Aristotle's "Best Regime": Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law

Introduction

introduction Alla man ei oi phulakes ma eudaimones, tines etepoi? If those who guard [the community] are not happy, who else will be? —Politics 2.5.1264b21–22 The last decade of the twentieth century produced a boom in scholarship concerning Aristotelian political philosophy. This reawakened interest in Aristotle’s political thought, and thus all the new attention to the Politics, seems due in part to the belief that liberal democracy needs a renewed link to the common good (Galston 1991, Yack 1993, Salkever 1991, Nussbaum 1990a, 1992, Sullivan 1984).1 This is needed to escape the trend to social apathy inherent in liberalism’s tendency towards moral individualism. Many authors are attracted to the Aristotelian attempt to strengthen democratic principles by linking them to the attempt to form the just political community (Yack 1993, Nussbaum 1990a, 1992, Salkever 1991). The recent collapse of the Soviet Union and other Marxist regimes around the world has been popularly understood to be a rejection of Marxism and Marxist political ideas. As Francis Fukuyama (1992) argues, with Marxism removed, the conflict among differing ideologies seems to have been resolved with liberal democracy as the only survivor. Although this may be the political reality of the third millennium, many scholars of political thought still find liberal democratic principles objectionable.2 The opponents of liberal democracy see it resting on a rights-based theory that has no room for either the common good or justice (Galston 1991). They reject liberal democracy on the grounds that it does not create genuine communities because of its excessive individualism. These opponents of liberal democracy, sometimes called “communitarians,” attempt to use Aristotle to 1. Peter Simpson’s magnificent commentary on the Politics should be mentioned, even though it was published after a great deal of this book was written. See Simpson 1998. 2. This group is usually of a neo-Marxist orientation, in the tradition of either C. B. Macpherson or Jurgen Habermas. 2 aristotle’s “best regime” support their criticisms. Yet I think the communitarians distort Aristotle for their own political purposes (Yack 1993). Although Aristotle would not support all aspects of liberal democracy, he nevertheless provides the argument that because human beings are naturally sociable, democracy is the regime-type that most closely helps man reach his highest potential as a human being (see Salkever 1991 and Lindsay 1994). Aristotle argues that because of human nature, it is inevitable as time passes that democracies will tend to prevail over any other regime. In this argument, Aristotle seems to anticipate de Tocqueville’s claim in Democracy in America that in the future, only democracies or despotism will come into being as political systems. It seems that not only is Aristotle’s view of democracy still defensible in the modern world, but it is superior to most other theories of democracy that currently claim authoritative status.3 It is my contention that Aristotle, even in the way that he structures the arguments of Politics 3, is not only presenting a defense of democracy, as some scholars argue, but suggesting that it also may meet the criteria for the best regime (Lindsay 1992a, 1992b; Nichols 1994; Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991; Salkever 1991). Such a reading would be supported by two historical interpretations of Aristotle’s Politics, those of Thomas Hobbes and Algernon Sidney. Hobbes sees in Aristotle an enemy, one who must be overcome if Hobbes’s absolutist politics is to be defended. Hobbes’s absolutist politics, although in many ways a response to the conditions created during the English Civil War, is a fundamental rejection of Aristotle’s Politics. Hobbes claims that Aristotle ’s philosophy is responsible for advancing the arguments that “to call all manner of commonwealths but the popular . . . tyranny” and that “in the well-ordered commonwealth, not men should govern, but the laws” (Hobbes 1991, 471–2). Unlike Hobbes, Sidney is a defender of popular government and an opponent of absolutist rule. Sidney points to Aristotle (as well as to the Bible) to attack the arguments advanced by Filmer for absolute kingship. Sidney not only criticizes Filmer’s use of Aristotle, but he also shows how Aristotle ultimately denies the claims Filmer advances in Patriarcha (see Sidney 1990, 84–6, 121–3, 133–5, 278–91, 452–5). Also, Thomas Jefferson, who is central to our own American heritage of democratic thought, did not think Aristotle hostile to popular rule. In a letter to Henry Lee on May 8, 1825, Jefferson cites Aristotle...