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.
