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"Man is by nature a social animal," says Aristotle. Thus, there is a strong and even instinctual impulse to live in the company of others. Why then are not small tribal enclaves the final form of social life? What is it about the polis that makes it the end toward which other and more primitive forms of affiliation evolve? The reason for the polis cannot be simply self-defense or trade. Pirates defend themselves and trade is possible among those with no settled communities at all. The polis is a lawful realm which imposes duties and discipline, thus creating obligations and selfless commitments; it is the setting in which the most significant aspects of our humanity can be realized. The model of the good polis lies in the nature of friendship. Friendships are formed and maintained on different grounds. There are those who maintain friendship solely for the sensual pleasure it affords, but such pleasure must be ephemeral. The friendship lasts only as long as the pleasure is reciprocated and forthcoming. There are those who maintain friendship for reasons of utility, such that John befriends Peter owing to Peter's being useful to John and vice versa. Utility, too, is not enduring; the friendship lasts only as long as it is useful and others may prove to be more useful or the usefulness may no longer be reciprocated. Then there is friendship grounded in virtue, such that one desires for one's friend what is best for one's friend, and this for the sake of one's friend. This perfected or completed friendship, for its aims do not go outside the friendship itself. Such friendships are virtuous because they conduce to the good. But perfected or completed friendships is not characteristic of most friendships. Virtuous or perfected friendship is possible only between those who are relevantly equal, though the measure of equality is not quantitative but proportional. As the the audience and the great performer are not equal, but each grants to the other what is due: that is sufficient equality. The only degree of inequality that would entirely negate the possibility of friendship would be that which divides humanity from the gods. Virtuous friendship is the ground and model for the good polis. But what does Aristotle mean by virtue? Virtue includes the intellectual abilities that are central to our human life -- greatness in art, learning, leadership. These virtues are partly innate but largely learned from masters. Moral excellence is also learned. Rather than being intuitive or residing in the soul of superior individuals, it is acquired by lifelong practice -- the habit of virtue. Moral virtue is a mean between excesses, a balance point. The goal of virtue is perfection, conceived of as just the proper relation of elements -- the golden mean, the middle way. Anger is natural; all men are endowed with it by nature, and nature does nothing by chance. What must be practiced in order to be virtuous is anger at the right objects: anger at injustice, for instance, is proper. Rage is not virtuous because it is excessive and uncontrolled. Courage is the virtue at the balance point between heedlessness and cowardice, which are both excessive forms of the same thing. Virtuous actions can only be done by conscious individuals making choices. Men of virtue form a minority, though they are able to promote what in fact are the greatest of human interests. Mob rule is the rule of passion. Virtue is possessed by the few. Those fit for virtuous or perfected friendship are also those fit for rule. The few can rule generally only by law. The polis, Aristotle says, precedes the individual; that is, it is the family, the original polis, and the social group from which our natures as individuals, as mother, father, friend, teacher, arise. The developed polis depends on friendly relations among members, and lasting friendly relations depend on virtue. Aristotle also identifies the attraction we have to the rule of law as arising from the law's philikon, or "friendliness" towards us. That is, by bringing out what is best in us, the law functions as would the virtuous friend to whom we are attracted by, again, what is best in us. |
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