Plato and Aristotle are important; I wish that their insights and arguments were more widely taught and more commonly known. And this of course applies to a wider array of classical authors and writers, including historians such as Plutarch and Tacitus. Western political discourse would only benefit from these authors who were treating foundational questions. So on one hand, I am all for more attention to these authors, as I believe they do have timeless insights. I have even found that those skeptical toward a kind of “canon” or set of “Great Books” are often impressed when they actually have to read “canonical” or seminal sources closely.^[1]

But I think that also means reading such primary sources carefully and in context. Take Aristotle’s political views. One bit of political Aristotelia that’s often cited is his claim that man is a political animal made for the polis.^[2] Another is that the polis exists for “the living well” of its citizens, and that “politics” is about making citizens good.^[3]

Now, there’s a kind of (zealous, often conservative) intellectual gesture, somewhat redolent of the scholastic approach, to apply these and other precepts to contemporary “politics” in the twenty-first century.

That move becomes harder, however, when Aristotle talks about the ideal conditions for his ideal polis. Obviously, it cannot be too small, he says. But it also cannot be too large, for the

one consisting of too many, though self-sufficing in the mere necessaries, will be so in the way in which a nation is, and not as a state, since it will not be easy for it to possess constitutional government—for who will command its over-swollen multitude in war? or who will serve as its herald, unless he have the lungs of a Stentor? . . . . It is possible also for one that exceeds this one in number to be a greater state, but, as we said, this possibility of increase is not without limit, and what the limit of the state’s expansion is can easily be seen from practical considerations.^[4]

He elaborates:

The activities of the state are those of the rulers and those of the persons ruled, and the work of a ruler is to direct the administration and to judge law-suits; but in order to decide questions of justice and in order to distribute the offices according to merit it is necessary for the citizens to know each other’s personal characters, since where this does not happen to be the case the business of electing officials and trying law-suits is bound to go badly; haphazard decision is unjust in both matters, and this must obviously prevail in an excessively numerous community. Also in such a community it is easy for foreigners and resident aliens to usurp the rights of citizenship, for the excessive number of the population makes it not difficult to escape detection. It is clear therefore that the best limiting principle for a state is the largest expansion of the population with a view to self-sufficiency that can well be taken in at one view.^[5]

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Philosopher has a bit of an anti-Federalist streak.

This suggests to me that, from Aristotle’s own perspective, much of what he has to say about politics is simply inapplicable to our own world as currently constituted. Comparing twenty-first century nation-states to the Greek poleis is like comparing apples and boulders: there are some similarities, but something is left to be desired analytically if you can’t articulate the differences. It’s fine to say that Aristotle thought politics was about making mature, virtuous people. I also think he might have laughed at someone who asserts that principle in cotemporary debates about, say, federal income tax rates, executive orders, or the role of the market.

With respect to Christianity per se, by the way, this is also why I personally remain pretty skeptical of political theological approaches that look back to early Protestant states as models for inspiration and/or replication. I don’t doubt that those arrangements might have had some merit in sixteenth-century Geneva or England. (I’ve made this point before about the whole Christian nationalism debate.) But before we start seriously considering transferrable ideas, I would first like proponents to articulate comprehensively all the mutanda, where those systems almost certainly cannot be translated.

1. Once in a graduate school seminar on the history of emotions, each of us—aspiring historians and literary scholars—was to lead a discussion focused on one emotion as evinced by a particularly primary source of our choice. With my classics background, I chose grief as the theme and Sophocles’ Ajax as the vehicle. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, which caught me a little off guard. The professor herself remarked, “This is really good stuff!” To the group’s surprise, Sophocles was a subtle, clever writer who brought to life interesting perspectives on grief, wisdom and self-control in the face of despair, and even gendered expectations. As I recall, the self-described feminist historians in the room were particularly startled to find Sophocles apparently choosing a woman, Tekmessa, as the authoritative voice in parts of the play.
   
   
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2. Politics 1.1 “Hence every city-state exists by nature, inasmuch as the first partnerships so exist; for the city-state is the end of the other partnerships, and nature is an end, since that which each thing is when its growth is completed we speak of as being the nature of each thing, for instance of a man, a horse, a household. Again, the object for which a thing exists, its end, is its chief good; and self-sufficiency is an end, and a chief good. From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal. . . .” Politics, trans. H. Rackham, LCL 264 (Harvard University Press, 1932), 9. ↑
   

   
   

3. Nicomachean Ethics 1, that the “Supreme Good was the end of political science, but the principal care of this science is to produce a certain character in the citizens, namely to make them virtuous, and capable of performing noble actions.” Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham, LCL 73 (Harvard University Press, 1926), 47. ↑
   

   
   

4. Politics 7.4, LCL 264:557
   
   
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5. Politics 7.4, LCL 264:557–9 ↑