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Whose Prayer? The Best Regime of Book 7 and the Lessons of Aristotle's "Politics"Author(s): Stephen SalkeverSource: Political Theory, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 2007), pp. 29-46Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452524 .

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buy20729-46

C)200 ag.Pubiations

1 .1 17095I6261 3

Whose

Prayer?

httpFB/00x6gp61o

a gt sted

at

The Best Regime of Book

7

and

http:H/dninesgepub.com

the essons

ofAristotle's olitics

Stephen

Salkever

BrynMawr College, Pennsylvania

Most modem readers fAristotle'sPolitics assume that he

regime

according

to

prayer kat'euchen)

inBook 7 is the ulmination f thework as a

whole,

a

utopia designed

to

guide political

reform.

say

no. This

polis

is not an ideal to

be

applied

to

practice,

ut one

aspiration mong

several tobe

seriously

xam

ined and consultedby political people

as

they

eliberate boutwhat to

do

in

particular

ituations. he

prayerpresented

n

chapters

-12

is notmeant

to

be

understood s Aristotle's own,

but

as

coming

from ne

imagined

oice among

the everal

presented

n

the icomachean Ethics and Politics.Would Aristotle

pray for his egime? o. It is instead he rayer f a realman (an aner) fully

committed opolitical life, omeonewho, unlikeAristotle, an imaginenoth

ing

more beautiful han beautiful

olis.

Aristotle's

subtlety erehas important

implications or nderstanding

he

hilosophy/politics

elationship.

Keywords:

Aristotle; political philosophy; theory nd practice; utopia

Sometimes, focusing

on a

discrete

interpretive uzzle

in a

philosophical

text

can

lead to

insights

about

theoretical issues thatgo well beyond the

possible meanings

of the text

in

question.

This is the

case with Aristotle's

discussion of thebest regime inBook 7 of thePolitics. By working through

the

details

of Book

7,

I

hope

to

bring

to

light

a

conception

of thework of

political

theorists that is

distinctly

at odds with the

widespread view

that

our

aim should be to formulate models or

sets

of

principles

that can be

adopted

and

applied by

citizens-or

to

show thatvarious

proposed models

and

principles

are

inadequate

to serve that function. The work-defining

norm in

Aristotle's

text is

opposed

to this

conception

of the theorist as

Author's Note:

A

version

of

this essay

was

presented

at

the

annual

meeting

of

theNew

England

Political

Science Association

in

April

2005.

For

insightful

comments and

criticisms

I

thank

Delba

Winthrop,

David

Roochnik,

Jean

Yarborough,

Mary

Dietz,

and two

anonymous

reviewers

for olitical

heory.

29







30 Political

heory

hypothetical

legislator,

and

he, like Plato, seems

determined tomake itdif

ficult for his readers to

appropriate his work

as a

direct guide to

changing

or

maintaining

the

world.

But

Aristotle's attitude toward the role of philos

ophy

in

political

life is not

merely negative. Book

7,

I will

argue, suggests

a different

positive role

for

philosophy or

theory,

less

direct but perhaps in

the end more

significant:

to

call

attention to the limits

of contemporary

political understanding, and

to

bring

out

questions and problems that the

contemporary

understanding

tends to

overlook,

to

its detriment.

Interpretingolitics

7

Book

7

of thePolitics poses several

important-and usually overlooked

problems

for the

reader.

Book 7

is

generally

taken to be the

culmination of

Aristotle's political theory,

n

which he presents

(primarily

in

chapters 4-12)

his

view

of the

simply

best

regime, the regime he describes

as

according

to

prayer (kat'euchen),

the

true

aristocracy

we

would

pray

for

if

we

could

con

trol all the factors that

go

into

making

a

political

community,

such

as

the

number of citizens and the extent of territory. ome readers, likeRichard

Kraut,

see

theBook 7 sketch

of this

city

in

speech

as a model to

guide polit

ical

choice,

and as such the central

message

of the

Politics. The

only

thing

that

puzzles

Kraut about Book 7 is that

ristotle

should

put

itoff for so

long:

For

there s

something nsatisfactory

bout

Aristotle's postponement f his

discussion

of the deal

city

to the

nd

of

his treatise: e asks his audience

to

wait

a

long timebefore

he comes

to

thedestination forwhich he

has been

preparing

hem. t is

in

ooks 7 and 8 that

e

find ristotle's fullest nd

most

detailed

account

of how

a

city

is best

organized.'

Most

readers,

like

Kraut,

understand Aristotle's

regime

according

to

prayer

as the culmination

of the entire

work,

meant to serve as an ideal

guide

to

practical political

reform,

ven

if

not to

such reform as can

be undertaken

in the immediate future.

Jill

Frank,

for

example,

argues

that the best

regime

of Books 7-8 indicates the outlines of

a

regime

that

exists

in

the

present

as

one

potential

telos

among several,

a

possible

future,

ut one that an be actu

alized

only

after

Athens,

or some

other

existing regime,

has

managed

to

establish

the kind of

political friendship

that

Aristotle

sees as

thework of

a

polity,

the cross between

democracy

and

oligarchy

that

approximates

true

aristocracy.The best possible development would thusbe in two stages: from

Athens

as

it is

to

polity,

and then from

polity

to

what Frank calls the

city

of







Salkever

/Whose Prayer?

31

prayer envisaged

inBook 7.

Josiah

Ober

sees

in the

institutions

f this

city

a blueprint

for a

quite

different nd

much less attractive

future,

n

imperialist

conquest

of

Asia,

to

be

led in the

not too distant future

y

Alexander,

for

the

sake of establishing

a

true

aristocracy

of Greek

philosopher-politicians

sup

ported

by

Asian

slave

labor.2

But there are reasons

to

doubt

that

treating

the

kat'euche^n regime

as

a

choice-guiding

model

is

consistent with

Aristotle's

political

science

(poli

tike)

or

philosophy

as a

whole,

as

presented

in the

Nicomachean

Ethics

(hereafter,NE)

and the

Politics.

His use

of the designation regime

accord

ing to prayer connects Aristotle's Book 7 regime to thekat'euche^n regimes

he criticizes

inBook 2, those

of

Plato3

in theRepublic

and theLaws, as well

as

the solutions

to

the

political problem

offered by

Phaleas and

Hippodamus and those

which

are

suggested

by Sparta, Crete, and Carthage.

The Book

2 discussion

of

these

regimes

is

severely critical, arguing

in each

case that the

idealizing

theorists

or the intellectual

partisans

of

actually

existing

cities like Sparta misleadingly

believe that there

are

simple

solu

tions

to

the

problems

of

politics.

Aristotle

shows,

in

effect,

that these

theorists and partisans

have

missed the

point

that

he

opens

in Book

1,

chapter 2, and lays out explicitly inBook 3, chapter 12: thatpolitical ques

tions

always require

a

balancing of diverse and

sometimes incompatible

goods,

a

balancing

thatcan be

accomplished only

in context and not by the

unmediated application

of universalizing theory.

Aristotle's evident

opposition

to

utopian solutions,

along

with his

per

sistent stress on the

need for contextual

judgment

in both theNE and

the

Politics, has led

a few readers to reject

the notion that ristotle intends

the

best

regime

of

Book 7 to serve

as

any

sort of a model for

political

praxis.

Mary Nichols

is one:

If thebest regimeservesas amodel for thercities, it isnot as the ideal of

which they

fall short nd which they hould

striveto emulate. It is a

model

only

because

it reveals the imits

f

politics....

The conditionsnecessary for

political

rule

make its full

flourishing

mpossible.4

My

own

position

on

how

to

read Book

7

is closer

to

that f Nichols than that

of

Kraut

or

Ober

or

Frank.While

I

acknowledge

at

the

outset

that ristotle's

text an

support

more

thanone

reading,

I

will argue that

the

kat'euche^n polis

is

not intended as a

model

or

ideal

to be

followed, but

as

one

aspiration

among

several to be

seriously

examined and

consulted by political people

as

they

deliberate

concerning

what must be

done in

particular

situations.

My







32

Political Theory

argument is that

the prayer

presented in

chapters 4-12

should not be read

as

Aristotle's

own, but as one

imagined

voice among the

several presented

by

his political

philosophizing

in theNE and

the Politics,

which two

volumes

must

be taken

together as a set of

lectures on

politike^

addressed

to future

politicians.

The

likely

agent of

this

prayer

is a man

(that is, in

Aristotle's

Greek,

an

aner,

a

male-or, better,

a

real

man -rather

than an

anthr6pos,

a

human

being)

fully

ommitted

to the

political life,

someone forwhom

noth

ing more

beautiful can be

imagined than

a beautiful

polis. Such a

person

understands

human virtue

quite

differently

from

Aristotle, who,

like

Plato, is

consistently and explicitly critical ofwhat he sees as thepowerful and mis

guided Greek

tendency to

equate virility or

manliness and

virtue.5 If there

is

a

politeia

in

Book 7 that

ristotle

himself

would

pray for,

t ismore

likely

to

be the

clearly

fictional

isolated

polis-hardly

more

than a

fully

actualized

philosopher

(or Aristotelian

god) disguised

as a

hypothetical

city-briefly

mentioned

in

7.2,

1324b41-1325a5:

But even

by itself a

single polis, one

governed

nobly, could flourish

by

itself-if indeed it

s

possible

for

polis

using

serious

laws tobe

managed

on

its wn

somewhere-and the

rdering

f its

regimewould not

be toward ar

or dominating ver enemies, given its ssumed isolation.

Such a

regime

would indeed be

active,

but all its

activity

would be

directed

toward itself: it

is not

necessary

that

those cities be

inactive that

re

situated

apart

by

themselves

and

choose

upon reflection o live that

way.

For

action

can

also take

place

among

the

arts....

Otherwise,

the

god

and the ntire

niverse could

hardly

be in

a

noble

condition,

ince

they

ave

no

external ctions

beyond

those that

are

proper

to

themselves.

7.3,

1325b23-30)6

This

autotelic

polis,

barely

hinted

at as a

possibility

in

7.2

and

7.3,

is

quite

different

from

the

city

attuned

towar

and

commerce

that

ristotle

turns

to as

the

kat'euche^n best

polis

in

his

discussion

that

runs

from7.4

through

7.12.

My startingpoint

for

discussing

Book

7

in terms

of

these

two

voices

is

the belief

that the

overall

purpose

of

Aristotle's

political

thought

is

not to

develop

and

defend a

single

coherent

model

to serve as

the

one

best

guide

to

political

action and

choice,

but instead

to

describe and

criticize, using

the

evaluative

perspective supplied

by

his

theoretical

understanding

of

nature

and

human nature, a series of plausible horizons or opinions about politics

and the best human

life.7

What

Aristotle's

theory

brings

to

politics

is

not a

new

model,

but a

teleological

theory

of the

human

good,

one

that is both









34 Political heory

This

double motion, a reconciliation

of

the quarrel between politics and

philosophy largely

on

philosophy's terms, is produced by the implicit dia

logue between

the

prayer of the noble citizen

in

chapters 4-12 and the quite

different

voice

of

the theorist

examining

the

relationship between political

life and

human

virtue(s)

in

chapters 1-3 and 13-15.

One

convenient

way

to see

the

difference between these

two voices or

perspectives

on

politics

is

to

examine three

apparently anomalous features

of

the

kat'euchen

polis

of

chapters 4-12,

ones

that

seem to

clash with

the

understanding

of the theoristwho

speaks

to

us in

the

rest

of the

text: the

unremarked presence of

apparently unjust slavery,

the

preeminence of

andreia

(courage

or

manliness)

among

the

virtues,

and

the

place

accorded

to

conventional Greek

religion (and

the concomitant absence

of

genuine

theoria

or

philosophy)

in the

city

of

prayer.

How

Aristotelian

Is the

City of Prayer?

Unjust Slavery

The citizens

of the best

regime

need

leisure,

and

therefore

they

need

slavery-wage

labor is

not a

viable

substitute

(nor

is

living

off

the

land).

Aristotle's

implication,

I

think,

s that there is no

alternative

to

some

form

of

slavery

if

we are to secure

for the citizens of this

regime

both

the

material

goods they

need

to

live and

the leisure

time

they

need to live well. This

by

itself s

perfectly

consistentwith Aristotle's more extensive discussion

of

slav

ery

in

1.3-7.

In

obvious and

striking

ontrast

with

what

he

says

about

thebest

democracy

in

6.4,

Aristotle

says (in 7.9)

that

farming

n the

kat'euchen regime

must

be done

by slaves, presumably

to

provide

more

leisure for thewould-be

fullycommitted citizens whose prayer thisregime expresses than is available

to

the farmers f

Book

6,

who

care

about

politics

and who

participate

in

elect

ing

and

auditing

officeholders

and

in

serving

on

juries (1318b;

it

goes without

saying

that

they

would also become

soldiers

when

needed),

none

of

which

are

negligible

or

passive duties,

butwho

are

unwilling,

as

well

as

unable,

to

devote

their lives

to

the

polis

rather

than

to

their farms and families.

A

working

farmer's

life

would leave citizens

too

little eisure for the

practices

of human

excellence,

and

wage

labor

makes forbad

citizenship,

as

the

personal depen

dence of laborer

on

employer opens

the

way

to

corruption and, perhaps,

leads

citizens

to

exaggerate

the

(nonetheless

very

real) importance

of

money

to a

good lifeand a well-organized polis. So what is left is slavery, and slavery

against

nature-Book

1

having

demonstrated that

perfectly

natural

and

just

slavery

would

be

extremely unproductive slavery.

So a

form

of

unnatural and







SalkeverWhose

Prayer?

35

unjust

slavery

must be

adopted-though

the injustice should

be mitigated

as

much

as

possible

by promising

the slaves emancipation

as

a reward

for

good

service (1330a).'1

What

is notable

here is not somuch the likelihood

that

lav

ery

in

thiscity

of prayerwill

be

unjust,

but the

utter absence of any

consider

ation of

its

ustice.

Nothing

is

said

here,

as it is inBook

1,

about

the extent to

which slavery

is

a

good

life

for those

who are slaves

by

nature.

Slavery

is

an

economic

necessity, given

the ancient

alternatives,

but the good

conscience

about unjust

enslavement

exhibited in this polis

seems dictated

not

by

the

unalterable

factsof

life and the

existing technology,

but

by

thenecessities

pre

sent

in the character of thecitizens-by what theyrefuse toconsider as much

as

by what they

need

to

live

well. 2

The

Elevation

of

Manliness

over

Deliberative

Ability

The

same

sort

of

particular

psychological

necessity

that

pushes justice

to

one

side

in the

case

of

the

practice

of

slavery

is also

at

work

in the law

con

cerning

citizenship

in

this

true

ristocracy.

The

kat'euchen

polis

is

compelled

to

assume

(against

reason)

that ll

who

are

as

young

men

capable

of

bearing

arms well will be capable of exercising legal and political judgmentwhen

they

are

older-since

those who

have authority

over ta hopla (heavy

arms)

will

also have authority

over

whether

the regime

will last

or

not (7.9,

1329al

1-12).

There is

no

explanation

of

why

the

possession

of andreia (man

liness) guarantees

the later flowering

of dikaiosune^ (justice)

and epieikeia

(equity

or

decency,

theword

Aristotle most

frequently

uses as a summary

termfor

the

quality

of the

good

human

being).

Those

who bear armsmust

be

guaranteed

an

opportunity

to serve

in

political

office

when

they

are older,

or

else

they

will be a threat

to the

regime.Again,

the necessity operating

here is

local

rather than

universal-a

matter of the

habituated

morality

of

this par

ticular regime (and perhaps of politics everywhere, at least politics as

Aristotle

knows

it)

rather

than natural

inevitability.

The

premise

of this

regime

is that thehighest aspiration

of any real

man

(aner)

is participation

in

ruling,

and the only

reward that

nsures the loyalty

of thosewho bear

arms

is

the

prospect

of

achieving high political

office.Needless

to

say,

this is

not a

conception

of the best

human

life shared

by

the theory presented

in the

chapters

of Book

7 that

surround chapters

4-12. One

central difference

between

the

horizons

of

chapters

1-3

and

chapters

13-15

on

one hand

and

chapters

4-12

on

the other

is that the central

chapters

assert a

parity

between

military and political life (see the end of 7.9, but compare the apparently

lower

rank of

military

prowess

as

compared

with the

ability

to

judge

well in

7.8, 1328b),

a

parity

explicitly

denied

by

the

chapters

thatbracket the

city

according

to

prayer.

In the same

way,

the

bracketing chapters

are

concerned







36 Political Theory

with

thevirtues

of

human

beings

(and the relationship between thegood

male

and thegood

human

being),

and

the central chapters with

the

virtues of

males

(orwith

the

relationship between the good male and the good citizen)

only.'3

Nevertheless, this close

connection

between military

and

political

activ

ity is itself a

central theme

of the Politics from beginning

to

end,

and its

presence

in

the prayer

of the committed citizen comes as no surprise. The

connection between military virtue

(polemike arete) and political virtue

(politike)

or

justice (dikaiosune^)

as ends

in

themselves,

rather than

merely

instrumentalmeans to good politics

(like wealth or free birth), is asserted

at the end of 3.12, 128314-22:

The

dispute necessarily

occurs

in

respect

to

those things

which

constitute

polis [or

fromwhich a

polis

ismade]. It

is

reasonable that hewell-bom

the

free

nd

the

wealthy lay

claim tohonor ...

yet

if these

things

re

needed,

so

also,

it is

clear,

are

[thevirtue]

of

justice

and

military

virtue ... without the

former

arts

there annotbe a

polis,

butwithout the

atter he

polis

cannotbe

finely dministered.'4

Elsewhere in thePolitics, Aristotle

asserts

that there

is

an

intimate

connec

tionbetween hopliteia (the hoplite order) and politeia (the political order),

as

a

matter of both theoretical account

and historical

fact. '

It is

clear,

however,

that

the

wider

perspective

of the

surrounding

chapters

of

Book

7 sees this

intimate

connection

between

hopliteia

and

politeia

as

a

dangerous

and ever

present tendency

in

all those

places

that

take

good

citizenship seriously.

In

chapter 2, Aristotle says

that

the

laws

and customs

(ta nomima)

established among

most

people

are random

heaps,

so

to speak, but

wherever the

nomoi

aim

at

one

single thing,

it is at

domination

(to kratein) (1324b5-7).

He

goes

on to

say

that this

is

equally

trueof Greek poleis, such as Sparta and Crete, and of non-Greek nations

powerful enough forpleonexia, such

as the

Scythians, Persians,

Thracians,

and

Celts.

Politics

from this

perspective loses much of

its

nobility

and

appears

as littlemore

than

the

sublimation

of

private pleonexia.

Similarly,

chapters

14

and 15 leave

no

more doubt than does NE 10 thatwar is sim

ply

an instrumental

means to

peace, and that

the

excellences connected

with

war

are

the least

human

of

the virtues.

Demotic Rather

Than

Philosophical Religion

There is a thirdway the kat'euche?n regime diverges sharply from the

Aristotelian

perspective,

and

this

is in

its

conception

of

the

role of

religion

in







Salkever /

Whose

Prayer?

37

politics.

In

this case,

the tension is

especially clear,

since in

7.3

Aristotle

reminds

us

of his philosophic notion

of the

god

as the

continuously

actual

ized unmoved

mover

thatplays

so

central

a

role

in

his defense

of

the

theoret

ical life

(and

his critique of the

extent to

which the actuality

of

thepolitical

life

is

the

highest

level

of human

energeia)

inNE

10.

But

no

such god appears

in

chapters 4-12,

where we find

instead

a

wholly

conventional

picture

of

Greek piety,

inwhich the

gods

serve to reinforce civic

morality rather than

serving

as

a

way

of

problematizing

that

morality-a narrowly

civil

religion,

presided

over

by the elderly

ex-warriors and

rulers,

rather than

a

religious/philosophical challenge

to

the

idealization

of

existing political life.

By contrast, outside

of

these chapters, Aristotle's attitude toward

con

ventional religion almost always tends

to

deprecation,

even

in

those works

that

are

only glancingly concerned

with first

hilosophy. Piety is conspicu

ous

in

its absence from the

listof

the

moral virtues in

theNE, tragedy is rig

orously desacralized

in the

Poetics,

and

the

anthropomorphic

Greek gods

are

said

to

be mere

self-glorifying

human inventions

in

Politics 1.2 (1252b).

Aristotle lays out his view of the difference between these

two aspects

of

religion,

the part that

leans toward

philosophical insight

and

the

part

that

is

merely amyth useful for tyingcitizens to theregime, inMetaphysics 12.8,

1074a38-bl4:

There is a

tradition

anded

down from the

distant

past

to

latergenerations,

that hese

stars re

gods

and

that

he

whole

of

nature

s

divine.

The rest f the

tradition s

a

mythical accretion,

dded

to

persuade

the

many

and

to

use

in

upholdingwhat

is lawful and

advantageous;

for thosewho handed it

down

say that he

gods

have human

form

r

are

similar

to

other

nimals,

and

they

add other features

ollowing

from hese nd similar

to

them. ut

ifwe

sepa

rate

the first oint-that they thought

he

primary

ubstances

were

gods

from these accretions, and consider

it

alone, we

will

regard

it

as a

divine

insight,

n

the

ssumption

that

very

craft nd

philosophical

discipline

has

probably oftenbeen

discovered,

as far as people could manage it, and has

often

been forgotten,

nd

that

his

elief

has survived ike remains from

ar

lier

generations

until thepresent.And so

[the

truth

f]

the ancestralbeliefs

coming

from he arliest times s evident

to us

only

to

this

xtent.16

Aristotle's

voice

in

7.3

asserts

the

first

point,

but the city of prayer

coun

tenances

only the

mythical

accretions. One illuminating

contrast

here might

be with Plato's

Laws,

inwhich theAthenian

Stranger

inBook 10 constructs

a veryAristotelian cosmology and theology that seem tobe an attempt to

fashion a more

adequately

philosophical

civil

religion.

No such

attempt

is

made

in

the

Politics,

perhaps

because Aristotle could not

bring

himself to







38 Political heory

believe that

any such

philosophically attractive civil religion could

be

made

acceptable

to

the

men

of

the kat'euche^n regime.

Whatever

the

reason,

no

such

connection

with

philosophy

appears in

chapters 4-12-no

god

of thephilosophers, and

no

special

place

forphiloso

phy

in the

city

of

prayer.

The

only mention

of

philosophy

in his

account of

the

kat'euche^n regime

in

chapters

4-12 is at

the

end

of chapter

1

1,

in

the

dis

cussion of the importance of good military defense:

there

are,

he

says, also

inventions thatdefenders either have made or must look for and use philos

ophy

to

think

out.

For

attackers do

not even

attempt

to

impose

their rule

on

those who are well prepared (1331al4-18).'7 This is reminiscent of

Aristotle's remark

inBook

1

about the

surprising (to

the

uninitiated)

instru

mental utilityof philosophizing

as

a

way

of

acquiring wealth (Thales

showed

he

was nobody's fool, though

a

philosopher, by using his meteorological

skills

to

establish

a

lucrativemonopoly

on

olive presses), something that is

very useful for

all

poleis (1259a).

This is a much

lower, less

constitutive

use

of

philosophy

as a means

to

a

political

end thaneither the

suggestion

inBook 2

that philosophy is

the

only possible

cure for

the

souls

of

potential tyrants

(1267a),

or

the

claim inBook 3

that

olitical philosophizing

is needed

to

help

us understand the sortof equality that is an essential element of all political

community (1282b),

or the use of

music

as

a

philosophical diagoge^

or

pas

time

in

Book

8. Once

again,

comparison

with Plato's

Laws

helps illustrate

the

thinness

of the

kat'euche^n

regime:

there is

no

nocturnal

council

here,

no

institution harged

with

judging according

to nature what

things

come

into

being

in a noble

fashion

and what

things

do not

(Book 12, 966b8).

Administration Rather

Than

Deliberation

One

additional

surprising

feature of the best

polis

of

chapters

4-12

should be mentioned, and that is the strikingabsence of any discussion of

political

life and

political judgment

in

the

kat'euche^n regime.

The

public

life

of the

polis

of

prayer

seems to be much more a matter

of

household

management

or

administration

(dioike^sis, 1331b8-9)

rather

than

political

judgment. 8

There

is nothing

about the

political

institutions

of the

regime

about

how the citizens would

engage

in

making

new

laws and

changing

old

ones,

in

settling lawsuits,

and

in

auditing

the

performance

of

officeholders.

Perhaps

one

of the

built-in

limits

of

the

kat'euche^n

regime

as a model is

that

it

eliminates the

permanent

problems

of

political life,

much

as

Socrates'

cities

in

speech

in

the

Republic

eliminate

the

problem

of

justice by

assum

ing

away

the

tension

between

individual interest

and common

good.'9

This

is

perhaps why Aristotle

ends

his

explicit

treatment f

this

model

regime by







SalkeverWhose

Prayer? 39

cutting off as pointless

any

further

talk about how the offices and public

spaces of this regime

should be

organized:

But it is pointless

to

spend timediscussing

and

giving

detailed accounts of

suchmatters,

for t is

not hard

to

think hem

through:

hat is hard is

to

cre

ate

them. o speak

about them

s

a

work of

prayer,

utwhether

they

ome

about is

a

work of chance.

(1331bl8-22)

When

Aristotle

turns

to the

problems

of education in virtue in the

chapters

that follow, he is no longer speaking from within the horizon of the

kat'euche^n

regime, but from

the

perspective

of

an

outsider, looking

at

politi

cal life

from the vantage point

of his

conception

of human

nature.

Does

this

mean

thatAristotle

is somehow ironic

in calling the regime

of

chapters

4-12 the best regime,

and that

he shows it

to us

only

to

encourage

our

rejection?20

Not

necessarily;

there is a third

interpretive ption.

My conjec

ture s that

ristotle's

wish,

and the

general

lesson his Politics seeks through

out to

convey, is

for

a

polis

whose

citizens

are

capable

of

moving

between the

two

perspectives

and allowing

each

to

interrogate

the other.

How Can Philosophy

nform olitics?

Articulating

uestions the ndoxa

Hide

The Politics

begins

dialectically,

with a

proposition

about a hypothetical

interlocutor,

one whose conception

of

politics

the rest of the work will

address.

That interlocutor asserts

that the essence of

politics

is

the same

as

the essence of

monarchical

rule,

the essence

of

controlling slaves,

and the

essence

of

running

a

household-in

each

case,

what counts

is ruling

rather

thanbeing ruled.The interlocutor is often taken to be Plato, on thebasis of

the resemblance between

this

position

and one asserted

by

the

Eleatic

Stranger

at

the

beginning

of

the

Statesman,

a

proposition

the

Stranger

soon

sees

as

a mistake

on

the veryAristotelian grounds

thatpolitical rule is dif

ferent

from the others

in

that

it

is

rule

over

equals

relative

to

imperfect

but

indispensable

aws.21

The interlocutor s

not

Plato,

however,

but the

endoxa,

Aristotle's

name

for

themost

widespread

and

influential

elements

of

reputable Greek opinion.

Aristotle's response resembles

that

f Plato's

Socrates,

who

in

dialogue after ia

logue

substitutes

caring

for

ruling

as

the chief

political activity.22

he cen

tralrhetorical nd

practical

work

of

the olitics

is to

respond

to thebelief in the

linkbetween

politics

and

power,

as we

might say,by asking

the udience to see







40

Political

Theory

political

activity

in

a new

light,

the

lightprovided

by

the

Aristotelian under

standing f

nature

and

human

nature.His

goal

is

not towin over

Platonists tohis

theoretical ide, but to rebut nd

redirecthis numerous

and not

especially philo

sophical

opponents,

who

by

Book 7 he

identifies s

the

many (hoi

polloi):

'Themany eem

obelieve hat

astery

despotike)s

political ife

politike)

(1324b32-33).

Who are

these

many

who believe

that the central

business

of

politics

should

be

acquiring

and

maintaining power?

Aristotle, like Plato,

frequently

uses

the

many

as a

rhetorical scarecrow to

stand for

people

unlike

us,

people with whom we would not be caught dead agreeing. This is espe

cially effective

rhetorically

when he can

attribute

to this

undesirable

category

many

opinions

that we

presumably

more

refined folk

bring

with

us to the

discussion

of

politics.

A

good

example

of

this

in

theNE

concerns

honor:

in

Book

1,

1095b, the belief

that

honor is the

highest good

is attributed to

the

refined people rather

than

to

the

many,

who

care

only

for

pleasure.

Later

in

the

NE,

however,

Aristotle

defends

pleasure

as an

essential

element of

human

happiness

or

flourishing

(eudaimonia; 7.13),

and

identifies

the

love

of honor

with

the

many (8.8,

1

159a1 1-12);

in

the

Politics,

this

love

of honor

is

iden

tifiedwith thewealthy.What seems at first odistinguish us from them

a

concern

with

honor-turns

out

to be a

problem

we all

share.

The

first

step

in his

task of

distancing politics

from

mastery

in

the

Politics is in the

discussion of

slavery

in

Book

1,

the first

mpirical

topic

he

discusses,

and the first

pplication

of his

conception

of nature to

everyday

life. The conclusion of

this discussion

is not a

thumbs-up

or

thumbs-down

judgment

about

the

ustness

of

slavery,

but

a

statement that

it is

clear from

these

things

that

mastery

and

politics

(despoteia

and

politike?)

are

not the

same

thing

nor are all kinds of

ruling (archai)

the same

as one

another,

as

some

ay

1255bl6-18).

The practical goal ofAristotle's Politics is thus toproblematize political

life

by

bringing

the

endoxa into

conversation

with the

theoretical

language of

a

nonreductionist

and

complex

naturalistic

account of

human

beings,

an

account

that

stresses

the

unique

plurality

of

human

goods and their

partial

incommensurability-and

thereforeboth

the

centrality and

the

fallibility

of

phrone?sis

and

prohairesis

for a

well-lived human

life

and a

well-formed

politeiallaws. This

project

would

seem to

be

in

direct

conflict

with

the best

kat'euchen

regime

of Book

7-which

presents itself s a

final

solution to the

political

problem

of

the best

possible

regime, rather

than a

problematization

aiming

at

deepening reflection rather than

directly

promoting

one

kind

of

praxis

rather

than

another.

How can

we

explain this?

Is

the

Book 7

polis

the

best

of all

possible poleis?

In

one

way,

yes;

in

another

way,

no.Yes-if thebest

polis

is one

composed

of

fully

committed

citizens,

those

who

identify

the







Salkever

/Whose Prayer?

41

common good with the

human

good

simply; if

the

good

man

(aner)

is iden

tical with the

good human being (anthropos).

But

no-if the best polis

is

composed

of citizens who entertain serious

doubts about the coincidence

of

the

political

good and the human good

simply.

In

practice, each of

these

answers

may be better

at

different times and

in different

laces-depending

on the

circumstances

and

the resources

of

different oleis.23

What, then, is

the

practical

point of the city

according

to

prayer?

As

with

the absolute monarchy (pambasileia)

described

at

the end

of

Book

3,

the

Book 7 city

serves

practice

and political

reason by

highlighting

certain lim

its of politics

that the

serious

citizen should always

have in view. In Book

3,

those

involved

the limits

imposed by

a rule

of

law

and by

the need

for

a

largemeasure of equal

status in all law-governed regimes.

The purpose of

politics-the development

of

individual human virtue and happiness-can

never

be perfectly

reconciled with

essential

political

practices

and

norms,

in this

case

the rule

of

law

and citizen equality.24

Far

from being

a

counsel

of

despair, this practical

bit of advice tells

us to be

very careful

to

avoid

either

falling

in love with

utopian

dreams

or

deifying

our

existing political

arrangements.

If there s a paradox at theheart of human politics, it is this:we need some

thing

uthoritative

kurion)

in our

emotional and dianoetic

lives to restrain the

tendency

to

unlimited

acquisition (pleonexia)

and

help develop

the

potential

for

practical

reason

(phronesis)

and the

virtues of

character;

but no

person,

no

principle (or law),

and no way

of life can serve as a

perfectly

adequate

and

permanent authority.

hat saves

politics

on this

ristotelian view

from

being

a

tragedy

is

the

uniquely

human

capacity

for

reshaping

ourselves and our

communities

through

articulate

speech,

through logos.

As Aristotle's exten

sive

discussion

inBook 5

of thePolitics

of

the causes

and ways

of

avoiding

the

destruction

of all sorts

of

regimes

indicates,

we can

change

our

political

world as well. Neither biological inheritance nor deeply ingrained ethos is

destiny

for human

beings,

who

many

times act

against

habituation and

against

nature

on account

of

logos,

whenever

they

are

persuaded

that

being

otherwise is better

(Politics

7, 1332b6-8).25

This

remarkable passage

on

the

openness

of individual

identity

ccurs

just

before

Aristotle's final survey of

the

nature

of the

human

soul,

politics,

and the

virtues in

chapters 14-15

of

Book 7. The

upside

of this,

so

far

as human

agency

is

concerned,

is the

thought

that

while

politics

is not

open

to a

perfect

or

utopian resolution,

it

is

permanently

revisable.

There is also a negative reflection about the role of theory in theworld

of

practice

implicit

inAristotle's failure

to

supply

actors with an action

determining

model:

any

theoretical formulation that is clear and

precise

enough

to be understood as an

action-guiding

directive is

a

mistake, an







42 Political heory

error

about the

plurality

and

partial

incommensurability

of

human

goods.

The

mistake

we make

here

is

not

merely

pedagogical

(as

if

the

only con

cern were with

getting auditors

to learn

for

themselves),

nor is it a

failure

to

recognize

a

presumably unique human

agency,

but

it is

an

empirical

mis

take

about what

being

a

human

being

is

like,

and as such a

distortion

of

the

world

political

philosophy

intends

tomake

better.

Is

there, then,

any Aristotelian answer to

the question

of the best

politi

cal

order?

Is there a

city

that

he

might

pray

for?

Aristotle

tells us so

much

about the

indispensability

of

political life

for

human

flourishing

that it

would be absurd

to

conclude thathe has no

views

at

all about this

question,

even

given

his

repeated

stress on

the

need for

contextual

judgment

and for

theoretical

restraint

in

political

affairs.While

the

city

of

prayer

does

not

supply

such

an

answer, the

philosophical critique of that

city is

not meant

to

imply that all

political life is

equally

flawed, something

to

be

avoided

except

under the

pressure

of the

direst

necessity.

His

own best

city

cannot

be

specified

in

detail,

but

we can at

least

say

that it

would be

persistently

aware

of

and on

guard against

the two

mistakes

most

commonly

made

by

citizens

and

theorists alike:

treating political

life

as

merely

instrumental,

and treating citizenship as thepeak of human activity.

Notes

1.Richard

Kraut,

Aristotle: Political

Philosophy

(Oxford:

Oxford

University

Press,

2002),

190.

Kraut

goes

on

to

speculate

that the

reason

the

ending

of

Book

3

corresponds

so

closely

to

the

beginning

of Book

7

is

that

the

end of

Book

3

was

written

by

a

scribe

or

editor

prepar

ing

an

abridged

version of

the

Politics for those

lacking

the

time

or

inclination

to

slog through

the

largely negative

material,

as

Kraut

understands

it,

presented

in

Books

4-6.

2. Jill

Frank,

A

Democracy

of

Distinction:

Aristotle and the

Work

of

Politics

(Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press,

2005),

ch.

5;

and

Josiah

Ober,

Political

Dissent in Democratic

Athens

(Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton

University

Press,

1998),

ch. 6. Frank assimilates the

prayer

regime

to

themiddle-class

aristocratic

democracy

of Book 4.

But

she

accomplishes

this

by

leaving

out

critical

consideration

of

the

particular

institutions of the

kat'euch?n

regime.

I

strongly

agree

with

her,

contra

Ober,

that the

democracy

of

distinction Aristotle sketches in

Book

4

is

the

appropriate goal

or

model of

political activity,

and

that,

for

Aristotle,

such

a

regime

is valu

able and

according

to nature

because

it

promotes

in

various

ways

lives that

are

prohairetic

rather

than

pleonectic.

But,

as

I

will

try

to

show

in

what

follows,

I

do

not

think the

Book 7

prayer

regime

serves

this function

at

all.

3. Note Plato's Socrates'

use

of

prayer

in

the

Republic.

See

Kraut, Aristotle,

192

n.

1,

who remarks that

Socrates

says

he

hopes

his beautiful

city

in

speech,

his

Kallipolis,

is

not

a

mere

prayer,

but

a

possibility,

a

useful model.

For

example,

at

the

end

of Book 7

(540dl-3):

the thingswe have said about the city and the regime are not in every way prayers . . . they

are

hard but

in

a

way

possible

(this

is Allan Bloom's

translation,

from

his The

Republic of

Plato,

2nd ed.

[New

York: Basic

Books,

1991]).

Aristotle,

by

contrast,

says

that the best

polis







Salkever

/

Whose Prayer?

43

of Book

7 is

a

prayer,

though

it

cannot

be

something impossible. My

guess

is

that Plato's

city

is

meant to

serve as a

sort

of model that

can

be actualized

in

practice,

though

for adult

moral

self-education

rather than

political change

(I

think the end

of

Republic

9 is conclusive

on

this),

whereas

Aristotle's

kat'euch?n

regime

is

not.

It is

more

like

a

hope

or

dream than

an

accurate

theory.

The

question

is,

whose dream is it?

In

On

Interpretation

(16b33-17a4),

Aristotle

defines euch?

or

prayer

as a

logos

that is neither

true

nor

false?a

significant

and

meaningful

logos,

but

not

one

that has

truth-value,

and

so

not

a

part

of

any

scientific demonstration. The

NE and the

Politics,

we

should

bear in

mind,

are

meant to

be scientific

works,

albeit

practical

or

action-oriented

science rather than science

that aims

at

no

activity beyond

itself.

4.

Mary

Nichols,

Citizens

and Statesmen:

A

Study of

Aristotle's

Politics

(Lanham,

Md.:

Rowman

&

Littlefield,

1992),

164-65,

and ch.

4

generally.

5.1

argue

for

this

interpretation

of

Plato

and Aristotle

as

critics of

the

Greek

attitude toward

virility (andreia?frequently

rendered

courage,

but better

translated

as

virility

or

manliness

since

it is the

adjective

formed from

an?r,

male)

in

Stephen

Salkever,

Finding

the

Mean:

Theory

and

Practice in

Aristotelian

Political

Philosophy

(Princeton,

N.J.:

Princeton

University

Press,

1990),

ch.

4,

Gendered Virtue:

Plato and Aristotle

on

the Politics

of

Virility.

6.

Translations from the Politics

are

based

on

those

of Aristotle: The

Politics,

trans,

with

an

intro.,

notes,

and

glossary

by

Carnes

Lord

(Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press,

1984);

and

The Politics

of

Aristotle,

trans,

with

an

intro,

analysis,

and

notes

by

Peter L.

Phillips

Simpson (Chapel

Hill:

University

of

North

Carolina

Press,

1997);

and translations from the

Nicomachean

Ethics

are

based

on

Aristotle:

Nicomachean

Ethics,

2nd

ed.,

trans,with

an

intro,

notes,

and

glossary

Terence

Irwin

(Indianapolis,

Ind.:

Hackett,

1999).

7.1 have sketched the general features of such an approach to these twoworks in Stephen

Salkever,

Aristotle and the

Ethics of Natural

Questions,

in

Instilling

Ethics,

ed. Norma

Thompson

(Lanham,

Md.: Rowman &

Littlefield,

2000),

3-16;

and

Stephen

Salkever,

The

Deliberative Model

of

Democracy

and

Aristotle's Ethics of Natural

Questions,

in Aristotle

and Modern

Politics: The

Persistence

of

Political

Philosophy,

ed. Aristide Tessitore

(Notre

Dame,

Ind.:

University

of Notre Dame

Press,

2002),

342-74.

A

similar

approach

is

engagingly

applied

to

the

NE in Thomas W.

Smith's

Revaluing

Ethics:

Aristotle's

Dialectical

Pedagogy

(Albany:

State

University

of

New

York

Press,

2001).

8.

The

opening

line

of Book

7 is

a new

beginning

only

on

the

assumption

that

our

current

Book

7 is

meant to

follow Book

6,

rather

than Book

3?if

the latter

is

true,

then the

beginning

of

7 flows

smoothly

from the

end

of

3. So

long

as

the

only

way

of

resolving

the

question

of the

order

of

the books

of

the Politics is

an

interpretive

judgment

about

which

order

is

more

coher

ent,

I

prefer

our

current

order,

on

the

premise

that

discontinuities and

new

beginnings

are a cen

tral

feature of

many

Aristotelian texts.

Viewed

in the

context

of his educational

goals,

these

discontinuities add

to

the

text's coherence

rather than detract from it.Carnes

Lord

(15-17)

dis

agrees,

and

provides

an

excellent

guide

to

the

question

of the order of

the

books.

Where

you

place

the traditional

Books

7

and 8

depends

on

whether

you

think

Aristotle would be

willing

to

defer the

question

of the best

life and his

regime

according

to

prayer

until after his

discussion,

inBooks 4-6

as

traditionally

numbered,

of

practicable

regimes,

ones

that

are

possible,

for better

and

worse,

under the circumstances Aristotle

sees

around

him.

I

think itmakes

good

sense

for

him

to

do

just

that;

Simpson disagrees.

I

would frame the issue thus:

if

you

believe

thatAristotle

wants

to

use

his discussion

of the best

life

as a

ground

from

which

to

deduce

political principles,

thenwhat have

been called Books

7

and 8

should then indeed be

placed

as

Books 4 and

5;

but

ifyou think as I do thatAristotle wants to teach his students to ask thequestion of the best life

rather

than

to

present

them

with

a

doctrine of

it,

then itmakes better

sense

to

leave the books

as

they

are.

Much

also

depends

on

whether

you

think that the

regime

according

to

prayer

is

meant







44 Political Theory

to

serve as a

model

for

practical

reform

(with

Simpson)

or a

warning against

treating politics

as

the

final

and

perfect

human

horizon.

I

think

it is such

a

warning,

and

not

a

simple

one.

Instead,

Aristotle

uses

the

regime according

to

prayer

as a

point

of

departure

for

his final

discussion of

human virtue and

human

nature,

and for

his discussion of education

in

Book 8?an

education

Simpson

misleadingly

refers

to as

education

in the

best

regime.

Book

8

is

a

reflection

on

the

complex

structure and

function

of

paideia,

and

not

a

pedagogical

scheme for

any

regime,

whether

in

fact

or

in

speech.

For brief

discussion

of

the

discontinuities

in the

NE

and

the

Politics

and

some

pedagogical

and rhetorical

justifications

for

these

breaks,

see

Stephen

Salkever,

Aristotle

and the

Ethics of Natural

Questions,

in

Instilling

Ethics,

ed. Norma

Thompson

(Lanham,

Md.:

Rowman

&

Littlefield,

2000),

3-16.

9.

Alasdair

Maclntyre,

Dependent

Rational

Animals:

Why

Human

Beings

Need the

Virtues

(Chicago:

Open

Court,

1999).

10.

Ronna

Burger

argues

persuasively

and

ingeniously

that

NE

10

plays

down

the

possible

tensions

between the

theoretical

life and

the

political

life,

even

as

it

ranks

the former above the

latter.

See

Ronna

Burger,

Aristotle's

'Exclusive'

Account

of

Happiness:

Contemplative

Wisdom

as a

Guise

of the

Political

Philosopher,

in

The

Crossroads

of

Norm

and

Nature:

Essays

on

Aristotle's

Ethics

and

Metaphysics,

ed.

May

Sim

(Lanham,

Md.: Rowman

&

Littlefield,

1995),

79-98.1

think

something

similar

occurs

in Politics

1.

11.

For

an

argument

that there is

no

inconsistency

between Aristotle's

account

of

natural

slavery

in

Book

1 and his

suggestion

that

slaves

in

the kat'euchen

regime

should

be

given

the

prospect

of

freedom,

see

Kraut,

Aristotle,

297-98.

12.

By

contrast,

there is

no

slavery

at

all

in Plato's

Kallipolis.

According

to

Socrates

in

the

Republic, slavery enters thepicture only after the best city has declined into timocracy, a regime

like that

of

Sparta,

halfway

between

aristocracy

and

oligarchy,

whose

rulers

institute

private

prop

erty

and

are

largely

concerned

with

war

and

the love

of

victory.

At

this

point,

the timocratic

rulers

make

slaves and

perioikoi

[serfs

who dwell around

the

polis]

those

whom

they

had

formerly

guarded

as

free

friends

and nurturers

(547c

1-2).

13.

See

7.15,

1334all-16:

Since

the

telos is

evidently

the

same

for

human

beings (anthr?poi)

both in

common

and

privately,

and there

must

necessarily

be

the

same

defining principle

(hows)

for

the best an?r

and the best

politeia,

it is evident that

the

virtues

directed

to

leisure

should be

present;

for,

as

has been

said

repeatedly,

peace

is

the end

of

war,

and

leisure

of

occupation.

He

goes

on

in this

passage

to

stress

the

priority

of the

virtue

of

philosophy

as

pertaining

to

leisure,

justice

and moderation

as

belonging

to

both but

especially

necessary

in

times

of

leisure,

and manliness

as

belonging along

with

endurance

(see

NE

1)

to

the

lower?more

instrumental

and less

constitutive?realms

of

occupation

and

war.

14.

See also

4.4,

1291a24-28:

If

then,

one

were

to

regard

souls

as

more

a

part

of

an

animal

than

body,

things

of

this sort?the

military

element

(to

polemikon)

and the element

sharing

in

justice

as

relates

to

adjudication,

and the

deliberative

element,

which is the

work

of

political

understanding?must

be held

to

be

more a

part

of cities than

things

relating

to

nec

essary

needs.

15. See Book 2, 1265b26-29

(speaking

of the best

regime

inPlato's Laws, he says, The

organization

as

a

whole is

intended

to

be

neither

democracy

nor

oligarchy,

but

a mean

between







Salkever

Whose

Prayer? 45

these,

which

they

call

a

polity,

because

it is

composed

of

those

who

are

hoplites ),

and

Book

3,

1279a36-b4.

For

discussion

of the historical connection

between the

emergence

of

hoplite

war

fare and the

emergence

of the

polis

in ancient

Greece,

see

J-P.

Vernant,

The

Origins of

Greek

Thought

(Ithaca,

N.Y:

Cornell

University

Press,

1984),

ch. 4.

16.

Translation

by

Terence

Irwin

and

Gail

Fine,

from

their

Aristotle: Selections

(Indianapolis,

Ind.:

Hackett,

1995),

341-42.

17.

Carnes Lord's footnote

to

this

passage

highlights

Aristotle's

willingness

to

recommend

applied philosophy

as a

necessary

response

to

advances

in

military technology:

Catapults,

battering

rams,

and movable

towers

were

introduced into Greek warfare

by

the

Carthaginians

in the

course

of

their

struggle

with

Dionysus

I of

Syracuse; Philip

of Maced?n

used them

extensively

(Aristotle,

trans.

Lord,

267

n.

46).

In

his translation of the

passage,

Lord,

usually

so

carefully

literal,

translates

the verb

philosophein

at

1331al6

by

the

pallid investigate,

though

in

a

footnote

to

the

passage

he

calls attention

to

Aristotle's

Greek.

18.

It

is

not

surprising

thatMartha

Nussbaum takes

most

of

her

Aristotelian

public

pol

icy goals

from the

kat'euch?n

regime

of

Book

7;

and it

is also

not

surprising

thatNussbaum

subsequently

concludes that

her

capabilities approach

to

politics

has much

more

in

common

with John Rawls's

top-down

Neo-Kantianism

than with Aristotle's nondeterministic natural

ism.

See

Martha

Nussbaum,

Aristotelian Social

Democracy,

in

Tessitore,

Aristotle and

Modern

Politics,

47-104.

Amartya

Sen's

more

open-ended

version

of

the

capabilities approach

is thus

more

Aristotelian

thanNussbaum's.

See

Amartya

Sen,

Development

as

Freedom

(New

York:

Knopf,

1999).

19.1

have

inmind here the

analogy

Socrates

offers

(Republic

2,

368e-369a)

as a

method

ological basis for discovering themeaning of justice, saying that an individual is to a polis as

a

small letter is

to

a

large

letter

in

Book

2. If

the

polis

is

only

a

large

individual,

the

problem

of individual

differences,

the

problem

that

gives

rise

to

the need

for

justice,

vanishes.

20.

Commenting

on

the

surprising

presence

of

unjust slavery

in

the

regime according

to

prayer,

Mary

Nichols

says

that

this

shows

that

the

Book

7

regime

is less

an

ideal

model

for

politics

than

a

lesson

in

its

imperfection.

Aristotle's

designation

of that

regime

as

the 'best' is

surely

ironic

(Nichols,

Citizens

and

Statesmen,

145).

21. On the

Aristotelian

character

of

the

Statesman,

see

especially

Paul

Stern,

The Rule

of

Wisdom

and the

Rule of Law in Plato's

Statesman

American

Political

Science Review

91

(1997):

264-76.

22.

For relevant citations

and

discussion,

see

Stephen

Salkever,

Socrates'

Aspasian

Oration:

The

Play

of

Philosophy

and Politics

in

Plato's

Menexenus,

American Political Science

Review

87

(1993):

133-43.

23.

By

contrast,

Plato's Socrates

in

Republic

7

(520b) argues

that the best rule

in

politics

is

always

the rule

of

those who

are

unwilling

to

rule

because

they

know

a

better bios

(way

of

life)

than

the

political

one.

24.

The

problem

of

citizenship,

law,

and the

best life in

Aristotle

is

the central

topic

of

Susan

D.

Collins,

Aristotle

and

the

Rediscovery of Citizenship

(Cambridge: Cambridge

University

Press,

2006).

While

I

differwith

the

details

of

some

of her conclusions

about

Politics

7

and

8,1

have learned

a

great

deal

about

Aristotle's

understanding

of the

relationship

between

philosophy

and

politics

from

her

arguments.

25.

This

passage

needs

to

be

set

alongside

the

more

often

quoted

passage

on

the

importance

of the habituation

we

receive

as

children:

It

is

not

unimportant,

then,

to

acquire

one

sort

of habit

or another, right from our youth. On the contrary, it is very important, indeed all-important

(NE

2,

1103b23-25).

Given

the

preliminary

context

of that

remark,

which

occurs

well before

any







46

Political

heory

extended discussion of

either

virtue

or

phronesis,

it

cannot

be taken

simply

as a

statement

of

Aristotle's

belief in the

impossibility

of

altering

the habits

we

acquire

in

childhood,

no

matter

how foolish

these

habits

seem

to

us

when

we are

adults. On the

meaning

of the Politics

1

pas

sage,

see

Frank,

A

Democracy

of

Distinction,

which

points

out

that such

openness

is

already

pre

figured

in theNE

in

the discussion

of

responsibility

in Book

3. Our

habituated

character,

our

ethos,

is

a

firm

personality

without which

we

have

no

human

identity,

but it is

always subject

to

change,

for the

better

and for the

worse.

The

truly

human life is

prohairetic

(Politics

3.9,

1280a;

NE

6.2,

1139b),

not

merely

ethical,

but such

a

life

can

be

one

of vices

as

well

as

virtues.

Stephen

Salkever

is the

Mary

Katharine

Woodworth Professor

of

Political Science

at Bryn Mawr

College.

He is the author of Finding theMean: Theory and Practice inAristotelian Political

Philosophy,

and

a variety

of

articles and chapters

on

ancient

and

modem

political

philosophy.

Documents

Whose prayer. The best regime of Book 7.pdf