POLS 2310

Exam 2

Fall, 2005

PART I

According to Aristotle, what would we need to know to determine whether a particular collection of households was a village or a political community?

We would know whether the people in the community can satisfy their basic needs dependably.  If so, then it is a political community, and if not it is a village

According to Aristotle, what is the most important thing that distinguishes human beings from other gregarious animals?

Human beings have speech, or reason.  They need to make decisions about what is advantageous and just.

According to the analysis of Aristotle in class, there are four things that human beings need that make them "political animals."  What are those things, providing a brief explanation of each?

Opportunity: basic needs need to be satisfied so as to permit people to develop reason.

Understanding: human beings need to develop an understanding together as to what their good involves.

Ability: human beings develop in one another the particular abilities they need to accomplish what is good.

Control: human beings need to use reason to control their desires in order to get the things done that they want to do.

According to Aristotle, what science would someone need to know to analyze the activity in a pre-political household?  Is that same science adequate to understanding behavior in a political community?  Briefly, explain.

The science is economics.  Economics is not sufficient to explain or critique people’s behavior in political associations because the goal is no longer merely acquisition, but living well.

According to Aristotle, what are the three forms of rule that seek the common good?

Monarchy, aristocracy, and Polity.

According to Aristotle, what are the three forms of rule that seek the private interest of the rulers?

Tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy

According to Aristotle, what would a form of rule where a rich majority was ruling for its own private interest be properly called?  According to class, what is the point of raising the question?

Aristotle says that it would be an oligarchy, since purpose, (that it is for the rich) is more important than the number of rulers.

According to Aristotle, what form of rule does the rule of husband over wife exemplify, and how does he define that form?

Aristotle says it is an example of statesman’s rule, which he defines as the rule of equal over equal.

According to Aristotle's argument, what would be most helpful to know in order to be able to explain the behavior of the members of a family in Lycurgus's Sparta?

It would be most helpful to know the goals of Lycurgus’s regime and how well the regime goes about meeting those goals.

Part II

How does Aristotle classify oligarchy and democracy?  What is the oligarchs' argument that justice requires that they should rule?  How does Aristotle evaluate that argument, and what does he conclude from the argument and its evaluation about how political power ought to be distributed?  Explain how that conclusion is then applied to an analysis of democracy.  According to Aristotle, what would need to be proven to demonstrate that the majority ought to rule?  Analyze Aristotle's attempt to demonstrate that, and show his evaluation of that claim.  Overall, what does the argument about the oligarchs and the democrats demonstrate about what should be considered in deciding who controls political power?

Aristotle classifies both oligarchy and democracy as unjust forms, forms of rule whose purpose is the private interest of the rulers rather than the common good.  Oligarchy he calls the rule of the rich for the rich, and democracy the rule of the poor for the poor.  But neither democrats nor oligarchs, who favor of those forms of rule, agree that their preferred form is unjust.  The issue is based upon the concept of distributive justice which says that equal things should go to equal people and unequal things should go to unequal people.  Applied to politics this means that equal amounts of political power should go to equal people.  The key question then becomes: when distributing political power what is the politically relevant equality or inequality among human beings?

The oligarchs argue that the relevant equality or inequality is wealth.  They argue that in order for a community to exist it needs to provide for its defense and needs a decent economy.  Both of those things, in turn, require wealth, and the oligarchs claim that the fact that they have acquired wealth indicates the ability to provide this condition that is required for the community.  Aristotle comments on this argument by noting that the approach of the oligarchs is good: they attempt to demonstrate that they should have political power because they have the skills needed to do the job that needs to be done.  Where they fail, however, is in correctly identifying what that job is.  The oligarchs correctly note that they can provide a necessary condition for a political community, but they did not address the question of what the community is for.  Although it needs a good economy and defense, what it is for is a good quality of life.  It follows, therefore, that those who know what that good quality of life entails and how best to get it are the ones that should have more political power.  Thus, the discussion of the oligarchs’ argument demonstrates that the politically relevant equality or inequality is knowledge of what is good and how to get, or prudence.

The next step is to apply this insight, that prudence is the relevant equality or inequality, to the argument for majority rule.  In order to make a good argument for majority rule one would need to demonstrate that the majority will make more prudent decisions than any minority.  Aristotle attempts to do that, comparing democracy and aristocracy, and in the course of that quietly demonstrates that in most cases the argument for majority rule would not be sound.  In all likelihood the majority would bring as much imprudence to bear on decision-making as prudence, and, hence, would be less likely to make good decisions and the most prudent few in the community.  Even could you find a way to use the prudence of each of the democrats without using the imprudence, such a system would be unlikely to consider appropriately the overall goals of the good quality of life of the community and its citizens, and so would not lead to the best decisions.  Indeed, Aristotle leads us to realize that merely by limiting voting rights to adults even democrats assume that reason is the title to rule.  That's, in the analysis of the oligarchs and democrats arguments in Book 3 of the Politics Aristotle leads us to see that the key quality that should be desired in rulers and that is present in rulers when politics lives up to its nature is this understanding of what is good and how to get it.