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We pointed out in our commentary on Book two that History as a scientifically organised discipline did not exist as such during Ancient Greek Times. Aristotle, in fact, was the first thinker to systematically refer to the thoughts of previous thinkers in his arguments for his various positions( E.g. De Anima). But the two works of most significance for scholars interested in this question are “The Politics” and “The Constitution of Athens”.
We know that Aristotle’s Lyceum collected over 150 constitutions from different city-states as part of a research project into the art of government. This empirical collection of “evidence” was a surprising move on the part of this rationalist thinker, but this method was, in fact, in accordance with the Aristotelian account of the scientific method that accumulated evidence in order to formulate the basic terms of a theory. This stage of classification precedes the later stage of theory formation in which the search for principles and laws begins in earnest. Aristotle was well aware that these collected constitutions were more than just a totality of facts or descriptions of events and processes. They manifested an awareness of the relations of important ideas such as diké (getting what one deserves) areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and arché (principles or laws).
According to Raymond Weil, in an essay entitled “Aristotle’s View of History” ( Articles on Aristotle, 2. Ethics and Politics, Ed Barnes, J., Schofield, M., and Sorabjy, R.,(London, Duckworth, 1977), Aristotle prefers the term “constitutional” to the term “democratic” and he also makes some surprising claims such as, Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, was a “middle-class” leader and his work initiated the “constitutional” form of government. Solon, that is, according to Aristotle, embodied the principle of “The Golden Mean”. For Aristotle, this negotiation of a pathway between extremes insofar as the moral virtues were concerned was a desirable characteristic of political administrators and demonstrated “sound judgement”.
Plato’s work “The Republic” presents a hierarchy of political administrations featured his ideal Callipolis at the zenith, followed surprisingly by timocracies such as Sparta and Crete, followed by oligarchies, followed by democracies at the bottom of the hierarchy. Aristotle, on the other hand appears to reject the term “timocracy” in his system of classification and Plato in his dialogue “The Laws”, also seems to be raising questions about a form of government that places the virtue of courage above all the other virtues.
The Aristotelian schema of political administrations as we pointed out earlier was based on research into 150 different constitutions collected for the purpose of comparison and analysis. What emerged was a six-fold schema of rule by one person, rule by a few people, and rule by the many. For Aristotle, all of these three forms of government could be good if wisdom prevails among the lawmakers and rulers, but insofar as that did not happen, and the process of government became corrupted by arrogance or a love of luxury there were perversions of each form of government which he named as tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. So, for both Plato and Aristotle, democracy was an inferior form of government insofar as it was associated with an excessive desire for freedom and disbelief in the traditions and laws based on the “nothing too much” principle. Electing polis officials with complex responsibilities by a lottery system was criticised in the Republic from the point of view of leaving to chance whether or not these officials possessed the best capacities and abilities to perform these state-functions. Aristotle must have shared these concerns given the importance he placed upon areté, sound judgement, and the golden mean principle in his overall Theory of Change. For Aristotle the law-giver must be a great-souled man (Phronimos) with an understanding of History and Philosophy. Weil highlights the theoretical aspects that are involved in this:
“It is true that in Aristotle’s explanation of historical facts, there emerges the scheme of the four causes. In the city, for example, we can observe a material cause(the different estates), a formal cause(the form of the constitution), an efficient cause (the legislator) and a final cause (a good life).”(P.203)
Weil hints at the complexity of a hylomorphic theory of History but does not elaborate upon this aspect any further. The fact, for example, that the estates are composed of a constellation of villages, which, in turn, are composed of a constellation of families with patriarchal heads, is suggestive of underlying material and forms which in turn have shaped our desires and our powers of thought, understanding, judgement and reasoning.
The above also presupposes the importance of the ideas of areté, diké, arché, epistemé and techné for the evolution of the polis. The desire for the good life is undoubtedly a powerful and important desire that incorporates biological, psychological social and political needs which are difficult to fully satisfy and may well lead to the discontentment Freud reported in his work “Civilisation and its Discontents” ( The Penguin Freud Library, Volume 12, Translated Strachey, J.,(London, Penguin, 1976). This is not, however, an argument for the abandonment of this telos of the Good Life which is the answer to the Kantian question “What can we hope for?”: an answer that contains moral, political, and eschatological dimensions.
History, however, embracing as it does, a way of conceiving both what is going on in the present but also what has happened in the past and what might happen in the future, is nevertheless about the facts which occur in what Aristotle called the media of change(namely, space, time, matter). The events the historian studies, occurs in these media and these events sometimes leave physical traces that can be discovered long after the events have happened, e.g. archaeological findings of the buildings, settlements or cities which have been the sites of different political regimes. Yet it is only to the extent that documentation can be connected to these sites that we can begin to accumulate knowledge as to what kind of government ruled these sites or what kind of ethos prevailed amongst the inhabitants. Only documentation could provide us with the constitutions that may have guided lawgivers in their creation maintenance and implementation of “The Laws”. Of course documentation of various kinds are vulnerable to the destructive powers of natural disasters (e.g. floods, fires etc). If this is the case, then we find ourselves in the realm of hypotheses about the facts, the realm of probabilities, rather than certainties. Aristotle is prepared to speculate about such circumstances at the risk of being proven wrong: If, for example, documentation that was thought to have been destroyed is discovered. In this context Weil accuses Aristotle of collecting evidence and interpreting that evidence in accordance with the theories he has formed. He conceded that Aristotle never juggles with the facts but he does juggle with ideas. If the context is one in which there is no physical documentation then ideas about what happened must be theory laden, and the question then becomes whether hylomorphic theory is a better guide than for example, Platonic theory, or more materialistic theories. If the circumstances do not permit the articulation of facts then the judgments may be less historical and more philosophical, but it can be argued, nevertheless, that these judgements carry some political weight or force. Hylomorphic theory does not limit itself to characterising the world, but is also a theory about us, rational animals capable of discourse. We are, that is, forms of life constituted of a particular configuration of organs-limbs-hands that has lifted us out of an animal form of existence tied to a specific space and time, into a form of life where we can sit in a library and speculate about what Socrates, Plato or Aristotle thought, becoming thus, in Aristotles eyes the best of animals.
Book three begins in Aristotelian fashion with the claim that all investigations into the origins of political systems requires that we take into consideration the development and decline of such systems over long periods of change. The Athenian begins by appealing to History and Tradition, and claims that:
“The human race has been repeatedly annihilated by floods and plagues and many other causes, so that only a small fractions survived.”(P.119)
In the case of the legend-based occurrence of The Great Flood, the Athenian speculates that perhaps a few mountain-side shepherds (with no knowledge of the rat-race form of existence in the cities) survived. Given that all documentation of these political systems probably was wiped out, all the civilised structures and institutions of community life had to be recreated or reinvented. The shepherds on the mountainsides that survived still possessed their homes and their animals and were therefore not thrown into poverty by this cataclysmic event. But they were not rich either, and thus qualified for the middle-class status so favoured by Aristotelian theory. These survivors, the Athenian argued, accepted without cynicism the “doctrines they heard about gods and men” (P.122). These survivors will also have lacked the technology to be found in cities, especially those items designed to harm and kill human beings.In these surviving communities we are more likely to encounter good spirited activity and judgement and less likely to encounter hateful aggressive behaviour such as lawsuits, it is argued.
There is in fact today archaeological evidence of a devastating catastrophic flood ca 7500 years ago when the Mediterranean sea “roared into the Black Sea”. There is, that is, considerable evidence of the flood referred to in the Bible where almost all animal and human life perished in a flood which came after “40 days and 40 nights” of torrential rain. This, according to the physical evidence must have resulted in a thick layer of water transported sand, silt, and mud moving over vast areas of the earth. Huge boulders were also displaced. So, what for a considerable amount of time was regarded as a myth devoid of objective content, actually happened. In the biblical story of Noah we can, however, wonder whether he would have had the time to construct such an enormous ark but this too would have been possible if, for example, there had been longer periods of rain resulting in rising water levels prior to this cataclysmic event.
The Athenian continues his narrative of post-flood existence and claims that the first forms of government to be created were probably autocracies: a community form resembling the form of rule of households with a patriarchal head. After a period of time a large number of families might amalgamate to form larger communities that would be more likely to meet the growing changing needs of larger groups of people. Such larger groups would be aiming at creating a state of self sufficiency and independence. Traditional social and religious standards would be appealed to, but the patriarch would rule in his own way with his own conception of the rules and laws that he required subjects to folllow. As the community increased in size, representatives would be elected to review the different sets of rules and laws used by a number of different patriarchal heads . This would be for the purpose of creating a commonly accepted system (a system Plato calls an aristocratic system-the rule by a few representatives).
The Athenian moves on to discuss the example of the city-state called Ilium, built on a beautiful plain and situated at the source of several rivers: created long after the legendary flood. After the flood, three estates were formed with Sparta being perhaps the most important. Each ruler promised the other assistance in the case of attack or being wronged in some undefined way If one estate became the aggressor, the other two states would protect the victim. Unfortunately Sparta of the plains was the only estate not to succumb to corruption and the alliance ultimately failed. This, the Athenian argues was caused by the fact that the legislation of all of these cities of the plains was based on only one virtue out of a range of virtues, namely courage. This meant that these city-states were rife with vice of all kinds. The Athenian regarded this as fundamentally a knowledge issue:
“we maintain that crass ignorance destroyed that great empire, and that it has a tendency to produce precisely the same results today”(P.136)
Millennia after these words were spoken they still ring out their message today in our communities in which knowledge is built into the very fabric of our institutions. What we are encountering above is both a political and a historical argument and, of course, an argument for the importance of wisdom associated with sound judgement in the passing, maintenance and implementation of the laws of the polis. So, in this work “The Laws”, it is the “Form of The Good” that is the fundamental form of knowledge the Phronimos needs to perform his good work. History too, is also of importance for this work, but it differs as a form of knowledge from Poetry and Philosophy because it is based on particular truths which are the essential conditions for many of its judgements. Insofar, however, as History must be not just theoretically enlightening but also enlightening in a practical sense there must be judgements of value, (e.g. the value of a war for a particular society at a particular time) functioning as regulative ideas.
The Athenian then presents a number of arguments for the title to authority:
1. title of parents over children and descendants
2. title of those of high birth over those of low birth
3. title of elders over youth generally
4. title of master over slave.
5.title of the stronger over the weaker
6. title of the wise over the ignorant.
When however, those with any of the above titles to authority succumb to the thousand headed monster of our appetites and live a life of unnecessary luxury or succumb to arrogance born of hate, the Athenian “diagnoses” such conditions as “infectious” or “diseased”. This knowledge of The Good was certainly operative in Plato’s other Callipolis, “The Republic”, where, in order to come to terms with the evil of succumbing to ones appetites, Plato suggested that a prohibition be placed on the ideal rulers of this ideal polis: a prohibition that prevented the rulers from owning any money or property.
The Athenian also discusses the problem of endowing those who do not possess the necessary knowledge with too much authority. Such souls, it is argued will become puffed up with arrogance an injustices will follow as quickly as it does with those souls corrupted by a life of luxury. The Phronimos or lawgiver, the Athenian argues must possess a knowledge of the Good which includes a range of virtues plus a sense of proportion if one is to avoid a decline into “fevered” forms of government. Remarkably, in illustration of this point, the Athenian maintains:
” a man who combined human nature with some of the powers of a god observed that your leadership [of Sparta] was still in a feverished state, so he blended the obstinacy and vigour of the Spartans with the prudent influence of age by giving the twenty-eight elders the same authority in making important decisions as the kings.”(P.140)
The context of the above quote is what the Athenian referred to as the “age of destruction” of the empire of the Plains which included the Persian naval attack on Greece, and here again we encounter the combination of the Philosophical idea of the Good with a description of historical events and processes. We should also note, however, the religious element of the debate when the Athenian claims that Lycurgus(who created the Spartan Council of elders), manifest the divine power of sound judgement (the panacea for all forms of “fevered” government).
The Athenian also notes that another measure designed to curb the fevered judgment of the young was the introduction of “oaths of office”. This, he argued, would hopefully prevent them from becoming tyrannical.
Finally, the Athenian includes another surprising characteristic of the good state:
“One should always remember that a state ought to be free and wise and enjoy internal harmony, and that this is what the lawgiver should concentrate on in his legislation”(P.142)
This suggestion of the rational idea of freedom would become more important in the moral accounts Immanuel Kant would give in his duty-based ethics which we have argued elsewhere accepts many of the critical assumptions of Aristotelian hylomorphism. There is, for example, no doubt that Freedom played a large part in the determination of the Greeks in their fight against the Persians.