Constitutional Cyclicality

According to Aristotle, constitutions should be ordered to best allow citizens to lead a life of happiness through education. As he puts it in his “Nichomachean Ethics”, II.1103b4: “For legislators make citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.” Aristotle qualifies this in his “Politics” on page 198, lines 2-10: “A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange…So we must lay it down that the association which is a state must be regarded, therefore, as being not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions.” He further elaborates his concept of political society for the sake of noble actions in “Nichomachean Ethics”, I.9: “Political science spends most of it pains on forming its citizens to be of good character and capable of noble acts.”

Aristotle uses as his concept of “good” a gauge of order, writing in “Politics” VII 1326a29: “Law is order, and good law is good order.” He extends his equation of “good” with law in “Nochomachean Ethics”, I.13: “The student of politics studies virtue above all else since he wishes to make his fellow citizens good and obedient to the laws.”

In his “Nichomachean Ethics”, VIII.10, Aristotle writes: “There are three kinds of constitution: monarchy, aristocracy, and that based on property, timocratic.” He explains that the type that works best depends on the people: “All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.” (V.3)According to Aristotle, democracy is the deviant form of polity: “Timocracy passes over to democracy, since both are ruled by the majority.” (VIII.10) In his “Politics”, he defines democracy as rule by the many for the gain of the many at the expense of the law: “When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch…such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.” Aristotle regards democracy as the least harmful perverted government, writing in “Nichomachean Ethics” VIII.11: “In democracies there is more friendship than under other forms of governance since the citizens are equal and have much in common.” However, he qualifies this statement in “Politics”, IV.1291b34: “If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” In such a way, Aristotle explains on page 104 lines 14-20, democracy becomes corrupted: “But obviously a state which becomes progressively more and more of a unity will cease to be a state at all. Plurality of numbers is natural in a state; and the farther it moves away from plurality toward unity, the less of a state it becomes and the more a household, and the household in turn an individual.”
On the other side, Aristotle defines monarchy as government of one for the absolute good and, in “Nichomachean Ethics” VIII.10, tyrancy as the deviant form of kingship: “Monarchy deviates to tyranny; the king looks to his people’s interest; the tyrant looks to his own.” As such, he cautions in “Politics” page 226 lines 17-19: “Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.”

~ by Judgian12365 on March 22, 2013.