What can’t we live perfectly good, virtuous lives without politics ?
The answer lies in our nature. Only by living in a polis and participating in politics do we fully realize our nature as human beings. Aristotle sees us as beings “meant for political association, in a higher degree than bees or other gregarious animals.” The reason he gives is this: Nature makes nothing in vain, and human beings, unlike other animals, are furnished with the faculty of language. Other animals can make sounds, and sounds can indicate pleasure and pain. But language \, a distinctly human capacity, isn’t just for registering pleasure and pain. It’s about declaring what is just and what is unjust, and distinguishing right from wrong. We don’t grasp these things silently, and then put words to them; language is the medium through which we discern and deliberate about the good.
Only in political association, Aristotle claims, can we exercise our distinctly human capacity for language, for only in a polis do we deliberate with others about justice and injustice and the nature of the good life. “We thus see that the polis exists by nature and that it is prior to the individual,” (Book I of The Politics). By prior, he means prior in function, or purpose, not chronologically prior. Individuals, families, and clans existed before cities did,; but only in the polis are we able to realize nature. We are not self-sufficient when we are isolated, because we can’t yet develop our capacity for language and moral deliberation.
The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.
So we only fulfill our nature when we exercise our faculty of language, which requires in turn that we deliberate with others about right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice.
But why, you might wonder, can we exercise this capacity for language and deliberation only in politics ? Why can’t we do it in families, clans, or clubs ?
To answer this question, we need to consider the account of virtue and the good life that Aristotle presents in the Nicomachean Ethics. Although this work is primarily about moral philosophy, it shows how acquiring virtue is bound up with being a citizen.
The moral life aims at happiness, but by happiness Aristotle doesn’t mean what the utilitarians mean - maximizing the balance of pleasure over pain. The virtuous person is someone who takes pleasure and pain in the right things. If someone takes pleasure in watching dog fights, for example, we consider this a vice to be overcome, not a true source of happiness. Moral excellence doesn’t consisit in aggregating pleasures and pains but in aligning them,s o that we delight in noble things and take pain in bse ones. Happiness is not a state of mind but a way of being, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
But why is it necessary to live in a polis to live a virtuous life ? Why can’t we learn sound moral principles at home, or in a philosophy class, or by reading a book about ethics - and then apply them as needed ? Aristotle says we don’t become virtuous that way. “Moral virtue comes about as a result of habit.” It is the kind of thing we learn by doing. “The virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well.”
LEARNING BY DOING
Becoming virtuous is like learning to play the flute. No one learns how to play a musical instrument by reading a book or listening to a lecture. You have to practice. And it helps to listen to accomplished musicians, and hear how they play. You can’t become a violinist without fiddling. So it is with moral virtue: “We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” It is similar with other practices and skills, such as cooking. Many cookbooks are published, but no one becomes a great chef simply by reading them. You have to do lots of cooking. Joke telling is another example. You don’t become a comediate by reading joke books and collecting funny stories.
If moral virtue is something we learn by doing, we have somehow to develop the right habits in the first place. For Aristotle, this is the primary purpose of law - to cultivate the habits that lead to good character. “Legislators make the citizens bood by forming habits in them and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.” Moral education is less about promulgating rules than forming habits and shaping character. “It makes no small difference… whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.”
Aristotle conceives moral virtue: Being steeped in virtuous behavior helps us acquire the disposition to act virtuously.
Aristotle’s defense of Slavery
Aristotle not only accepted it but offered a philosophical justification. Some see in Aristotle’s argument for slavery a defect in teleological thinking as such; others see it as misguided application of such thinking, beclouded by the prejudices of his time. I don’t think Aristotle's defense of slavery reveals a flaw that condemns his political theory as a whole.
For Aristotle, justice is a matter of fit. To allocate rights is to look for the telos of social institutions, and to fit persons to the roles that suit them, the roles that enable them to realize their nature. Modern political theories are uneasy with the notion of fit. Liberal theories of justice, from Kant to Rawls, worry that teleological conceptions are at odds with freedome. For them, justice is NOT about fit, but about CHOICE. To allocate rights is NOT to fit people to roles that suit their nature; it is to let people CHOOSE their roles for themselves. Who is the to say what role is fitting for me, or appropriate to my nature? If I am not free to choose my social role for myself, I might well be forced into a role against my will. So the notion of fit can easily slide into slavery, if hose in power decide that a certain group is somehow suited for a subordinate role.
Liberal political theory argues that social roles should be allocated by CHOICE, not FIT. Rather than fit people to roles we think will suit their nature, we should enable people to choose roles for themselves. Slavery is wrong because it coerces people into roles they have not chosen.
According to Aristotle, for slavery to be just, two conditions must be met: it must be necessary and it must be natural. Slavery is necessary, Aristotle argues, because someone must look after the household chores if citizens are to spend time in the assembly deliberating about the common good. So Aristotle concludes that slavery is necessary. But necessity is not enough. For slavery to be just, it must also be the case that certain persons are suited by their nature to perform this role. So Aristotle asks if there are “persons for whom slavery is the better and just condition, or whether the reverse is the case and all slavery is contrary to nature.” Unless there are such people, the political and economic need for slaves is not enough to justify slavery.
Aristotle concludes that such people exist: such people “are by nature slaves and it is better for them … to be ruled by a master. Aristotle seems to sense something questionable in the claim he is making because he quickly qualifies it: “But it is easy to see that those hold an opposite view are also in a way correct.” Looking at slavery as it existed in the Athens of his day, Aristotle had to admit that the critics had a point. Many slaves found themselves in that condition, for a purely contingent reason: they were formerly free people who had been captured in war. Their status has noting to do with their being fit for their role. For them, slavery was NOT natural, but the result of bad luck.
For liberal political theory, slavery is UNJUST because it is coercive. For teleological theories, slavery is unjust because it is at odds with our nature; coercion is a symptom of the injustice, not the source of it. It is perfectly possible to explain, within the ethic of telos and fit, the injustice of slavery, and Aristotle goes some way toward doing so.
The ethic of telos and fit actually sets a more demanding moral standard for justice in the workplace than does the liberal ethic of choice and consent. Consider a repetitive, dangerous job, such as working long hours on an assembly line in a chicken processing plant. Is this form of labor just and unjust?
For the libertarian, the answer would depend on whether the workers had freely exchanged their labor for a wage: if they did, the work is just. For Rawls, the arrangement would be just ONLY IF the free exchange of labor took place against fair background conditions. For Aristotle, even consent against fair background conditions is not sufficient; for the work to be just, it has to be suited to the nature of the workers who perform it. Some jobs fail this test. They are so dangerous, repetitive and deadening as to be unfit for human beings. In those cases, justice requires that the work to be reorganized to accord with our nature. Otherwise, the job is unjust in the same way that slavery is.
Casey Martin, a professional golfer with a bad luck, asked the PGA for permission to use a golf card during tournaments. The PGA turned him down, citing its rule prohibiting carts in top professional tournaments. Martin took his case to court argued that the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) required reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, provided the change did NOT “fundamentally alter the nature” of the activity.
The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Martin had a right to use a golf cart. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, analyzed the history of golf and concluded that the use of carts was not inconsistent with the fundamental character of the game. “From early on, the essence of the game has been shot-making, using clubs to cause a ball to progress from the teeing ground to a hole some distance away with as few strokes as possible.” As for the claim that walking tests the physical stamina of golfers, Stevens cited testimony by a physiology professor who calculated that only about five hundred calories were expended in walking eighteen holes, “nutritionally less than a Big Mac.” Because golf is “a low intensity activity, fatigue from the game is primarily a psychological phenomenon in which stress and motivation are the key ingredients.” The Court concluded that accommodating Marin’s disability by letting him ride in a card would NOT fundamentally alter the game or give him an unfair advantage.
Whoever is right about the essential nature of golf, the federal case over Casey Martin’s cart offers a vivid illustration of Aristotle’s theory of justice. Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they can allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward. Despite our best attempts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what’s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.