions of him would not change appreciably from the ones I hold at present, were I to read all of his other works. In seeking to understand (if only in my imagination) what life was like for Aristotle and what he revealed of himself through his writing, I came also to appreciate for whom he was writing, and why he wrote as he did. He wrote for all human beings, because he saw their natures cast from the same mould everywhere. He wrote patiently, hoping to sway men, from kings to paupers, one by one, and bit by bit, to get on the virtuous road to the good life. Although he had little hope for success, he never abandoned hope that most men might one day be persuaded to follow his advice. That is when I realized that my somewhat sentimental quest for Aristotle the man in his writings had changed to a beholding of what he left for the posterity of man. He left us much more than mere philosophy. He left us a legacy which, unfortunately, has been spurned by Western civilization. So it is that I have changed my initial choice of title for this piece -- Impressions of Aristotle -- to the much weightier one of Aristole's Spurned Legacy. Making the best of the circumstances It has ever been so that those who would influence public opinion with respect to cultural mores, social behavior, and political practice (Aristotle was engaged in doing just that in his role as teacher and tutor) must be careful not to incur the displeasure of the citizens of the influential propertied middle-class -- in Aristotle's case, the oligarchs of the city-state. A healthy measure of prudence and tact must be exercised by the intellectual, the scholar, and the teacher in order to maintain popularity and reputation with the middle-class, on whose largesse he mainly depends for his social and material well-being. It seems logical to me that the man who, in the Nicomachean Ethics, stresses the virtues of wisdom, prudence, and temperance would himself have practiced these virtues. As it happened, Aristotle too, like the rest of us, did not escape the vicissitudes of life's circumstances and changing fortunes, as will be told in greater detail below. Aristotle was born in 384 BCE and raised in comfortable circumstances, the son of a physician to the Macedonian king. At the age of sixteen he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until Plato's death in 348. After departing from Athens, Aristotle was invited by Hermeias, ruler of Atarneus and a former member of the Academy, to found a philosophical community at Assus. While there, Aristotle married Hermeias' niece. He was also tutor of Alexander (the Great), son of king Philip of Macedonia for a short time. There is no question that Aristotle spent many years studying and teaching on the fringes of the upper class society of the rich and powerful. Even after he returned to Athens in 335, as a resident alien, and founded the Lyceum, he maintained contact with his friend Antipater, who was Alexander's viceroy. However, securing a comfortable livelihood by maintaining good relationships with the upper class (which a person who is engaged in intellectual or artistic pursuits is often obliged to do) does not make one a member of that class, nor a sycophant of that class. As it was, Aristotle returned to Athens three years after the city-state had suffered a strategic defeat by Philip of Macedonia at Chareonea (338). Philip himself was killed the next year (337), and Antipater assumed rule as Alexander the Great's viceroy. When Aristotle arrived in Athens two years later the city was in a sour mood. Demosthenes, a renowned Athenian orator, wished to preserve the independence of Athens and other city-states from Macedonian domination. He had been responsible for inciting the city-states to form an alliance and confront Philip on the field of battle; the result of it was the crushing defeat of the alliance at Chareonea. Philip had actually dealt very leniently with Athens after his victory, but Demosthenes persisted in agitating the Athenians to rise up against the Macedonians. It appears that Aristotle, therefore, had to run his Lyceum for more than a decade in an atmosphere of hostility toward Macedonia and suspicion of anyone who maintained cordial relations with the Macedonian rulers. When Alexander the Great died, in 323, Demosthenes intensified his agitation against the viceroy Antipater. For Aristotle, who was seen as a friend of Antipater, Athens now became a very hostile and dangerous place. He departed from Athens not to return again. He lived the few months left of his life in relative obscurity in Chalcis. Aristotle was one of the intellectual giants who lived toward the end of the golden age of Greece. Karl R. Popper remarks in his book Conjectures and Refutations, (Ch. 5, XI), that the development of Greek philosophy, especially from Thales to Plato, is "a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth." Aristotle could draw upon a lot of development of philosophical thought by his predecessors which was at that time still relatively fresh. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, Popper also expresses admiration for the Greeks for their rapid development of the values system that makes up democracy and the open society. Popper sees this era as a significant turning point in the history of mankind. I quote a passage from Popper at length because it is a brilliant and concise statement on that glorious era:
These times of great intellectual, cultural and political achievement by the Greeks in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE were also times of almost constant tumult and warfare among the city-states. For most of the time, there was an on-going struggle between Sparta, who was the preserver of the culture of the old tribal society, and Athens, who was building a revolutionary mercantile empire based on, if not a democratic, then at least a timocratic model, and of a society which was receptive to outside cultural influences and was inclined to forget and abandon the old tribal traditions. In Athens, a new phenomenon appeared in society -- division of the citizenry along ideological lines, which division has remained with us ever since. The division was between conservatives and progressives. The conservative oligarchs of Athens favored, by and large, the Spartan tribal culture and often conspired treasonously against the populist democrats of their own city. Those were politically and socially unpredictable and uncertain times. Reputations, offices, and thrones could be lost suddenly; so could also ones very life. In order to evaluate Aristotle, the man, it is particularly important, therefore, to take into account the tumultuous times he personally lived in, and the equally tumultuous years before his birth which he had knowledge of from recent history. Karl Popper has a very negative view of Plato for expressing tribal and totalitarian sentiments in his works and for being a supporter of the reactionary oligarchs of Athens; and more so is Popper critical of Plato's uncle Critias, who actually participated in the murder of people of the democratic opposition after Athens fell to Sparta. Popper similarly labels Aristotle, who, after all, was Plato's disciple for many years, as a supporter of the oligarchs, but I think he is judging him too harshly. Aristotle and democracy It is true that Aristotle was not wild about democracy, or more accurately, about the extreme populist and anarchist forms of democracy. But it is clear from his own writings in Politics that Aristotle understood very well the good and the bad of every form of government known to men. After all, he lived in the laboratory where all the different kinds of governments had been or were being tried. He describes the pros and cons of numerous kinds of governments, citing in each case the places where they have been tried or are in force. In the passage below, Aristotle discusses democracy and oligarchy:
There is an amazing amount of political wisdom in the above passages. First of all, Aristotle did not like the kind of democracy which "arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects." Today we would characterize Aristotle as a moderate conservative. Today, only a communist or hard-core socialist demands that people must be equal in all respects, i.e. materially equal. Aristotle certainly was neither of those. It is also clear that Aristotle favored a republican form of democratic government that has a bicameral structure (a lower and an upper chamber) because he recommends that "both kinds of equality should be employed." And, have not the people of liberal democracies concluded from their experiences in the 20th century that "democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy?" Further, behold the most amazing of Aristotle's remarks that "a government which is composed of the middle class [the bourgeoisie!] more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy." Is that not also one of the sacred canons of modern Western democracies? To cap it all, when Churchill said that democracy is a bad form of government, except that all the others are worse, did he say anything different from Aristotle's remark that democracy "is the safest of the imperfect forms of government?" Aristotle and slavery I am of the opinion that slavery was one of the issues on which Aristotle had to walk the fine line. He is often criticized by modern scholars for condoning slavery. But, would a public renunciation of slavery by a teacher to the rich and powerful have had any influence in speeding the abolition of it? Hardly. However, it certainly would have been detrimental to the well-being of Aristotle himself. Slavery has been practiced since the beginnings of civilization, and most likely even before that. Slavery has been a factor in the economy of many societies and states up to our present times. Slaves have been forced to do the dirty, physically exhausting, and dangerous work that needs to be done but that the free men are loath to do. Not so long ago, slavery was a state-run enterprise in the Soviet Union: Slaves (political prisoners) were used in uranium mines and to clean nuclear-powered submarines of radioactive waste. In Aristotle's Greece the owning of slaves was not only an economic but also a cultural practice. By and large, Aristotle's pupils came from the upper strata of society, from prosperous oligarchs and kings. Ownership of slaves was indicative of social status; it showed that one was rich enough to afford to keep them. It would have been unthinkable for them not to own slaves. But I can't imagine Aristotle upholding slavery on principle. Through his lectures and writings on ethics and morals, Aristotle was constantly trying to persuade men that it is to their own benefit to live a virtuous life and to allow the next fellow to do likewise. At the same time, he had no illusions about the nature of man, expressed very directly in this statement:
Aristotle did not hold much hope that man (as a species) could be perfected into the "best of animals"; we must be content that some of us acquire a smattering of virtue. Towards the end of the Nicomachean Ethics he writes:
So it is, then, that Aristotle himself thought that he was teaching the standards for human perfection to a mostly imperfectible bunch. Among other imperfections, Aristotle had to resign himself to the imperfection of slavery. When I read the following passage from Politics I can imagine in my mind's eye Aristotle instructing a group of (probably youthful) students in what today would be called Economics 101. (I can even imagine that to Aristotle this was perhaps boring course material which he had to cover as part of the curriculum.) He is discussing rather mundane matters of household management. He says that the ability to manage a slave is a need of practical life; he is also hoping that the current attitude of master to slave can be improved, no doubt in order to better the lot of the slave (". . . seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present"). Note also that Aristotle uses here the non-committal, impartial expression (which he employed frequently) of "some are of the opinion"; not "I think", not "we believe," but an unspecified group of "some." That is how one keeps out of trouble with the powers that be.
However, Aristotle counters that statement immediately with a somewhat provocative assertion:
Again, Aristotle sounds impartial on the subject -- "others affirm", not "I believe." But, having mentioned the hypothesis that slavery might be an interference with nature, i.e. an unnatural relationship between men, he returns to the prevailing conventional wisdom which argues that a slave is, after all, a possession, and concludes with:
It is important to note the interjection of the otherwise redundant phrase "being a human being." I think that Aristotle is subtly challenging his students to contemplate the illogicality of the idea that any member of the human race could be thought of as a physical possession. If it can be said of one human being that it is possible for him to be a possession, it can be said of all human beings, even of Athenians. That is not a conclusion that would be welcome in the minds of any of Aristotle's students. Aristotle next proceeds to state the question of whether slavery is or is not a natural institution.
It is to be noted that Aristotle starts out with a categorical statement asserting that slavery is a natural thing, supposedly supported by reason and fact:
But his argument appears to be contrived, leading one to suspect, once more, that Aristotle is presenting this weak case only to please the consciences of his students and their elders, many of whom were from slave-owning families, rather than to please his own. He actually slides off the point, and spends lines 1254a24 to 1255a02 citing various natural instances of "rulers" and "ruled," which are really not instances of master and slave in the true sense, but are rather natural hierarchical and cause-effect relationships. After all, to state that in the natural world one will always find that something or someone is in charge -- the master of the situation or process -- doesn't equate it with slavery. Aristotle could not present any proof of slavery in the natural world because he could not find any. Instances of actual slavery in the natural world are very rare; only a few have been found, mainly in the insect domain. Nevertheless, Aristotle states the conclusion that slavery is a natural thing. Aristotle, like many who came after him, had to conform with the "political correctness" of the time:
As if to confirm our suspicions that Aristotle has made the spurious argument for slavery in the natural world simply to please his patrons, he hastens to amend it. Just in case we are not quick enough on the up-take, he throws in an enigmatic reference to his own unstated personal opinion with the remark: "Even among philosophers there is a difference of opinion."
As I understand it, what Aristotle implies in the above quote is that there really is only one kind of slavery which consists of the subjugation of man by man by violent means, usually in war, but not exclusively in war. The practice of raiding other tribes which are considered to be less civilized than your own for slaves is also a violent act conducted with superior brute strength. The "slavery by nature" looks more and more like a phantom concept inserted into the argument by Aristotle in order that he might propitiate the beliefs of the ruling classes. Finally, Aristotle recognizes the racial underpinnings of slavery. Men do not enslave their own kind, only people who they consider to be "barbarians," i.e. people who are racially, ethnically, or culturally greatly different from themselves. The "barbarians" turn out to be the "natural slaves." Aristotle can be faulted only for concurring (reluctantly, in my opinion, i.e. "it must be admitted") with the conventional belief (prevalent in the Greek world then and still prevalent in some parts of the world today) that certain alien ethnic and racial groups "are slaves everywhere."
In spite of the above concession to slavery, Aristotle by no means endorses it. It seems to me that Aristotle never abandons his belief that all men are basically the same, because they are members of the same species. A man is still a human being even when enslaved, and has the potential to be a friend and freeman. Indirectly, Aristotle hints that abolition of slavery is most likely to happen in a democracy. This point is addressed in the following passage from the Nicomachean Ethics:
I conclude my argument that Aristotle the ethicist and logician could not, in his heart of hearts, approve of slavery with this brief remark he made in Book VII of Politics:
Aristotle is renowned for always exalting the grand and the noble. He is saying that those who own slaves and use them as slaves lack nobility of character. |
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