Political Animals Revisited. 2013

Political Animals RevisitedAuthor(s): Josiah OberSource: The Good Society, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2013), pp. 201-214Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/goodsociety.22.2.0201 .

Accessed: 21/12/2013 11:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The GoodSociety.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 171.67.216.21 on Sat, 21 Dec 2013 11:28:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/goodsociety.22.2.0201?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


the good society, vol. 22, no. 2, 2013 Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

In what ways (if any) might Aristotle’s political thought be relevant to contemporary political theory or practice—or is “making Aristotle r elevant” a quixotic enterprise doomed at the outset by arguments that are perni-cious, implausible, or both?

It goes almost without saying that there are aspects of Aristotle’s political thought that are not relevant, at least in any positive, theory-building sense: Aristotle’s defense of the claim that some persons are, by dint of an inborn psychological flaw, “slaves by nature,” along with his military doctrine that asserts that it is just to employ organized violence to enslave a foreign population of putative natural slaves, is an obvious case in point.1 Aristotle also asserted that all women suffer a psychological disability that prevents them from reliably deliberating about public goods and that this disability debarred women from active citizenship.2 Aristotle further contended that the civic virtue essential for the effective performance of active citizenship is necessarily corrupted when an individual acts as an instrument of anoth-er’s private advantage (whether that meant laboring under another’s direc-tion,3 or expert musical performance enjoyed by another).4 It follows that everyone who works for a living is rendered, ipso facto, slavish by habit and thereby unsuited for political action. I will call these three claims “Aristotle’s useless arguments.”5

I will argue in what follows that certain of Aristotle’s other central argu-ments are far from useless: they are plausible, useful for contemporary theorizing—and separable from his useless ideas about slavery, gendered

Political Animals Revisited

josiah ober



2 0 2 | t h e g o o d s o c i e t y | vol. 22, no. 2

moral psychology, self-corruption, and also from what I will call, below, “extra baggage arguments” about the priority of the state over the individ-ual, teleology, and the unity of the human good. Aristotle’s “useful argu-ments” can, I argue, be built into the foundation of a contemporary theory of democracy as collective self-governance that is recognizably Aristotelian, even though it might not be endorsed by other theorists who draw on Aristotle’s thought or, for that matter, by Aristotle himself.

The primary useful argument that grounds Aristotle’s ethical and politi-cal thought, and that can be deployed as the foundation for an Aristotelian (as opposed to Aristotle’s own) theory of democracy as collective self- governance, is the famous claim that the human being (anthropon) is a political animal (zoon politikon).6 This means, in the first instance (by reference to Aristotle’s works on biology),7 that humans are social creatures. We typically live in conspecific groups (like, say, chimpanzees or lions), rather than “sporadically,” as isolated individuals who come together with their kind only occasionally for the purpose of mating (like, say, leopards or orangutans). Moreover, unlike some social animals (say, zebras) that live in herds but do not produce or share in the consumption of public goods (other than the enhanced security against predators produced by multiply-ing sense-organs), we humans live in groups that are highly organized, have defined memberships, and are concerned with the creation, distribution, and consumption of vital public goods.

According to Aristotle, humans are taxonomically similar to other highly social (i.e. political) animals that work cooperatively in communities to produce public goods that are shared in common. His primary example is honey-bees, who work together to build hives and to produce honey. While the comparison with social insects leads to some puzzles (below), the taxo-nomic (as opposed to genetic: humans are obviously genetically closer to orangutans than we are to bees) description of humans as falling into the category of animals that are social in the special and strong sense that we typically live in organized societies and produce complex forms of essential (to us) public goods, seems reasonable on the face of it.

Humans are, however, quite different from honey-bees (or ants, termites, or other social animals) in the diversity of the kinds of social organizations we create and inhabit—and thus also in the diversity of our patterns of pro-duction, distribution, and consumption of public goods. Whereas every hive produced by honey-bees of a given species will be much the same as every other hive produced by members of the same species, the same cannot be said of states or other systems of human social organization. Bees dwelling



ober | Aristotelian Political Theory | 2 0 3

in a given hive are naturally hyper-cooperative to a degree that humans dwelling in a given state clearly are not. The “rules” that bees follow are set by their nature—not by the fiat of a lawgiver bee, or by an agreement among the worker-bees. These natural rules do not change much over time and bees follow them without much deviation.8 Humans, in contrast, make rules (in the form of social norms and institutions), and are able to change the rules, sometimes frequently and sometimes radically. Furthermore, individual humans, unlike bees, may choose not to obey the rules, and they may or may not enforce rules broken by others.9

Aristotle takes all of this into account. Although his teleology (see further, below) led him to assert that the polis (and indeed a polis of a certain sort) was the unique natural end of human sociability, and that therefore any other form of social organization was in some substantial sense deficient, he certainly rec-ognized that there was a great deal of variation in the kinds of organizations in which humans actually live (kingdoms, empires, ethnic tribes, as well as city-states).10 The readily observed fact that poleis were diverse in their political regimes is a major concern of the Politics. The diversity of organizational forms developed by humans shows that, unlike bees, our nature does not fully determine the form of our social organization.

The variety of human social organizations is, at least in part, a function of the fact that, as Aristotle recognized, there is a great deal of individual variation among the members of a given human community, in terms of natural talents, skills, life experiences, and acquired knowledge. Moreover, there is a good deal of variation among communities in regard to the range of talents that are socially supported and in how individual varia-tion is treated. In some societies (e.g. Sparta) variation among citizens was discouraged and military skills were heavily emphasized. In others (e.g. Athens) diverse talents and experiences were actively promoted. Moreover, unlike bees, humans have individual interests as well as collective interests, and they have the capacity to form and act upon plans for pursuing their own interests. There are, consequently, many possible solutions to the ques-tion of social equilibrium, that is, of how a society might be organized such that it persists more or less stably over time. Some solutions are, from the point of view of Aristotle’s eudaimonistic ethics, more choice-worthy than others. The Politics explains why that is so, and suggests ways that relatively

There are . . . many

possible solutions

to the question of

social equilibrium.

. . . some are more

choice-worthy than

others.




more choice-worthy forms of social organization might be advanced. Once again, on the face of it, that seems a reasonable way for political theory to proceed.

Aristotle emphasizes individual human self-interest in his extended crit-icism of Plato’s Republic. Aristotle asserts that Plato’s ideal state is unwork-able because it fails to take into proper account either diversity of humans and their interests, or the inherent human tendency to prioritize the inter-ests of self and close kin.11 The issue of self-interest is also prominent in Aristotle’s discussion of the “parts” of the natural whole that is the polis.12 The parts are variously understood by Aristotle to be individual citizens, or groupings of individuals into factions based on interests shared by some, but not all, members of the community. Individual and factional interest is a problem because the particular interests of the “parts” may diverge from the common interests of the “whole,” a problem that is exacerbated by human diversity. Yet Aristotle cannot, based on his assumptions about human nature, avail himself of Plato’s “harmonic” solution to the problem.

Humans are, in sum, unlike bees in that natural sociability does not, for the members of a community, solve the problem of how a number of diverse individuals can reliably secure the public goods necessary for joint and several flourishing. Aristotle’s political thought is relevant and interest-ing for contemporary political theory in part because Aristotle recognized that, for humans, collective action is a problem that must be solved by insti-tutional design—which calls for an institutional designer. Aristotle explic-itly acknowledges this issue when he points out that, although each human has a natural impulse to participate in a polis-type community (koinonia), he who first constituted a polis brought about the greatest of goods.13

In his criticisms of Plato, as elsewhere in the Politics (notably in book 5), Aristotle recognized that, in the absence of well-structured incentives, indi-viduals would strategically choose to free-ride on others’ cooperation, that this could lead to a cascade of non-cooperation, that publicly-held resources risked being degraded through a commons tragedy, and that, when they do share a common interest, people may fail to find a common focal point around which to coordinate their actions and thus fail to achieve a goal shared by each of them. Aristotle’s recognition that these were impediments to effective human cooperation, and that there were a wide range of possible—although not equally choice-worthy—equilibrium solutions to the problem of coop-eration, prompted his detailed examination of i nstitutional design in the Politics. It is this recognition that makes his u seful arguments interesting from the viewpoint of positive political theory.14




Aristotle’s political animals argument becomes normatively interesting, and I think remains entirely plausible, when he asserts that humans are more political than other social animals (i.e. we produce more diverse and higher order public goods than do social insects) because of certain distinc-tive human capacities. For the purposes of political theorizing, the human capacities that are of primary importance are, for Aristotle (as for Hobbes and many theorists since), the ability to employ reason and the ability to engage in highly complex forms of interpersonal communication, through speech. Unlike any other species, we use reason and speech to deliberate (intra-personally as well as inter-personally) about matters of importance to the collectives of which we are parts, as well as to each of us, as individu-als. And thus, for Aristotle (unlike for Hobbes and many other theorists since), we humans are “the most political” of all social animals.15

Reason and speech are at once capacities (dunameis) that are constitu-tive of humanity, and essential human functions (erga) that allow for the achievement of distinctively human ends. It is through the appropriate (i.e. virtuous) exercise of our natural capacities for reason, as practical wisdom, and speech, in the form of deliberation about justice and interest, that we seek to achieve our joint and several ends. At the top of Aristotle’s moral-ized hierarchy of ends is the just civic community itself. Whereas Aristotle worked out these ideas in the context of a naturalized teleology (see below), we need not buy into his teleological argument to accept the basic line of thought that leads from natural capacities to the achievement of individual and collective ends, or to accept that justice ought to be high on a hierarchi-cal list of ends worth striving for.

The argument about human capacities and functions gains its normative force from Aristotle’s eudaimonism: his conviction (held in common with other Greek moral theorists) that the goal of life ought to be not mere exis-tence, but living well.16 Given that humans are social animals, we cannot live well unless we live together, in communities. The purpose of the state is thus not merely survival but living well together. Living well together requires, as a precondition, a certain level of security and material goods sufficient to ensure basic welfare.17 Beyond that, it demands that humans engage in the right (most virtuous) activities aimed at the right (highest) ends.18

Right activity necessarily includes (indeed it may be defined as)19 the free exercise of constitutive capacities in accordance with virtue (i.e. in the functionally most appropriate manner). And so living well, as an individ-ual and as a citizen in a community, demands (at least) the opportunity to exercise, freely and virtuously, the human capacities of reason and speech.




Given our social nature, and our common interest in having the best community possible (i.e. the most choice-worthy social equilibrium), we must participate in deliberations aimed at building and sustaining the public goods that are in turn required for the continued existence and flour-ishing of the civic community. Any individual human political animal who is denied that sort of deliberative opportunity—i.e. who is prevented (per-haps by institutional rules) from employing reason and communication in the active pursuit of public goods—ipso facto fails to live as well as he or she ought. By extension, a human community in which individuals are denied the opportunity to deliberate about common interests will be likely to fall short of doing as well as it ought.

I accept that Aristotle’s conception of the best form of community was predicated on mutual advantage (i.e. that each member of the community

has the chance to live as well as s/he is capable of living),20 rather than on maximizing an aggre-gate of goods whereby some may live well at the expense of the well-being of others. If that is cor-rect, we must suppose that in the best sort of com-munity, the one we should pray for,21 each (adult, psychologically healthy) individual will have the opportunity actively to participate in politics by employing reason and speech in public delibera-tions. If we furthermore dispense with the useless arguments, the Aristotelian take on human nature leads us to suppose that the best human community is a sort of democracy— insofar as democracy is as a regime-type defined by an extensive, diverse, and

active citizen body.22 In brief, Aristotle’s constitutive capacities argument, once stripped of the useless arguments, offers a normative grounding for d emocracy. A constitutive capacities grounding for democracy is indepen-dent of rights-based normative arguments for democracy, but is compatible with them.23

Moving beyond Aristotle’s own arguments, a capacities-based normative argument for democracy will plausibly bring along with it other indepen-dently and rightly (in my view) valued conditions. In order freely to exer-cise reason and speech in pursuit of the end of providing public goods for a civic community, I must have, in the relevant ways, freedom, equality, and dignity. I must, most obviously, be free to express reasons in speech and free to associate with my fellow citizens in deliberative public fora. Moreover, my reasons must, to the degree that they are relevant to the matter being

We must

participate in

deliberations

aimed at building

and sustaining the

public goods that

are in turn required

for the continued

existence and

flourishing of the

civic community.




deliberated, be given equal weight to other equally relevant reasons. I must, therefore, be secure in both my share of political liberty and of political equality. Moreover, in order for my freely expressed and equally weighted reasons to be functionally activated (that is, to have effect in the actual pro-vision of public goods), I must not live in risk of humiliation or infantiliza-tion: I must have the respect and recognition of my fellow citizens in my role as citizen.24 Finally, each citizen, having different talents and experi-ences, will have somewhat different things to offer to public deliberations on public goods. Insofar as those different contributions are both valuable and insofar as they are the product of epistemic and experiential diversity, a capacities-centered democracy will protect, and indeed promote, diversity among the citizenry.25

The sketch offered above, of an attractive and Aristotelian (rather than “Aristotle’s own”) normative theory of politics ends in a democracy committed to political freedom and equality, to civic dignity, and to epis-temic and experiential diversity. The theory depends, of course, on the plau-sibility of the underlying argument about human political nature. Insofar as strong forms of sociability, along with the use of reason and speech, are in fact universal features of human existence, there seems nothing inherently implausible about Aristotle’s descriptive claim that humans are political animals. The idea that certain capacities are “constitutive” of humanity is, I suppose, intuitive insofar as the counterfactual, that a society of beings completely lacking reason and speech would be regarded as human, seems implausible.

The constitutive capacities argument need not lead to the unpalatable conclusion that individuals lacking specific capacities ought to be denied decent treatment. There are very good reasons (for which I don’t think much argument is needed) to reject the claim that individuals who, by some misfortune, happen to lack sociability, reason, and speech are liable to being treated as non-humans. These reasons are, however, inadequate to reject the proposition that the being-kind “human” is, generally speaking and when compared to other animals, characterized by sociability, reason, and speech. Nor does the “humanity of impaired persons” consideration offer grounds for denying that reason and speech are necessary (if not suf-ficient) for the provision of the public goods that are, in turn, essential to the existence of good, or even of minimally decent, human communities.

The constitutive capacities argument offered here—focused on sociabil-ity, reason, and speech—is not meant to be exhaustive. There may well be other capacities (e.g. moral emotions) that are constitutive of the human. Some of those other capacities might be relevant only to non-political




domains of activity, but some may also be important, or even necessary, for the provision of essential public goods. Taking other capacities into consideration might lead to extensions or refinements in our conception of what counts as a good or decent human community. Identifying other capacities relevant to the provision of public goods would demonstrate the incompleteness of my sketch of a useful Aristotelian theory of politics. But it would not invalidate the theory, insofar as my concern is with specify-ing necessary, rather than sufficient, conditions for individuals to live well within a reasonably stable community.

This sketch of Aristotelian foundations for a theory of collective self-governance would fail to contribute usefully to contemporary p olitical t heory if it could be shown that the constitutive capacities argument came with the wrong kind of strings attached: i.e. if Aristotle’s “useful arguments” were inseparable from arguments that were, for one reason or another, u nacceptable. Most obviously, if the useful arguments do not hold without the inclusion of one or more of the “useless arguments,” the enterprise must be abandoned. Moreover, there are three other arguments made by Aristotle in the Politics, which, although they are not as prima facie p ernicious as those I have dubbed “useless,” might nevertheless seem to saddle the Aristotelian political theory I have sketched with so much unwanted baggage as to render it unworthy of consideration by any theorist with even minimally liberal commitments.

The first of these “extra baggage” arguments is Aristotle’s claim that the human individual is subordinate to the community.26 This claim might seem to license the collectivity to treat individuals in ways that are sufficiently illib-eral as to rule any political theory that must embrace it out of bounds. Second, Aristotle’s political theory is predicated on a teleology that posits the polis as the unique form of social organization sought by human nature.27 Neither the methodological premise that human nature aims at some determinant form of social organization, nor the substantive conclusion that the polis must be the best form of society for humans, is likely to convince a contempo-rary reader. Third is the notion, often and plausibly attributed to Aristotle,28 that there is a single human good that can be reduced to contemplation, to political activity, or to politics somehow conjoined with contemplation.29 The “single/unitary human good” argument leaves too little room for individuals to choose among a range of possible goods.

The useless arguments, regardless of how strongly Aristotle himself may have been attached to them, are readily detached from the useful arguments as I have sketched them above. Aristotle’s basic point in Politics 1.2 is that




humans are by nature political animals, possessing (like other animals) certain constitutive capacities, the free exercise of which is a necessary part of our flourishing. Women, slaves, and those who labor for others are certainly human (they are social, and employ reason and speech), so they ought to be included in the category of political animals. But they are sub-sequently removed by Aristotle from the category of “complete” political animals—i.e. fit to be active citizens who would expect to employ reason and speech, in accord with virtue, in deliberations concerning the common interest—for what must appear, to us, as moderns, as false claims about moral psychology.

Aristotle’s useless arguments are based, I suppose, on a combination of the endoxic principle that beliefs held by most reasonable people are likely to be true, and his inability to imagine a society of mutual advantage with-out “machine-like” natural slaves (i.e. persons who would live less well were they to deliberate about collective ends). Given that the reasonable beliefs held by moderns (and the science behind those beliefs) do not allow for the sorts of psychological flaws Aristotle alludes to, and that we have machines to do machine-like tasks, we may reject Aristotle’s reasons for removing women and those who work for others (free or slave) from the category “complete political animals.” Once they are recognized as com-plete political animals, women and those who labor for others are fit to join the category “active citizens.” That reintroduction causes no inherent difficulties for the theory, because the Aristotelian citizen body is already (relative to Plato’s earlier political theory) large and diverse.

Unlike Plato’s argument in the Republic, which presumes that only a few (if any) persons possess the inherent philosophical talent to become active-citizen philosopher-kings, and that in the best community those few will receive an education that will render them epistemically similar to one another, Aristotle’s “polis of our prayers”30 is predicated on the assumption that all complete political animals are active citizens, and that there are relatively many of these. Although they will be educated by the state and habituated to obey the laws,31 Aristotelian citizens will necessarily be more diverse in what they know and in their life experiences than are Platonic philosopher-kings.

Aristotelian active citizens do not participate in politics all the time, but rather according to the principle of “ruling and being ruled over by turns.”

Aristotelian citizens

will necessarily

be more diverse

in what they

know and in their

life experiences

than are Platonic

philosopher-kings.




So long as the principle of mutual benefit is sustained, which it surely can be once we have rejected Aristotle’s empirically unsustainable reasons for removing of women etc. from the ranks of potential citizens, there is no inherent reason that any (adult, long-term) resident of a community who possesses the capacities of sociability, reason, and speech, and who is capa-ble of using those capacities in accord with virtue (with moderation, and for the common good), should not share in deliberations about public goods.32

The first of the “extra baggage” arguments, which seems to subordinate individual citizens, as “parts,” to the “whole” that is the state, is different from the other two, in that it arises from a misinterpretation of the rela-tionship of Aristotle’s ethics to his metaphysics, rather than from Aristotle’s actual beliefs about politics. The misunderstanding rests on a faulty con-ception of how parts and wholes relate to one another in Aristotle’s meta-physics. By reference to the relevant passages of the Metaphysics33 we can see that when Aristotle claims that the polis is by nature prior to the indi-vidual human, he is referring to a priority in substance: i.e. that, while the state can continue in existence as what it is despite the removal of any one individual, the individual cannot remain the same in terms of what he is if separated from the state. This is because, outside of the state, a community of which he is a part, he no longer has the opportunity properly to perform certain of his appropriate functions as a human—that is to exercise practi-cal wisdom in accord with virtue by (among other things) deliberating with others about public goods. We may not think that this is the right way to think about humans outside of the state, but the key point is that the “natu-ral priority” of the state does not entail any crude ethical implications about the interests of the state relative to the interests of the individual. Indeed, if we accept that Aristotle’s best state is predicated on mutual advantage, we must suppose that political interests are both joint and several: advanc-ing the interests of the state requires that individual interests likewise be furthered. The Aristotelian community does not, in short, gain the author-ity simply to use the individual as an instrument to its own presumptively higher ends.34

Next, Aristotle’s teleology grounds his own conception of the state, but it need not ground a contemporary political theory based on the idea of constitutive political capacities. It is certainly the case, from a constitutive capacities perspective, that humans require some kind of community if they are to live well. It is further the case that, in a community in which humans cannot freely exercise reason and speech in ways that are poten-tially consequential for decisions related to collective interest, people do




not live as well as they ought. But there is no reason to suppose that these considerations lead inevitably to, much less “aim at,” any determinate kind of political order. I can see no reason why conjoining a naturalistic concep-tion of human capacities to a eudaimonistic conception of ethics requires abandoning a Darwinian, and thus decidedly non-teleological, understand-ing of how we came to be the animals we are. As moderns, we may imagine the exercise of reason and speech in publicly salient ways as taking different forms, and taking place at different levels of political authority (e.g. in a fed-eral system). Modern technology diversifies and expands the possibilities for employing reason and speech in a publicly salient manner. While vari-ous forms of authoritarianism and paternalism will indeed be excluded as candidates for good, or even decent, communities by the Aristotelian politi-cal theory sketched above, the theory accommodates communities that vary widely in terms of scale and institutional arrangements. An Aristotelian theory of politics does not, in brief, condemn us to polis nostalgia.35

The third of the “extra baggage” arguments holds that the human good is unitary and singular: thus, there is a single, complete human good that is the same for each complete human being. The Aristotelian political theory sketched above does hold that without the opportunity freely to exercise reason and speech, a human life cannot be said to go as well as it ought. But that presumption does not entail the further assumption that free exercise of constitutive capacities (even a much more extensive list than that imag-ined here) defines the sum of happiness for any given life. Obviously, a life will not be happy in the absence of basic material conditions (at a mini-mum, adequate food, shelter, health). But moreover, it is plausible to sup-pose that the potential for happiness of each human life can be only partly completed by adequate material conditions plus conditions guaranteeing free exercise of constitutive capacities.

Any complete human life will, I suppose, require, in addition, free choice among a range of voluntary and only partially compossible goods. An indi-vidual’s choice among these voluntary goods may (indeed probably will) include things that would not be regarded by all others as choice-worthy. Thus, the Aristotelian political theory sketched here leaves substantial space for the liberal conviction that people ought to have considerable choice in the ends they pursue, and that there will be very substantial diversity among the life-plans of individuals in a given community. In brief, to say that, as humans, we share a basic interest in the free exercise of our fundamental human capacity to act as citizens, does not imply that we share all (or even most) of our interests with our fellow citizens.




Finally, Aristotelian theory need not be committed to a Rawlsian exclusion of comprehensive doctrines (i.e. conceptions of the good) from the domain of public (as opposed to private) reason. Aristotle supposed, reasonably enough, that humans do use reason and communication in deliberating about conceptions of good and evil, as well as about justice and interest.36 But even staunchly Rawlsian liberals may reject John Rawls’37 comprehensive exclusion of comprehensive doctrines from the realm of legitimate public deliberation.38 So an Aristotelian theory of democracy may certainly allow public deliberation about the good, and may do so (being Aristotelian, rather than Aristotle’s own) without assuming that deliberations will (or even should) settle on a singular and unitary conception of the good.

I have suggested that, once it is freed from both the pernicious “useless” arguments and the burdensome “extra baggage” arguments, Aristotle’s con-ception of humans as animals with distinctive capacities—the free exercise of which both promotes our own well-being and (at least potentially) makes our communities better—emerges as a potential foundation for develop-ing a contemporary political theory of collective self-governance. Deciding whether that potential can be realized, in whole or in part, and how attrac-tive the resulting theory will be compared to rival theories, requires more detailed argumentation than I can offer here. I hope, however, to have shown that such an effort would not be inherently quixotic.

Josiah Ober is the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford and specializes in the areas of ancient and mod-ern political t heory and historical institutionalism. He has a secondary appointment in the Department of Classics and a courtesy appointment in Philosophy. His most recent book, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in C lassical A thens, was published by Princeton University Press in 2008. His ongoing work focuses on the theory and practice of democracy and the p olitics of knowledge and innovation. Recent articles and working papers seek to explain economic growth in the ancient Greek world, the relationship between democracy and dignity, and the aggregation of expertise including, “D emocracy’s Dignity” (2012) and “Democracy’s Wisdom: an Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgment” (2013).

NoTes1. Aristotle, Politics.1.38–8.2. Politics, 1.13.




3. Politics, 1.11.4. Politics, 8.6.5. I suppose that Aristotle’s claims in each case were sincere (rather than

ambiguous or critical, per Gerald M. Mara, “The Near Made Far Away: The Role of Cultural Criticism in Aristotle’s Political Theory,” Political Theory 23.2 (1995):280–303.), although the issue is not central for me insofar as I argue only that certain parts of Aristotle’s political thought, rather than Aristotle’s thought taken as a whole, may be relevant to contemporary theory. By “useless” I mean “useless for us, for the purposes of contemporary political theory,” not “without any conceivable use for anyone, ever.” Obviously, Aristotle did put these claims to use.

6. Politics, 1.2.7. David Depew, “Humans and Other Political Animals in Aristotle’s History of

Animals,” Phronesis 40 (1995):156–81.8. Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2010).9. I recognize that I am over-simplifying the behavior of non-human social

animals; e.g. some orangutans (unknown, as were chimpanzees, to Aristotle) do live socially (Jeffrey H. Schwartz, The Red Ape: Orangutans and Human Origins (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2005).), and individual bees do sometimes break the “rules” (and may be punished by their hive-mates for so doing). But the general point about how human behavior is relevantly like and unlike that of other social animals remains valid. My argument is not meant to contribute to evolutionary or socio-biological approaches to politics (e.g. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis. A Cooperative Species. Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).); that is to say: the degree to which cooperative behavior is or is not motivated by shared genes is not specifically relevant to the argument.

10. Oswyn Murray, “Polis and Politeia in Aristotle,” in The Ancient Greek City-State, ed. Mogens Herman Hansen (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1993).

11. Politics, 2.2–5.12. Politics, 1.1; 3.1.13. Politics, 1.2.14. Josiah Ober, “Democracy’s Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for C ollective

Judgment,” American Political Science Review 107.1(2013):104–22.15. Politics, 1.2.16. Nicomachean Ethics, bk 10.17. Politics, 7.4; 7.8.18. Politics, 1.2; 3.6; 3.9.19. Politics, 7.2.20. Along with: Fred Dycus Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics

(Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1995).21. Politics, 7.4.22. Josiah Ober, “Aristotle’s Natural Democracy,” in Aristotle’s Politics: Critical

Essays, ed. Richard Kraut, and S. Skultety. Lanham,( Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005a). and Josiah Ober, “Natural Capacities and Democracy as a Good-in-Itself,” Philosophical Studies 132 (2007):59–73.

23. Josiah Ober, “Democracy’s Dignity,” American Political Science Review 106.4 (2012):827–46.

24. Ober, 2012.




25. Josiah Ober, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

26. Politics, 1.2.27. Per above, Aristotle was well aware that there were many non-polis communi-

ties; in Aristotle’s naturalized teleology, nature does not always (or even often) get what it seeks.

28. See for example, Richard Kraut, Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).

29. Politics, 7.12 and Nicomachean Ethics, bk 10.30. Politics, bk. 7 and 8.31. Politics, bk. 8.32. In a democracy the citizenry, or its representatives, must decide whether these

criteria have been met. Obviously this leaves room for arbitrary exclusions, but the premise of democracy is that citizens can, under the right conditions, make right (or right enough) decisions about important matters. When that assumption fails, democ-racy is unsustainable.

33. Aristotle, Metaphysics (4.11, 6.8)34. I owe this argument about the ethical non-implications of Aristotelian meta-

physics to an unpublished paper by Huw Duffy (Department of Philosophy, Stanford University) drawing on and revising arguments in Miller 1995.

35. Josiah Ober, Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going on Together (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005b).

36. Politics, 1.2.37. Rawls, John. 1996. Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.38. Jeremy Elkins and Andrew Norris, Truth and Democracy (Democracy, Citizenship,

and Constitutionalism) (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012): ch. 15–17.



Political Animals Revisited. 2013

Documents

Transcript of Political Animals Revisited. 2013