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ETHICS & POLITICS, ANCIENT & MODERN
Thanassis Samaras (George Washington University, Philosophy): 'Aristotle and the Question of Citizenship'
Friday March 15, 2013 | 03:15 -05:00 PM | 90

Title:
'Aristotle and the Question of Citizenship'

Abstract:

In this paper I address the problem of the exact character of politeia in the narrow sense (‘polity’) in the middle Books of the Politics. This character is defined, at least to a considerable extent, by Aristotle’s determination of who is and is not a citizen in ‘polity’. I also examine the issues of the feasibility and desirability of this kind of constitution, as well the implications of its character for Aristotle’s attitude towards democracy.
I argue for the following positions:
a) In his classification of constitutions in the Politics, Aristotle follows Plato’s categorization of Politicus 302b ff., with only two inconsequential modifications.
b) ‘Polity’ is a generic term which covers particular instances of constitutions. Aristotle discusses four such instances in the Politics. Three of them are fairly probable cases of ‘polity’ and are recognized as such by most scholars. I add to this list the ‘first kind of democracy’ of 1291b30–38 and 1292b23–34. Although technically a ‘corrupt’ form of democracy, this constitution is actually closer to ‘polity’ than it is to what Aristotle calls ‘extreme’ democracy.
c) Despite the fact that the philosopher does not discuss any of his exemplifications of ‘polity’ in much detail, a careful reading of the text demonstrates that ‘polity’ is a constitution based on the restriction of citizenship to the leisured and the hoplitic classes, to the exclusion of the landless and the banausics, and that it falls within the tradition of the ‘mixed’ constitution. Following Huxley and Ober, I propose that this politeia is Aristotle’s preferred solution to the banausic problem (which may also be termed the problem of ‘potential citizens’) and that it is the constitution that Aristotle regards as the best possible for existing Greek cities with a large banausic population. Monarchy is not a viable option for these cities, and the kat’ euchên politeia of Books VII and VIII, with its leisured Greek and barbarian slave population, can only be realized in cities where a Greek banausic population is not already in place. It can only be achieved, therefore, in areas outside of Greece proper, such as Asia Minor.
d) Points (b) and (c) allow us to answer the questions of the feasibility and desirability of ‘polity’. This constitution is possible when there is in the city a (probably farming) ‘middling’ class politically strong enough to impose it, but the philosopher thinks of this as a rather rare possibility. In terms of desirability, according to Aristotle’s classification of the different constitutions, kingship would be the best, followed by aristocracy, whereas ‘polity’ would only be in third place. But ‘polity’ remains the best option for those cities in which the conditions for either a perfect monarchy or a citizen body consisting of fully leisured landowners do not exist. As mentioned in (c), most democratic cities in southern Greece, including Athens, would fall into this category.
e) The fact that Aristotle includes in the Politics an orthê kind of constitution in which the many are in power is sometimes cited as evidence that he is not inimical to democracy and is genuinely interested in its amelioration. This position, however, is untenable for the following reason: when Aristotle’s talks of ‘the many’ in ‘polity’, he does not mean the whole population of native adult males, but a much narrower group, consisting roughly of aristocrats and self-sustaining farmers and excluding ‘potential citizens’ such as the landless and the manual workers. Nevertheless, any constitution of this kind cannot be called a democracy at all, either according to what Aristotle’s contemporaries took the term to mean, or according to Aristotle’s own understanding of it in 1278a17–18, where he states that democracy is the consitution which bestows citizenship to the banausics and the thêtes. So, both in terms of classical Greek political theory and in terms of Aristotle’s own analysis of the social composition of the different types of constitutions, ‘polity’ is not a democracy. It is rather a moderate oligarchy. This means that, far from being interested in improving democracy, Aristotle is in favor of terminating it and replacing it with an essentially oligarchic constitution.

Commentator: Ben Miller (Stanford Philosophy PhD)