Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science.
Simpson, Peter
Lord, Carnes, and O'Connor, David K., eds. Essays on the
Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991. vii + 255 pp. $45.00--This book consists of an
introduction by Carnes Lord and nine essays: Stephen Salkever on
Aristotle's social science; Carnes Lord on Aristotle's
anthropology; Abram Shulsky on Aristotle's economics; Josiah Ober
on Aristotle's sociology of class, status, and Order; David
O'Connor on Aristotle's conception of justice; Stephen
Salkever on Plato and Aristotle on women, soldiers, and citizens; Waller
Newell on Aristotle on monarchy; Barry Strauss on Aristotle on Athenian
democracy; and Richard Bodeus on Aristotle on law and regime.
One theme of the book is that Aristotle's political writings
contain ideas that complement, or are superior to, current approaches in
the social sciences. A second theme is that Aristotle's political
writings cannot be taken at face value. These writings are practical
and, according to Aristotle, practical sciences are not meant simply to
increase knowledge but to bring about improvements in how human beings
live. In other words Aristotle wrote to persuade, hence not only will
his arguments tend to be colored by the nature and concerns of his
intended audience (so that knowing the historical context becomes a key
to understanding those arguments), but they may be misleading as to what
he really thought (for to be effective in persuasion he might need to
hide truths too dangerous or disturbing to make explicit). It becomes
necessary to read Aristotle's words with an eye for irony,
indirection, deliberate omission, and the like.
The first of these themes is perhaps best illustrated by giving
concrete examples of where Aristotle is superior or complementary to
contemporary thought. All of the essays do, in some way or another, give
such examples, but those by Ober, O'Connor, and the first one by
Salkever do so most successfully. Ober rightly refutes the idea that
Aristotle's analysis of politics can be viewed as proto-Marxism
(that analysis is far more subtle and realistic); O'Connor rightly
points up the greater richness in Aristotle's analysis of justice
and injustice over modem theories; Salkever rightly stresses that
Aristotle's method offers a third way between that of the modem
empiricist and hermeneutic schools.
The second theme is more problematic because it is based on a
certain inference: Aristotle wrote with a practical intention and
therefore he wrote obliquely, ironically, or the like, and his real
views are not those that appear on the surface. This inference has a
certain attractiveness but it is by no means uncontentious, either as a
thesis about practical writings or as a thesis about what Aristotle
meant by practical writings. But while the essays use the thesis,
sometimes extensively, none of them treats of it directly. The thesis is
least effective in Strauss, who brings it in as a sort of deus ex
machina to excuse Aristotle from bias in his critique of Athenian
democracy. It is more effectively used by Salkever in his second essay
(which discovers an interesting feminist slant in both Plato and
Aristotle), and with some, though lesser, effectiveness by Shulsky,
Newell, and Boddus (several of whose points are, I think, just
misunderstandings of Aristotle's argument). Its use in Lord's
essay is most noteworthy for there it justifies--in the discussion of
the naturalness of the city--leaving behind the famous Politics 1.2 and
concentrating instead on scattered hints about thumos and on the
writings of Plato and Polybius. The strangeness of this will strike any
reader, and though Lord reaches some intriguing conclusions as a result,
his procedure really needs more sustained defense than it gets.
Nevertheless, this is a valuable collection. The essays do
constitute an important addition to the growing literature on
Aristotle's political thought and moreover illustrate an approach
to that thought that needs to be taken seriously.
