Aristotle - Contemporary Perspectives on His Thought by Sphendone-Mentzou Demetra;

Author:Sphendone-Mentzou, Demetra;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

1 The Values and the Political Causes of the Correct Πολιτεία

I shall now focus on Aristotle’s main value and political preferences in order to establish my line of argumentation.

Firstly, Aristotle fully adopts the purpose of democracy, namely universal freedom (personal, social and political cumulatively). Freedom is defined by democracy as autonomy, that is, self-determination of life, in the sense of not being governed by any other person. He considers universal freedom as the appropriate axiomatic principle of the anthropocentrically integrated social being and as the only principle per se capable of securing the stability of the πολιτεία of his time.

As far as the socio-economic field is concerned, the actualization of freedom is linked to two statutory presuppositions: it does not adopt the dependency on need (poverty) as a common identity of the citizen, nor the dependency on the field of labour. It is interesting to note that Aristotle accepts, like democracy, the oligarchic foundation of the economic system (the non-introduction of the democratic principle into it). However, he accompanies it with the axiomatic principle of the exit of the citizen from the economic process. This is because this is the only way to achieve the social freedom of the citizen. Indeed, the citizen’s “conventional” dependence on the owner of the economic system means giving up his freedom and thus becoming a slave. The productive procedure, wherever it demands dependent labor, is called upon to turn to slave labor.

Having the problem of social/economic dependence solved, Aristotle faces the question as to how the citizen will participate in the redistribution of the economic product, since he does not participate in its production. At this point, the Stagerite turns to the argument of democracy, adopting the principle of leisure. Leisure is a fundamental principle of the Aristotelian πολιτεία. Aristotle points out that leisure not only resolves the question of social freedom, but also forms the constitutional basis of political freedom, because the “good leisure” is considered to be the condition of “good ruling.”379

In the political field, the actualization of freedom depends upon the establishment of a πολιτεία, which introduces the society of citizens as the main institutional parameter into its function. Aristotle agrees with this axiomatic principle of democracy, which by definition rejects the formation of politics, in terms of autonomous political power (the political system’s belonging to the legal plasma of the “state,” as in the principle of political sovereignty). Political freedom is secured only when the society of citizens changes into a political society and acquires the main responsibility of the πολιτεία (δῆμος).

The citizen in Aristotle’s “πολιτεία” is the full citizen of democracy. Hence, he introduces the simple quality of the free person (who belongs to the society of the polis-state) as a fundamental condition of “citizenship,” without the accompanying conditions or the limitations of oligarchy.380 In addition, the Stagerite points out that, in order to rule properly, the citizen must secure his livelihood (his financial self-sufficiency) through the πολιτεία. In contrast, oligarchy leaves this matter to the citizen. However, the solution

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