Aristotle and Greek Science 2nd

第二部分

CHAPTER TWO

Aristotle and Greek Science

VIII. Politics

1. COMMUNISM AND CONSERVATISM

1: From so aristocratic an ethic there naturally follows (or was the sequence the other way?) a severely aristocratic political philosophy. It was not to be expected that the tutor of an emperor and the husband of a princess would have any exaggerated attachment to the common people, or even to the mercantile bourgeoisie; our philosophy is where our treasure lies. But further, Aristotle was honestly conservative because of the turmoil and disaster that had come out of Athenian democracy; like a typical scholar he longed for order, security, and peace; this, he felt, was no time for political extravaganzas. Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lie steady under our hands. And in general, says Aristotle, “the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil; and when the advantage of change is small, some defects whether in the law or in the ruler had better be met with philosophic toleration. The citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by acquiring the habit of disobedience.”The power of the law to secure observance, and therefore to maintain political stability, rests very largely on custom; and “to pass lightly from old laws to new ones is a certain means of weakening the inmost essence of all law whatever.” “Let us not disregard the experience of ages: surely, in the multitude of years, these things, if they were good, would not have remained unknown.

2: “These things,” of course, means chiefly Plato’s communistic republic. Aristotle fights the realism of Plato about universals, and idealism of Plato about government. He finds many dark spots in the picture painted by the Master. He does not relish the barrack-like continuity of contact to which Plato apparently condemned his guardian philosophers; conservative though he is, Aristotle values individual quality, privacy, and liberty above social efficiency and power. He would not care to call every contemporary brother or sister, nor every elder person father or mother; if all are your brothers, none is; and “how much better it is to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato’s fashion!” In a state having women and children in common, “love will be watery . . . . Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection—that a thing is your own, and that it awakens real love in you—neither can exist in such a state” as Plato’s.

1: Perhaps there was, in the dim past, a communistic society, when the family was the only state, and pasturage or simple tillage the only form of life. But “in a more divided state of society,” where the division of labor into unequally important functions elicits and enlarges the natural inequality of men, communism breaks down because it provides no adequate incentive for the exertion of superior abilities. The stimulus of gain is necessary to arduous work; and the stimulus of ownership is necessary to proper industry, husbandry and care. When everybody owns everything nobody will take care of anything. “That which is common to the greatest number has the least attention bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public, interest.” And “there is always a difficulty in living together, or having things in common, but especially in having common property. The partnerships of fellow-travellers” (to say nothing of the arduous communism of marriage), “are an example to the point; for they generally fall out by the way, and quarrel about any trifle that turns up.”

2: “Men readily listen” to Utopias, “and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody’s friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing, . . . which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, arise from quite another source—the wickedness of human nature.” Political science does not make men, but must take them as they come from nature.