Aristotle in America: Why Democrats are Republicans and Why Republicans are Neither

VI. No Deception Required

In his widely-read essay, “Natural Right and the Problem of Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery,” Marquette University Professor Darrell Dobbs urges us to take Aristotle’s defense of slavery as a common-sense way to avoid “the extremes of a purely formal universalism and relativistic situationalism.” Dobbs wants his readers to recognize both that “Aristotle’s account of natural slavery is coherently formulated, and that it incorporates a reasonable standard for justice in the conduct of despotic government and thus provides a solid basis upon which we can condemn the actual practice of slavery wherever it involves abuse and injustice” (emphasis added).

Dobbs’ reading of Aristotle’s defense of slavery is particularly popular among scholars who trace their intellectual lineage to University of Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss. Beginning from the premise that members of society are and will remain unequal, these scholars then seek to interpret political institutions and laws in such a manner as to accommodate this persistent inequality. Then somewhere along the line, most, although not all, of these scholars end up advocating something like Plato’s rule of Guardians who keep “the many” in check by enlightened use of Gorgias’ fine art, rhetoric, i.e., “the noble lie.” For, they argue, it would be irresponsible and, indeed, destructive to permit “the many,” who lack both sufficient knowledge and sufficient skills for statecraft, to be granted equal power and status alongside those who are fit to rule.

Like most Straussians, Dobbs reads Aristotle through a lens cut by Plato. That is to say, Straussians come to Aristotle bearing Plato’s accusation that Socrates was unwise. He was unwise to publically air his criticisms of “the many” and he was unwise, when confronted by a jury composed of “the many,” to mock them openly. Members of the really existing polis (as distinguished from Aristotle’s ideal republic) are unequal. Moreover, “the many” are uneducated and unskilled. If you really want to do what is best for the republic, then you had best keep your thoughts to yourself.

Was then Aristotle naïve, as the Straussians suggest? Or was he wiser than either his mentor, Plato, or today’s would-be Platonic Guardians.  In all honesty, Aristotle was a little of both and neither. But, in order to understand how Aristotle was “both and neither,” we need to understand how and why he differed from his teacher Plato.

We have to remember that, following Pericles’ death, during the struggle for his successor, it was entirely natural for “true Athenians” (i.e., those who had supported Pericles) to look with suspicion on anyone who had been a student of Socrates. Nor was this merely on account of Socrates’ teachings. Although we may never know for certain, it appears likely that either under duress or willingly, Socrates may have been complicit in the rule of the Thirty Tyrants who, like Socrates, wished to make a quick end to Periclian democracy. If there is any truth to these reports, then it may help explain Plato’s commitment to secrecy and deception.

And where was Aristotle during these tense moments? He was nowhere. Remember, Pericles dies in 429 BCE. Socrates is tried and executed in 399 BCE. When, thirty-three years later, Aristotle shows up on the doorsteps of Plato’s Academy, he is only eighteen years old, barely a man. We need also to remember that the wars sparked by Pericles’ insatiable ambition had left Athens a shadow of its former self. As the Athenians attempted to restore some semblance of order to their once grand city, few paid any attention to their neighbors to the north, in Macedon, whose role in the final chapter of Classical Greek History would soon prove so central. And, so, few paid attention to the resident alien, Aristotle, himself a full Macedonian, who, in 366 BCE, showed up at Plato’s Academy.

During Aristotle’s studies at the Academy, Macedon’s expanding wealth and power began to make its way south toward Athens, gradually drawing Athens and southern Greece into its imperial orbit. Plato dies in 347 BCE.  Aristotle clearly thinks that he should have been selected Plato’s successor. Instead, a “true Athenian,” Plato’s nephew Speusippus, was selected. Aristotle is looked over, it is likely, because by then Philip II of Macedon’s imperial designs for Athens and Greece were obvious to all. So, when, in 344 BCE, Philip invited Aristotle to tutor his son, Alexander, Aristotle had every reason to accept the invitation and no reason to stay in Athens.

A half-dozen years later, in 338, Philip’s armies defeat a Thebian-Athenian alliance and Athens officially becames a part of the Macedonian empire. In 336, Philip dies and his empire passes into the hands of his son, Alexander, Aristotle’s former student, thus laying the groundwork for Aristotle’s triumphal return to Athens in 335 BCE.

Was Aristotle naïve? Not at all. Aristotle returns to Athens with the full protection of his imperial patron who is no longer Alexander the son of Philip, but already Alexander the Great. In broad daylight, absent the fear that plagued Plato and his students, Aristotle the resident alien is free to boldly lay out before his students his blueprint for sound republican government. Moreover, as Alexander’s former tutor, Aristotle can instruct his own students with complete confidence that Alexander knows and is sympathetic with the principles he is setting forth. No secrecy or deception required.

Was Aristotle naïve? Absolutely. For he must have known, as every agent of an occupying military force surely knows, that his safety in Athens depended almost entirely on Alexander’s good will and good fortune. One slip and Aristotle’s dream of helping to found a truly republican Athens could be shattered. For, as Aristotle must surely also have known, the republican values and institutions that he was seeking to create required a certain kind of individual, an educated and independent citizen, bound together with other like-minded individuals who share a singular vision for the common weal. And such citizens were few and far between in an Athens made safe and secure by military occupation.

Absent that military occupation, what would prevent Athens and Greece from dissembling into its several parts? What would prevent “the many” from once again pouring out into the streets and threatening the lives and livelihood of their self-selecting Guardians? What would prevent difference, inequality, domination and submission, and so despotism, from once again prevailing in the streets of Athens?

In the 1940s and 50s when Leo Strauss began to collect and consolidate his small following at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, almost thirty years of world war must have made Aristotle’s republican vision appear naïve indeed. Democracy had prevailed in Hitler’s Germany. French sympathizers had poured into the streets to welcome Nazi troops come to liberate them from their bourgeois dreariness. Fascism, strictly speaking, was, of course, not democracy. But, it was close enough to democracy—appealing directly to “the many” who lacked what the few wisely denied them—to disabuse Strauss’ worldly-wise students of any direct path leading from truth-telling to freedom. They preferred Plato’s deception and “noble lie” to Aristotle’s naïve republican virtues.

But, what of Aristotle’s defense of slavery?

In the last chapter, we explored Aristotle’s discussion of private enterprise (oikonomia) and public. We saw that while nature is naturally despotic, Aristotle felt that it was in the nature of being human for us to band together in communities of equals. This, Aristotle concluded, was why the manager of even a large private enterprise should not become a representative within a political community of equals.

As Darrell Dobbs’ article shows, Aristotle’s defense of slavery has been allowed to flourish apart from and even in opposition to his defense of public values and institutions. This was not Aristotle’s intention. Aristotle did not urge human beings to follow their nature, not if this meant limiting themselves to their isolated households and private enterprises. Rather did Aristotle call attention to our higher nature, that nature that draws us together into communities composed of equals dedicated to the common good.

What Dobbs and Strauss’s other followers have done is simply ignore Aristotle’s defense of public values and institutions. Our life together begins and ends with our isolated private households and businesses. Here, reduced to nature, difference prevails over equality. No wonder then that Dobbs becomes an advocate for despotism and despotic rule over republican values and institutions. And no wonder that Dobbs becomes an advocate for that movement within American political life against all things public.

Public institutions, it is said, are strangling private enterprise. The public needs to let go in order for private enterprise to flourish. It is not the public’s responsibility to promote equality or health or education or welfare. Rather should our public servants, laws, and institutions promote and protect the private household and private enterprise.

Of course, this is not only the very opposite of Aristotle’s republican vision. It is also the very opposite of the republican vision contemplated by the Framers of the US Constitution. And, yet, despotism is there—right there—written into that very document. It is called slavery.

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