A PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK
FOR POLITICAL SYSTEMS
"... man is by nature a political animal." -Aristotle [A1:1253a(37)]
By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
Aristotle's Politics
Modern political systems have their roots, to a large extent, in the ancient Greek "city-states". The style of government used by many of these city-states is generally regarded as "the forerunner, if not the direct ancestor, of the constitutional democracies of the contemporary West" [L4:1]. Indeed, as we have seen, the word "politics" is itself closely related to the Greek word for these city-states, polis. Perhaps the most influential of the classical discussions of the nature of politics has been Aristotle's book, Politics [A1], which "defines a permanent human possibility and thereby irrevocably alters the way men understand themselves."[1]
In Politics Aristotle attempts to determine what constitutes the "best" city. This requires him not only to discuss what its particular characteristics would be, but also to analyze the general nature of a city and the different political systems (politeiai)[2] which can be used to govern a city. Although his analysis is by no means the last word on the subject, an examination of Aristotle's framework for political systems can serve as a useful starting point in our search for the political system which fits best with a Christian world view. For it will provide us with a clear idea of the various options open to a person who wishes to adopt some type of political philosophy.
Politics as Partnership
Aristotle begins his study of politics by claiming that "every city is some form of partnership...for the sake of some good", and that the political philosopher's task is that of "investigating what the city is composed of" [A1:1252a(35); see also 1261a-b(55)]. He then points out that families and business relations are also examples of partnerships which exhibit something like politics on a lower level. A partnership between several families gives rise to a village, and a partnership between several villages gives rise to a city [1252b(36)]. The partnership that makes up a city therefore requires certain agreements between "similar persons, for the sake of a life that is the best possible" [1328a(209)]. Aristotle is not suggesting that such partners must be similar in every respect, but that both unity and diversity must exist between the partners in different respects: "a city tends to come into being at the point when the partnership formed by a multitude is self-sufficient."[3]He summarizes his main point as to the purpose of cities in A1:1280b(99):
... the city is not a partnership in a location and for the sake of not committing injustice against each other and of transacting business. These things must necessarily be present if there is to be a city, but not even when all of them are present is it yet a city, but [the city is] the partnership in living well both of households and families for the sake of a complete and self-sufficient life.
Anyone who can participate actively in the political partnership which makes up the city is qualified to be a "citizen". Thus Aristotle says in A1:1275a-b(87):
The citizen in an unqualified sense is defined by no other thing so much as by sharing in decision and office ...
... Whoever is entitled to participate in an office involving deliberation or decision is ... a citizen in this city; and the city is the multitude of such persons that is adequate with a view to a self-sufficient life ...
Sharing in the political partnership of the city requires the citizen not only to be a capable decision-maker, but also to be a person who is willing to abide by decisions made by others. For as Aristotle stresses in A1:1277b(92), "the good citizen should know and have the capacity both to be ruled and to rule, and this very thing is the virtue of a citizen-knowledge of rule over free persons from both [points of view]."
In monarchies, where only one person rules, there are in this sense no citizens; in fact, there is no city and no politics either in this strict sense, inasmuch as there is no partnership between equals for the purpose of ruling and being ruled. This is why Aristotle, as we shall see, sometimes contrasts monarchies with what we would call "republican" (i.e., non-monarchical) political systems: only the latter are politeiai in the true sense of the word (though he sometimes uses this term loosely to refer to monarchies as well), so republican systems occupy his primary attention in Politics. [4]
Six Political Systems
The primary significance of Aristotle's political philosophy for our study is that, in the course of his discussion, he employs a systematic framework consisting of the six possible types of political system.[5] They are distinguished by the different source of authority and power which characterizes each. After asserting in A1:1279a(96) that "the authoritative element" in a political system must "be either one or a few or the many", he explains the difference between "correct" political systems and their "deviations": "when the one or the few or the many rule with a view to the common advantage, these political systems are necessarily correct, while those with a view to the private advantage of the one or the few or the multitude are deviations."
The names Aristotle assigns each of these six systems are as follows. The correct form of "monarchy" is called a "kingship".[6]"Aristocracy" (i.e., power held by the best [aristos] people) is Aristotle's term for the correct form of rule by the few. And "polity" is his term for the correct form of majority rule, though he says this term can also refer in a general way to all political systems.[7]
Deviations from those mentioned are tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity. Tyranny is monarchy with a view to the advantage of the monarch, oligarchy [rule] with a view to the advantage of the well off, democracy [rule] with a view to the advantage of those who are poor; none of them is with a view to the common gain. [A1:1279b(96); see also 1289a(119-20)]
We shall now proceed to examine each of these political systems in a bit more detail.
In his discussion of kingship, Aristotle is careful to point out that there are several different kinds of kings [A1:1285a-b (109-110)]. The main distinction is between those whose authority transcends the law and those who must themselves obey the law. A political system in which the "so-called king" rules "according to law" is not a true "kingship"; such a king is more like a "permanent general" [1287a(113)]. A "kingship" in the true sense of the word is an "absolute kingship", in which "one person has authority over all matters..., with an arrangement that resembles household management" [1285b(110-111)]. In a kingship, "the best political system is not one based on written [rules] and laws", because a good king will be able to judge fairly according to the circumstances of each specific situation, being guided by the general principles of the law, even though his judgment need not be determined by them [1286a(111)]. As Aristotle puts it in A1:1284a (106-107): "If there is one person so outstanding by his excess of virtue-or a number of persons......such persons can no longer be regarded as a part of the city.... [For] they themselves are law." He then points out that "ostracism" is the inevitable fate for such persons "in the deviant political systems" [1284b(108)], even though in "the best political systems...persons of this sort will be permanent kings in their cities."
In theory, a kingship should be the best political system, yet Aristotle prefers aristocracy for several reasons. There is always a danger that the one man holding all the power will turn bad, so that the best system would degenerate into the worst (i.e., tyranny). The only protection against such a man being overcome by his own selfish desires is for him to accept the rule of law; thus "it is laws-correctly enacted-that should be authoritative", not persons [A1:1282a-b(103)]. The nature of law is such that it protects people against the ever-present danger of being corrupted by their own appetite, for as Aristotle explains in A1:1287a(114): "One who asks law to rule...is held to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence law is intellect without appetite."
Another problem with kingship in Aristotle's view is that there is likely to be more than just one good man in most cities, so the good men who are not allowed to rule will not be satisfied with the inequality between themselves and the king. Such an unjust situation is almost inevitably resolved by replacing the king with an aristocracy, in which all the rulers are good men [A1:1286b(112)]. Hence, Aristotle suggests that the less power a king has (i.e., the less he is like a true king), the longer he will be able to preserve his rule [1313a(173)].
An "aristocracy...is in some sense an oligarchy", since in both types of political systems "the rulers are few" [A1:1306b (159)] (oligos means "few"). The difference is that, unlike a typical (i.e., deviant) oligarchy, in which the rulers are chosen merely "on the basis of wealth", the rulers in an aristocracy are chosen "in accordance with virtue".[8]The typical form of oligarchy is likely to be bad for the city, because there is no guarantee that the rulers will be virtuous (and thus, look after the welfare of the poor) just because they are rich. An aristocracy, by contrast, is by definition (in Aristotle's sense of the word) a political system in which the few virtuous men who are given the power and authority to rule will look after those who are not members of the ruling class.
Perhaps the distinction to which Aristotle devotes the most attention in Politics is that between the two extreme forms of non-monarchical government, oligarchy and democracy, probably because these two systems are the ones found most frequently in real historical cities (both in ancient Greece and in modern times). For example, he says "law may be oligarchic or democratic" [A1:1281a(100)], in the sense that "in democratic political systems the people have authority, while by contrast it is the few in oligarchies" [1278b(94)]. In A1:1279b(96)-1280a(97) he continues:
oligarchy is when those with property have authority in the political system; and democracy is the opposite, when those have authority who do not possess a [significant] amount of property but are poor ... What makes democracy and oligarchy differ is poverty and wealth: wherever some rule on account of wealth, whether a minority or a majority, this is necessarily an oligarchy, and wherever those who are poor, a democracy. But it turns out ... that the former are few and the latter many ...
Democracy is the political system in which a partnership exists between the "common people" (démos), who will have an equal say in the way power and authority are distributed in the city, whether or not they own property. Whereas "the defining principle of aristocracy is virtue" and "that of oligarchy is wealth", the defining principles of democracy are "freedom" [A1:1294a(130)] and "the majority [i.e., the poor] having authority" [1310a(167)].
One of the key aspects of freedom is that it involves "being ruled and ruling in turn" [A1:1317a-b(183)]. Such an arrangement of reciprocal ruling among equals "is law" [1287a(113)]. As with most of the other political systems, Aristotle discusses several varieties of democracy [1291b-1292a(125)], including the type in which "the people become a monarch", in the sense that "the many have authority [over the law, though] not as individuals but all together" [1292a(125-6]. In the narrow sense of a political system (i.e., the sense in which it excludes monarchies), "a democracy of this sort is not a political system. For where the laws do not rule there is no political system."
Aristotle warns that the best political system cannot be determined in advance, for any of the systems (except tyranny) may end up being the most appropriate for a given city, once its specific situation is taken into consideration. Thus, for example, he admits that sometimes a kingship will be the best system for a city, even though in general "to have law rule is to be chosen in preference to having one of the citizens do so" [A1:1288a (115-116)]. The political system which Aristotle thinks is most often to be preferred, which he calls "polity", is midway between aristocracy and democracy. Yet even in the case of polity, he grants that "there is nothing to prevent another political system being more advantageous for certain [cities]" [1296b(136)].
Polity is a political system based on Aristotle's famous principle of the "golden mean" [see e.g., A2:1106a(65)-1109b(75)], which tells us always to avoid extremes, or in this case tells us that "the middling sort of life is best" for the city as well as for the individual [A1:1295a(133)]. In other words, polity is a political system in which what we would call the "middle class" forms a majority of people who have the power and authority to rule in a way that mixes elements of the other three republican systems. The mixture Aristotle has in mind involves a combination of democracy and oligarchy (the two extremes) in such a way that their extreme elements will cancel each other out: a polity requires "a mixture of...the well off and the poor".[9]But it might also mix elements of aristocracy and oligarchy, as when a polity requires "a law distributing offices on the basis of merit [as in aristocracy] to those who are well off [as in oligarchy]" [1288a(116)]. When Aristotle says in A1:1320b(190) that the best sort of oligarchy "is very close to so-called polity", we must assume the good oligarchy to which he is referring is an aristocracy. For aristocracy and polity are the "means" between the "extremes" of oligarchy and democracy [see e.g., 1307a(160)]:
Figure 1: Four Forms of Republican Political System
This explains why Aristotle sometimes seems to equate polity with aristocracy [e.g., 1286b(112),1293b(129)]; for in comparison to the two extremes, which are on the whole bad for most cities, these systems represent the means, which in each case is good.
The remaining political system, tyranny, which is the opposite of (i.e., deviation from) kingship, is actually called "the extreme form of democracy" by Aristotle; conversely, he says some forms of oligarchy and democracy are "tyrannies", divided among many persons.[10] He explains the relation between tyranny and the other two deviant political systems in A1:1310b(168)-1311a(169):
Kingship accords with aristocracy, while tyranny is composed of the ultimate sort of oligarchy and of democracy-hence it is composed of the two bad political systems and involves the deviations and errors of both of them....
.... Having wealth as its end comes from oligarchy ..., as does its distrust of the multitude.... From democracy comes their war on the notables ...
He then explains why kingship is not worth the risk of tyranny:
Kingships no longer arise today; if monarchies do arise, they tend to be tyrannies. This is because kingship is a voluntary sort of rule ..., but [today] there are many persons who are similar, with none of them so outstanding as to match the extent and the claim to merit of the office. [1313a(173)]
If we now add the two forms of monarchy to the four forms of republican political systems, we can put all six systems together in the form of a diagram, which will enable us to see the entire framework at a single glance.
Figure 2: Aristotle's Six forms of Political System
In his discussion of political revolutions, Aristotle argues that, although each system can change into virtually any other system, they tend to "undergo revolution more frequently into their opposite than into a political system of a neighboring sort" [A1:1316a-b(179-80)]. In other words, a revolution is more likely to be influenced by the internal logic of the relation between different political systems than by the empirical factor of what type of system is in effect in a neighboring city.
In A1:1286b(112) Aristotle describes more fully how the progression of political systems, as represented by the arrows in Figure 2, typically works itself out in real historical situations: political systems normally start out as kingships, pass over into aristocracies or polities, degenerate into oligarchies, fall into the grips of a tyranny, and are liberated from oppression by a democracy. Even though it does "harm to the political system" to move "from an aristocracy" to "a democracy" [1270b(76)], Aristotle therefore regards democracy as the almost inevitable political system, inasmuch as it serves as the best protection against tyranny [1286b(112)]. Yet Aristotle's own hope is that this historical fact can be overcome by reason, with the result that the least extreme of the truly good systems, polity, though it has rarely existed in the past, can become a reality.
Summary and Conclusions: Loyalty and Freedom
Aristotle offers a clear and concise summary of his framework for political systems in Nicomachean Ethics. In Book VIII, Chapter 10, he suggests that "kingship, aristocracy, [and] timocracy" are the three basic forms of good political constitution [A2:1160a(245)]. He defines kingship as a political system in which one good man has absolute power and authority over all the people. As long as the king is truly good, this will be the best type of political system, because he will always have the best interests of his subjects in mind. And since he will not have anyone else to oppose him, he can always put his good will into practice.
Aristocracy, by contrast, is a government in which the power and authority are wielded by a privileged class, consisting for the most part of the "best" men. Although this too is a good political system, it is not as good as kingship, because it is more likely that a few bad men will infiltrate the aristocracy and corrupt the intentions of the otherwise good rulers.
The least beneficial of the three good political systems, from the standpoint of the citizen, is timocracy (cf. polity in Politics [see above, pp.12-14n]) which Aristotle defines as the political system in which "all citizens who can satisfy the property qualification"-i.e., anyone who owns property [timema]-will "have the same political status" [A2:1160a(245)]. This is the least of the good systems, because, although most property owners will be capable of making good political decisions, it would now be much easier for bad men (who happen to own property) to influence the way laws are formed and rights are distributed among the citizens.
Aristotle then compares the relationship between the citizen and the city in these three good political systems to three types of family relationships. In kingship the king is like a father and the citizen is like a son.[11]In aristocracy the ruling class is like a husband and the other citizens are like a wife. And in timocracy (or polity) the relationship between property owners is like that between siblings.[12]
A difficulty in choosing which political system is best in the long run arises because each of the three "good" systems can easily be perverted into a "bad" political system, just as family relationships are not always harmonious. Thus, if a king turns out to be a bad man, kingship becomes tyranny. And if the minority of bad men in a ruling class are able to gain control of the city, aristocracy turns into oligarchy. In both cases the implications for the majority of people would be disastrous, since they will have no right to complain if they are treated badly by the ruler(s). The perversion of timocracy (or polity), by contrast, is democracy, which Aristotle calls "the least bad" of the three bad political systems. Apparently, this "majority rules" system is bad because the will of the majority is likely to be influenced by the selfish motives of the many bad people who live in any society.
As we know, individuals in a democratic society feel democracy is good, because it gives them some power and authority. Yet if Aristotle is right, the net result is likely to be bad for them, because those who are good will probably be in the minority. And in that case, these good citizens will be unable to exercise enough control to implement truly wise policies for the city.[13]
Aristotle is careful to warn that kingship is the most risky option, because "the worst is that which is the opposite to the best." When choosing a political system, we must therefore keep in mind that when we aim at a particular system, we might end up with its opposite instead. This is why, as we have seen, Aristotle elsewhere chooses polity (i.e., timocracy) as the safest option: even if it slips into democracy, the negative effect on the average citizen is kept to a minimum.
In conclusion it may be helpful to distinguish between Aristotle's three pairs of political systems by noting how they differ in the level of freedom they offer to the citizens. It is often said that there is no such thing as unlimited freedom: indeed, freedom is normally defined by reference to some limitations, such as the self-imposed limitations of loyalty to an authority, or obedience to laws. So the question here is, how do the various sorts of political systems limit the freedom of the citizen?
A king requires a high level of loyalty from his subjects, to the extent that they cannot properly be called "citizens" at all; but in return (if he is a good king) he gives them a high level of freedom. Their daily lives need not be encumbered by excessive laws as long as they remain loyal to the king. The ruling class in an aristocracy requires a more moderate level of respect and loyalty, but offers in return a somewhat lower level of freedom. More laws are needed to keep the lower classes under control, and these laws restrict the freedom of all citizens.
Finally, in a polity (or timocracy), and even more so in a democracy, the level of freedom for the citizens is actually at a comparatively low level-despite the common belief to the contrary. Why? Because in these systems there is little or no need for the citizen to be loyal or respectful to fellow citizens, so instead, as we have seen, a complex network of laws must be instituted in hopes of preventing the stronger citizens from taking advantage of the weaker ones.[14] In other words, democracy takes away freedoms and replaces them with rights. However, as Aristotle's framework of political systems so clearly reveals, such a sacrifice of freedom is the price that must be paid by those who wish to minimize the risk of tyranny. For a system offering a higher level of freedom can quickly change into its opposite, which will offer little or no freedom to the citizens, but will promote injustice and oppression of a type which is unlikely to occur in a democracy.
Now that we have come to a basic understanding of the concept of politics and of the relationships between some of the most typical political systems (see Table One for a summary of Aristotle's framework), we can proceed to examine which type, if any, is most appropriate for Christians to support. My use of Aristotle in this Chapter is not intended as an exhaustive account of all possible political systems, but only to provide an adequate sampling of some of the most important types. Some modern political systems, of course, do not exactly match any of Aristotle's basic types.[15]Nevertheless, this framework will be adequate for our present purpose, which is not to discuss political philosophy in general, but to examine what political philosophy, if any, is endorsed in the Bible.
Table One:
Aristotle's "Good" Political Systems and their Perversions[16]
