SHARING IN THE CONSTITUTION

Abstract

Fred Miller's Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics(1) is a heroic attempt to make concept of rights central to Aristotle's political philosophy. argument, although intriguing and richly rewarding, seems to me not to work. There is an inherent improbability in Miller's thesis, given what we know of in which treatise was composed (section I below). Citizenship as Aristotle conceives it is a matter not primarily of possessing certain rights, but of sharing in constitution (section II). Section III concedes that Aristotle's citizens something like what we would call rights qua citizens, but rejects Miller's attempt to find in uses of to dikaion/ta dikaia (what is just) an Aristotelian vocabulary for political rights. Section IV proposes that it is notion of desert or merit (axia) which does substantive foundational and explanatory work in Aristotle's theory of political justice which Miller would ascribe to rights. A brief conclusion (section V) sets inquiry in context of some wider issues of interpretation. I should say a preliminary word about method I am adopting in this article, mainly to point out that there is nothing whatever remarkable about it. I take myself to be approaching Politics in accordance with interpretative canons standard in mainstream historical and Aristotelian scholarship. Compare study of Aristotle's metaphysics. Everyone would grant that before we start considering whether hule or indeed any other Aristotelian concept anticipates or maps onto some modern notion of matter in any interesting or important way, it is imperative to acquire a full understanding of way idea functions within whole matrix of concepts, analyses, and theses which make up Aristotle's physics and metaphysics. I am simply pursuing same method with respect to that matrix of concepts in Aristotle's political philosophy within which Miller hopes to locate an anticipation of idea of rights. My references to work of John Pocock in section V suggested to some readers that I am espousing a form of historical or cultural or Kuhnian relativism which rules Miller's project out of court ab initio. only form of relativism to which I think this essay commits me is methodological relativism (if that is what it is) that I just described. I Athens. Historians of institutions of classical democratic no qualms in introducing topic of citizen rights into their accounts. Thus Douglas MacDowell begins Part 2 of Law in Classical with a chapter on personal status whose opening words are these: rights of anyone in Athens, including his right to prosecute at law, depended on his status, on whether he was a citizen (polites or astos) or an alien (xenos) or a slave (doulos or oiketes).(2) Similarly, Mogens Herman Hansen has a section of chapter in his Athenian Democracy on the people of Athens entitled: The Citizens, their Rights and Duties. Referring for support to Aristotle's Politics 3.1 he states: principal privilege of an Athenian citizen was his political rights; in fact they were more than just a privilege: they constituted essence of citizenship.(3) This makes citizenship in ancient sound not all that unlike citizenship in a modern western state. Things begin to look a bit different once we start listening to social and cultural historians. Consider for example following remarks of Sir Kenneth Dover in Greek Popular Morality, recently adjudged most important and original of all his books by Sir Hugh Lloyd Jones. Whereas we have become accustomed for a very long time to regard law and state as mechanisms for protection of individual freedoms, the Greek, says Dover, did not regard himself as having more rights at any given time than laws of city into which he was born gave him at that time; these rights could be reduced, for community was sovereign, and no rights were inalienable. …