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

Epilogue

epilogue With him the love of country means Blowing it all to smithereens And having it all made over new —robert frost, A Case for Jefferson Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises—elimination or eradication of heterogeneity. —carl schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, preface Throughout the previous chapters I have outlined the arguments that Aristotle presents for justifying popular rule, or democracy, as the best regime. As I have suggested, he presents two peaks in his Politics—or at least in Politics 3. The first peak is the rule of the many and the superiority of their capacity to judge finely, and the second peak is an argument concerning the superiority of the rule of law. After examining the two peaks separately, I conclude that they are in fact reflections of each other. It is the oligarch who first puts forth the analogy of the arts to undermine the democrat’s claim of supremacy over oligarchy; but the claim of the arts is the claim not of oligarchy but of kingship. Oligarchy’s claim is that the wealthy should rule. The democrat claims that the rule of the best man is merely another form of oligarchy , in that it denies the many access to the ruling offices (3.10). Also, the rule of law is not the rule of law generically expressed but the rule of law in a democratic context. This equates the rule of law and the rule of the many. The argument for the rule of the many and the rule of law consists of these two arguments in that they both end up justifying the rule of the many restrained by law as the best regime. The first peak arises out of the concern for which element in the city ought to be authoritative (3.10.1281a10–11). The line of argument moves and ends to indicate the best judges—the many, the epilogue 213 few, or the one (3.11.1282b8–23). The second peak arises out of the question of whether the best man or law should rule (3.15.1286a8–9). The answer found in both peaks is that the many should rule and that their rule should be guided by law. The law here is not natural law or a transpolitical law but democratic law (see Yack 1993). Democratic law will act as a restraining factor to allow the city to reach the right decision on how citizens should live and act. The rule of law here obstructs the slavishness of the multitude, which was said to be the only factor that would disqualify the many’s capacity to judge in a more superior fashion than all other rulers (3.11.1282a13–19). In the end, the arguments of the two peaks both defend democracy when ruled by law as the best regime. This contravenes the usual defense of kingship , aristocracy, and so-called “polity” as the best regime. As I have demonstrated in the first chapter, all three of the usually understood best regimes are rejected as candidates for the best regime in Politics 3. They are rejected in favor of democracy restrained by law (see McCoy 1989). Some might object to this interpretation as going against the whole tradition of scholarship on Aristotle’s political philosophy. But one must take note of the two famous interpreters of Aristotle—Hobbes and Sidney—who argue that Aristotle ultimately supports democracy restrained by the rule of law as superior to all other regime types. Hobbes rejects Aristotle because Hobbes construes his discussion of the rule of law and his support for popular rule as harmful to the political peace in limiting the ruler’s ability to act. Hobbes’s support for monarchs leads him to reject popular rule; he contends that Aristotle’s political philosophy favors such a regime. Sidney, on the other hand, openly and clearly uses Aristotle’s arguments about the rule of law’s superiority to the rule of the wise, and the greater wisdom of the many in political deliberations , as support for his defense of popular or democratic republicanism against Filmer’s monarchic absolutism. Further support for this countertraditional reading of Politics 3 is evident in the traditional interpretations’ misreading of the text by treating it merely as a philosophical treatise. I dealt with this in my introduction, but it...