Music and the End of Aristotle's Politics
Aristotle's Politics, Book 8
Due to increased traffic from YouTube, quite a few new subscribers have joined Commonplace Philosophy in the last week or so. Before we get to this week’s material, let me a say a few words.
First: welcome! It’s a pleasure to have you.
Second: This is the weekly installment of our book club. This is a free book club I offer to subscribers. In 2025, we read The Human Condition, Mrs Dalloway, The Dispossessed, The Republic, The Remains of the Day, Zhuangzi, and Aristotle’s Politics. This week’s post is the final installment on Aristotle’s politics. The book clubs are simple: I announce a reading schedule, we read the book together, and once a week I send out a post on the material. Once per month, paid subscribers can join a Zoom call to discuss the material further.
Third: Next year, the book club is all about the philosophy of technology. I’m planning to provide some more content for paid subscribers to enhance the experience, but at its core the book club is free. Support is appreciated, as it helps me keep working here on Substack and on YouTube, but you will have access to 2026’s book club regardless.
And with that, we’re reading to finish our discussion of Aristotle. We’ll discuss Book 8 (with a bit from Book 7, on education), and then on December 6 we’ll have the final zoom call of the year from 3-4:30 PM Eastern.
Last week, I omitted a discussion of education from Book 7. This week, we’ll combine those sections with the material from Book 8, and then we’ll reflect on the book as a whole.
Education is necessary in a political community because – here I am thinking with Aristotle rather than strictly interpreting – virtue is necessary for good governance. If we as a people do not possess virtues like moderation, prudence, wisdom, and courage, then we will not support policies and programs that serve our longterm interests. We’ll be immoderate, imprudent, foolish, and craven. We’ll prioritize quick comforts over the health of the political community. We’ll no longer desire that the city continues, either — we’ll be so selfish that we’ll only support our own interests. And of course, that way leads to ruin.
And we’ll need to start early, Aristotle thinks. From the very beginning of a child’s life, the city has an interest in ensuring his or her flourishing. Thus, Aristotle discusses diet, exercise, early education, the stories children will hear, proximity to slaves, and when children can be allowed to attend lampoons.1 This comes down to a simple principle: ‘For all such things should prepare the road for their later pursuits.’
Education will be public. Aristotle does not devote much time to the arguments for why this is so, but he does write:
Since there is a single end for the city as a whole, it is evident that education must necessarily be one and the same for all, and that superintendence of it should be common and not on a private basis.
We can fill in some of the gaps here. If education must the same for all, then we must ask how that is practically achieved. We could allow the private superintendence of education, but this would be an impractical way to ensure that everyone received the same training. So, it must be publicly administered.
To draw on a modern example, consider homeschooling. I know many homeschoolers, and I happen to know many excellent homeschoolers — their children are getting a great education thanks to their dedication. But I also know that homeschooling is incredibly heterogeneous, and the quality can vary widely. Within the set of homeschoolers, surely, some of those children are not being educated properly. If we want everyone to receive the same education, or at least the same minimum education, then this is a policy problem.
I’m using this only as one example; I’m not anti-homeschooling. In fact, we see the same problems in public schools. Your zip code, even within the same city, can determine your school quality to a shocking extent. Those children do not receive the same education even when it is publicly administered. And of course, private schools add more complexity to this picture.
Objectively, we are far from the Aristotelian ideal. Whether that is a problem or not is left as an exercise for the reader.
The question then becomes: what should these children learn? Aristotle identifies four subjects which are commonly taught:
Letters
Gymnastics
Music
Drawing
But he also calls these subjects ‘ambiguous.’ What he seeks to identify in Book 8 is what is appropriate and possible (8.8).2 We need to ask why children are taught these subjects, and we need to keep the end in mind — namely, Aristotle is concerned with educating children so that they can appropriately enjoy leisure. This is not recreation – Aristotle calls that play – and is closely related to contemplation and rest. This might make sense of Aristotle’s claim that it would be absurd for people to take up cooking: this is ignoble and unfree, or ‘slavish’ to use his terminology, and thus unfitting of children who are being raised to be citizens.
This also means that education is not ultimately aimed at utility: ‘To seek everywhere the element of utility is least of all fitting for those who are magnanimous and free.’
Learning letters is easy to justify, and Aristotle spends little time on it. Learning letters allows one to read and to pursue further study, as Aristotle has done in his own lifetime. The actual learning of letters may be boring, and Aristotle says that learning is accompanied by pain, but it enables a child to go on to do things fitting of a free person. It opens up a new world for them, one that they can begin to explore for themselves: the world of ideas. They can study biology, philosophy, poetics, and even politics itself. Thus, we will need to teach children their letters.
Gymnastics has as its end physical health. Training the body to be healthy and to endure necessary suffering is important for future thriving. What must be kept in mind, though, is that this is not the end in itself. Aristotle briefly discusses the problem of Sparta. Spartans prioritized physical education, and they dominated others through their physical prowess. But Aristotle attributes this success to the lack of training of their opponents; once their opponents trained a well, the Spartans became less formidable. This is because Sparta does not have an eye toward higher and more noble things. The Spartans are beastlike, he says.
Drawing is likely similar to letters in its justification. It is necessary for life, and likely allows one to create diagrams, plans, etc., and it may also be necessary for studying geometry. So, drawing is justified by what it enables; Aristotle does not seem to have a view of these children going on to be artists themselves. That is something for craftsmen to do.
But Aristotle’s primary discussion in Book 8 is music. This is because music is difficult for him to justify at first. For one, learning to perform music is not the sort of thing that he has in mind — the true end, here, is for the child to grow up so that he can recline at table and listen. This will provide him with rest, and rest helps ease the pain of the necessary exertions in life. But why is that a good way to spend one’s time, anyway? Why must it be part of the necessary education in the city?
His solution: musical education is character formation. Modes of music correspond to experiences of the soul, and thus exposure to these modes can form the soul by habituating it to experience these emotions. Aristotle does not do as Plato and Socrates suggest and ban modes of music from the city; in fact, he says all modes should be part of education. This does not mean, though, that they must be present in equal proportion. The Dorian mode is associated with good character, while the Phrygian is associated with frenzy; so, the Dorian is to be prioritized.
Children will learn to play music, but it will only be to a certain extent. Aristotle says that the instruments that are appropriate is clear, but I don’t see a list provided. I do see, however, one instrument that is especially prohibited: the flute. The flute is like the Phrygian in an association with frenzy, but it is also unfitting because it renders you incapable of speech as you play it. Further, any instrument which requires professional education is unfitting, because we are not training these children to eventually enter contests. The point is to enable them to rest so that they can properly enjoy leisure.
And that is the end of Aristotle’s Politics. There is no grand summary of Aristotle’s political theory, nor a climatic myth like we found in the Republic. Instead, it ends when it has addressed all the practical matters that will enable a city to flourish.
It is an odd book. I admit that I do not find it nearly as compelling or thought-provoking as the Nicomachean Ethics, but I do see its value. The Nicomachean Ethics is almost entirely focused on the individual’s character, though a significant portion of the text is devoted to friendship. Still, we know that this cannot be the totality of ethics. Ethics is a matter of living together as well. Thus, it is natural to see the Politics as an extension of the project which began with the Nicomachean Ethics, an attempt to give us a picture of a whole, flourishing life.
It is a book lacking a bold, grand vision of communal life. There are no philosopher-kings to solve all of our problems. Yet, it is a book grounded in the practicalities of living together, a book that makes you think We have to take life together seriously, or else we’ll lose it. And at the risk of oversimplifying, I think that is the great message of the book. Life together takes a substantial amount of thought, care, and work. Life together, if we want it to be worth living, doesn’t happen by accident. There are many ways for it to go wrong, many ways for us to go wrong. If we want to make this work, we will have to get to work.
Only when they have been sufficiently educated that what they hear will not harm them.
Lord notes that the final paragraph of 8.8 is held by many scholars to be a later interpolation. But the idea that he is seeking the appropriate and the possible is a fair characterization of Aristotle’s view of education.
Hey, Jared. I'm a big and longtime fan of your work and I'd like to step in for the first time with a correction/clarification.
You link the musical modes directly to our (modern) interpretation of the diatonic modes, such as Dorian and Phrygian, but what Aristotle — and Plato, for that matter — were mentioning was something entirely different. Their concept of tonoi and harmoniai is not directly related to diatonic modes, and certainly not in the same way we understand them today. It was, from what I remember, a mistranslation during the medieval times, with some authors attributing it to Boethius.
There are many references for this. Martin Litchfield West's Ancient Greek Music (1992), which is available in archive.org talks about this extensively. Other good reference is Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, by Thomas J. Mathiesen (1999).
Anyway, wanted to clarify because, for musicians reading this, they may associate it with harmonies whose character is entirely different from what the Greeks were mentioning.
I know this because I'm a musician/composer myself, and I was a composition and theory teacher for many years. Now I also write a newsletter here about music, aesthetics, and technology :)
Thanks for your work,
Óscar
As a latecomer I enjoyed this exercise. Aristotle was writing a work of political science as much a work of political theory and, as you say, he offers no grand vision of communal life. It is—again, as you say—a book grounded in the practicalities of life—i.e., it’s political science. Many of his insights are worthy of a modern poli-sci class. I read this work for the first time many years ago as an undergrad political science and philosophy double major. I very much enjoyed pulling down my old Ernest Barker translation and reading my youthful marginal comments. I think there is great wisdom hidden in your seemingly prosaic insight that Aristotle’s Politics lacks “a bold, grand vision of communal life. …no philosopher-kings to solve all of our problems.” I will argue, however, that it’s not something his work lacks. I think he is dead-on where he ought to be. Our lives and our communities are complex and messy. They require constant tending. Those who come up with grand visions to perfect mankind very often end up killing men in pursuit of their grand visions.