okay today we're turning our attention
Aristotle and The Politics. We haven't quite
left The Republic behind because many of
you will have a vexed afternoon
answering the reading response question
for this week which is essentially about
Aristotle's take on the Socratic project
that we found supported in The Republic so we haven't quite left The Republic behind, but
nonetheless today what we're going to do is turn our attention to The Politics and we're going to consider book one
today, the primary focus today
will be on book one, since you'll be working on
book two yourselves ... [classroom chatter] 
So we're going to look at book
one today and then as we go forward
we're going to look at book three tomorrow and then
next week we'll finish up with the remaining part of book's three to six and then the
following week will pick up the remaining
part of the text. Thereafter we'll be
turning to Cicero so for those of you who have not yet purchased Cicero, I encourage you to do so.
The Policraticus is simply not
available so we'll make that text available to you
in some kind of electronic format that you can download.
[Classroom issues]
 
 
[Classroom issues]
 
Is it fair that there should be one rule for one person and another rule for everyone else?
what does Socrates tell us? What happens
if we don't obey the rule of law? This
classroom cannot function. I see
resistance! you still have not removed
the computer from your desk. This
is going to happen one way or another it
goes off the desk. Would you like someone
to lend a piece of paper so you can take
notes the old-fashioned way?
is there any ambiguity about my computer rule? Are we all clear? This is a tyranny, right? We've
been studying different forms of government, this is a tyranny. The tyrant imposes his
will, the people resist. Unfortunately you
can't organize a rebellion until after your
grades are in, but at that point come up to my office and like pee on the wall, I mean
fair enough but until then you simply have to accept the terms of the tyranny. Are we agreed?
Yes! okay, thank you. Okay, today we're
turning to Aristotle. Aristotle I think
we could justly say is certainly the
greatest philosopher up until the modern
time, certainly the most famous and we might even say even today he holds that title of
being the sort of father of philosophy, of modern philosophical thinking
of the post-Socratic philosophers. It's hard to understate the importance that Aristotle
has played in the development of the
intellectual tradition in the West
Aristotle is a foundational, fundamental
figure of Western intellectual thought.
We might in fact note that in the
so-called rediscovery of Aristotle -
for many, many centuries Aristotle's works
were lost and in the twelfth and
thirteenth century in Europe there was
the rediscovery of his corpus from a
very small number of works that had been
known through translation from the ancient
Greek and sometimes Arabic into Latin, of
the vast majority of his corpus and that
took place in the 12th century and gave
rise to what Charles Homer Haskins,
the great Harvard historian, has called the
Renaissance of the 12th century, stands
sort of at the beginning then of this
intellectual movement that takes
place in the west that culminates then
ultimately with the kind of intellectual
developments that we know further on. Thomas Aquinas, the great figure of Christian
theology of the high middle ages spent his
entire life essentially to reconcile his
Christian cosmology with the thought of
Aristotle to the point w here he simply
referred to Aristotle as 'The
Philosopher.' So in his works, when you see
'The Philosopher' that means Aristotle.
But not only in the West. For example, in
the Jewish tradition, Moses Maimonides,
the great Jewish philosopher
from the medieval period, said of
Aristotle that he was the master of all
who are wise. Aristotle as the teacher. So
Aristotle in this sort of Western sense
has this very dominant role. We take...
actually we might even note that for example
Francis Bacon, the author of what we
think of as the modern scientific method
who wrote a book in the 16th, 17th century
called the new organon, the Novum Organon
in which he essentially tries to as he saw it rescue inquiry from what had become its
Aristotelian canonization. People were too
wedded to the principles of Aristotle, so in the Novum
Organon, Bacon tries to lay out a new way
of thinking about things. That alone
demonstrates the degree to which Western
thinking had become Aristotelian by nature.
So when we look at Aristotle and we turn to this figure we're looking at, in this case, a
small work but that's part of a much
larger corpus of one of the great
thinkers of the Western tradition. So let's 
talk a little about who this guy was,
his life, what he did, his general approach and then we'll turn our attention more
specifically to the first part of The
Politics. He was born in 384 BCE, before
Common Era, in a part of Greece know then
and now as Macedonia, in a town called Stagirus
and that's why you'll sometimes see
Aristotle referred to as the Stagirite
And at a young age, much like you, he
went off to university. Except unlike you
the University he went to had,
does anyone kn ow who his teacher was? Plato
his teacher was Plato. You're stuck
with me, right? by the way, Plato would
also not have allowed computers in his classroom, that's for sure. So he went off to Plato's Academy and he studied
there as a student at Plato's Academy
and like, as happens to some very sort of
keen students, he never left. He stayed
there not just for four years but for
decades. He stayed there in fact for 20 years, and a lot of what we have from his pen
dates to that period when he was working and studying at Plato's Academy. He left in
347, which was the year of Plato died, and he went for a couple of years to live in a
small town in what is now Turkey,  the town
of asos and then he went from there to the
Isle of Lesbos which is nearby and he spent a couple of years there until he was
summoned by essentially his patron, or a
patron, the famous Philip of Macedonia
was the king of that region of Greece
to tutor his son. Philip needed to have a
good teacher for his son. He had high
hopes and ambitions for this young man
so he asked Aristotle to come and to tutor
his son in the ways of knowledge. Does
anyone know who his son was? Alexander the first... Not the first ... the Great ... yes Alexander the Great
so it's actually a very sort of fanciful
notion of the great Aristotle teaching
Alexander the Great sort of versing him
in these sort of high levels of knowledge
the reality is probably that he only taught
Alexander the Great fore a year at most because
Alexander, as a young member of the royal
Macedonian household, had other important
things to do, like conquer much of the known world. So the degree to which Aristotle
left an indelible imprint on Alexander
the Great is not entirely clear. At any
event, after a number of years working
within the court of Philip of Macedonia
he returned to Athens in 335 and he set
up an institution the name of which is
still carried forth to this day, associated
with education. Those of you who have been through one
form or another of lycée education will
know that the origins of that word are
from the Aristotelian Lyceum, the school that Aristotle set up in Athens in 335. And he
worked there for about a decade until in 323 he left Athens for the city of
Chalcis sorry and he died
the following year. His departure from
Athens in 323 accompanied by, it is
speculated, a rise of anti-Macedonian
sentiment in the city of Athens, related to the career of Alexander the Great and Aristotle is
famously said to have remarked that he
would flee Athens because he did not
want happens to sin against philosophy
for a second time. Who was the first
person we find at the beginning of the Athenian sin? Not Plato. Socrates, right? So Aristotle was not a
Socratic figure, he wasn't willing to drink
hemlock for the cause, he wanted to go
off and he was happy to retire to an
island, and he died very shortly thereafter. So
that in very broad strokes is the life of
Aristotle. Within that period he spent
most of his time engaged in what is to
our eyes today a just dizzying array of
inquiry. We tend to think of Aristotle
as a philosopher, and we tend to use the
modern sense of philosophy in
 thinking about him in that way, in the
way we attach him to that label,
but we should think about him in the way
that philosophy and ... think about 
him in the purest sense of philosophy a lover of
knowledge that's truly who Aristotle was
because if there was some area in which
knowledge could be exercised, there you would find Aristotle inquiring into it. So, for
example, a full one quarter of the corpus
of his works that we still have today
are not related to ethics or politics or
metaphysics they're related to zoology
and anatomy and biology. He was
fascinated for example with the way in
which organisms worked. He dissected creatures. He was very interested in the natural
world and so we find that Aristotle over
the course of his life turns his
attention to an enormous array of
subjects. Today we would call them the
disciplines of things like mathematics
of biology, of zoology ,of physics and astronomy
not to mention theater, dance, and comedy
and rhetoric, as well as ethics, politics
philosophy, metaphysics and so on. A truly
extraordinary range of intellectual
inquiry that Aristotle undertook. Most of his works have disappeared sadly.
We have only about, it's estimated, somewhere between one quarter to one third of the
total amount that wrote, but what we do
have is extraordinary enough. It's produced
entire industries of scholars who spend
their careers dissecting or trying to
figure out Aristotle. Now that you have read
a bit of the politics you can appreciate
that Aristotle is not always the
clearest author to read. There are often
ideas in Aristotle that seem oblique and
difficult to penetrate, which is curious
because Cicero, to whom we shall turn
our attention next, and who was a great stylist
of both Latin and Greek prose, Cicero
described Aristotle's writing as a river
flowing of gold. Now that you've read the
Politics, would you describe the language
of the Politics as a river flowing of
gold? Probably not. If anything it's a
muddy river silted up with bits of stuff in it,
difficult to get around probably not
a river you want to spend that much
time in. In terms of its prose style,
how can we reconcile the Ciceronian
judgment: Aristotle, a writer of golden
prose, compared to the stuff that we have in front of us, and the answer is probably
because what remains of many of
Aristotle's work, and that certainly is
the case of the Politics, is not a finished
work intended for publication. This was
not a work that Aristotle had crafted in
a very fine way to then distribute to
a wide audience. These were probably his
lecture notes, these were probably the stuff he
scribbled down so that when he was
teaching his students he'd remember more
or less where he was which is why we
find extraordinarily important concepts
such as the one we'll be discussing today,
the zoon politikon, man is a political
animal, an extremely pregnant idea,
dispatched in about two pages. You'd think
to be able to fully understand the depth
of complexity of that concept it would
be worth an entire chapter and yet he
deals with it in only two pages. I think
the reason for that is because if you
were actually in Aristotle's classroom
he knew all the stuff he wanted to say
so he just had to put down basically a
few notes and then he would carry on at
great length. So when we look at the
Politics of Aristotle, indeed much of his work, we're often seeing the sort of internal
mechanics of his thinking as opposed to
these finished, polished works that he
that he wrote. We know that he had what he called popular works because he makes
reference to one of them in the Politics
If you turn to 1278b [line] 30 you'll see he
says ... he talks about the existence of
popular works. It's on page 70 for those
of you who have the text. You can see
that he says "there is no difficulty in
distinguishing the various kinds of rule
they have been often defined already in
our popular discussion." They have been defined already in our popular discussions, that is the
discussions that were intended for the
public. So it suggests that there's this
distinction between Aristotle's public
works and these writings that we have
for us today. Before we turn specifically
to the kinds of issues that we find in
book one of the Politics, I think we need
to quickly review some of the key
elements of Aristotelian thinking. It's a bit
unfair to ask you jump into a complex
work like the Politics without any sort
of context for how Aristotle
understood the world, how he understood
the nature of inquiry, the nature of his
hermeneutics, the nature of his
epistemology, and so on. So we'll make a
few brief comments about how Aristotle
understood the nature of inquiry because
it matters then to how we will interpret
and understand the politics. The first
thing we can say is, and these I should note are my own views,  so you might have a different
reading, but I think we might in very
broad strokes characterize a fundamental
transformation that takes place between
teacher and student. Students are often
seeking to sort of position themselves
with respect to their teacher by taking
contrary positions and I think that's
the case here. Plato as we saw is
fundamentally concerned with this world
of forms. There is this ideal, abstract
world which represents the perfection of
things, so a lot of the enquiry we find in
platonic texts is directed towards that
end. Aristotle, by contrast, is unambiguously
an empiricist he is somebody who's
really interested in the sort of
starting premise of observation what can
I see what can I observe you may
remember that in Plato we saw for
example you didn't read it ourselves we
discuss it in class the powerful of the
cave the very idea in that parallel the
cave is we should not trust what we see
we are not seeing what is true
and so therefore the senses guiding
perception the world in perception is
not a true world you have to go beyond
that Aristotle by contrast starts with
the idea that perception phenomena the
things that you can see and observe
matter and they can be used in as the
starting point as the basis for an
inquiry in which to fundamentally reveal
the truth about things so that
represents a fundamental shift of
fundamental transformation if you will
of intellectual perspective from a-put
time to an Aristotelian framework he
himself called it finally now the idea
phenomena that you start with what you
can see and you also had this idea that
once you change what you can see you
appeals when he called in doxa and it's
in boxing method and doxa which is
credible opinion that seemed to be
reasonable what the idea was to based on
what you can see you then make reference
to credible opinion and you interrogated
that opinion in order to inquire as to
its true or its it's truth or whether it
was false in order to do that you need
to have a system of logic you needed to
have a way to proceed from one point to
the next logically in order to
interrogate what that credible opinion
was and we find that that Aristotle
spends a lot of dedicated number is
works to the question of Washington the
Aristotelian logic remains one of them
apartment modern philosophy and that
idea of logic for Aristotle was
fundamental because what gives you
sirrah certainty or gives you confidence
about moving from the phenomena that you
observe to the truths that you conclude
relates to the kind of logical process
that you ring that connects those two
together so that the robustness or the
vigor of your logic connect Center
they have about the truth that you
inquire uncharacteristically for
Aristotle who is usually quite modest
about his words and his work on logic he
says of all the things that I've done I
hope that you haven't read this will see
that there is not inconsiderable value
in this system of water and you can see
in the politics the way that he works
through his ideas follows this kind of
very logical sequence we talked about
this and we talked about this let me
Clark does this and you constantly test
your sub positions and your propositions
so that sense of an Aristotelian logic
that's worked out as a way of
substantiating the use of finding the
use of phenomena the use of what you can
observe in order to discover the truth
of James one of the things that we find
Aristotle and it's important then to our
discussion of the politics is what's
being referred to as is essential
disempowers to Julian essentialism
what is the essence of something right
which is what Aristotle ass lead wise
often of the truth of fundamental things
for example the essence of man might be
our capacity to reason that is what
makes us what we are so this sense that
you can improve the observation of
phenomena ultimately arrive at an
understanding of the essence of
something is essentially drives or word
Aristotelian inquiry and we find in what
are all those words an effort
painstaking to separate what is the
essence of something and what as merely
as he calls it a property of something
that which an item or an object might
have but does not in fact make it what
it is for example it may be that human
capacity to reason is our essence but
the fact that we have eyes and ears is
not an essence of humanity because many
things have eyes and ears it is merely a
property of man for that distinction
between what is essence what is property
refined as a fundamental distinction in
the Aristotelian logical scheme finally
I will note one other aspect of the
hours of Helium intellectual framework
which helps helps us understand what is
the fundamental truth
because it also pertains to what we find
in the politics which was Aristotle's
belief that if you could answer for
basic questions you would be able to
arrive at the truth of something at the
truth of the matter is so called for
causes idea
the four causes are the material before
mille the efficient and the final the
material cause refers to what something
is made of the formal cause describes
why it takes the form or shape that it
does the efficient cause explains why it
comes into being or what makes it move
and the final cause is why it is there
what is its purpose what is it better
for and I will give you some examples
specifically of this because in the
context of the state's Aristotle
subjects the state to this causal
analysis he provides both the material
or should say twice a material formal
efficient cause of the state and I will
describe I will talk about in specific
terms in just a moment Aristotle
believed that if you could determine
with confidence and accuracy the
material formal efficient and final
cause of something you wouldn't know
what it was you had then be able to act
to access the truth yeah
the efficient is what brings about
something or what makes it move and the
final cause is what it is therefore
what's the purpose the material is what
it's made of and the formal describes
why it is the way it is why does it take
certain sheamus's for this will become
clearer when we turn our attention to
the city-state will see some specific
examples of how we see those causes in
action but the point being was that if
you could with any kind of confidence
determine what these four causes worried
then you would have some clear notion of
what of what the object was that you
were looking at and that would give you
that a sense of its truth in the purest
sense of the word so we look at the
politics what we'll find is hundred sort
of using that kind of causal structure
really a lot of the politics is about
trying to distinguish trying to
determine the nature so without sort of
general background enactus you have to
dick they'll have to I sorry granny
would lead to be extremely lived in my
description of our salt lake our
zucchini body 20 minutes that easy but
without very basic sort of description
in place what I'd like to do is I'd like
to turn our attention today at book one
extraordinary book in which on the one
hand it seems that Aristotle lays out a
very fundamental condition or how he's
going to inquire about the nature of
politics of the nature of the state and
then very shortly thereafter to go into
a lengthy and disturbing defence of a
message
that I think all of us would find
deplorable slavery and then particularly
in our modern age proceeds to describe
the conditions of the family in ways
that are probably some of the horrible
as well terms of how he sees quality
between the sexes so I'd like to spend
the remaining time that we have together
to consider the sort of two or three
fundamental ideas that are contained in
this first woman to see if we can
understand why it is that Aristotle
engages in this in this kind of exercise
let's first start we'll start with
aerosols own words here beginning of
both one he says every state is a
community of some kind and every
community is established with a view to
some good for everyone always acts in
order to obtain that we're taking good
nice statement maximization right there
but if all communities aim at some good
the state or the political community
which is the highest of all and which
embraces all the rest aims at good in a
greater degree than any other and at the
hottest this is the way in which
Aristotle starts the politics that the
state is built but we're seeking to
achieve the highest what is the highest
good does he mean by the sense that all
cheap seek to achieve that which is good
state seeks to achieve the highest good
see mean by that what is the highest
I didn't even need to pause to
understand take a moment to reflect on
what he intends to stay by that there is
a concept in the ethics and we've
already seen it a little bit with
play-doh
and ammonia no one heard this word
before you got home yes
yes sort of probably definitely is very
hard to define I was reading an article
yesterday by the Harvard philosopher
Thomas Nagel 40 pages long try to figure
out what this term things we can start
with deconstructing the term Aoki is
good and dime on means spirit so much
more pensive so it's good spirit and
it's very sort of etymological leaven in
good spirit we usually define it as war
but often you'll find the solidus choose
to translate at times flourishing Noli
song in French or floated into Spanish
forged I German flourishing value
flourish flourish so you die mania do
you BEC mony is often described as this
idea commissioning of yourself
flourishing and what does that mean
happiness flourishing you've already
seen this concept remember that in the
Republic how is it that Socrates defines
justice that which makes you happy now
that would be happy later right so the
concept of food ammonia a word I onia we
can see already has some hints in played
upon surprising Aristotle have you spent
so many years of replied Academy that
would pick up on some of these ideas
that we find in the tonic bar in the
context of Aristotle the sense is that
this is what we are striving to achieve
we all want to have the state of
happiness state of human flourishing a
Romania are you doing okay sorry but the
question is what is happening is what is
flourishing for example if I give you a
lot of money are you happy I give you a
lot of money in a very nice car are you
happy at a big house and say you're not
the work better right does that make you
happy if you have a lot of material
comfort is that a die onia really it's
just sounds eight haha yes so where's
the dymo me apart yeah
harder you're quite right part of us
using our reason right one of the things
that we say remember this idea of
essentialism what is it that makes us
what we are our sense of reason so
that's part of it but there's another
part of it as well we are capable of
reasoning we're also capable of
something else so we've also seen from
Plato this idea of excellence or
virtually remember we noted that one of
the things that Plato's key into or
Socrates's came to encourage is this
reading of Justice as an excellence that
is within the soul this idea that you
all have we saw the word already ret
virtue or excellence and so at a very
basic level aimed ionia with good life
human happiness human flourishing is
this combination of our capacity for
excellence moral virtue and our own
ability to reason moral virtue guided by
wisdom seems to be the easiest way that
we can understand the nature of a movie
that is the greatest good human
excellence or excellence guided by
virtue I have a quote here from that
paper by Thomas Nagel he says a word I
monea involves not just the activity of
the theoretical intellect but the full
range of human life into action in
accordance with the broader excellences
of moral virtue and practical wisdom the
full range of human life in action in
accordance with moral virtue and
practical wisdom so that is this idea of
a diamond there's not a single thing it
is a composite of things it is an array
this might say a state of being a way of
thinking a way of acting all coming
together and in the echo magnetics
and domian athletes we find Aristotle
spends a great deal of time working
through what this notion is of a dive Oh
Mia so the very beginning comfortable
when he says that the state or political
community which is the highest of all
and embraces all other communities aims
at good and a greater degree than any
other and that the highest good who's
essentially stating is that the purpose
of the state is this notion of a dime
only of human happiness of human
flourishing that is the purpose of the
state and so in a way it allows us then
from the very first lines to understand
what is the core motivation behind this
why did Aristotle want to undertake the
project of the politics if you go back
to our four causes it is not the
material nor the formal nor the
efficient but the final cause that
occupies Aristotle primarily in this
book what is the state for what is its
purpose that is ultimately the
intellectual project that is being
undertaken in the policies we might note
a couple of points about the way in
which he constructs then this book the
way in which its distinguished and each
from predecessor the Republic kakugane
courts of which it is nonetheless not
working day the first thing that will
note perhaps the most important thing
that would note is that it's shorter and
students around the world are grateful
for that right will also note though
that unlike the Republic which had very
little concern as we saw for realism
wasn't shocked rities was not interested
particularly in trying to ground the
Republican practical examples
occasionally we saw we review the
Republic yes I wonder if this is
feasible put this
and insulin by contrast Aristotle's work
is very grounded in the empirical is
very grounded is no practical is over
and over and over again using precise
specific examples to illustrate what
he's talking about I'll give you a few a
few examples by way to illustrate the
point for example on the problem of
subordinating your neighbors on page 49
in the text of 1269 a uses the example
of Sparta and create a notices that
these reserves at these two city-states
Sparta and creeks are very different
ways of dealing with their neighbors the
cretins seem to get along quite well
with their neighbors whereas the
Spartans are constantly dealing with
armed rebellion on the question of
whether the state should be ordered to
give men just spotting powers over their
neighbors again another important point
for ancient Greek politics at 1324b, he
gives us the example of Sparta, Crete
Carthage and Scythia,  and he draws specific attention to how those states order
their order their affairs with their
neighbors when he asked the question how
magistrate should be chosen uses the
example of the small city-state of
Megara a town in Greece at 1300a. When
he asks how cities should define whether
he argues that cities are more than just
entities that exist for the purposes of
mutual protection and mutual security or
mutual trade benefit he points to the
example of Carthage and its trading
allies to demonstrate the decision
should not be seen just in those ways so
when we go through the text of Aristotle
one of the things we have that we don't
have is a constant reference to the
world as it is not the world as it might
be this is not a utopian text as we saw
out getting play together and his
credits
so the human nature to our use poems he
does although Plato also makes reference
to human nature but maybe my arguing the
aerosols reference to human nature is
more more realistic yes means that
something to do many that you were so
sure is such an idea it could be I think
what we see when we look at those
examples when we under when we look at
Aristotle's interest in telling his
readers look at this city state look at
this city state look at this big place
over here this is why actual why was
that I think what we're seeing is
essentially the text being grounded in
empirical terms empirically driven text
so that need to make specific reference
to actual examples so that is to say
that the politics is not concerned with
the state as it might be ideally the
politics is concerned with the state as
it is an Aristotle and wants to give us
a description of that state how we can
then understand it and best directed
towards its full its function towards
its fine cause which is the realization
of Eudaimonia for the citizens to live
within. The very first, the very first
thing that Aristotle says in the book it
is perhaps one of the most famous things
have got the most famous thing that
Aristotle ever said is that man is a
political animal, a zoon politkon, right
the very first thing that we get. And it
is dealt with in a remarkably brief
fashion this remarkable notion and yet a
lot hinges on that observation that man
is he is on we are by our nature
political with a lot that we
attached to that concept that concept
carries with it a lot of significance
and we might consider what the
significance of that idea is but first I
think is that this means that the art of
politics is a practical it's in our
nature is something that we need to
develop in order that we may live better
lives so it functions is practical this
practical way it also means that it is
important if it is in our nature that we
understand what the aim of politics is
what is the t lo since the Greeks called
it the purpose what is the purpose of
politics what is this final cause what
is the telos of man in a political
society what are we trying to achieve
and the third I think point that comes
out at this observation that man is a
political animal is it means that the
conclusions of eases the observations
that Aristotle makes new conclusions
that he draws familiy these two are
reading of the politics these for
reading of the state not in descriptive
terms but in normative terms I'll
explain what I mean
it is not that we simply observe the
world around us and write down what we
see it is that we observe the world
around us write down what we see and
discuss analyze consider it and then try
to derive conclusions about what would
be the best state given what we see
normative is in other words prescribing
it's directing us towards a certain kind
of solution there is one statement
better and another there is one
political society that is better than
you know that there is one way of
defining citizenship that is better than
another and so therefore there is a
normative element to the project behind
the Aristotelian behind this
Aristotelian idea that man is a
political animal because if we are a
political animal that means and have
your very nature this need to practice
politics if you can practice something
you can practice it well or you can
practice it poorly and that means the
ebay undertaken inquiry gentlemen we
okay you sure we take you to that side
of the room I'm not maybe oh I'm just
asking because I sure would like to say
we are ok we have your attention for I
only need 30 more minutes and then drive
here it's not a long time that's not
even but prologues with Britney Spears
I just hated myself for Brenda sitting
there did I not rk5 arcade fire wall
about arcade fire right good macho bad
monkey town ok so we see then this
element of normativity was that a
comment on arcade fire what November we
see this normativity underlying than the
project of the city coming out of this
first fundamental observation man is a
political and let's see what he says
about this idea the pan is a critical it
is of course famously described to us in
1253a 4-1252 and 1253 let's review his
argument the first thing argues that the
state is natural it is not an artificial
construction it is something that is
natural right
he says is heaven that the state is a
creation of nature and that man is by
nature a political animal and he who by
nature not by your accident is without
the state is either a bad man or above
humanity it is evident that the state is
a creation of nature and that man is a
by nature equally loud what is this
evidence what is this proof that we are
by nature a political because this I
think is the key element where he throws
off of wine he says this is enough to
show that it's true and getting that one
line there is a moment of significance
to understand what is it that makes us
political by nature what does he say no
no no I think because we compare the
state with households now
now yes is that what you're going to say
it might be unfair but I can haunt this
is a speech I just caught I just caught
off five people rudely you need a how-to
it was it was a short buzzer there it
could just said speech get it out there
said the glory goes over it down to the
left side of the room oh ok thanks for
playing today right side of the room be
nice to have yours over their
constitution price again speech speech
that's what makes us political animals
we are the only animal that has speech
what is the greek word for speech I've
seen this before
those of you for meetings are Greek my
bad handwriting logos logos is the word
for speech logos also means something
else in ancient Greek what else does it
mean logos needs also work reason and so
we find right in this thing we are
distinguished from bees and other
animals because we have this ability of
low dose of speech but also then of
reason this is what makes us political
and why does that I mean we mentioned
all these other things which are true we
live in households households are right
in the new states it's everything else
that everybody mentioned is true but in
all Springs from this fundamental notion
as he says that we are the only animals
who has the gift of logos the gift of
speech why does that that make us
political by nature what is it about
that that makes us political animals
yes it enables us to start trading
categories of things that then refer
back to what leads to the good life as
he says the power of speech is intended
to set forth the expedient and the in
exceed that which should be an app with
chalk should be there for likewise the
just and the unjust and it is
characteristic of man alone as any sense
of good and from speech from logos from
reason comes then this understanding of
what is good and what is that what is
Just and what is unjust and everything
then springs from that one observation.
It is worth noting this word logos that
means both speech and reason is a very
very pregnant term there's a lot of
stuff that's here what does he mean by
this idea of speech or reason. And I
might, it's hard to know, many scholars have
argued a great deal over this particular
question, but i'm going to suggest you we
might take a proposition. It comes from
another Aristotelian work which is on
rhetoric, he talks about rhetoric and he
designs..., in the rhetoric he provides this
example of three modes of persuasion,
which will be familiar to those of you
who have ever had a fight with her parents
because you wanted them to do something
and they didn't want to, the first is what he calls ethos. Ethos, which is when you make
reference to yourself and how good you
are. Right? Let me go on the trip. I'm a
great person. You know me Mom, I won't do anything bad I'm a good kid right you can
trust me, I'm an excellent person. Ethos:
making reference to your character, the
character of the speaker. You should believe me because I'm good. The second one that he describes is
pathos, creating this climate of empathy
that you want to get people, from people
in a certain mood. Mom if you don't let me go on the trip I'm going to be so sad everybody else is going, all
my friends are going. I'll be sitting
here all alone because you won't let me go, right?
It creates that sense of empathy. And the
third is... he calls logos. Speech. The
power to persuade, the ability of your
words to persuade of your position. So if
it turns out making reference to your
moral character and making your mom feel
sorry for you isn't enough, then you can
simply get into the argument about: mom you
simply cannot afford not to let me go on this trip. You have to make it and I will tell
you why, and that's when you bring the full
arsenal of rhetorical and intellectual
skills to bear to present an
unimpeachable, unimpeachable idea. Yes sir?
[Student speaking: the second one is pathos?] Ethos, pathos, and logos the three arts of
persuasion in the Aristotelian world of rhetoric. But note the power of logos.
Logos doesn't just mean speech, in that
sense, does it? What does it mean? It means
speech that persuades. Speech that is
persuasive. Speech that gets you to
understand further, as comprehension. So
when he talks about this idea, because I
think it's important when he says that
we alone have logos. Animals can
communicate can they not? They make
sounds and they convey certain
information by those sounds. Aristotle spent at least a quarter of
his life interrogating the biological
and zoological world. He knew about that. He
knew that the sounds that animals make are part of this phainomena that he was exploring,
must have served some purpose. What is
the purpose it serves? Maybe to
demonstrate distress or hunger or
something like that. But the sounds that
we make, the speech that we have, the
logos that we have
attached to reason has has this characteristic of persuasion. That we can use our speech
in order to set for certain kinds of
positions, and that's then what makes us
a political animal. That justice and
unjustice, that good and bad, that these things
spring into being, they are made possible
by this gift of logos. And so it is that
element that he talks about that gives us
this, that makes us then by nature a political animal.
But there's something else that attaches to
speech as well. It's not just our ability
to persuade. If I am speaking, there must
be somebody else. It also creates the
sense of the necessity of a
relationship, of certain kinds of
relationships that characterize who we are.
So we have a sense of logos. We
inevitably then also have the sense of
the kind of relationships that logos can
create. I can speak to you, I can
persuade you, I can love you, I can
express myself in these kinds of ways
and this then creates a certain kind of
bond, an affinity, an affection that then
can exist between people. And I think
that's very fundamental because the
political, the art of politics,
understanding of politics, ultimately
comes down to the way in which people
live together. And it is logos that
creates, that enables, creates, and
determines how we then live together. And
we'll see that a lot of the Politics
particularly when we come to our discussion tomorrow and next week, a lot of the
Politics is determined by, or is trying
to figure out what is the best way which
we can characterize that coming together,
that living together. What are the
conditions that make that best for our own lives and allow us best to
pursue the good life, allow us to
flourish?
Having laid out this idea that man is
by nature a political animal ... yes [student speaking]
Yes, I think that's right. The concept of
relationship implies reciprocity, right?
Except there's one relationship which
doesn't seem to have a lot of
reciprocity, which is what we're about to
turn to now, which is slavery. It is for many
students - not just students - for many
people very jarring to find that  you're
barely three or four pages into this
book and suddenly Aristotle, this great
figure who's surrounded you your whole life, this wonderful thinker, launches into a
vigorous defence of slavery, of enslaving
people. It's a very awkward moment for
many people. How do we deal with this? And it seems foundational. It's right there
in book one. It's like okay we're
a political animal, now what do I want to talk
[about]: slaves. Right? How do we make sense of this discussion of slavery? What can we
do with that? A number of scholars, not
inconsiderable number of scholars, simply
say okay we've talked about the zoon
politikon, man is by nature a political
animal, now let's turn to book two.
And they simply skip over that part, as if to
say well don't really know what to make of it. Other people have argued, well, look, in
ancient Greece slavery was a pervasive
institution, everyone had slaves, it was just the
way they did things back then so we
simply say that Aristotle is a product of
his time, right? A kind of a Zeitgeist
argument [student: doesn't that undermine him?]
Not necessarily, we could simply say
simply that he, you know, he cannot, it's
not always easy to think outside of the
strictures that surround you. But I think
there's a problem with that argument,
that Aristotle's understanding of
slavery is merely a product of his time,
that he's simply taking this as a given
because everybody is doing it. Because
Aristotle himself is at great pains to
talk about slavery in two ways. How does
he talk about slavery? yeah [Student: the way you
take a slave from the war, someone that
was a high warrior in this society if you
taking as a slave for use yourself,
that's not ...] Should he be a slave? That's
right. And we can put it more generally. We
can use Aristotle's own language. He asks,
he tries to understand the difference
between slavery as it is natural and
slavery as it is conventional. The
example you're talking about, yes,
somebody who's not really a slave but was
nonetheless enslaved because of an unjust
war, is conventional slavery. But he asks,
is there such a thing as natural slavery
So if we say, well he was simply the product of his time, everyone has slaves, that
would be fine if Aristotle simply
accepted slavery and then moved on. But
he doesn't. He goes more profoundly into
the question. Is slavery just? Is it a
right thing? Is it something we find in
nature? And he then spends a lot of time
trying to interrogate or to reveal the
difference between what he calls the
conventional and the natural definition
of slavery. Well I think we need to
contend with this is in Aristotle's thought.
I don't think we'll, I don't think it's
acceptable that we simply pass over to
book two and say well it's too bad that he
felt this way, so we'll simply move on,
because it's so fundamental, it's clearly
foundational to his project. It's the
very first thing that he wants to talk
to us about when he tries to push
forward the notion of what politics
means. So whether we'll be able to
clarify or not, I don't know, but I think
we at least need to give it a chance, we need to allow an airing of what he
tries to say about this subject so that
we can at least understand why it is
there, and what it means for this text. Let's
first ask what is it that he sees as
characterizing the 'master' and the
'slave'? What does the master have in
actual terms, not in conventional terms, and start there, as he sees it as a natural
condition. What does the master have that the slave does not?
What is it, what is it that makes the
master better? You're right, there is this
unevenness that that reflects then the natural condition of the
slave. But what is it that the master has
that the slave lacks? Logos. Reason, right?
The master is capable of full reasoning,
and the slave, he says, cannot reason. The
slave can apprehend reason, he can
understand the reasoning of others, but
the slave cannot reason for himself. And
so, as a result of this discrepancy
between those who can reason and those
who can only apprehend reason, therefore
Aristotle argues that there is such a
thing as natural slavery. That for us, probably, is
a very difficult concept for us to get
our heads around that the world is
divided into those who are armed with the
capacity to reason and there are those
who can simply apprehend it, but cannot
reason for themselves. Yes sir?
[Student: Can we deduce from there that Aristotle thinks that the people are not born
equally, that there's some are born better
than others?] I think we can absolutely
conclude that, yes. If some are by nature
master and some are by nature slave
there is clearly this idea that there is
inequality in terms of your ability to
exercise your human reason. He actually
goes and says that as much. We might say
if you take a look at, I think it's at the end
of the book [one]
he says you can see where he talks about
this incident on page 29 for those of
you who have the printed out version
1260b, 1260a sorry, he says
"the slave has no deliberative faculty
at all." To deliberate, to think through
things, to cogitate. "The slave has no
deliberative faculty at all." And he says
a little bit further on he says, "a ruler
ought to have excellence of character in
perfection, for his function, taken
absolutely demands a master artificer. The
subjects, on the other hand, require only
that measure of excellence which is
proper to each of them." And so this idea
of arete, of excellence, of virtue, seems
to imply a different measure to those
who shall rule, and to those who shall be
ruled. So there does, there's unambiguously this sense of inequality. Now it is true
that some scholars have argued that in
this description of slavery there is a
subtle argument that Aristotle is making
by trying to draw this distinction
between natural and conventional slavery,
that what he's really trying to do is
attack the way in which slavery was
practiced during his day, during his time
that he was alive. Because he notes, and you brought it up, there is an argument where he
says although there are these natural,
there is this natural condition called
slavery, there are some who say that
slavery is unjust because of the way in
which it has been agreed upon by
convention. And he gives the example of those
who are enslaved as a result of an
unjust war. And that means that people
who are by their nature are not slaves,
nonetheless find themselves in an enslaved
condition. Yes sir? [student talking]
... [he says that masters and slaves are like one entity
and they profit from each other. Like
if the master is unjust to the slave...] Not quite. He
says the slave belongs to the master's
body, but the master does not belong to
the slave. So it is actually, it's a, it's
a unilateral relationship in that way.
There are some obligations on the part
of the master. He says the master must
learn the art of being a master,
there's an excellence of being a master,
that's true. But in terms of that kind of,
what you're talking about, that sort of
imperative that's there, that is just on the
part of the slave. The slave belongs to
the master is though part of his body,
but that does not apply the other way
around. If we come back then to this idea,
this problem, this attempt that some
scholars have made to say in Aristotle
well there's actually a subtle argument
to be made here against slavery because
of the way in which it was practised by
convention, we might notice then these
two points that he raises. One, that there are those
who are enslaved against their nature as
a result of unjust war, and we might use
the phrase "might makes right," right? Is
that actually fair? No. So therefore we
find it many who are enslaved should not be enslaved, because it is not part of their
nature. And he makes another argument
which is in this sort of incredibly
dense text, which I've read many times and
I still don't quite understand, but I'll
read it together, maybe reading it out loud
will help me, 1254 the end of 1254b
to the beginning of 1255a, he says we
would like it if nature could arrange
such that all the slaves had very big
bodies and very small brains, basically.
And that all the masters had kind of
weak, puny bodies, like mine, but gigantic
brains, and that way it would be pretty
straightforward: okay, slave, master,
slave, master, right we'd be able to
distinguish by appearance who should be
a slave and who should be a master. He
says, "nature would like to distinguish
between the bodies of freemen and slaves
making the ones strong for servile labor,
the other upright and although useless
for such services useful for political
life, in the arts both of war and peace.
But the opposite often happens and some
have the souls and others have the
bodies of freemen and doubtless it meant
different from one another in the mere
forms of their bodies all would
acknowledge the inferior class should be
slaves of the superior. But the beauty of
the body is seen, whereas the beauty of
the soul is not seen, it is clear then
that some men are by nature free, and
other slaves and that for these latter
slavery is both expedient and right."
But because the soul cannot be seen and
it is in the soul where you find whether
you are by nature a slave or not, it means
that the way that slavery is practice
may be unjust, because some, who by nature are
sla..., are free men are nonetheless
subjugated to slavery. And so therefore
if you cannot guarantee that those who are
enslaved, should be enslaved by virtue
of their nature, perhaps it's better not
to have slavery at all. That argument has been
suggested as a way to try to rescue this
discussion from Aristotle. I don't know if
that's a compelling argument. I think
we're reading into Aristotle something
there that really may not... It's true I should note, that Aristotle had slaves and at the end
of his life, he freed them. So he may have
had some qualms about this institution.
But I think trying to make that
justification, or trying to
make that argument that he's using the
natural definition of slavery to contest
the conventional definition of slavery
is a willful reading, it's an
anachronistic reading, it's a 20th, 21st
century reading of Aristotle, trying to
make him something that he is not, which
is a progressive modern thinker whose
views conform with our own. I think instead we
have to take Aristotle at his own word, we have to take him on his own ideas, and instead try
to understand why it is that he is
focused on slavery, among other things, in
this first book. After he talks about
slavery he then talks about something
else, which is? What's the next thing he
turns his attention to, after he finishes
up with slaves? What? No, before then. He calls it the art of acquisition but we call it
what? Making money, right? He turns to the
question of making money. And he asks, how do
we, how should we understand this act
of gathering, of getting wealth of
gathering wealth. He starts the
discussion I think at the
1256a "let us now inquire into property
generally," and so on. You'll note that one of the
conclusions that comes out of this, he
says the art of war is a natural art of
acquisition. War is natural, under, in
Aristotle's reading at 1256b . "If
nature makes nothing incomplete and
nothing in vain the inference must be
that she has made all animals for the sake of man, and so from one point of view the art
of war is a natural art of acquisition,
for the art of acquisition includes
hunting, an art which we ought to practice
against wild beasts and against men who
though intended by nature to be governed
will not submit, for such a war is
naturally just." Another very inconvenient sentiment for us war is
natural and ought to be practiced both
against wild beasts and against men who
ought to be governed but who refuse to
be governed and so therefore they must be
forced to submit, "who though intended by
nature to be governed will not submit, the
war of such a kind is natural and
just." He then goes on and he
describes some detail of his ideas of how, of wealth gathering, of wealth-getting, and
I think one of the key elements that we see
in this discussion, you may recall
he seems to anticipate economics, he notes that the use of money is merely conventional, that
if you have a lot of money and you
substitute it with something else, that
it wouldn't serve very much. We see that at
1257b, "the natural riches and the
natural art of wealth-getting are a
different name in their true form they
are part of the management of the
household," so there's this idea that the
art of gathering wealth is a part of the
management of the
household. And there's an important
characteristic here, which is what? What
is Aristotle keen to emphasize in the idea
how we gather wealth, how we get wealth?
What does he talk about? Does anyone remember? The idea of limit. He says if you simply gather
wealth in perpetuity, gather wealth unlimitedly,  you're not doing a good thing, thatt there
should be a limit to how much you gather, that there is a limit to this. He says it at
page 24 at 1258a, line 15 "We have considered the art of wealth-getting which is
unnecessary and why men want it, and also
the necessary art of wealth-getting
which would seem to be different from
the other, and to be a natural part of
the art of managing a household
concerned with the provision of food
not however like the former kind unlimited, but having a limit." So he's keen in this
discussion of how we gather wealth
within the household to note that
there are these distinctions between the
limited kind and the unlimited kind. And
you'll recall that he holds out for special
sanction the practice of usury. What is
usury? Lending money at interest, right? Banking, basically. Aristotle, just another person
who doesn't like bankers. He says, you'll
see it at 1250ab, the most hated sort
and with the greatest reason is usury
which makes a gain out of money itself.
Money is merely convention, right, and so if
you are using a convention to create
something further conventional it is the
worst kind. So this idea of acquisition
needs to be directed towards good
ends, and one of its fundamental
features seems to be the idea of limit.
We're not gonna be able to do too much
with that idea right now, but you'll see when
we come back to this discussion when we look
at what we might call Aristotle's
comparative politics, that that sense of
limit becomes important to how we then
understands the gestation, or sorry the
organization of the state. Let's take a
look at the third and final element of
the household management that Aristotle
considers here in book one. We've seen
his discussion of slavery, in which he
argues then that the slave is a naturally
constituted person characterised by
their lack of logos, their inability to
reason, but only to apprehend
reason. We see then in this context of
wealth-getting that it is a natural
function of the household management, the
act of getting wealth, but that it must
be practiced in a good way, not a bad way,
characterized by the sense of limit. And
then, finally, we have the remaining part
of the household, which is the rule of a
man over his wife and his children. And here
he has these two distinctions. We can turn
to what we might call Aristotle's
anti-feminism, in which he urges women to
be silent - ladies, I'm sure you all
took great note of that. "Silence is a woman's glory." he quotes approvingly, saying
silence is a woman's glory. What is
Aristotle's view of the woman in the
household, other than that she should be
silent? Is she a slave? No, she's not a
slave. So she's not that bad. [student: Pretty much] Is she pretty much a slave? Really? Do we think
that Aristotle's view of women in the
household is that of a slave? [student: she lacks logos]
Does she lack logos?
What she lacks is what he calls authority. If you turn back to where we saw that
that description of the slaves,
1260a lines 10 going forward, the slave
he says has no deliberative faculty at
all: slave can't think. A woman has it but
it is without authority. She cannot direct it
to some kind of authoritative end. So women
do have logos. It's just the way in
which it can be practiced is
characterized by an absence of authority.
And the child has, has this reasoning but
it is immature so it must
necessarily be supposed to be with the
excellence of character also, so the
woman has logos, which means then that the
characteristic of rule that exists
within the household between, say, a master
and a slave, and a husband and his wife
is different, because the sort of natural
condition is different. And so he comes
to this point, and he describes, and there's
an inconsistency here that we are I think
not going to be able to reconcile, he
describes a relationship, master and
slave, as a royal or as a monarchical
relationship as if a subject to his
King. But he describes a relationship
between a wife, or a husband and his wife
as characterised by, does anyone remember?
What kind of rule it is?
Constitutional rule.This is an example of a constitutional rule.
So that's a fundamental difference
between the monarchical rule, or the
regal authority, that the master has over
the slave, and a constitutional authority
that a husband has over his wife. What
is the difference between royal or regal
authority, and constitutional authority?
Regal authority, you simply command, you
tell people what to do. Is that the case
under a constitutional authority? No,
what is a constitution? A set of rules,
right? It's a code of conduct that's been
established. And so the relationship then
between a husband and a wife corresponds
to this idea of a set of rules that
govern behavior. Where is the authority,
then, in that relationship? The authority is
in the kind of constitutional nature
itself. The woman who lacks authority of her logos then has the authority of the
constitution, as it were, this constitutional relationship, or
constitutional guide, I should say, that's in the relationship, by which she can then
direct or use her reason. And then finally
for children because they're immature if
he says that the relationship of a
father or a relationship of a father to his
children is one of what he calls love
and respect due to age. That's where
that sense comes from. He also interestingly calls that a regal or a royal or a
monarchical relationship, but it
seems clear that the relationship
governing a father and his children, a 
master and his slave, are different,
they're not the same kind of
relationship, even though he uses the
same word. To sum up, why is it that
Aristotle spends this first book
examining these different elements of
the household? Why does, what's the purpose of this
foray into the minutiae of the household? [Student: because that's that status quo, let's
call it, is what then provides the good
that an individual seeks for.] To have slaves? [sorry?]
To have slaves? Now that you've gone through this lecture, you're armed
with the good life, you're going to go out
and try and enslave some people, say
listen, just been reading a little Aristotle, I'm after a little of the Eudaimonia goodness
I've gotta enslave you, it's not my fault, Aristotle says I have to? [Student: just like
Plato's isn't a republic that is that
the acceptance of the ideal republic and
everyone doing their task appropriately
that becomes just.] That's true, you
could say that, but why start with the household. I think that's the question, what's
going on there. Yes?
[Student: because he then criticizes the Plato's
view of the household.] He's just
setting up his criticism of Plato?
I think there's more to it than that, I think there is more to it than that.
[He wants to define himself what he thinks before he criticises Plato] Okay.
 
Remember, when Socrates
investigates this notion of Justice
Glaucon and Adeimantus put forward this
provocative notion of justice as
conventional, what does Socrates say we
need to do? He says, we need to start with
that which is big that which is written
in great letters and use that to then
decipher that which is written in small
letters. What is Aristotle, in effect, doing
here? The reverse. We start with the small,
we start with the components, and from
there we'll move out into what we see
around us in the larger iteration. What
is it that makes up a state? What is its
material cause? It is the households that
exist within the state. And so if we can
find something about the nature of
authority, the nature of rule that exists within a household it will then enable us to be
able to draw from that, some argument
about the nature of rule that we might
find in the state, because it is then
tethered by, and the word that Aristotle uses
over and over again is, our nature, it is who
we are by our very nature. And so when we look
at those relationships of rule in the
family, husband to wife, husband to
children, master to slave, in each one he
is very, very keen to make sure that it's
grounded in the understanding of what
constitutes the natural relationship, the
natural state of rule. And it seems to
conclude, and we'll pick up with this
discussion tomorrow, it seems to conclude
with the idea that there are some who
naturally shall rule and there are
others naturally who shall be ruled. And it seems
then to be a fundamental condition of
the state that we accept that there
there is this basic division
between those who shall rule and those
who shall be ruled. I'll leave it there. I'll take
your question after classm but I'll leave it there.
Or do you have a comment to make?
 
 
what you can observe in the
household naturally then can be observed
in the state. Okay, I'll see you guys tomorrow and we'll pick up our discussion.
