Autor: Michael, Davis

Buch: The Politics of Philosophy

Titel: The Politics of Philosophy

Stichwort: Einführung 1; Aristoteles, Politik (warum Verst.-Schwierigkeit heute); Individuum (heute) - politisches Wesen (Aristoteles); Problem d. Tugend (Vollkommenheit aus Unvollkommenheit); Beispiel: Stolz (Selbstgenügsamkeit, Selbsterkenntnis); Politik - Ethik

Kurzinhalt: Now, if political life is a human artifact, the individual must be in some sense complete prior to society. Our need for political life is then a sign of our permanent alienation from nature.

Textausschnitt: Introduction: Rational Animal/Political Animal

1a One cannot help bringing expectations to Aristotle's Politics, many of which are unfavorable, not to say hostile. How can someone immersed in the problems of Athens of the fourth century B.C. and of the polis, a form of government that can scarcely be said any longer even to exist, have much to say to us? Furthermore, Aristotle insists on making judgments about which form of political order is best. Even though we inevitably make such judgments in practice (as well as the judgments about the best ways to live on which they are based), we are theoretically ill at ease with them. And even if in principle at ease with them, we would almost certainly disagree violently with particular features of Aristotle's account. There is no place in contemporary political discourse for speculation about natural slavery or the natural inferiority of women to men. (Fs)

1b Even if we are positively predisposed toward the Politics, our expectations are somehow negatively determined. We know that for Aristotle human beings are by nature political (1253a), but we tend to understand this claim as a denial of various modern theories of the primacy of the individual. Aristotle is taken before the fact to stand in opposition to the state-of-nature theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, according to which political life is not natural but a product of human art. Now, if political life is a human artifact, the individual must be in some sense complete prior to society. Our need for political life is then a sign of our permanent alienation from nature. Aristotle's alternative seems to suggest that we who are by nature political can for that reason live naturally, and so, happily, within a political order. Drawn to the Politics with some hope, we approve of Aristotle's attempt to show how political life grows naturally, rather like a flower, out of other natural human associations. According to the first book of the Politics, political life ultimately originates in sex; nothing seems more natural. (Fs)

2a At the same time, however, we are skeptical. This possibility of overcoming the tension between public and private seems a little coercive. We cannot help noticing that one of the "natural associations" to which Aristotle refers is natural slavery. This makes us especially uncomfortable when we see how much seems to depend on what, given Aristotle's understanding, can only be a small percentage of the population. Natural slaves are those who participate in reason to the extent of perceiving but not themselves thinking what is rational; it is, therefore, difficult to believe that they would be sufficiently numerous to be a part of the average household. Thus, making slavery a regular part of the household that grows into the polis inevitably calls into question the naturalness of the household, and so of the polis. (Fs)

2b Accordingly, while we may be drawn to the naturalness of the origin of the polis, that is, sex, we cannot help remembering that poleis do not grow like flowers. They are instituted. And more often than not, as the paradigmatic cases of founders, Cain and Romulus, suggest, this involves violence—even fratricidal violence. Our expectations concerning the origin of politics are therefore at odds. Thinking about sex and violence leads us to wonder whether Aristotle's Politics is not a very problematic book. This is all to the good, since the problem we sense in approaching the book turns out to be the problem it is about. The Politics is an attempt to reconcile the polis as a product of growth with the polis as a product of human freedom. We both grow into political life and make it. (Fs)

2c It is a commonplace to point to the intimate connection between the Politics and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Signs of this connection are everywhere. Aristotle begins the Politics (1252a4-7) by identifying the polis as the association concerned with the comprehensive and authoritative human good (at which all human action ultimately aims, according to Nicomachean Ethics 1094a 1-23). He concludes in Book 8 with an account of how to educate men to be at once good citizens of the best regime and, since the goal of the best regime is to make its citizens happy, good men. The Nicomachean Ethics begins by identifying the science of what is best with politics (1094a27-29) and ends by making it clear that being good requires being raised nobly, which almost always means being raised under good laws (1179b30-34). Thus, if the end of the Politics points to the goal of politics as education to virtue, the end of the Nicomachean Ethics points to the necessity of the polis as a means to the education to virtue. All of this makes a certain sense. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle indicates that human virtue is rooted in our natures as rational (1102a5-1103a11). Since human beings are naturally political, it should be no surprise that there is a connection between virtue (and ultimately happiness) and life in the polis. (Fs)

3a The connection between virtue and politics is complicated, however, by the problematic character of virtue as Aristotle understands it. In the Nicomachean Ethics the problems are present at the very outset. Aristotle begins with the claim that all human action seems to aim at some good and then argues that this means that there must be a single best or highest good that is for its own sake and not for something else. The science of this authoritative good is called politics. Then, however, having argued for the necessity of a single "best," Aristotle splits the object of this science into two—the beautiful or noble things (ta kala) and the just things (ta dikaia). How, then, is the good at which all things aim one? (Fs)

3b The first virtue Aristotle treats in the Nicomachean Ethics is courage (andreia). Virtue is supposed to be desirable for its own sake. The paradigmatic case of courage is, according to Aristotle, courage in war (1115a). But war is at best a necessary evil— "War is for the sake of peace" (Politics 1333a35). Courage, then, can come into being only when preceded by an evil. Moderation (sophrosune) has a similar structure. It is a virtue only in a being who is potentially immoderate. Aristotle knows about this difficulty, as is clear from his discussion of shame (aidos) at the end of Nicomachean Ethics Book 4 (1128b10-36). Shame is not properly a virtue because it presupposes that something bad has been done for which one ought to feel ashamed. While good in a certain context, it is not simply good, for the context it presupposes is itself defective. This similarity between shame on one hand and courage and moderation on the other moves Aristotle to say that the latter "seem to be the virtues of the irrational parts" (Nicomachean Ethics 1117b24-25). However, when one presses the issue, it becomes clear that this is the structure of all of the moral virtues. Moral virtue can be the goal only for a being attempting to overcome imperfection. The imperfection of our condition makes possible our striving and so is good. However, it cannot be understood as good without undermining the rationale for our striving. (Fs) (notabene)

3c Aristotle speaks three times about the unity of the moral virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics. In Book 4 he calls pride or greatness of soul (megalopsukhia) an ornament (kosmos) of the virtues without which they are incomplete and therefore not virtues (1124a). In Book 5 he calls justice the sum of the virtues and complete or perfect virtue insofar as it is concerned with other human beings (1129b). Finally, in Book 6, Aristotle says that prudence (phronesis) makes moral virtue possible and is made possible by it (1144b). In each instance the apparent unity of moral virtue is problematic, and in each case the problem is similar. (Fs)

4a Crudely put, pride means being good and knowing it. It is the pleasure we take in our own virtue and therefore requires that we be aware of our own virtue as virtue. But how does the man proud because he is so self-sufficient and godlike that he wonders at nothing come to know that he is virtuous? Honors. But the life of honor was rejected earlier in the Nicomachean Ethics (1095b) as insufficiently self-sufficient. The proud man ought not to depend on others, but when he thinks of himself as worthy he can only do so by thinking of himself as worthy of honor, and that means the honor of others. Self-knowledge requires that we look at ourselves as though we were other; we must look at ourselves through the eyes of others. It seems then to be at odds with that godlike self-sufficiency that is the warrant for pride. The proud man lacks either self-sufficiency or self-knowledge; in either case, he cannot be proud, for to be proud one must know oneself to be self-sufficient. (Fs) (notabene)

4b The problem of pride points in two directions. Lack of self-sufficiency means dependency. If we can complete ourselves only through others, we are directed toward political life and its characteristic virtue—justice. However, the problem of self-knowledge points to Aristotle's account of the intellectual virtues in Book 6. According to Aristotle, justice can be the sum of the virtues because it makes it possible for us to share our lives with a view to self-sufficiency (1134a), and self-sufficiency is the core of virtue. Still, collective self-sufficiency is a constant reminder of individual dependence. Thus, although, as it is actually practiced in political life, justice is concerned with the equitable distribution of goods, the need for such a distribution indicates that there is not an inexhaustible supply of goods. Good things are scarce enough to be in demand. Like courage, justice is concerned with a harsh fact about human life. (Fs)

4c Pride also pointed to the problem of self-knowledge. When we turn to Book 6 seeking some resolution of this difficulty, we discover a new set of ambiguities. Part of intellectual virtue is concerned with the essentially unchanging; the other part is concerned with the constantly changing. The unity of intellectual virtue would seem to require that one of the two parts predominate, but the highest element, sophia, or wisdom, by the very virtue of being highest, cannot predominate. It is by nature concerned with what does not change. On the other hand, that phronesis, which is lower, should rule seems strange and even contrary to nature. Virtue seems to require self-knowledge. But self-knowledge requires that we turn away from what is timeless and most important and turn toward ourselves. But to do this is to forsake the highest capacity of our reason, the exercise of which is virtue. Virtue therefore requires that we forsake virtue. (Fs)