Ethics And Politics In Aristotle: A Discussion of Richard Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy

Abstract

Abstract This book is one in a series of new studies of major social and political thinkers, which aim to present accessible, historically based introductions to their thought, together with reassessments of their central ideas and arguments and assessments of their continuing relevance to current political debate. (I paraphrase the description on the back cover.) In its task of introduction and critical reassessment it seems to me to succeed admirably. It provides the newcomer with exactly the kind of accessible yet authoritative introduction to Aristotle’s political thought which the series aims at, and in its critical reassessments of his doctrines raises many issues of interest to the specialist (some of them touched on below). On the matter of relevance to contemporary political debate I am more sceptical; though Kraut states in his preface that one of his ambitions is to present Aristotle ‘in a way that shows how he speaks to the politics of our own time’ (viii), in fact the book has very little to say about relevance to contemporary issues. I do not regard that in itself as a defect, since I think that Aristotle’s political theory is so firmly entrenched in a historical situation radically different from that of the modern world that he has in fact very little relevance to modern political problems. Rather my criticism is that in paying lip-service to an unattainable ideal of contemporary relevance Kraut unintentionally plays down the extent of the distance between Aristotle’s socio-political world and ours.