Aristóteles e a política de Atenas bbb

Aristóteles e a política de Atenas bbb https://www.academia.edu/2108440/Aristotles_response_to_fourth_century_athenian_society?email_work_card=thumbnail C HAPTER O NE A RISTOTLE ' S RESPONSE TO FOURTH - CENTURY A THENIAN SOCIETY M ARÍA J OSÉ M ARTÍN V ELASCO I. Introduction In the fourth century B.C. the democratic political system of Athens—then atits most developed—went through a crisis: its focus on the "polis" no longer fittedthe new circumstances of the individual. New and more realistic projects, foretell-ing different social and cultural horizons began to appear. Athenian citizens de-veloped a more critical attitude towards the democratic assumptions of the preced-ing period. They began to value other non-strictly democratic forms of govern-ment. And in the case of philosophers, they proposed theoretically perfect yet uto- pian political structures. The lack of interest in actual political life, compared to thecharacteristic activism of the previous century, is reflected at several levels.To begin with, New Comedy confronts the social criticism of Aristophanes with plots focusing on the private life of citizens. A second aspect is the gradual accept-ance of universality, of equality between all men, and the elimination of differences between Greeks and barbarians, which culminates in the policies of Alexander theGreat. A third element can be found in Demosthenes' continuous complaints aboutthe indolence of citizens and their abandonment of duties. Another example is thegeneralisation of what we could call the contemplative life, reflected in the politic-al views of Plato and Aristotle, which are more theoretical than practical. And fi-nally there is the fact that the democratic constitution acquires greater complexity,leading to the demise of the archetype of the personal, political citizen and to the progressive evolution of what we now refer to as the professional politician.Like Plato, Aristotle establishes a link between two alarming phenomena of histime: the instability of Greek political life and moral anarchy. Both philosophersconclude that the latter is the cause of the former and, consequently, they consider that the remedy is to teach people how to live better lives.According to Aristotle, the plenitude of morality is born from the state. It isthere, in the community, living side by side with their fellow-citizens, that men ful-fil themselves perfectly and completely, and it is there, in this social arena, where 2Chapter One their well-being can be fully achieved. 1 He proposes this concept as a solution tothe ideological and moral crisis of his time. I am therefore going to examine his political and moral theory from this point of view. I am going to start with the the-oretical and general proposal that questions the possibility of living together, andwill then analyse the concept of law. I will finish with the influence of education oncitizens.In the political arena Aristotle symbolises the culmination of a doctrine—which begins with Homer and continues with Socrates and Plato—in which politicalthought is linked with moral and educational theories; and being located at the endof an era, his proposals reflect a deeper content at the level of thought and experi-ence. II. Social life Aristotle, who bases all his philosophical theory on experience, states that "ingeneral, to live together and share in any human concern is hard […]." He illus-trates this by a simple example, namely groups of people travelling together. Heremost of them fall to quarrelling, "because in most cases they annoy each other over ordinary, everyday matters" ( Pol . II, 2.3 (1263a)). 2 In spite of being hard, living to-gether is necessary because "the impulse towards this kind of association exists bynature in all men", and "whoever is incapable of associating or has no need to be-cause of self-sufficiency is either a beast or a god" ( Pol . I, 1.12 (1253a)). Therefore"even without needing the mutual help, men tend to living together and they jointogether by participating in the common welfare", because "man is a political an-imal by nature". He also takes into consideration that cooperation is essential to 1 G. Lawrence having asked whether happiness, according to Aristotle, is a theoretical or a practical activity, concludes that: "The happy, or best, human life consists in a full lifetime'sworth of activity in accord with excellence. For this we need all, that is, both, human excel-lences. For it is only then that we will be able to do well that which it is best for us to do,whatever the situation –and thus obtain the best life we humanly could, given our circum-stances. […] The ideal life circumstances for a human are those which allow us, or leave usfree, to contemplate as much as we can, given the inevitable physical, emotional and socialdemands of human nature. For only then can we achieve the absolutely, or unqualifiedly,ideal life—at least so far as a human can." (13), G. Lawrence, "Aristotle and the Ideal Life," The Philosophical Review 102.1 (1993): 1-34. 2 Aristotle's quotations, both in Greek and in English, are all taken from the Perseus Digital Library (www.perseus.tufts.edu). Nicomachean Ethics : J. Bywater, ed., Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea (Oxford, 1894) and H. Rackham, ed. and trans., Aristotle , XIX, Nicomachean Ethics (London, 1934); Rhetoric : W. D. Ross, ed., Aristotle. Ars Rhetorica (Oxford, 1959)and J. H. Freese, ed. and trans., Aristotle , XXII, Rhetoric (Cambridge and London, 1926); Politics : W. D. Ross, ed., Aristotle's Politica (Oxford, 1957) and H. Rackham, ed. and trans., Aristotle , XXI, Politics (London, 1944). Aristotle's response to fourth-century Athenian society3 face adversities and, consequently, the man who has to fight in order to live alonedoes not live peacefully and does not achieve the peace he searches for by nature: "it is absurd to turn a happy man into a lonely man, because nobody, possessingeverything, would prefer living alone, as man is a social being and prepared to livewith others by nature" ( Eth. Nic. IX, 9.3 (1169b)). Men, if they have a tendency towards society by nature, do not reach fulfilmentif they do not live in society. Having grounded men's social characteristics innature, Aristotle then goes a step further. He deduces that an individual is incom- plete without the state, for the individual is linked to the state as he is part of thewhole and the whole is superior to the part by nature. If the relationship betweenthe state and the individual is established because of nature, men will acquire their perfection in their relationship with society, and society will be shaped according tothe characteristics of human nature instead of against them. It is within society thathuman nature is completed.Admitting the possibility and the necessity (φύσει) of communal living meansaccepting the characteristics of a society formed by different individuals: "It is clear that if the process of unification advances beyond a certain point, the citywill not be a city at all, for a state essentially consists of a multitude of persons. Andif unification is carried on beyond a certain point, the city will be reduced to familyand family to individual, for the family is a more complete unity than the city, andthe single person than the family; so that even if any lawgiver were able to unify thestate, he must not do so, for he will destroy it in the process. And not only does acity consist of a multitude of human beings, it consists of human beings differing inkind. A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state" ( Pol . II, 1.4(1261a)). A state without diversity is "a state that will arrive at a point where in a sense itwill not be a state. […] It is as if you were to reduce concord to unison or rhythmto a single beat" ( Pol . II, 2.9 (1263b)). Aristotle always had in mind in his state-ments the criticism of the egalitarianism proposed by Plato—in The Laws and The Republic— as an ideal solution to the political problems. Therefore he insists uponthe acceptance of diversity as a fundamental principle of society.Agreement (ὁμονοητικόν) must be based on an acute sense of the different in-terests of each person, which need to be reconciled in a reasonable manner. 3 And to 3 H. de Mauriac, "Alexander the Great and the politics of "Homonoia"," Journal of the His-tory of Ideas 10.1 (1949): 104-114, considers that the idea of the unity of mankind as the basis of Alexander the Great's way of ruling the empire sprung from the Aristotelian conceptof Homonoia. Before him, the desirability of Homonoia was generally admitted but it wasinterpreted in a negative manner, as the absence of faction fights. Aristotle considers it in a positive sense, as a mental attitude of considering the parts as one.