Draft 1.5 Aristotle 11122013.docx

8/14/2019 Draft 1.5 Aristotle 11122013.docx

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Vincent Li

Deliberately non-deliberative democracy or saving Aristotle from the democrats: reading

Aristotles constitution as collective rationalism and power arrangement

Aristotles work Politicsis a challenging work because it, as is often characteristic of

Aristotle, demonstrates both a startling depth of empirical knowledge and a seeming

susceptibility to the common-sense/prejudices of ancient Greece. Not only does Aristotle split

himself between analysis of an ideal polis (state), the best possible polis and the most easily

obtainable yet least bad polis, it seems like he also has to make persuasive appeals to his partisan

audiences reconciling strongly divergent political opinions (Aristotle, 2005,1288b

3739).

(Linsay, 107). The result is ambivalence in his an Aristotelian argument for collective rational

decision-making. Finally I will sketch out work as well as in the scholarship thereof. Some

scholars stick Aristotle strictly in the democratic camp, while others critique this move.1This

paper places itself somewhere in the middle of the conversation in order to explain, drawing

heavily from the work of Josiah argument, the argument for reading a model for deliberative

democracy in Aristotle. In order to do this, I will develop a potential critique for this argument

drawing from the critical theorist Chantal Mouffes critique of deliberative democracy and

conclude with my initial hesitation about the move to democratize Aristotle.

Aristotle develops a spectrum of the best to the worst regimes classified by the essential

qualities of the rulers and the ends to which they rule. There are six major types (Aristotle, 2005

1279a32-1279

b4). Three are correct and three are corruptions of the correct regimes/constitutions.

The regimes range from monarchy which is the best because most divine to tyranny which is the

worst because it is a corruption of the best (Aristotle, 2005, 1289a26-38).. In between are

1Martha Nussbaum, for example, defends him from a social justice perspective (Nussbaum, 1992). Dorothea Frede,

in contrast, has a good piece critiquing liberal revisionism in Aristotle.


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aristocracy which is a rule by the best few, constitution or polity which is rule by a balanced

many and their respective corrupted forms: oligarchy, rule by the rich few and democracy, rule

by a poor/needy majority.2The hierarchy, therefore, is descending in the correct regimes from

the most divine to the most diluted good regime as one monarch or a few aristocrats can be

exceptionally good and rule in the collective interest, whereas the many cannot all be

individually good (Aristotle, 2005, 1279a32-1279

b4). The corrupted regimes, in contrast, rule for

the interest of the rulers, rather than the collective good and consequently fail the natural end of

all states as existing and ruling for the good life of the citizenry (Aristotle, 2005, 1279b

4-10,

1281

a

2-10). The hierarchy is ascending in the corrupt regimes from the most corrupt tyranny to

the best corrupt regime democracies which can under optimal conditions allow for a relatively

stable and good polis because it dilutes the power of any parts self-interest and therefore

removes most of the obstructions to government for the collective good (1281b

21-37).

Democracy, therefore, is the best of the bad regimes in contrast to the much rarer correct regimes

of government by the good for the collective good (Ober, 2001, 213). Democracys status as the

best of the bad is important for reading deliberative democracy in Aristotle. While for Aristotle

democracy has its share of problems, it also has its upsides (Ober, 2001, 226). That being said

the nuances can be put aside for the moment in order to first develop the arguments for

democratic decision-making in Aristotle.

Aristotle seems to argue for democracy in Section II of Book III of the Politicsarguing

that democracy yields greater political stability and decision-making. In order to briefly

summarize the former, Aristotle recognizes that many cities are composed of poor native adult

males who feel entitled to rule and consequently in order to prevent instability those free men

2While not important to the argument of the paper the numbers that correspond to the virtue/vice of the constitution

are not the essential characteristics of the regime. So oligarchy, for example, can be rule by a rich majority

(Aristotle, 2005, 1279b34)


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should be allowed to participate in politics, but only to elect officials (Aristotle, 2005, 1279b

34-

1289a6, 1281

b21-37). This measure seems to be a political necessity that comes with the size of

in the Politicswhen he at least recognizes the validity of arguments for the virtue and rationality

of a collective over a single person or a few. From his arguments in the Politics, it seems like

democracy may be the only game in town because of the increasing size of cities and

consequently the increased strength of the masses (Aristotle, 2005, 1286b

3-21). This is, however,

not a strong endorsement of democracy. It sounds more like the cities of ancient Greece were

held hostage by the working class which needed to be placated, than that they really benefited

from democracy.

The stronger argument for democracy Aristotle considers is whether a collective can

govern better and make better decisions. It is theorized that a collective decision-making body

makes better decisions because it is the summation of the virtue and rationality of the individuals

that make up that government (Ober, 2009). The passage from which this argument can be

derived is worth quoting at length:

The many, none of whom is a good man, may nevertheless be better than the few good

men. . . as a whole. . . as meals to which many have contributed are better than those

provided by one outlay. For each of these many may possess some part of goodness andwisdom. . . as the mass may be a single man with many feet and many hands and many

senses, so it may be with their character and thought. That is why the many are better

judges of works of music and poetry; some judge one part, some another, and all togetherthey judge it all (Aristotle, 1281

a39-1281

b14).

This invokes three important metaphors; 1) that of the potluck dinner 2) that of the multi handed

and sensed person and 3) that of the judgment of a dramatic production. I will deal with the first

and the third and the second indirectly. He argues that just as potluck dinners are better when the

mutual product of multiple contributors, a government by the masses may also be better than

government by a single good person or a few good people in summation. Even if the individuals

are only partially virtuous or rational, the parts add up to a greater whole. This is a strong


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argument for pluralistic governance and consequently democracy because it makes the normative

claim that a government of many worse citizens is superior to a government of a good few.

It is worth noting here that there are conditions to the superiority of collective decision-

making which are that the citizenry must be both varied and be at least somewhat virtuous and

rational. Ober, points out:

Obviously the potluck dinner, as a whole, can go wrong if the parts, the various

contributions, are not both reasonably diverse and individually good. . . each diner may

just happen to bring the same dish (say, 6 courses of pasta salad. . . certainly not better

than [a meal] provided by one individual (Ober, 2009).Aristotle makes this clear in his reasoning that citizens can have a part in goodness and wisdom.

If the citizen body had none they could not govern for the collective interest. To develop the

potluck metaphor, they would add nothing and only eat. The importance of diversity to

deliberative decision-making is furthermore made clear in the complementary metaphor Aristotle

employs about the judgment of dramatic productions. A large and diverse body of judges each

versed in some aspect of tragedy as art form can judge well because their working together

combines their individual expertise into a collective expertise (Ober 2009). They like the multi-

handed man have multiple senses of the art form. The requirement that the collective be varied

seems like an even argument for strong pluralistic governance insofar as such a government must

be composed of a diverse citizen body. It makes one think of contemporary egalitarianism in

which everyone is assumed to be special and have something to contribute to a healthy

democracy.

Aristotles argument for collective decision making seems to resonate with and even

exceed contemporary egalitarianism because it seems to forward a conception of citizen-rulers as

consumers of government who are therefore better qualified than so called experts. While this

claim may seem hyperbolic, the strain is not absent from the text. It can be found in Aristotles


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defense of the epistemic superiority of collective decision-making over expert decision-making

(Aristotle, 2005, 1282a14-23). In defending an arrangement in which the majority is allowed to

elect political officers, Aristotle must answer why ordinary citizens should be allowed to make

political decisions over those with strong theoretical knowledge of politics, i.e., the experts. In

doing so he makes a strong claim that although laypeople do not have theoretical knowledge they

have a superior practical wisdom that comes in their being users of political systems designed by

experts. Analogizing experts to builders or architects, he explains that the person living in the

house made by the former is a better judge of said house because he/she uses it. Consequently it

makes sense for the laity to rule because they benefit collectively from the existence of the polis

and therefore can make the best decision for the polis even if they do not have formal knowledge

of it.

The distinction between theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom can be found in the

Nicomachean ethics (Aristotle, 2005, Section 6). Practical wisdom is the ability to deliberate

about particulars and to make good decisions in accordance with ones interests, whereas

theoretical knowledge is knowledge of the higher causes of those particulars and therefore is not

directly relevant to action upon particulars or as result of deliberation about particulars. Aristotle

gives the example of nutritional knowledge. Knowing that light meat is better for you than dark

meat is useless if you do not know whether chicken is light meat or dark. Knowledge of the

relevant universal is therefore useless without knowledge of the particular. Contrastingly

knowing that chicken is healthy is knowledge of a variable particular which is useful because it

allows you to take action by eating chicken regardless of whether one knows why chicken is

healthier for you. A possible implication of Aristotles builder analogy would then be that

arrangements in which the collectivity is allowed to make decisions are better than one in which


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all decisions are made by experts or technocrats as in modern democracy because such a

collectivity is wiser in its rule as it is better acquainted with social realities than say Harvard

educated policy wonks who work for the Cato Institute, an argument which while perhaps not

making Aristotle an anarchist still seems somewhat radical by contemporary standards.

Finally collective decision-making is negatively more rational than government by the

one or even potentially by the few because it dilutes the fallibility and emotionality of any one

ruler. He explains: Which would be the less corruptible ruler, the single man, or rather the

plurality who were all good? Clearly the plurality (Aristotle, 2005, 1286a16-37). The argument

goes something like this: Because laws are general principles and cannot decide every

particularity, decisions must be made by emotional humans. A collective is less susceptible to the

emotional swings of a single person and therefore dilutes the emotionality of human decision-

making. Laws are, however, nonetheless necessary because they exceed the rationality of any

human: Law has no emotion, whereas every human soulmust have it. Aristotle consequently

seems to advocate for a democratic state restrained by constitutional and statutory laws in order

to moderate the decisions of the collectivity.

This is, however, not the entirety of the truth. While Aristotle does make what Ober calls

philo-democratic arguments that seem to be adequate for articulating a model of deliberative

democracy as collective rational decision-making, it still necessary to look at the context and

intent of Aristotles project especially since democracy remains within Aristotle the best of a bad

lot of regimes (Ober, 2001, 293). Obers admits that Aristotle was likely and specifically

defending collective decision-making against the Platonic ideal of the philosopher kings and

consequently did not fully endorse democracy. Obers brilliant insight, however, is that Aristotle

defends too strongly democratic claims in defense of an impossible to obtain aristocracy given


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the reality of the size of the polis and strength of the working class. Democracy being the best of

the easily attainable regimes makes it a defensible Aristotelian alternative to tyranny that can

potentially be further bettered in the creation of constitution in which the power economic

classes is carefully balanced and mixed such that none rules for its own interests (Ober, 2001,

313, 323) (Aristotle, 2005, 1295a25-1296

a7). While we cannot precisely say that Aristotle is a

democrat in this regard, we can at least attribute strong democratic tendencies to his philosophy.

If these tendencies, in turn, remain adequate for to contemporary politics, we can further

conclude that it is possible to develop a democratic model based on rational and collective

decision-making, i.e., a deliberative democratic model.

The argument Ober develops is, moreover, rather persuasive given the research that he

marshals to support his thesis arguing that strong democratic norms can be found in Aristotle

despite his hierarchical tendencies. Developing the summation argument explained above, Ober

contends that the best test of a constitution to see whether it coheres with Aristotles arguments is

to test its ability to facilitate human capacities to reason, govern, deliberate etc:

If an aristocratic democracy. . . is the most natural form of Aristotelian regime, then it

should also be the case that democracy allows humans to make best use of certain of their

natural human capacities in respect to governance. . . deliberation. . . the capacity. . . tomake reasonable choices about. . . the common good (Ober, 2005, 237).

Ober argues that given Aristotles understanding of human nature as being naturally political and

capable of deliberation a capacity that lacks a prima facie reason for not being shared by all

native adult males (Ober, 2005, 235-6). Even though Aristotle famously disenfranchises the

working class (banausics), women and slaves on the grounds that they lack the reasoning

capacities of propertied men, Ober contends that it is nonetheless possible to expand the circle to

include such groups on the grounds that they have the natural political capacities necessary for

citizenship because the poor argumentation/moral psychology with which Aristotle defends his


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exclusion (that is that slaves lack capacities for reason, women lack deliberative authority and

the working class is slavish) can be replaced with our contemporary assumptions that

deliberation is a natural human capacity that all those groups share such qualities and is

overwhelmed by the strength of the argument for diversity in collective decision-making (Ober,

2005, 239-40). Ober proposes a test asking whether whether there is a reason to ontologically

exclude the banausics, rather than excluding them on the weaker empirical grounds that in

Aristotles Athens they were slavish. Not finding such a reason or even an answer from Aristotle

as to how we should treat the working class, Ober concludes that democratic citizenship can be

extended to the banausics and likely, therefore, the other excluded groups. On this view, it seems

entirely reasonable to read democratic tendencies into Aristotle. Although we should still

recognize Aristotle as an exclusive aristocrat, when theorizing democratic norms we should not

shy away from engaging Aristotle to locate and develop a theory of deliberative democracy that

values collective diversity in rational decision-making:

When we turn. . . to the project of normative democratic theorizing we need not be constrained

by the classical-era endoxaregarding women, slaves, or the effect of labor on the human psyche.The core Aristotelian argument. . . that democracy is our natural inheritance as political animals

and that natural democracy accommodates (even requires) diverse decision-making bodies is not

dependent upon peculiar assumptions about how deliberative capacity is distributed by nature orimpaired through practice (Ober, 2005, 204)

It seems that expanding the circle of actual citizens to include all potential citizens, i.e. to give

citizenship to all adults on the assumption that all adults are naturally rational, allows us to read

Aristotle as both a step in the development of political and democratic thought and even as a

jumping off point for a political theory distinct from modern liberalism (Ober, 239-40).

This seems, however, overly apologistic. Why do the work of disentangling Aristotelian

norms from overtly racist, sexist, classist hierarchies? Are we that unhappy reading Rawls? This

seems even worse than the classic separation readers often make between a philosophers life


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and his/her writing, as when readers ignore Heideggers Nazism or John Stuart Mills work for

the British East India Trading Company. In those cases it is perhaps possible to believe that

obscure biases of the authors do not influence the substance of their arguments, but in Aristotles

case, the Politics seems too much a philosophical formalization of aristocratic Greek common

sense and consequently seems too staunchly embedded in hierarchy to lend to democratic

thinking (Ober, 295). Ober certainly recognizes these problems pointing out that strictly sticking

to Aristotle would require our endorsement of aristocratic government (Ober, 2005, 239). That

being said Obers argument about our ability to disentangle Aristotle from his cultural biases is

compelling. Even if it seems dangerous to assume that Aristotles arguments work without his

assumptions about the psychology of potential citizens, an argument is needed to establish that

Aristotles democratic theories cannot be disentangled in order for us to reject Obers reading.

While I cannot offer a complete critique of Ober, I will sketch out a possible critique here

drawing from the critical theorist Chantal Mouffe offering the provisional argument that

Aristotles conception of government as being for the collective good and thereby requiring the

rationality and virtue of its citizenry is inherently aristocratic because that rationality is precisely

what disqualifies certain potential citizens and that we should therefore be more hesitant about

meritocratic theories of democracy. The result should provide enough material for a discussion

of Aristotle in relation to deliberative democracy and scholarship thereof. The first part of this

argument is suggested in the earlier paragraph on correct and corrupt regimes. The best regimes

are the regimes ruled by the best because they are best able to rule for the collective interest. If

the rulers govern for their own self-interest rather than the collective good or if they lack

deliberative capacities, they constitute a failed and corrupt regime. The qualifications that no

interest group in a constitution rule to its own advantage and that the ruling class must meet


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certain qualifications excludes democracy because it is government by the needy and unqualified

according the Aristotle (Ober, 321-4). The working class lack the virtue to rule because they rule

for their own self-interest and they lack the rationality because menial work makes them slavish

and therefore supposedly incapable of reason (Aristotle, 1277a37b3). Similarly women and

slaves are also disenfranchised by Aristotle because they lack certain deliberative capacities.

Women lack the authority to take good actions based on their reason and slaves the lack the

ability to reason independent of their masters (Ober, 298). In Aristotle, the justification for

exclusion is grounded in the inability of those groups to meet the merit qualifications of

Aristotelian government. Because the ruling class must be virtuous and rational, the depraved

and irrational are excluded and in Aristotles philosophy thats the banausics, women and slaves.

That being said, Ober is not unreasonable when he makes the claim that we can move beyond

these biases because we have different assumptions about natural human capacity. The argument

developed above is not that meritocratic conceptions necessitate exclusion, but that they are

susceptible to and facilitate exclusion because they include and exclude on grounds of merit.

This problem becomes more salient when we question, whether or not contemporary

democracy does not utilize exactly those sorts of restrictions, when we, for example, fail to give

regard to animals, deprive criminals of political rights or the mentally insane of autonomy on the

grounds that they lack the rationality or virtuousness of normal humans. Obers expansion of the

circle suggest that Aristotles arguments can be plugged into other systems, however, this does

not mean that the philosophy has any sort of inherent safeguards against political exclusion, in

fact quite the opposite. The result is concerning given the historic usage of meritocratic

conceptions of government to for example disenfranchise voting populations through

mechanisms such as the electoral college or poll taxes on grounds that the masses or African


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Americans lack the proper capacities for governance. Contemporarily a culture of expertism

relocates the substance of policy making to technocratic decision-makers rather than the citizenry

on grounds of the superiority of an elite class with the degrees and CVs to govern (Mouffe,

(Ober, 301). Mouffe helps deal with the seeming neutrality of deliberative democratic models

arguing that the hope for a political order without exclusion is an ideal that fails to grapple with

the exclusion inherent to political order as the organization of that whole on some logic of its

part (Mouffe, ) Although Mouffe writes more in the context of deliberative democratic theorists

such as Rawls or Habermas, the argument applies to Obers formulation of Aristotelian political

theory as test for whether a group is in or out is that groups capacity to deliberate. This suggests

that what seems like an accidental or empirical problem of Aristotles cultural biases indicates a

broader ontological problem with political order that is belied by theorizations that hold the

pretense to create ideal speech situations that eliminate exclusion. This is, moreover, not an

argument that there should not be requirements for political participation rather it is an argument

that we should be careful how we formulate such claims because of the moral repugnance of

depriving a particular group of political rights on the grounds of that groups supposed

irrationality. We should be suspicious of moral and intellectual qualifications for political

participations lest those qualifications become disqualifications.

Mouffes work, then, offers us an alternative as well. Drawing ironically enough from the

Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, Mouffe contends that instead of reinflating classical

democratic notions with moral meaning in response to economic arguments for democracy as

interest aggregation and technocratic execution, we should emphasize the political underlying

democratic decisions. For Mouffe only focusing on the political dimension can allow us to

recognize the simultaneous cooperative and competitive elements of political decision-making


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and move beyond moral classifications of virtuous or depraved and towards a mutual recognition

of political agency, i.e., that we do not have to agree with or even like other people, but we

should not at the same deprive them of political rights on those grounds. The implication of this

critique for our reading of Aristotle, suggests that focusing too strongly on the logical substance

of his arguments, while failing to draw adequate attention to the political context in which those

arguments were developed fails to understand his democratic norms as a compromise between

conflicting interest groups of classical Athens (Lindsay). Rather than reading Aristotle as merely

debating Plato, the research Thomas Lindsay argues that we must read Aristotle rhetorically as

appealing to the democrats in order to persuade them in greater alignment with his aristocratic

assumptions, hence the move by Aristotle to moderate the demos with a middling economic

class. Ober gets a lot right because he does a rather robust analysis of Athenian and Aristotelian

democracy contextualizing it to scholarship of the political context, but we can do a lot better by

understanding that Aristotles arguments were inherently political, brokering discursively

compromises between competing group and given this reading do the same in our reading of

Aristotle by rejecting his inherent democratic tendencies. We are by no means obligated to

defend Aristotles work even when we recognize his seemingly democratic arguments because

Mouffes argument suggests that we can read and learn from Aristotle without trying to build a

model from it. This is a better approach to democracy because it refuses to deprive political

rights on moral grounds, leaves open possibilities for constructing our own democratic models,

and recognizes that no model is adequate because inherently exclusive. Instead of reading

democracy as some sort of endpoint for our current political situation, we can instead recognize

the current situation as something of a work in progress and go from there.

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