'The complete community is the city'
Aristotle's Politics, Book 1
Today, we are starting our reading of Aristotle’s Politics. We’ll read this book for the rest of October and end in early December. This will end our 2025 read-alongs, and then in 2026 we’ll move into the philosophy of technology reading group.
Here is the schedule for Aristotle’s Politics:
October 13: Book 1
October 20: Book 2
October 27: Book 3
November 1: Members-Only Zoom Call 3-4:30 PM Eastern
November 3: Book 4
November 10: Book 5
November 12: Members-Only Zoom Call 8-9:30 PM Eastern
November 17: Book 6
November 24: Book 7
December 1: Book 8
December 6: Members-Only Zoom Call 3-4:30 PM Eastern
As a reminder, Zoom calls are for paid subscribers. If you’d like to join those calls (and have access to the recordings afterward), considering purchasing a subscription. You’ll also be supporting my work on YouTube, where I strive to bring philosophically-informed content to a wide audience.
Aristotle’s Politics begins where his Nicomachean Ethics ends. Indeed, this is how Aristotle ends the latter:
Now, since those prior to us have left undiscovered what pertains to legislation, it is perhaps better for us to investigate it ourselves—and indeed what concerns the regime in general—so that, to the extent of our capacity, the philosophy concerning human affairs might be completed. First, then, let us attempt to go over whatever partial point has been nobly stated by our predecessors; and then, on the basis of the regimes collected together, let us attempt to contemplate what sorts of things preserve and destroy cities, what sorts of things do so for each of the regimes, and through what causes some regimes are governed nobly, others in the contrary way. For once these matters have been contemplated, we might perhaps understand better also what sort of regime is best, and how each regime has been ordered, and by making use of what laws and customs.
With this as our beginning, then, let us speak.
The Politics, then, is intended to be the completion of the project which we started in the Nicomachean Ethics. Some additional context may make this clearer. Recall that in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle:
Frequently appeals to what we ought to do together, as in cases of justice and magnanimity. Ethics is not merely the striving for an ideal individual human life; how we live together matters in all the relevant ways.
Devotes a substantial portion to one of the basic human bonds, friendship. Aristotle says that humanity may be thought of as a coupling animal; we natural seek out others with whom we can live.
So, it is natural to move on from the Nicomachean Ethics and into the Politics, to contemplate how we might best live together. It is a useful practice to keep your copy of the Nicomachean Ethics nearby. You may also want to keep a copy of Plato’s works, because Aristotle is often replying to (or assuming some familiarity with) the political works of his teacher: Republic, Statesman, and Laws especially.
‘It is evident from these things…that mastery and political rule are not the same thing and that all the sorts of rule are not the same as one another,’ Aristotle writes at the beginning of I.71 We can anticipate that Aristotle will reach this conclusion from the beginning of the text, in which he writes: ‘Those who suppose that the same person is expert in political rule, kingly rule, managing the household, and being a master of slaves do not argue finely.’ The arguments are lacking, and we see that he does not believe that the conclusion is defensible with better arguments offered, and so we get the conclusion in I.7.
We will talk about the arguments from I.1-I.6 in a moment. But focus for a moment on what Aristotle is saying. First, he uses the term expert (or at least does in the English translation by Lord). Ruling (what we might call the general class containing all the types of ruling discussed in Book I) is not a thing one can master; you can master or become an expert in the various members of the class, but not the class itself. Second, he is signaling that we are going to be discussing several kinds of ruling in Book 1:
Political rule
Kingly rule
Managing the household
Being a master of slaves2
Those who would hold that there is a single art at issue here – Lord mentions in an interpretive note that Aristotle may be referencing Plato’s Statesman – hold that ‘there is no difference between a large household and a small city’ and that kingly and political rule are one and the same. They do not argue finely. Now, we must turn to seeing the errors of their arguments.
But first, let’s step back just a bit and look at how Aristotle really begins the Politics; let’s turn to the first passage of I.1:
Since we see that every city is some sort of community, and that every community is constituted for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what is held to be good), it is clear that all communities aim at some good, and that the community that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others does so particularly, and aims at the most authoritative good of all. This is what is called the city of the political community.
This obviously calls to mind the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics:
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good. Hence people have nobly declared that the good is that at which all things aim.
This same way of approaching the matter has now been applied to communities; they are constituted for the sake of some good. According to Aristotle, the city is what aims at the most authoritative good of all. Recall that this is written well before the emergence of the nation state. Aristotle holds that the city is ‘the complete community…it reaches a level of full self-sufficiency…and while coming into being for the sake of living, it exists for the sake of living well’ (1.2), and the city is the telos of (temporally) prior communities. They exist for the sake of the city. Humanity is meant to live in cities. Most of all, no one is meant to live alone.
The city is thus prior by nature to the household and to each of us. For the whole must of necessity be prior to the part; for if the whole body is destroyed there will not be a foot or a hand, unless in the sense that the term is similar…but the thing itself will be defective. Everything is defined by its function and its capacity…That the city is both by nature and prior to each individual, then, is clear. For if the individual when separated from it is not self-sufficient, he will be in a condition similar to that of the other parts in relation to the whole. One who is incapable of sharing or who is in need of nothing through being self-sufficient is no part of a city, and so is either a beast or a god.
Either a beast or a god — but either way, inhuman.
But the city does emerge readymade. The two first communities come from the conjoining of persons: the conjoining of male and female is for the sake of reproduction) and the conjoining of the ‘naturally ruling and ruled’ is for the sake of preservation. Out of these two communities arises the household: ‘the household is the community constituted by nature for the needs of daily life.’ The extension of the household is the village. These villages, and some early cities, are ruled by kings, because this is an extension of the kingly rule of the eldest in a household. Then, the complete community – the city – arises from several villages. Aristotle is providing us with both a reductive analysis of the city by identifying its component parts while also giving a natural history of the city — that is, a story of how any given city might emerge in nature.
A household is made up of slaves and free persons. The household’s smallest parts are: master, slave, husband, wife, father, and children. There are three things, then, that must be investigated to make sense of household rule.
Mastery (rule over slaves)
Marital rule (rule over wives by husbands)
Procreative rule (rule over children by parents)
This makes reading Aristotle’s Politics quite uncomfortable for us as 21st century persons. I do not think of myself as ruling over my wife; there is a sense in which I rule over my children, but I think much of the art of parenting is in not forcing them to submit to your well; I would never want to rule over a slave, because I believe there should be no slaves. I imagine my readers feel much the same — so on the one hand, we must be willing to temporarily bracket our beliefs in order to understand what Aristotle hand to say while, on the other hand, remaining firm in our moral convictions.
How I will be approaching this throughout this read-along may be unsatisfactory to some, but I think it is the best course. I am going to give you the case that Aristotle makes. I am going to make it as strong as I can, in fact, as I aim to do with all of his works. In our discussions (comments, Zoom calls, chat threads) however, I expect disagreements. So I will present Aristotle as charitably as I am able, and then we can dissect those arguments.
This is because Aristotle holds that ruling over others is natural. Slaves, to Aristotle, were property, but the more illuminating description he gives is that they are animate instruments. They provide productive labor for their owner. And some people are fit to be slaves:
For one who does not belong to himself by nature but is another’s, though a human being, is by nature a slave; a human being is another’s who, though a human being, is a possession; and a possession is an instrument of action and separate from its owner.
Someone can be by nature properly the property of another. The questions we should ask, then, are:
What is ‘by nature’ here, such that barbarians meet the criteria but Greeks do not?
Is anyone in actual fact ‘by nature’ property of another?
Aristotle’s remarks in 1.2 seem to be the core of the argument:
For that which can foresee with the mind is the naturally ruling and naturally mastering element, while that which do these things with body is the naturally ruled and slave; hence the same thing is advantageous for the master and the slave.
Aristotle’s conclusion, which may then be the justification, is that the arrangement of master and slave is mutually beneficial. Everyone is better off with slavery, even the slave. And it is evident who ought to be ruled and who ought to rule: ‘Immediately from birth certain things diverge, some toward being ruled, others toward ruling’ (I.5). There are ‘those who are as different from other men as the soul from the body or man from beast,’ and these are the people who ‘are slaves by nature… Nature indeed wishes to make the bodies of free persons and slaves different as well as their souls.’3
Aristotle’s discussion of slavery thus naturally transitions to the conclusion presented in I.7:
Mastery and political rule are not the same thing and that all the sorts of rule are not the same as one another…For the one sort is over those free by nature, the other over slaves; and household is monarchy…while political rule is over free and equal persons.
In all cases, there is a ruler and a ruled, but the character of the ruled varies, as does the particularly arrangement between ruler and ruled.
Book 1 of the Politics discusses the city very little. That will come later. The rest of the book is dedicated to distinguishing mastery and household management, showing that these are different arts. Then, we will be able to more clearly see that political rule is a different art than all the others.
Is household management ‘the art of getting goods’? Is it a part of it or subordinate to it? Household management is primarily defined as the art of using one’s property. So, is the art of getting goods a part of household management? This is a matter of dispute. But Aristotle says yes.
For the art of getting goods, there are many ways of life: the nomad, the farmer, the brigand, the fisher, and the hunter. Even the art of war ‘will also be in some sense a natural form of the acquisitive art,’ as it presumes expertise in hunting. Household management contains as a part: ‘the art of acquiring those goods a store of which is both necessary for life and useful for the community of a city or household.’ This tells us that the art of household management is larger than simply getting goods.
There is another way of getting goods, too, but it is distinct. This is the art of commerce. The art of commerce is not a part of the household, because within a household there is no need for trade or exchange of this kind. Goods are freely given, because this free transfer is a matter of sufficiency. A household that lacks this kind of free transfer would fail to survive; it is necessary to households, then, that they are non-commercial. Household management involves the use of the same goods as the art of commerce, but they use them in a different respect; I believe we can say that household management uses goods in a way that is part of their nature rather than external to it; commerce uses these goods as a means of exchange, sometimes with the middleman of money, but this is not their ‘proper use.’ The art of household management is the art of using one’s property in its proper use — the analogy Aristotle provides is with weaving, where the art of weaving is using wool, not making it.
Unlike mastery (the ruling of slaves), marital rule and paternal rule are the ruling of free persons; this makes marital rule and paternal rule more similar to political and kingly rule respectively. Aristotle’s reasoning for this is much like his reasoning for slavery:
For the male, unless constituted in some respect contrary to nature, is by nature more expert at leading than the female, and the elder and complete than the younger and incomplete.
And presumably, Aristotle would say that this arrangement is in part justified through its mutual benefit.
We have established four classes of persons, then, in the household:
Free men
Free women
Children
Slaves
Each of these classes must partake in virtue — yet, the virtues they partake in are distinct. (A free man would partake in gentlemanliness, while this would be unfitting for a slave, given that it would undermine the slave’s status as slave.) Remember that in the Nicomachean Ethics, virtues are activities of the soul. Differences in virtue, then, would be accounted for by differences in the soul:
The parts of the soul are present in all, but they are present in a different way. The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete. It is to be supposed that the same necessarily holds concerning the virtues of character: all must share in them, but not in the same way, but to each in relation to his own function.
And with this characterization of the household, we are ready to move forward — namely, we will now to turn to ‘the views that have been forward about the best regime.’
Throughout the reading group, we’ll use Roman numerals for the book and Arabic numerals for the chapter. So I.7 is Book I, Chapter 7.
We will discuss Aristotle on slavery quite thoroughly and quite critically, I don’t doubt. But we need to first understand what he says.
I am not discussing the discussion in Chapter 6 of unjust slavery, those who are slaves by convention, simply due to a lack of space.
There is so much in this chapter. I omitted discussing Aristotle on money-lending and usury, for example. I expect most commenters will want to take issue with Aristotle's view of slaves and women, and rightly so. Looking forward to the discussion.
I understand the space constraints, so this is no heavy criticism, more a lament: I do wish you had included discussion of those who are "slaves by convention" or force, and are thus slaves unjustly. Here I think we can plausibly interpret Aristotle as being relatively radical for his time. I know many through the centuries have interpreted Aristotle as a Greek chauvinist, effectively saying that those who are "barbarians" (non-Greek speakers) might all plausibly fit into this shocking "natural slave" category. But I.6 cuts against this, I think, and suggests that there are in fact a great number of people who have been captured in battle and sold to foreign masters (a relatively common way to obtain a slave in the world he inhabited) who are definitionally, unquestionably, unjustly captive. This, at least on a more expansive reading, would imply that many if not most Athenian slaves were slaves unjustly. Certainly no modern abolitionist tract, but worth consideration.
Add to this the possible contextual background: assume these are, as they are often described, "lecture notes" of a kind from the Lyceum. Assume, too, that Aristotle's audience would have been an assortment of mostly wealthy young men from households with slaves. Assume, finally, that Aristotle has an interest in presenting an argument against slavery as practiced, but with enough plausible deniability to maintain students in attendance. A measured criticism with possible radical implications seems, to me, to fit with this admittedly tentative tale.
This, I take it, is the direction Mary P. Nichols goes in her Citizens and Statesmen: A Study of Aristotle's Politics. There are effectively three ways Aristotle on natural slavery is commonly read: 1. "Natural slave" is a large set, including basically all non-Greeks or at least a large number of foreigners; 2. "Natural slave" is a small set, including only those so intellectually dependent that they are literally improved by "rulership" (so whatever people are intellectually capable of following basic commands but not independently reasoning); 3. "Natural slave" is a hypothetical set with a definition that no human beings actually fit (hence: as different from other men as men are from beasts, thus not a human being). 2 seems plausible to me, and if I'm in an esoteric mood, 3 seems possible, and I think Nichols leans toward 3. Her case for this is strengthened by Aristotle later reflecting on the "virtues" appropriate to slaves. But wait a second, she says, virtue requires reflection and choice! But a "natural slave" seems to lack this capacity, so a slave-in-fact exercising virtue seems to explicitly imply they don't meet the "natural slave" definition we've been working to build.