Both Aristotle and Plato have taken an utopist totalitarian society as a foundation-stone in their political discourse. However, there are some major differences as well as some similarities in the political ideologies of the two Greek philosophers’ ant it is these, which I will analyze in this paper.
Justice is the main pursuit of Plato’s political ideology but in its pursuit, Plato rejects rhetoric, quite contrary to the sophists. He believes that justice is good in itself and so are its consequences. On the other hand, the fundamental argument of Aristotle centers on the point that nature does nothing in vain. To him, politics is considered to be the end-product of a virtuous life. He is more concerned about the logic of happenings rather than their metaphysical existence, a substantial difference in Plato’s political ideology.
Plato argues that justice is a kind of division of labor. A carpenter should be concerned only about his wooden planks, a builder of his bricks and so on. He puts the notion forward that if such division of labor does exist in society, it would make it a just one. He puts it clearly that “when the trader, the auxiliary and the guardian each do their own business that is justice, and will make the city just.”(Plato, Republic) Aristotle, on the other hand argues that polis is prior to the individual and away form polis, we are not humans. He argues that “the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part.”(Aristotle, Politics, Book One) To put it more aptly, Aristotle makes it very clear that a human is not a human if he is not a part of the state. He believes in collectivism, not the individual specialization vis-à-vis division of labor that Plato proposes.
To Plato, justice, happiness and harmonization are all equivalent. In one of the dialogues, he argues that justice is there when various parts of the individual harmonize within himself. Thus, for Plato, the ideal state is the one in which all groups harmonize within themselves. Aristotle believes that “justice is the bond of men instates, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.”(Aristotle, Politics, Book One) Aristotle is in more favor of a society based on inequality and hierarchal structure. He firmly believes that only rich should be the rulers since they are masters of the land.
The value system of Plato is based on the fact that the higher the being is, the better it is. Aristotle, meanwhile, believes that the whole is better than the part and gives a biological argument to corroborate his thesis. He mentions the example of a human hand and says that if the hand is not attached to the body, it is of no use. It is only useful when it is part of a human body. For Plato, the argument is somewhat different because he believes the closer you are to the true form, the more you are.
Now, let us turn our attention to the kind of government the two propose.
Plato believes that we have three main faculties, that of appetite being the lowest, emotions being in the middle and reason being the highest. The appetite is matched with the producing class, emotions with the Guardians and reason with the philosophers. Furthermore, the producing class has the virtue of temperance, the guardians of courage and the philosophers of knowledge. When the above three segments work properly, the state is just, superior and blissful.
Aristotle, being in favor of inequality and a firm hierarchal structure, proposes that only some have the aptitude to rule and not all. For him, monarchy is of four types; spartan, tyrannical, dictatorship and kingly. He favors the last one because he believes that “the best must be that which is administered by the best, and in which there is one man, or a whole family, or many persons, excelling all the others together in virtue, and both rulers and subjects are fitted, the one to rule, the other to be ruled, in such a manner as to attain the most eligible life.”(Aristotle, Politics, Book Three)
For Plato, the virtue of the philosopher is that of the ruling class. Since he is a man of reason, he is to govern over the people. He argues that the “only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is of true philosophy.” Aristotle, by contrast, is more giving in a sense that he proposes that aristocracy should allow someone form the masses to rule if he superior in wisdom, that is, a make of gold.
Now let us turn to the realm of ideas of the two philosophers. Plato divides the known into two: the world of the relative and the world of the absolutes. He believes that you can get knowledge in a euphonious way. Another way to acquire it would be to have a dialectical method. According to him the universe is divided into two forms: realm of ideas which gives birth to knowledge and realm of appearances which give birth to opinion. He states blatantly that “those who love the truth in each thing are to be called lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion.”(Plato, Republic)
Theology is the branch that Aristotle explores and his belief is that everything is created for a purpose. He believes that of all the parts of existence, the end is superior and the best. “In all arts and sciences the end is a good and the greatest good and in the highest degree a good in the most authoritative of all-this is the political science.” (Aristotle, Politics, Book Three)
In the last part, I will analyze some of the contradictions I found in the political philosophy of the two philosophers. Plato, although highly in favor of upward mobility of the masses, excludes slaves from the hierarchy. Also, he makes it clear that the guardians should be highly influential people and not from the lower bounds of society. Also, women for Plato are nothing but anathema since they are not to take part in the politics of the state and neither in its functioning. Only men are to form the different institutions of the state because a child is thought to be still in a process of learning while a woman is simply incapable. Aristotle also continues in this vein and believes that women and slaves are not to be part of functioning of the state, the former being virtue less and the latter thought only to obey, not to command.
Also, indirectly in the case of Plato and directly in the case of Aristotle, an idea of a totalitarian state is proposed with the state monitoring every part of its citizens life from matters relating from marriage to religion. History bears witness to the face that such totalitarian societies are highly centralized, as in the case of the Peruvian Incas and Mexican Aztecs where the ruler was the nucleus of the state and administration. This extensive social organization around one focal point was the eventual cause of their demise since when the ruler falls, the domino-effect comes into place and one by one, the whole state collapses.
These are some of the contradictions that I found in the political philosophy of the two. However, there is no doubt that Plato and Aristotle have contributed mush to political thought and most of the modern discourses have their findings as their basis.
But since nothing is perfect in the real world, where things are in permanent state of flux, a process of continuous knowledge still continues.
