Introduction and part one
Political Science B
Square One
Aristotle
Introduction:
As a former teacher of Humanities, there are a few things about Western Culture’s beginnings in Ancient Greece that I know, or that I think I know. I have taught the subject, but the “knowledge” I have garnered and attempted to pass on is not from primary sources, but from reliable secondary sources. I have never read Aristotle in the original Greek, nor have I read a direct, word-for-word, translation. I am, in short, not the kind of scholar you might like me to be, but hopefully you will find me to be the kind of “scholar” who makes the difficult less difficult and even easy.
The title of this treatise is Political Science B. There is no Political Science A. This treatise has no precursor. The “B” designation indicates that I am prepared to take a practical approach as opposed to an idealistic approach to my subject. What I have written here is meant to be taken as a step in the right direction, but not as the final word. One of the things I think I know about Aristotle is that he would approve a practical approach. Indeed, Aristotle’s practicality is the reason I start with him and not with his teacher, Plato.
My subtitle is Square One to indicate that Aristotle’s teachings on political science are fundamental and fundamentally correct, not only for his time, but for our own as well.
Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, was an idealist who believed that there exists a perfect political model, and that all earthly political models are imperfect shadows. Somewhat to the contrary, Aristotle and I believe that we have to wade persistently through the world picking up pieces of wisdom and using those building blocks to make a political realm that will work as best it possibly can for us. Keep in mind that any new plan we devise may not work as well for the citizens who come after us.
Brief history: Aristotle studied under Plato. He took much wisdom from Plato and from other of Plato’s students at the Academy. Later, he reworked Plato’s teachings into a coherent philosophy of his own. He was interested in the most important questions: Freedom, Equality, and Justice. Because Aristotle’s father was a leading court physician in the court of the Macedonian King Philip ll, Aristotle spent some years as tutor to Alexander the Great. He had access to the best libraries, scholars, and books of that time. His special area of interest was governance, and he had a collection of Constitutions from many of the city-states of the ancient world. He believed that the core of good governance should flow from the middle class in order to avoid the avarice of the wealthy and the envy of the poor.
What follows is summary of what he wrote on the subject accompanied by commentary of mine own. My source is the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, Aristotle’s Political Theory, First published Wed Jul 1, 1998; substantive revision Tue Nov 7, 2017.
Note: The Stanford citations have been included. You will find an explanation of those citations by following the link provided at the end.
1. Political Science in General
In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle wrote that political science is the most authoritative of the sciences, as all others (military, domestic, etc.) serve as a means to its ends. He characterizes the ends of political science as ‘human good’. In other words, Aristotle believed that the goal of the chief of all sciences is the betterment of humanity. Aristotle did draw a very important distinction between political science as it applies to the individual and as it applies to the state. When he speaks of the “state,’ he is referring to the various city states of his time and his world. Here is what he said: “Even if the end is the same for an individual and for a city-state, that of the city-state seems at any rate greater and more complete to attain and preserve. For although it is worthy to attain it for only an individual, it is nobler and more divine to do so for a nation or city-state” (EN I.2.1094b7-10).
Commentary: In our time, the nation has subsumed, for the time being, most city authority. Therefore, to place Aristotle’s wisdom in a modern context, we might very well say, “The pursuance of individual rights is a ‘worthy’ cause, but not paramount to the welfare of the nation.” We might also extrapolate only slightly by asserting that “The ideal of political science would be to perfectly align our national concerns with our concerns for the needs of the individuals within our nation.” I think Aristotle would agree. I can’t say how Aristotle would feel about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem, but I can speculate that Aristotle would say that every citizen should have a voice, and those voices should be heard.
Follow this link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy pages on Aristotle:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/#SpecCon
Humans are political animals. Other intelligent social animals include dolphins, wolves, lions and chimpanzees; all four of these mammals also commit intraspecies violence. Our ancestor Homo habilis lived 2 million years ago with half the brain size of ours today and that was when our brains began to evolve faster to greater size and complexity. I think that warfare was a primary intraspecies competitive pressure; smarter warriors won more often than not, killed their dimmer competitors, raped their women and left them pregnant with genes for bigger brains.
Big armies usually defeat small armies. For two million years natural selection strongly favored the traits for organizing larger groups of people to facilitate cooperation within the group, defense from others and offense against others, depending on the immediate situations. History is full of war, war and more war; it seems to be very normal. Alexander of Macedonia was great because he successfully achieved conquest, a preemptive war, when an alternative could have been complete defeat from the east. Conquer or be conquered is not extinct.
In Aristotle’s time the city-state was the fundamental unit of military defense, today it is the nation, hence the transfer of power. As cities grew into states, natural selection favored behaviors that could succeed in producing offspring in an increasing urban environment and one set of these adaptive behaviors is political maneuvering, power plays. Prussian General Carl Clausewitz famously said that war is a continuation of politics and Chinese mass murderer Mao Tse Tung later said the same.
Mega killers such as Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and their many fanatical followers express the behavioral traits of those who derive immense pleasure from the total domination of others. Those of us less inclined to do so may have felt the joy of victory in a team sport (symbolic warfare) or when our candidate won an election. Criminal violence is never “random and senseless,” criminals choose high value targets or targets with low chance of injurious retaliation and the sensations are greatly satisfying. For example, a woman who was convicted of first-degree murder told reporters that stabbing her victim to death gave her orgasms.
The good of the nation is defined by those who win political power plays, those who control the means to govern people. The welfare state forcibly takes wealth from producers and gives it to others in exchange for political support. In the US this is called “transfer payments,” “redistribution,” and recently, “economic justice.” The welfare state-socialism-totalitarianism continuum is built on domination, threats and deception; behaviors that have a strong evolutionary foundation.
Another set of adaptations that co-evolved with bigger brains and larger group dynamics is the set of behaviors conducive to industry and commerce. There is substantial overlap here with the political behaviors because both involve relations between large numbers of people, but commerce is much more cooperative, peaceful and productive—agree to a deal or not, have a nice day, maybe we can deal later. These behaviors are encouraged by private property market arrangements and answer Aristotle’s question as to how to maximize the well-being of the individual. These are the behaviors that built the best of our modern world, true progressivism.
The political warrior type slanders commerce by calling great industrialists “robber barons” as they were neither. Voluntary employer-employee relationships are called “exploitation.” Marx called religion the “opiate of the masses.” For Marx, et. al, people are mere lumps of mass to be driven into revolution and dictatorship.
Small government with strong protections for life and property, where contracts are honored provides the flexible society that can provide the greatest good for the greatest numbers of people. An honest analysis of history supports this claim. A survey of the Index of Economic Freedom is also instructive.
See https://www.heritage.org/index/
Allow me to respond to your eight paragraphs one at a time in reverse order.
Paragraph 8: You speak of “small government”, and that idea needs clarification. Do you have in mind that the main spheres of political influence and dominion should be at the local level? If so, I would agree that configuration strikes closest to the ideal.In times of War, however, I would say Centralized control of political power holds the greatest promise of the “greatest good for the greatest number.”
Yes, the local level is where citizens best know their issues. I would limit the federal government to defense, pollution control, and preservation of liberty by checking state and local governments from over-reach.
Our warrior inheritance shows through with language such as wars on poverty, drugs, ignorance, etc. Crises are also a rationale for big government action–crises in education, climate, homelessness and such.
Paragraph 1:
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing!
Paragraph 2:
I’ve noticed that people are developing a certain distaste for hyperbole. As a teacher of Literature, I find hyperbole to be more entertaining and less wrong headed. Supposing I wanted to get more serious about doing something about poverty. What better way to describe my efforts than as a “War.” If I utter the words “War on poverty,” it certainly does not mean that I want to go out and kill rich people.
Reply to Jim’s paragraph 7:
The so-called “Robber Barons” were the biggest Capitalists of the so-called “Gilded Age.” I understand that we would be a third, fourth, or fifth world country without men like them. The country was in an economic race at the time, and it was a race that we won. I am trying to come up with a catchy two-word descriptor, but I’m not coming up with anything. I am just picturing that naval commander (was it Nelson?) saying, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” That was the kind of guys they were, but you have to somehow work in the idea that the torpedoes were sometimes people.
Have a little more faith in the “Masses.” We’re not all as dumb as Marx and Mao thought we were.
I heard Yakov Smirnov say, “In capitalism, people exploit people. In communism it is the other way around.” The torpedoes quote is from David Farragut who joined the Navy at age 12 during the War of 1812. At age 13 he was put in command of a captured ship. He became the US Navy’s first admiral in the Civil War.
Thank you for correctly attributing my quote. As always, I bow to the superior scholar.
Your quote of Yakov Smirnoff makes me smile. Thank you again. The difference is, of course, that in Capitalism, Free Enterprise is a core value and therefore entered into voluntarily. In Communism, the element of voluntary participation is completely absent.
I just googled Yakov, and I believe you mean “Smirnoff,” not “Smirnov.” Google says he portrayed a naïve Russian enthralled by his American experiences. I would like to know more. Do you have any favorite bits of his in mind?
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 6:
Neither I nor Aristotle, I believe, harbor any ill-will towards the Free Enterprise system. We all have the innate desire to operate freely and in an enterprising manner. Indeed, Free Enterprise is one of the two guiding principles of this country we both love. The other guiding principle is Equality under the Law.
Also, I agree in general with your assertion that commerce is “more cooperative, peaceful, and productive” than the political realm, but that sets a pretty low bar.
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 5:
I would definitely agree with you that our current political realm could best be characterized as a series of competing “power plays.” Ring the bell! It is already time once again for the Democratic straw candidates to meet the Republican straw candidates in the center of the boxing mat. It is all staged and choreographed for the maximum effect.
“Economic Justice” will only be realized when we get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the economic realm, and, even then, only if all citizens have equal economic status.
What does “equal economic status” mean to you?
In the ideal world, “equal economic status” means that my dollar will compete on an equal footing with President Trump’s dollar. Suppose I want to buy the house next door. Suppose President Trump also puts in a bid for that house. Suppose further that our bids match dollar for dollar. I am pretty sure President Trump will be moving in and I will be mildly disappointed and looking for a different investment. I am not envious or jealous of President Trump’s enhanced buying power. I am just saying that some of the elements of that transaction might seem less than ideal, at least from my perspective.
I have heard that Americans of predominantly African descent are sometimes side-stepped in the economic marketplace. That doesn’t seem right somehow. Does it?
In the future, perhaps, all transactions will, by law, be conducted anonymously. I am not calling for that to happen. I am just saying that anonymous buying might move us closer to the ideal.
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 4:
In the ideal world “Mega killers such as Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.” would lose their citizenship for the crime of being, wait for it…. Mega killers.
I am working on Part 3 of my review of Aristotle’s politics today. The people you mention in paragraph 4 should immediately lose the rights of citizenship and be punished in more gruesome ways as well.
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 3:
I hope you do not agree with Mao and General Clausewitz when they say that “…war is a continuation of politics.” I would agree with Aristotle. War is a symptom if bad governance and bad politics.
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 2:
“History is full of war, war, and more war.” It doesn’t have to be that way.
“Conquer or be conquered is not extinct.” Agreed, but it’s best not to imagine a threat at every diplomatic conference table.
President Trump seems to know the Platinum rule: Do unto others as they have done unto you. But never, ever forget to repay kindness with kindness.
Also, future history will long disagree as to whether Alexander was “Great,” or not.
Reply to Jim’s Paragraph 1:
“Humans are political animals.” Agreed, Aristotle said it first.
We are all in favor of “intraspecies competitive pressures.” It’s that war thing we all like to avoid a lot more often.