Ancient philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 1 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) 107

ARISTOTLE TO AUGUSTINE of property should be shared, but its ownership should be private That way owners can take pride in their possessions and get pleasure out of sharing them with others or giving them away Aristotle defends the traditional family against the proposal that women should be held in common, and he frowns even on the limited military and oYcial role assigned to women in the Laws Over and over again he describes Plato’s proposals as impractical; the root of his error, he thinks, is that he tries to make the state too uniform The diversity of diVerent kinds of citizen is essential, and life in a city should not be like life in a barracks (2 1261a10–31) However, when Aristotle presents his own account of political constitutions he makes copious use of Platonic suggestions There remains a constant diVerence between the two writers, namely that Aristotle makes frequent reference to concrete examples to illustrate his theoretical points But the conceptual structure is often very similar The following passage from book 3, for instance, echoes the later books of the Republic The government, that is to say the supreme authority in a state, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many The rightful true forms of government, therefore, are ones where the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; governments that rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or the few, or the many, are perversions Those who belong to a state, if they are truly to be called citizens, must share in its beneWts Government by a single person, if it aims at the common interest, we are accustomed to call ‘monarchy’; similar government by a minority we call ‘aristocracy’, either because the rulers are the best men, or because it aims at the best interests of the state and the community When it is the majority that governs in the common interest we call it a ‘polity’, using a word which is also a generic term for a constitution Of each of these forms of government there exists a perversion The perversion of monarchy is tyranny; that of aristocracy is oligarchy; that of polity is democracy For tyranny is a monarchy exercised solely for the beneWt of the monarch, oligarchy has in view only the interests of the wealthy, and democracy the interests only of the poorer classes None of these aims at the common good of all (3 1279a26–b10) Aristotle goes on to a detailed evaluation of constitutions of these various forms He does so on the basis of his view of the essence of the state A state, he tells us, is a society of humans sharing in a common perception of what is good and evil, just and unjust; its purpose is to provide a good and happy life for its citizens If a community contains an individual or family of 84