Political Animals Revisited

Abstract

In what ways (if any) might Aristotle's political thought be relevant to contemporary political theory or practice—or is “making Aristotle relevant” a quixotic enterprise doomed at the outset by arguments that are pernicious, implausible, or both?It goes almost without saying that there are aspects of Aristotle's political thought that are not relevant, at least in any positive, theory-building sense: Aristotle's defense of the claim that some persons are, by dint of an inborn psychological flaw, “slaves by nature,” along with his military doctrine that asserts that it is just to employ organized violence to enslave a foreign population of putative natural slaves, is an obvious case in point.1 Aristotle also asserted that all women suffer a psychological disability that prevents them from reliably deliberating about public goods and that this disability debarred women from active citizenship.2 Aristotle further contended that the civic virtue essential for the effective performance of active citizenship is necessarily corrupted when an individual acts as an instrument of another's private advantage (whether that meant laboring under another's direction,3 or expert musical performance enjoyed by another).4 It follows that everyone who works for a living is rendered, ipso facto, slavish by habit and thereby unsuited for political action. I will call these three claims “Aristotle's useless arguments.”5I will argue in what follows that certain of Aristotle's other central arguments are far from useless: they are plausible, useful for contemporary theorizing—and separable from his useless ideas about slavery, gendered moral psychology, self-corruption, and also from what I will call, below, “extra baggage arguments” about the priority of the state over the individual, teleology, and the unity of the human good. Aristotle's “useful arguments” can, I argue, be built into the foundation of a contemporary theory of democracy as collective self-governance that is recognizably Aristotelian, even though it might not be endorsed by other theorists who draw on Aristotle's thought or, for that matter, by Aristotle himself.The primary useful argument that grounds Aristotle's ethical and political thought, and that can be deployed as the foundation for an Aristotelian (as opposed to Aristotle's own) theory of democracy as collective self-governance, is the famous claim that the human being (anthropon) is a political animal (zoon politikon).6 This means, in the first instance (by reference to Aristotle's works on biology),7 that humans are social creatures. We typically live in conspecific groups (like, say, chimpanzees or lions), rather than “sporadically,” as isolated individuals who come together with their kind only occasionally for the purpose of mating (like, say, leopards or orangutans). Moreover, unlike some social animals (say, zebras) that live in herds but do not produce or share in the consumption of public goods (other than the enhanced security against predators produced by multiplying sense-organs), we humans live in groups that are highly organized, have defined memberships, and are concerned with the creation, distribution, and consumption of vital public goods.According to Aristotle, humans are taxonomically similar to other highly social (i.e. political) animals that work cooperatively in communities to produce public goods that are shared in common. His primary example is honey-bees, who work together to build hives and to produce honey. While the comparison with social insects leads to some puzzles (below), the taxonomic (as opposed to genetic: humans are obviously genetically closer to orangutans than we are to bees) description of humans as falling into the category of animals that are social in the special and strong sense that we typically live in organized societies and produce complex forms of essential (to us) public goods, seems reasonable on the face of it.Humans are, however, quite different from honey-bees (or ants, termites, or other social animals) in the diversity of the kinds of social organizations we create and inhabit—and thus also in the diversity of our patterns of production, distribution, and consumption of public goods. Whereas every hive produced by honey-bees of a given species will be much the same as every other hive produced by members of the same species, the same cannot be said of states or other systems of human social organization. Bees dwelling in a given hive are naturally hyper-cooperative to a degree that humans dwelling in a given state clearly are not. The “rules” that bees follow are set by their nature—not by the fiat of a lawgiver bee, or by an agreement among the worker-bees. These natural rules do not change much over time and bees follow them without much deviation.8 Humans, in contrast, make rules (in the form of social norms and institutions), and are able to change the rules, sometimes frequently and sometimes radically. Furthermore, individual humans, unlike bees, may choose not to obey the rules, and they may or may not enforce rules broken by others.9Aristotle takes all of this into account. Although his teleology (see further, below) led him to assert that the polis (and indeed a polis of a certain sort) was the unique natural end of human sociability, and that therefore any other form of social organization was in some substantial sense deficient, he certainly recognized that there was a great deal of variation in the kinds of organizations in which humans actually live (kingdoms, empires, ethnic tribes, as well as city-states).10 The readily observed fact that poleis were diverse in their political regimes is a major concern of the Politics. The diversity of organizational forms developed by humans shows that, unlike bees, our nature does not fully determine the form of our social organization.The variety of human social organizations is, at least in part, a function of the fact that, as Aristotle recognized, there is a great deal of individual variation among the members of a given human community, in terms of natural talents, skills, life experiences, and acquired knowledge. Moreover, there is a good deal of variation among communities in regard to the range of talents that are socially supported and in how individual variation is treated. In some societies (e.g. Sparta) variation among citizens was discouraged and military skills were heavily emphasized. In others (e.g. Athens) diverse talents and experiences were actively promoted. Moreover, unlike bees, humans have individual interests as well as collective interests, and they have the capacity to form and act upon plans for pursuing their own interests. There are, consequently, many possible solutions to the question of social equilibrium, that is, of how a society might be organized such that it persists more or less stably over time. Some solutions are, from the point of view of Aristotle's eudaimonistic ethics, more choice-worthy than others. The Politics explains why that is so, and suggests ways that relatively more choice-worthy forms of social organization might be advanced. Once again, on the face of it, that seems a reasonable way for political theory to proceed.Aristotle emphasizes individual human self-interest in his extended criticism of Plato's Republic. Aristotle asserts that Plato's ideal state is unworkable because it fails to take into proper account either diversity of humans and their interests, or the inherent human tendency to prioritize the interests of self and close kin.11 The issue of self-interest is also prominent in Aristotle's discussion of the “parts” of the natural whole that is the polis.12 The parts are variously understood by Aristotle to be individual citizens, or groupings of individuals into factions based on interests shared by some, but not all, members of the community. Individual and factional interest is a problem because the particular interests of the “parts” may diverge from the common interests of the “whole,” a problem that is exacerbated by human diversity. Yet Aristotle cannot, based on his assumptions about human nature, avail himself of Plato's “harmonic” solution to the problem.Humans are, in sum, unlike bees in that natural sociability does not, for the members of a community, solve the problem of how a number of diverse individuals can reliably secure the public goods necessary for joint and several flourishing. Aristotle's political thought is relevant and interesting for contemporary political theory in part because Aristotle recognized that, for humans, collective action is a problem that must be solved by institutional design—which calls for an institutional designer. Aristotle explicitly acknowledges this issue when he points out that, although each human has a natural impulse to participate in a polis-type community (koinonia), he who first constituted a polis brought about the greatest of goods.13In his criticisms of Plato, as elsewhere in the Politics (notably in book 5), Aristotle recognized that, in the absence of well-structured incentives, individuals would strategically choose to free-ride on others' cooperation, that this could lead to a cascade of non-cooperation, that publicly-held resources risked being degraded through a commons tragedy, and that, when they do share a common interest, people may fail to find a common focal point around which to coordinate their actions and thus fail to achieve a goal shared by each of them. Aristotle's recognition that these were impediments to effective human cooperation, and that there were a wide range of possible—although not equally choice-worthy—equilibrium solutions to the problem of cooperation, prompted his detailed examination of institutional design in the Politics. It is this recognition that makes his useful arguments interesting from the viewpoint of positive political theory.14Aristotle's political animals argument becomes normatively interesting, and I think remains entirely plausible, when he asserts that humans are more political than other social animals (i.e. we produce more diverse and higher order public goods than do social insects) because of certain distinctive human capacities. For the purposes of political theorizing, the human capacities that are of primary importance are, for Aristotle (as for Hobbes and many theorists since), the ability to employ reason and the ability to engage in highly complex forms of interpersonal communication, through speech. Unlike any other species, we use reason and speech to deliberate (intra-personally as well as inter-personally) about matters of importance to the collectives of which we are parts, as well as to each of us, as individuals. And thus, for Aristotle (unlike for Hobbes and many other theorists since), we humans are “the most political” of all social animals.15Reason and speech are at once capacities (dunameis) that are constitutive of humanity, and essential human functions (erga) that allow for the achievement of distinctively human ends. It is through the appropriate (i.e. virtuous) exercise of our natural capacities for reason, as practical wisdom, and speech, in the form of deliberation about justice and interest, that we seek to achieve our joint and several ends. At the top of Aristotle's moralized hierarchy of ends is the just civic community itself. Whereas Aristotle worked out these ideas in the context of a naturalized teleology (see below), we need not buy into his teleological argument to accept the basic line of thought that leads from natural capacities to the achievement of individual and collective ends, or to accept that justice ought to be high on a hierarchical list of ends worth striving for.The argument about human capacities and functions gains its normative force from Aristotle's eudaimonism: his conviction (held in common with other Greek moral theorists) that the goal of life ought to be not mere existence, but living well.16 Given that humans are social animals, we cannot live well unless we live together, in communities. The purpose of the state is thus not merely survival but living well together. Living well together requires, as a precondition, a certain level of security and material goods sufficient to ensure basic welfare.17 Beyond that, it demands that humans engage in the right (most virtuous) activities aimed at the right (highest) ends.18Right activity necessarily includes (indeed it may be defined as)19 the free exercise of constitutive capacities in accordance with virtue (i.e. in the functionally most appropriate manner). And so living well, as an individual and as a citizen in a community, demands (at least) the opportunity to exercise, freely and virtuously, the human capacities of reason and speech. Given our social nature, and our common interest in having the best community possible (i.e. the most choice-worthy social equilibrium), we must participate in deliberations aimed at building and sustaining the public goods that are in turn required for the continued existence and flourishing of the civic community. Any individual human political animal who is denied that sort of deliberative opportunity—i.e. who is prevented (perhaps by institutional rules) from employing reason and communication in the active pursuit of public goods—ipso facto fails to live as well as he or she ought. By extension, a human community in which individuals are denied the opportunity to deliberate about common interests will be likely to fall short of doing as well as it ought.I accept that Aristotle's conception of the best form of community was predicated on mutual advantage (i.e. that each member of the community has the chance to live as well as s/he is capable of living),20 rather than on maximizing an aggregate of goods whereby some may live well at the expense of the well-being of others. If that is correct, we must suppose that in the best sort of community, the one we should pray for,21 each (adult, psychologically healthy) individual will have the opportunity actively to participate in politics by employing reason and speech in public deliberations. If we furthermore dispense with the useless arguments, the Aristotelian take on human nature leads us to suppose that the best human community is a sort of democracy—insofar as democracy is as a regime-type defined by an extensive, diverse, and active citizen body.22 In brief, Aristotle's constitutive capacities argument, once stripped of the useless arguments, offers a normative grounding for democracy. A constitutive capacities grounding for democracy is independent of rights-based normative arguments for democracy, but is compatible with them.23Moving beyond Aristotle's own arguments, a capacities-based normative argument for democracy will plausibly bring along with it other independently and rightly (in my view) valued conditions. In order freely to exercise reason and speech in pursuit of the end of providing public goods for a civic community, I must have, in the relevant ways, freedom, equality, and dignity. I must, most obviously, be free to express reasons in speech and free to associate with my fellow citizens in deliberative public fora. Moreover, my reasons must, to the degree that they are relevant to the matter being deliberated, be given equal weight to other equally relevant reasons. I must, therefore, be secure in both my share of political liberty and of political equality. Moreover, in order for my freely expressed and equally weighted reasons to be functionally activated (that is, to have effect in the actual provision of public goods), I must not live in risk of humiliation or infantilization: I must have the respect and recognition of my fellow citizens in my role as citizen.24 Finally, each citizen, having different talents and experiences, will have somewhat different things to offer to public deliberations on public goods. Insofar as those different contributions are both valuable and insofar as they are the product of epistemic and experiential diversity, a capacities-centered democracy will protect, and indeed promote, diversity among the citizenry.25The sketch offered above, of an attractive and Aristotelian (rather than “Aristotle's own”) normative theory of politics ends in a democracy committed to political freedom and equality, to civic dignity, and to epistemic and experiential diversity. The theory depends, of course, on the plausibility of the underlying argument about human political nature. Insofar as strong forms of sociability, along with the use of reason and speech, are in fact universal features of human existence, there seems nothing inherently implausible about Aristotle's descriptive claim that humans are political animals. The idea that certain capacities are “constitutive” of humanity is, I suppose, intuitive insofar as the counterfactual, that a society of beings completely lacking reason and speech would be regarded as human, seems implausible.The constitutive capacities argument need not lead to the unpalatable conclusion that individuals lacking specific capacities ought to be denied decent treatment. There are very good reasons (for which I don't think much argument is needed) to reject the claim that individuals who, by some misfortune, happen to lack sociability, reason, and speech are liable to being treated as non-humans. These reasons are, however, inadequate to reject the proposition that the being-kind “human” is, generally speaking and when compared to other animals, characterized by sociability, reason, and speech. Nor does the “humanity of impaired persons” consideration offer grounds for denying that reason and speech are necessary (if not sufficient) for the provision of the public goods that are, in turn, essential to the existence of good, or even of minimally decent, human communities.The constitutive capacities argument offered here—focused on sociability, reason, and speech—is not meant to be exhaustive. There may well be other capacities (e.g. moral emotions) that are constitutive of the human. Some of those other capacities might be relevant only to non-political domains of activity, but some may also be important, or even necessary, for the provision of essential public goods. Taking other capacities into consideration might lead to extensions or refinements in our conception of what counts as a good or decent human community. Identifying other capacities relevant to the provision of public goods would demonstrate the incompleteness of my sketch of a useful Aristotelian theory of politics. But it would not invalidate the theory, insofar as my concern is with specifying necessary, rather than sufficient, conditions for individuals to live well within a reasonably stable community.This sketch of Aristotelian foundations for a theory of collective self-governance would fail to contribute usefully to contemporary political theory if it could be shown that the constitutive capacities argument came with the wrong kind of strings attached: i.e. if Aristotle's “useful arguments” were inseparable from arguments that were, for one reason or another, unacceptable. Most obviously, if the useful arguments do not hold without the inclusion of one or more of the “useless arguments,” the enterprise must be abandoned. Moreover, there are three other arguments made by Aristotle in the Politics, which, although they are not as prima facie pernicious as those I have dubbed “useless,” might nevertheless seem to saddle the Aristotelian political theory I have sketched with so much unwanted baggage as to render it unworthy of consideration by any theorist with even minimally liberal commitments.The first of these “extra baggage” arguments is Aristotle's claim that the human individual is subordinate to the community.26 This claim might seem to license the collectivity to treat individuals in ways that are sufficiently illiberal as to rule any political theory that must embrace it out of bounds. Second, Aristotle's political theory is predicated on a teleology that posits the polis as the unique form of social organization sought by human nature.27 Neither the methodological premise that human nature aims at some determinant form of social organization, nor the substantive conclusion that the polis must be the best form of society for humans, is likely to convince a contemporary reader. Third is the notion, often and plausibly attributed to Aristotle,28 that there is a single human good that can be reduced to contemplation, to political activity, or to politics somehow conjoined with contemplation.29 The “single/unitary human good” argument leaves too little room for individuals to choose among a range of possible goods.The useless arguments, regardless of how strongly Aristotle himself may have been attached to them, are readily detached from the useful arguments as I have sketched them above. Aristotle's basic point in Politics 1.2 is that humans are by nature political animals, possessing (like other animals) certain constitutive capacities, the free exercise of which is a necessary part of our flourishing. Women, slaves, and those who labor for others are certainly human (they are social, and employ reason and speech), so they ought to be included in the category of political animals. But they are subsequently removed by Aristotle from the category of “complete” political animals—i.e. fit to be active citizens who would expect to employ reason and speech, in accord with virtue, in deliberations concerning the common interest—for what must appear, to us, as moderns, as false claims about moral psychology.Aristotle's useless arguments are based, I suppose, on a combination of the endoxic principle that beliefs held by most reasonable people are likely to be true, and his inability to imagine a society of mutual advantage without “machine-like” natural slaves (i.e. persons who would live less well were they to deliberate about collective ends). Given that the reasonable beliefs held by moderns (and the science behind those beliefs) do not allow for the sorts of psychological flaws Aristotle alludes to, and that we have machines to do machine-like tasks, we may reject Aristotle's reasons for removing women and those who work for others (free or slave) from the category “complete political animals.” Once they are recognized as complete political animals, women and those who labor for others are fit to join the category “active citizens.” That reintroduction causes no inherent difficulties for the theory, because the Aristotelian citizen body is already (relative to Plato's earlier political theory) large and diverse.Unlike Plato's argument in the Republic, which presumes that only a few (if any) persons possess the inherent philosophical talent to become active-citizen philosopher-kings, and that in the best community those few will receive an education that will render them epistemically similar to one another, Aristotle's “polis of our prayers”30 is predicated on the assumption that all complete political animals are active citizens, and that there are relatively many of these. Although they will be educated by the state and habituated to obey the laws,31 Aristotelian citizens will necessarily be more diverse in what they know and in their life experiences than are Platonic philosopher-kings.Aristotelian active citizens do not participate in politics all the time, but rather according to the principle of “ruling and being ruled over by turns.” So long as the principle of mutual benefit is sustained, which it surely can be once we have rejected Aristotle's empirically unsustainable reasons for removing of women etc. from the ranks of potential citizens, there is no inherent reason that any (adult, long-term) resident of a community who possesses the capacities of sociability, reason, and speech, and who is capable of using those capacities in accord with virtue (with moderation, and for the common good), should not share in deliberations about public goods.32The first of the “extra baggage” arguments, which seems to subordinate individual citizens, as “parts,” to the “whole” that is the state, is different from the other two, in that it arises from a misinterpretation of the relationship of Aristotle's ethics to his metaphysics, rather than from Aristotle's actual beliefs about politics. The misunderstanding rests on a faulty conception of how parts and wholes relate to one another in Aristotle's metaphysics. By reference to the relevant passages of the Metaphysics33 we can see that when Aristotle claims that the polis is by nature prior to the individual human, he is referring to a priority in substance: i.e. that, while the state can continue in existence as what it is despite the removal of any one individual, the individual cannot remain the same in terms of what he is if separated from the state. This is because, outside of the state, a community of which he is a part, he no longer has the opportunity properly to perform certain of his appropriate functions as a human—that is to exercise practical wisdom in accord with virtue by (among other things) deliberating with others about public goods. We may not think that this is the right way to think about humans outside of the state, but the key point is that the “natural priority” of the state does not entail any crude ethical implications about the interests of the state relative to the interests of the individual. indeed, if we accept that Aristotle's best state is predicated on mutual advantage, we must suppose that political interests are both joint and several: advancing the interests of the state requires that individual interests likewise be furthered. The Aristotelian community does not, in short, gain the authority simply to use the individual as an instrument to its own presumptively higher ends.34Next, Aristotle's teleology grounds his own conception of the state, but it need not ground a contemporary political theory based on the idea of constitutive political capacities. It is certainly the case, from a constitutive capacities perspective, that humans require some kind of community if they are to live well. It is further the case that, in a community in which humans cannot freely exercise reason and speech in ways that are potentially consequential for decisions related to collective interest, people do not live as well as they ought. But there is no reason to suppose that these considerations lead inevitably to, much less “aim at,” any determinate kind of political order. I can see no reason why conjoining a naturalistic conception of human capacities to a eudaimonistic conception of ethics requires abandoning a Darwinian, and thus decidedly non-teleological, understanding of how we came to be the animals we are. As moderns, we may imagine the exercise of reason and speech in publicly salient ways as taking different forms, and taking place at different levels of political authority (e.g. in a federal system). Modern technology diversifies and expands the possibilities for employing reason and speech in a publicly salient manner. While various forms of authoritarianism and paternalism will indeed be excluded as candidates for good, or even decent, communities by the Aristotelian political theory sketched above, the theory accommodates communities that vary widely in terms of scale and institutional arrangements. An Aristotelian theory of politics does not, in brief, condemn us to polis nostalgia.35The third of the “extra baggage” arguments holds that the human good is unitary and singular: thus, there is a single, complete human good that is the same for each complete human being. The Aristotelian political theory sketched above does hold that without the opportunity freely to exercise reason and speech, a human life cannot be said to go as well as it ought. But that presumption does not entail the further assumption that free exercise of constitutive capacities (even a much more extensive list than that imagined here) defines the sum of happiness for any given life. Obviously, a life will not be happy in the absence of basic material conditions (at a minimum, adequate food, shelter, health). But moreover, it is plausible to suppose that the potential for happiness of each human life can be only partly completed by adequate material conditions plus conditions guaranteeing free exercise of constitutive capacities.Any complete human life will, I suppose, require, in addition, free choice among a range of voluntary and only partially compossible goods. An individual's choice among these voluntary goods may (indeed probably will) include things that would not be regarded by all others as choice-worthy. Thus, the Aristotelian political theory sketched here leaves substantial space for the liberal conviction that people ought to have considerable choice in the ends they pursue, and that there will be very substantial diversity among the life-plans of individuals in a given community. In brief, to say that, as humans, we share a basic interest in the free exercise of our fundamental human capacity to act as citizens, does not imply that we share all (or even most) of our interests with our fellow citizens.Finally, Aristotelian theory need not be committed to a Rawlsian exclusion of comprehensive doctrines (i.e. conceptions of the good) from the domain of public (as opposed to private) reason. Aristotle supposed, reasonably enough, that humans do use reason and communication in deliberating about conceptions of good and evil, as well as about justice and interest.36 But even staunchly Rawlsian liberals may reject John Rawls'37 comprehensive exclusion of comprehensive doctrines from the realm of legitimate public deliberation.38 So an Aristotelian theory of democracy may certainly allow public deliberation about the good, and may do so (being Aristotelian, rather than Aristotle's own) without assuming that deliberations will (or even should) settle on a singular and unitary conception of the good.I have suggested that, once it is freed from both the pernicious “useless” arguments and the burdensome “extra baggage” arguments, Aristotle's conception of humans as animals with distinctive capacities—the free exercise of which both promotes our own well-being and (at least potentially) makes our communities better—emerges as a potential foundation for developing a contemporary political theory of collective self-governance. Deciding whether that potential can be realized, in whole or in part, and how attractive the resulting theory will be compared to rival theories, requires more detailed argumentation than I can offer here. I hope, however, to have shown that such an effort would not be inherently quixotic.