The Moral Status of "the Many" in Aristotle

The Moral Status of "the Many" in Aristotle JAN EDWARD GARRETT THE FORMIDABLEINDUSTRYof Aristotle scholarship is testimony to the enduring attractiveness of the philosopher's thought. Especially appealing is the notion of the spoudaios, or excellent person, who figures prominently in his ethical and political writings. But today's friends of Aristotle have not been entirely candid about one feature of this model. They focus--more than Aristotle himself does--upon the contrast between the good person and the entirely vicious person, and tend to ignore the fact that Aristode's notion of the spoudaios involves a distinction, out of keeping with the surface ethos of modernity, between excellent persons and the Many (hoi polloi), most of whom, in Aristotle's view, are radically flawed, though not wholly bad. A number of factors have conspired to keep this distinction in the background : (1) Hoi polloi has a statistical as well as an ethical sense. One can deemphasize the latter by usually translating the phrase "most people," and in many contexts the result will seem plausible. (2) Hoi polloi is not quite a technical term in Aristotle, and he often uses other phrases (for example, hoi pleistoi, to pl~thos, hoifauloi, ho d~mos) for virtually the same effect. (3) It is difficult to translate Greek ethical terms without using words which now conjure up Christian associations. With ethical terms relating to those persons whom Aristotle regards as hoi polloi, these associations become obstacles to an adequate understanding of Aristotle's view. (4) The contrast between the Many on the one side and the few, the decent, the rich, or the cultivated on the other was a commonplace in Greek society, philosophy, and literature prior to Aristotle.~ Recognition of this fact may G. F.Else,Aristotle'sPoetics:TheArgument(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1967), 74-75. [171] 172 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31"2 APRIL t993 tempt modern readers to infer that in adopting it Aristotle uncritically took over the prejudices of elites in his culture.' But it is possible that, here as elsewhere, he like Plato poured his own wine into traditional vessels. We should ask whether his remarks about the Many fit into the overall structure of his political philosophy. If we find they do not, we will form a clearer notion of his intellectual limits; if we find they do, we should take them more seriously than we have so far. (5) To take seriously Aristotle's comments on the Many, however, seems today to invite charges of arrogance or contempt for ordinary people. Talk of hoi poUoi seems contrary to Christian and democratic virtues and, if that were not enough, Thomas Hobbes has made the case that it is contrary to rational self-interest.3 But what if there is such a class as hoi poUoi, and it forms the major part of our society as Aristotle thought it did his, and he is right, or even just more right than wrong, about it? His work might clarify to what extent and under what conditions the Many can contribute to the common good. On that chance we make a grave error not to study his views about this group. Section 1 of this paper conducts a preliminary examination of the meaning , grammar, and logic of the term hoi polloi. Section 2 looks at the way the group first appears in the Nicomachean Ethics, in a discussion of views on the good life. Section 3 introduces the "middle term" of my main argument, hoi fauloi, and argues that the Many are essentially identical to thefauloi. Section 4 is a comparative study of the character types of the faulos, the wretched person , and the incontinent. Section 5 locates the faulos and by inference the "mass person" as a heretofore unrecognized ana/ogue of the incontinent. Section 6 traces the connection between the Many and sociological classifications discussed in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book II, 12-17; I argue that the moral psychology of the Many is strikingly similar to that of persons past their prime.* ' A variation on this approach tries to understand the whole of (Plato's and) Aristotle's political philosophy as an expression of a conservative or...