Last week, I shared the first four of eight Aristotelian concepts that America’s Founders borrowed from the great Greek philosopher.
In this post, I share four more concepts. In the coming weeks, I plan to look at a couple of specific issues in Aristotle that caught my eye (legislation of sexual relations within a polity being a particularly relevant point), before starting in on discussions on Locke.
5. The Political nature of education.
It cracks me up to hear people talk about education as though it were some pure, non-political thing.
If you think it’s just about the kids, tax dollars, teacher’s unions, and Common Core say otherwise. Education is fundamentally political.
Why? Aristotle makes clear that education of the young is essential for the preservation of a political society and the growth of a virtuous citizen body. Portions of Book 7 and all of Book 8 are taken up with a discussion on how to raise and educate young people. It makes sense, right? If you’re trying to mold individuals into a cohesive social whole, you need them to understand, buy into, and propagate the social contract that’s been erected.
A program of education is necessary, then, in any virtuous polity. Thus, it should come as no surprise that education was highly valued in early American history, and continues to be an ideal.
Though modern Americans would probably differ with Aristotle on what the end result of education should be, early pioneers of public education were well aware of its value to the young Republic. Thomas Jefferson believed that his greatest contribution to America, beyond the Declaration of Independence, was the establishment of the University of Virginia. Before Jefferson, New England Puritans placed a high emphasis in education for the purpose of civic participation, a concept John Adams would channel in his famous response to the French duchess on why he did not study the arts:
Education as an individualist end in itself is a very recent development indeed.
6. Something for everyone in democracy.
Aristotle understood that jealousy was a common underminer of democracies, and a cause of class conflict. The desire of the poorer masses to possess and redistribute portions of the wealthy’s property were a common problem. This is one of several reasons why Aristotle was against pure democracy, but advocated for a mixed regime as a way to balance the competing interests of different groups within the polity.
Aristotle understood that a good government required the presence of different people with varying degrees of intelligence and ability, but inherent in this social milieu was a propensity for conflict. Thus, a polity, in order to be just, would have to have something for everyone.
Responding to the republican calls for broader democracy, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay penned the magisterial Federalist Papers as a defense of the Aristotelian mixed regime the American Constitution was proposing. Famously, in Federalist 51, Publius (as the authors collectively called themselves) points out the problems of factions in a democracy, and obliquely notes the democratic tendency towards division.
This inherent weakness of democracy is avoided in the American Constitution, Publius argues, because of the checks and balances and separation of powers. The effects of factions are thus controlled, something that Aristotle expressly advocates in Book 6 as he discusses the need to ensure all citizen classes a place in the policy’s power sharing scheme.
7. Equality is not total, or material.
Aristotle was either remarkably prescient, or had anecdotal evidence that required repetition of this political fact:
Political equality is not, and never should be, total.
It’s a fact we would do well to rediscover and consider. Aristotle noted that people are fundamentally unequal on the basis of some being made to rule and others being made to be ruled. Progressing to a discussion on who should be citizens and who should rule, Aristotle noted three claims that citizens could make to power: virtue, wealth, or freedom.
The fact of the matter is that not every citizen would have all three claims in equal proportion, and it was impossible to value one claim over the other since all three were necessary for a functioning society.
The result, Aristotle argues, is a division if powers and offices that is essentially power sharing between the different citizens, as the most just and equal outcome. And nowhere does he argue for economic equality, rather arguing against the virtue of such a step based on the fundamental inequality that can exist between persons on account of virtues they are endowed with.
Joseph Fiennes explains this concept in one of the best critiques of material equality ever:
While equality is certainly a holy American value, only recently has it been interpreted to be a kind of total and material equality. The Founders certainly seemed to understand that political equality was one thing, but material equality was another. How do I know this? Nowhere in the Constitution, or Declaration of Independence, or the Federalist Papers is such a concept of equality to be found. Equality is understood to be an aspect of human nature, and even of citizenship, but it seems to stop there.
This may be considered controversial, even blasphemous in the American context today, and one could even make an argument that the Founders limited their discussion on equality because of the issue of slavery, but this seems improbable given the fact that many if the Founders were outspoken in their opinions about the evil of that institution. It doesn’t seem to make much sense that they would suddenly walk on eggshells.
8. Aristotle’s agrarian romance.
I mentioned this in point 4 of last week’s post, but Thomas Jefferson and most Americans seem to share with Aristotle a love for the farmer. Why not? They only provide the food that a city needs to survive. No excess food supply, no freedom to pursue other things like civics and city building.
Aristotle holds farmers in such high regard that he sees this economic activity as the only really virtuous one since it is a fundamentally civic minded activity. Trade, banking, manufacturing are thought to be slavish and given over to mere property acquisition, which Aristotle saw as being a misuse of wealth. Remember, he subjects all human activity to the good of the city: Not good for the city = not virtuous for the individual.
Taken in this light, the Jefferson-Hamilton debate over what the major economic activity in America ought to be makes a ton of sense. Jeffersonian republicanism idolized the farmer citizen as the keeper of the American democracy, while Hamilton’s federalism argued for greater trade and manufacturing.
I will confess, I am a little confused why Aristotle and Jefferson don’t view trade and manufacturing as very virtuous economic practices. A couple of intriguing footnotes in my book suggested that Greek culture saw artisans and makers of manufactured goods as a step above slaves, so I suppose it could just be Aristotle voicing the values of his day and Jefferson following suit. Regardless, though, farmers are essential to any polity and so require a degree of consideration, but to what degree remains an interesting question to me.
So what do you think? You Aristotle fans think I missed something? Let me know in the comments.
Also, I’m kicking around ideas for my term paper. Requirements are pretty straightforward: 5,000 words analyzing a theme/topic in any of the books we read in class. Right now, my thought is doing a comparison of Locke and Aristotle on the tension between concepts of justice and inequality. What do you think?