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Aristotles thesis:

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Title: Aristotles thesis:


1
  • Part I
  • Aristotles thesis
  • From this it is clear that that the polis
    exists by nature and that the human being is by
    nature a political animal. 1252b32
  • o anthropos phusei politikon zoon.
  • Now, that man is more of a political animal than
    bees or any other gregarious animal is evident.
    1253a10

2
  • 1. Zoon
  • ???? transliterated as zoon includes all
    living beings, men, animals and Gods.
  • zoon/zoe is not pejorative.
  • It means ensouled being or living being in a
    wide and non-pejorative sense, which excludes
    only plants, but includes animals and Gods.
    (Animal by contrast, in the Roman and Christian
    traditions is pejorative.)

3
  • Hans Jonas puts it
  • ???? does not mean animal ( bestia), but
    every ensouled ( living) being, excluding plants
    but including demons, Gods, ensouled stars,
    indeed the ensouled universe as the greatest and
    most perfect living being itself. (Hans Jonas,
    Zwischen Nichts und Ewigkeit. Zur Lehre vom
    Menachen cited in Günther Bien, Die Grundlegung
    der Politischen Philosophie bei Aristoteles,
    Freiburg, Karl Alber, 1973, p. 123.)

4
  • Zoon mans natural existence, or the social
    existence of the polis existence by nature
    where this expression does not refer to (but
    specifically) excludes the teleological meaning
    of nature.
  • The instinctual basis of the polis desire for
    companionship.
  • The metaphysical/reproductive basis of the polis.
  • The drive for self-preservation.
  • The economic and material basis of the polis.

5
  • Martin Heidegger interprets the phrase
    politikon zoon as a reference to mans animal
    existence.
  • Martin Heidegger, On Humanism, 1949, p13
  • We must be clear that human beings in the final
    analysis are enclosed in the sphere of animal
    being (animalitas), even if he is not equated
    with beasts, but is given a specific difference.
    In principle one must always think of the homo
    animalisthis positioning is a kind of
    metaphysics.
  • So Heidegger thinks that mans status as a zoon,
    marks him out as an animal.

6
  • Politikon
  • It is commonly claimed that Aristotle define the
    human beings as a Zoon Politikon.
  • A. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality vol.
    III, p. 188
  • Ever since Aristotle defined man as a
    political animal modern man is an animal
    whose politics calls his existence as a living
    being into question.
  • B. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer p. 2
  • It is true that in a famous passage Aristotle
    defines man as a politikon zoon (Politics 1253a4)

7
  • C. Hannah Arendt
  • Aristotles definition of man as a zoon
    politikon was not only unrelated and even opposed
    to the natural association experienced in
    household life it can be fully understood only
    if one adds his second famous definition of man
    as a zoon logon ekhon.
  • Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago,
    1954, p. 27

8
  • Still Arendt implies that Aristotle has several
    definitions of man/human being/ and she is right
    about this.
  • Man is the only animal who can speak.
  • Man is the only animal who can deliberate and
    decide.
  • Man is the only animal who can act.
  • Man is the only animal who can count.
  • Man is the only animal who can remember.
  • Man is the only animal who can do science.
  • These are much better candidate definitions of
    man.

9
  • For in his biological writings, Aristotle allows
    that there are several different kinds of
    political animal.
  • In History of the Animals he distinguishes
    between gregarious animals ton angelaion and
    solitary animals ton monadikon. Some gregarious
    animals are political animals
  • Animals that live politically are those that
    have any kind of activity in common, which is not
    true of all gregarious animals. Of this sort are
    man, bee, wasp and crane. Aristotle, (HA 1.1.
    487 b33ff)

10
  • Political is a biological attribute and
    differentium of a small sub-class of gregarious
    animals, including human beings but not limited
    to them.
  • Look again at Aristotles supposed definition
    of man in Book I of The Politics
  • It is clear that man is a political animal more
    than any bee or any gregarious animal. Aristotle,
    (Politics, 1253a7)
  • This cannot be a definition because it does not
    distinguish man from other animals, and therefore
    does not define the human being

11
  • The specific difference that determines the
    genus of political animalsis that human beings
    have logos man is the only animal who has
    speech/reason logon de monon anthropos ekhei
    ton zoon (1253a9).
  • Through reason he works out his advantage, and
    what is just/unjust and good/evil.
  • The shared collective endeavour that marks human
    beings out as political animals is organized on
    the basis of the reason for the end of
    justice.This is peculiar to humans, and makes
    them the most political among animals.
  • For, the virtue of justice dikaiosune is what
    is political, and justice dike is the basis on
    which the political association is ordered, and
    the virtue of justice is a judgement about what
    is just. (1253a33-5)

12
  • Part II Aristotles Critique of Platos Republic
  • Republic Book IV 420c
  • Suppose while we were painting statues some one
    should approach us and find fault with us for not
    applying the most beautiful colors to the most
    beautiful parts of the body, because the eyes,
    which possess the highest beauty, were not
    painted in purple but in black, I think we should
    make a reasonable reply to him by saying, My good
    sir, do not imagine that we must make the eyes so
    beautiful that they would not appear to be eyes,
    or that we should do the like to the other parts
    but observe whether by giving to the several
    parts what rightly belongs to them we make the
    whole beautiful. Therefore do not now compel us
    to bestow upon our guardians happiness of such a
    kind as shall make them anything but guardians.

13
  • Plato Statesman 259b-c
  • Str. And the householder and master are the
    same?
  • Soc. Of course.
  • Str. Again, a large household may be compared
    to a small state-will they differ at all, as
    far as government is concerned?
  • Soc. They will not.

14
  • Republic book V 462
  • Or that again which most nearly approaches to the
    condition of the individual as in the body,
    when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the whole
    frame, drawn towards the soul as a center and
    forming one kingdom under the ruling power
    therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all
    together with the part affected
  • Very true, he replied and I agree with you that
    in the best-ordered State there is the nearest
    approach to this common feeling which you
    describe.
  • Shall they be a family in name only or shall
    they in all their actions be true to the name?
    For example, in the use of the word "father,"
    would the care of a father be implied and the
    filial reverence and duty and obedience to him
    which the law commands

15
  • Then in our city the language of harmony and
    concord will be more often beard than in any
    other.
  • Is this the attempt to make the class of
    guardians into one big family trying to
    transform the fellow felling between the members
    of a meritocratic elite into thick relations of
    affection and kinship.
  • Well known device for strengthening political
    unity. Arranged marriages.

16
  • Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you
    are brothers, yet God has framed you differently.
    Some of you have the power of command, and in the
    composition of these he has mingled gold,
    wherefore also they have the greatest honour
    others he has made of silver, to be auxillaries
    others again who are to be husbandmen and
    craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron and
    the species will generally be preserved in the
    children. But as all are of the same original
    stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a
    silver son, or a silver parent a golden son.
  • the fostering of such a belief will make them
    care more for the city and for one another.
  • Just so, he said. Republic III 415b-d

17
  • This has been taken to imply a very illiberal
    view of citizenship, and even implicit
    totalitarianism.
  • Further, the polis is by nature clearly prior
    to the family and to the individual, since the
    whole is of necessity prior to the part for
    example if the whole body be destroyed, there
    will be no foot or hand, except homonymously, as
    we might speak of a stone hand for when
    destroyed the hand will be no better than that.
    But things are defined by their function and
    power and we ought not to say that they are the
    same when they no longer have their proper
    quality, but only that they are homonymous. The
    proof that the state is a creation of nature and
    prior to the individual is that the individuaol,
    when isolated, is not self-sufficing and
    therefore he is like a part in relation to the
    whole. But he who is unable to live in society,
    or who has no need because he is sufficient for
    himself, must be either a beast or a God, he is
    no part of the polis. (1253a19)
  • the whole is naturally superior to the part.
    1288a25.

18
  • For these reasons Plato has been called a
    totalitarian, famously by Karl Popper in The Open
    Society and Its Enemies, 1945
  • "The identification of the fate of the state
    with that of the ruling class the exclusive
    interest in this class, and in its unity and
    subservient to this unity, the rigid rules for
    breeding and educating this class, and the strict
    supervision and collectivization of the interests
    of its members." OS

19
  • What is meant by totalitarian
  • Those regimes in which the political power is
    concentrated in one bloc, and the ruled have no
    alternative.
  • Those regimes that exercise propagandistic
    control over the values and interests of the
    ruled.
  • Any regime that has an extensive or almost total
    reach over individual live, that regulate every
    area of individual conduct.
  • Any régime that governs by systematic deception.

20
  • Part III Aristotles Critique of Plato.
  • (There is no form of the good, there are only
    various things that are good.)
  • Communism is unworkable and undesirable.
  • Note Aristotles alternative (1263b1).
  • The idea of a community of women is
    impracticable, against nature, and a misguided
    attempt at forging social soldarity/unity.
  • 2.1.It is a unity of the wrong kind because the
    state is not a family write large. (1252a8-16
    1261a1)
  • 2.2 The polis is not an individual a person
    writ large.

21
  • Plato/Socrates claims that it is best for the
    whole polis to be as unified as possible. Is it
    not obvious that a polis may at length attain
    such a degree of unity as to be no longer a
    polis? sine the nature of a polis is to be a
    plurality/multitide, and in tending to greater
    unity, from being a polis, it becomes a family,
    and from the family and individualSo that we
    ought not to attain this greatest unity even if
    we could because it would be the destruction of
    the polis. (1261a16-25 1263b31-35)

22
  • 3. Plato deprives the guardians of happiness.
  • But the whole cannot be happy unless most, or
    all, or some of its parts enjoy happiness. In
    this respect happiness is not like the even
    number principle in numbers, which may exist only
    in the whole, and not in either of the parts.
    (1264b19)

23
  • Part IV Aristotles totalitarianism?
  • Jonathan Barnes, Richard Mulgan, David Keyt,
    C.C. Taylor, Giorgio Agamben among other have all
    implied that Aristotles also has totalitarian
    tendencies.
  • Evidence
  • the city is prior by nature to the household
    and to each of us, since it is necessary for the
    whole to be prior to the part,,,So that the city
    both exists by nature and is prior to each
    individual is clear. (1253a-19)
  • One ought not even to consider that anyone of
    the citizens belongs to himself, for they all
    belong to the polis and are each of them a part
    of the polis1337a27-30.

24
  • Aristotle recommends that the statesman legislate
    on questions like
  • The health and physical fitness of its citizens.
  • Who may marry?
  • The age at which men should cease siring
    children?
  • The behaviour and manners of its womenfolk.
  • Punishments for adultery
  • What should be done to deformed or weakly
    children they should be exposed, hardened.
  • Book VII and VIII
  • Is this totalitarian?

25
  • But there was no private realm/private life in
    ancient Greece.
  • The polis was a small a face to face, society,
    Mediterranean society, and almost every aspect of
    life was open to public scrutiny and government
    regulation
  • M.I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, p.
    82.
  • All private actions were submitted to a severe
    surveillance. No importance was given to
    individual independence neither in relation to
    opinions, nor to labour, nor, above all to
    religion.Among the Spartans, Therpandrus could
    not string his lyre without causing offence to
    the ephors. In the most domestic of relations the
    public authority again and again intervened. The
    young Lacadaimonian could hardly visit his new
    bride freely The laws regulated customs, and as
    customs touch on everything, there was hardly
    anything that the laws did not regulate.
  • Constant, The Liberty of the ancients compared
    with that of the moderns in Constant Political
    Writings, p.311.

26
  • What is meant by totalitarian
  • Those regimes in which the political power is
    concentrated in one bloc, and the ruled have no
    alternative.
  • Those regimes that exercise propagandistic
    control over the values and interests of the
    ruled.
  • Any regime that has an extensive or almost total
    reach over individual live, that regulate every
    area of individual conduct.
  • Any régime that governs by systematic deception.

27
  • Calvert, B. 'Plato and the Equality of Women',
    Phoenix xxix (1975) 231243
  • Saxonhouse, A.W. 'The Philosopher and the Female
    in the Political Thought of Plato', Political
    Theory iv (1976) 195212, reprinted in (8) 95113
  • Annas, J.E. 'Plato's Republic and Feminism',
    Philosophy li (1976) 30721, reprinted in (33)
    26579
  • Lesser, H. 'Plato's Feminism', Philosophy liv
    (1979) 11317
  • Vlastos, G. 'Was Plato a Feminist?', Times
    Literary Supplement 4485 (17 March 1989) 276,
    2889, reprinted in (34) ii 13343 and in (8)
    11528
  • Cohen, D. 'The Social Context of Adultery at
    Athens', in P. Cartledge, P. Millett S. Todd,
    ed. Nomos essays in Athenian law, politics and
    society (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
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