Who or What is Aristotle's Political Animal?
Question
When dissecting the polis in his Politics (Book 1) Aristotle begins at two kinds of human couplings, one between man and woman, and the other between natural ruler and natural subject, masters and slaves. To him these are unions of those who cannot exist without each other.
He then charts the evolution of these unions through the poems and histories of Homer and Hesiod, imagining as they grow from families, to households, to villages, and to the polis as the final cause. The polis is the end of all other relationships; and since nature is an end, the polis exists by nature. Accordingly, the impulse to form a partnership of this kind is present in all men by nature, as if the flower is always present in the seed. It is from this assumption of human nature that Aristotle reckons man is by nature a political animal.
Some, like Aquinas, figure Aristotle meant something like social animal. However Hannah Arendt writes in her Human Condition that this was a Roman mistranslation which betrays the extent to which the original Greek understanding of politics had been lost (pg. 23). To Arendt the exact opposite was the case, as the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family (pg. 24). At any rate, there appears to be some equivocation between "political" and "social" among various translations and interpretations of Aristotle's Politics.
I wanted to farm some insight on the matter and am curious as to what far more superior minds think about the question. If not a mere social animal, what sort of man does Aristotle envisage when he describes the political animal (????????? ????)?
I have my own opinion below for those who care to read it.
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Opinion
I agree with Arendt that the concept ????????? ???? ought not be conflated with the concept social animal. Though Aristotle claims in his first assertion that Every polis is as we see a sort of partnership [????????], as if every polis began with some sort of agreement between men of equal standing, Aristotles inclusion of the master and slave as a fundamental and natural partnership inherent to the polis, along with his exclusion of barbarians and presumably other stateless individuals, is telling. It opens his theory to criticism and lends his polis an anti-social quality rather than a social one. Further, the master/slave relationship is a matter of convention rather than of nature. Others (though he does not mention who, as far as Im aware) commonly raised this objection even in his own time.
The use of the word ???????? (partnership, association, communion) to describe the polis at the outset of his Politics implies a form of social contract theory, that perennial myth of how states form. Were supposed to imagine that everyone got together to form the polis as if they were raising a barn, and weve all been working together to maintain it. To refute this all we need do is show that this partnership is in fact not a voluntary one, or is otherwise applied to people who have zero social relations, and so is not a partnership in any meaningful sense. Should one of Aristotles elemental partnerships prove to be involuntary, then so is the polis, at least if we apply his own method. The master/slave relationship is involuntary. And more often than not these relationships are applied mistakenly to those who might have no social relations, for instance between one slave and another. Therefor, not only is the ????????? ???? not a mere social animal, but also the polis itself is not a society in the in Latin sense. It is not a fellowship, communion, or partnership formed for any specific purpose as might be found among groups of voluntary association and other actual relations.
Another thrust to the equivocation between the political animal and the more natural and social animal was raised by Hobbes. Social animals live in society, but unlike men, they do not require any coercive power. The difference here is that the agreement of creatures such as bees and ants is natural, whereas with man it is by covenant, and thereby artificial. Hobbes adds another component necessary to conceive of the political animal, and to maintain the covenant, which is a Common Power, to keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to the Common Benefit" (Chapter XVII).
With all of this in mind, I believe the ????????? ???? would be better conceived as a sort of state animal, a creature of the polis, who accepts and embodies the state covenants as described by Hobbes. The state animal possesses something of the master and slave quality that Aristotle sees. With them he possesses the desire to lead or be led, govern or be governed, and will accept his standing as one or the other or both. He sees his relationship to the Common Power as a pairing of those who cannot exist without each other. Moreover, he has the impulse to form a partnership of this kind. He does not feel that no man is fit enough to be another master, or that involuntary relationships are morally illegitimate, and no amount of conscience will lead him to question it. The unnatural and anti-social arrangements provided by the state and other state creatures suits him well enough.
The danger I see is that this creature is forced to divide his social reality into two realms, as both Hobbes and Arendt do, into Public and Private, and exist within the interface between the two. In that sense I think Aristotle was somewhat prophetic. We have the actual social reality, formed by the natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family, and then we have the artificial, purely symbolic oneLeviathan (to get a sense of the symbolic nature of political society, John Searle makes a decent case in his The Construction of Social Reality). Over a long period of time and enough evolution I fear one will eventually subsume the other, and the political animal will supersede the merely social one if it hasn't already.
When dissecting the polis in his Politics (Book 1) Aristotle begins at two kinds of human couplings, one between man and woman, and the other between natural ruler and natural subject, masters and slaves. To him these are unions of those who cannot exist without each other.
He then charts the evolution of these unions through the poems and histories of Homer and Hesiod, imagining as they grow from families, to households, to villages, and to the polis as the final cause. The polis is the end of all other relationships; and since nature is an end, the polis exists by nature. Accordingly, the impulse to form a partnership of this kind is present in all men by nature, as if the flower is always present in the seed. It is from this assumption of human nature that Aristotle reckons man is by nature a political animal.
Some, like Aquinas, figure Aristotle meant something like social animal. However Hannah Arendt writes in her Human Condition that this was a Roman mistranslation which betrays the extent to which the original Greek understanding of politics had been lost (pg. 23). To Arendt the exact opposite was the case, as the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family (pg. 24). At any rate, there appears to be some equivocation between "political" and "social" among various translations and interpretations of Aristotle's Politics.
I wanted to farm some insight on the matter and am curious as to what far more superior minds think about the question. If not a mere social animal, what sort of man does Aristotle envisage when he describes the political animal (????????? ????)?
I have my own opinion below for those who care to read it.
***
Opinion
I agree with Arendt that the concept ????????? ???? ought not be conflated with the concept social animal. Though Aristotle claims in his first assertion that Every polis is as we see a sort of partnership [????????], as if every polis began with some sort of agreement between men of equal standing, Aristotles inclusion of the master and slave as a fundamental and natural partnership inherent to the polis, along with his exclusion of barbarians and presumably other stateless individuals, is telling. It opens his theory to criticism and lends his polis an anti-social quality rather than a social one. Further, the master/slave relationship is a matter of convention rather than of nature. Others (though he does not mention who, as far as Im aware) commonly raised this objection even in his own time.
The use of the word ???????? (partnership, association, communion) to describe the polis at the outset of his Politics implies a form of social contract theory, that perennial myth of how states form. Were supposed to imagine that everyone got together to form the polis as if they were raising a barn, and weve all been working together to maintain it. To refute this all we need do is show that this partnership is in fact not a voluntary one, or is otherwise applied to people who have zero social relations, and so is not a partnership in any meaningful sense. Should one of Aristotles elemental partnerships prove to be involuntary, then so is the polis, at least if we apply his own method. The master/slave relationship is involuntary. And more often than not these relationships are applied mistakenly to those who might have no social relations, for instance between one slave and another. Therefor, not only is the ????????? ???? not a mere social animal, but also the polis itself is not a society in the in Latin sense. It is not a fellowship, communion, or partnership formed for any specific purpose as might be found among groups of voluntary association and other actual relations.
Another thrust to the equivocation between the political animal and the more natural and social animal was raised by Hobbes. Social animals live in society, but unlike men, they do not require any coercive power. The difference here is that the agreement of creatures such as bees and ants is natural, whereas with man it is by covenant, and thereby artificial. Hobbes adds another component necessary to conceive of the political animal, and to maintain the covenant, which is a Common Power, to keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to the Common Benefit" (Chapter XVII).
With all of this in mind, I believe the ????????? ???? would be better conceived as a sort of state animal, a creature of the polis, who accepts and embodies the state covenants as described by Hobbes. The state animal possesses something of the master and slave quality that Aristotle sees. With them he possesses the desire to lead or be led, govern or be governed, and will accept his standing as one or the other or both. He sees his relationship to the Common Power as a pairing of those who cannot exist without each other. Moreover, he has the impulse to form a partnership of this kind. He does not feel that no man is fit enough to be another master, or that involuntary relationships are morally illegitimate, and no amount of conscience will lead him to question it. The unnatural and anti-social arrangements provided by the state and other state creatures suits him well enough.
The danger I see is that this creature is forced to divide his social reality into two realms, as both Hobbes and Arendt do, into Public and Private, and exist within the interface between the two. In that sense I think Aristotle was somewhat prophetic. We have the actual social reality, formed by the natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family, and then we have the artificial, purely symbolic oneLeviathan (to get a sense of the symbolic nature of political society, John Searle makes a decent case in his The Construction of Social Reality). Over a long period of time and enough evolution I fear one will eventually subsume the other, and the political animal will supersede the merely social one if it hasn't already.
Comments (28)
Relationships end in the Polis because that is the Public Sphere of Equality. The private house hold is where the inequality of relationships was housed.
I believe Aristotle said it could be either. There are "natural" slaves, and also those enslaved forcibly whose nature is otherwise. Probably in the Politics?
I know, I cited it in the OP. Also Hobbes. Also Aquinas. But I was hoping to start a discussion, not a reading.
Youre correct, but since Aristotle I think weve come to find that there is no such thing as a natural slave, that they are all slaves by convention.
I think Aristotle has an archetype in mind, and am wondering what that archetype may have looked like. Part master, part slave, maybe?
Sure, but I was more curious as to what you believe. Is it a civilian? A city-dweller? Who or what possesses the qualities Aristotle sees?
The public/private question is extremely interesting. You may know that Jurgen Habermas has suggested a different understanding of what a "public sphere" might encompass. Habermas sees the public sphere as a "third space" (in Hartmut Wessler's phrase) between the private world of family life (and, possibly, economic life), and the public world of the state and political practice. Broadly, the public sphere is meant to be the place where private citizens, qua private citizens, meet to discuss issues of common concern, up to and including questions of political and state authority in which they themselves may also participate.
Without delving too deeply into this, it suggests an interpretation of "political animal" that might have interested Aristotle. If there is indeed this "third space," then it seems to represent a co-dependence between the role of private citizen and that of participating member of the polis. Can these two aspects of human nature indeed "exist without each other"?
I feel Aristotle perhaps reified the notion that master and slave was a natural thing because of how few citizens there were which were actually considered as equals. The private realm of Citizens was part of the ruling class because each house had its own "army of slaves," which was a wide array of craftsmen, to law makers and of course the common slave.
Every citizen was of the ruling class. Not just the tyrant alone...
Every citizen his own king, where as the social is more like one big family controlled by the Nation State. The Nation State monopolizes power and violence.
Where as Power and Violence was seen as a necessity to the Greek.
The social man of today is just a tamed domesticated house cat compared to the political man of the Greek. The political man of the Greek assumed the rights to his own values...
Hence the greatest utility of polytheism Joyful Wisdom 143 Nietzsche:
Hence Sisyphus was actually rewarded with with his own demigod status of the ideal representing Eu Prattein, because in life he was the definition of Aristeuein from assuming the rights to his own values and triumphantly affirming those demands of his own life, besting multiple gods.
Very interesting, I wasnt not aware of Habermas thoughts on the matter. Thank you.
I like your thinking here. Personally, I believe the political animal and the social animal, and also the public and private realms, can exist without each other. But I fear one realm, or at least the conditions one might find in such a realm, is replacing that of the other.
Good work. Much to chew on here. Its interesting to note that to Aristotle (if I remember correctly), any man who was without the polis was either a beast or a god.
God knows what Aristotle would think of current Western democracies. Not much, is my guess.
Now youre speaking my language. Do you remember the work? I always found Habermas too difficult to read and never got into him. But your summary here has inspired me to give him another shot.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989. He is hard, or at any rate not a brilliant stylist, but I've always found him more than worth the trouble. There's also a critique called Habermas and the Public Sphere (1993) in which other philosophers respond to him, and he replies with more optimistic reflections about the public sphere. That might be a good place to start.
It was stated as a limit for man which some did (or could) not observe:
I suppose his biological divisions into animal kingdoms might indicate a greater whole, but Im not aware if he believed in higher political partnerships.
Its interesting to note, though, that his metaphor of the state as a living body, particularly a human body, has been used until modern times. Head of state, corpus (corporation), body politic, for example, are remnants of that metaphor and have persisted through the history of statism. Perhaps Hobbes was right that we must conceive of it as an Artificial Man.
Well, he was aware of the Persian empire through the long struggle with them. Alexander was out on his horse conquering it around then. The issue here is that life of a city is said to be natural. The city
is the result of the partnership, not the other way around. The capacity for the activity has to be present. The whole thing is tits-up if the only humans around are "incapable of entering into partnership:
What interests me is how the "divine" is also a disability from this point of view. The gods are really not fond of sharing stuff.
That quote about "either a lower animal or a god" is a bit tricky. Aristotle didn't think it was possible for a man to be either a lower animal or a god, right? So this is rhetoric. What he's really saying seems to be, "Since this is impossible, all humans are capable of entering into partnership; they are political animals."
He recognized that many men live as beasts. He also recognized that a man benefited from seeking the highest life expressed in varying representations of the divine. We are also capable of not being good men:
Between the parties with actual interest in what will happen in the future.
The Dionsysian Barbarian for example, was often depicted as the Satyr.
Aristotle is interesting in that regard because his pupil, Alexander, was reported to have pissed off his fellow Macedonians by adopting some Persian customs and dress. As he conquered very different places, he often paid respect to their divinities.
Perhaps he displayed an interest in diversity and the cosmopolitan that his teacher would view as being too woke and disrespectful.
On the other hand, Aristotle was a bit of a stranger himself. He left Athens when a certain group who really did not like him gained power. The dude lost his Visa.
I dont know, but Aristotle considered barbarians to be natural slaves, and natural slaves are a necessary component of the polis. But that wouldnt complete the dyad of those who cannot exist without each other, even though they were existing just fine without a master. So perhaps the polis extends beyond the city and the barbarians are just out there waiting for a master.