The Worth Of Aristotle’s Arguments Concerning Man’s Social/Political Nature

By Gary L. Morella

Aristotle envisioned political philosophy to be the culmination of the study of ethics in that while securing the good for an individual is a worthy achievement, securing the good for the city or polis is “divine,” understood in a teleological sense. Thus, in the same manner that man seeks the summa bonum in distinguishing between real and apparent goods along with considering questions involving the morality of human life, the good for man, ultimate end and moral principles, the structure of the human act, good and evil action, character and decision, prudence and conscience, and religion and morality, so also must the polis if its ultimate good is “divine” – the distinction being that singular good for man becomes the common good for the polis.

At the end of the Ethics Aristotle talks about the need for legislation to bring about the education of character in a marriage of ethics and politics as a unified account of human affairs, i.e., the human good.

Saint Thomas Aquinas later developed some of the great themes of Aristotelian political philosophy, such as the social and political nature of man, the importance of the common good, and the role of virtue. He did this within a framework of the formulation of a natural law philosophy that human reason could appeal to as a standard higher than positive human law.

Aristotle’s contention that man is social and political by nature will be briefly examined. Some terminology must be discussed before this examination is undertaken. In Book I, Chapter 1 of The Politics Aristotle defines the polis, or political society. It is to be emphasized that Aristotle was not talking about “the state” but rather literally the city that is often translated “city state,” “body politic,” or “political association.” The polis for Aristotle is an association that is instituted for some good since this is the function of all associations. The polis is particularly distinctive because it aims at the highest or most inclusive good for humans in community. The polis is the most sovereign and inclusive association because it aims at the most sovereign and inclusive good. (Note “sovereign” in this context primarily means highest or best, and not the most powerful.) The polis becomes the completion of the other associations, and this is why it is best in that it perfects them as a final cause in the same manner that man seeks to perfect himself throughout the entirety of his life for the summa bonum.

At the outset of his Politics Aristotle wants to correct any misconceptions about reducing a political association to some other type of association, which would miss the good intrinsic to the political. The polis becomes an irreducible human association and good, being neither the association of the family, business partners, or master and servant. This is done in an effort to protect the integrity of the political good, and at the same time, the pre-political (family and economics, for example) from the political. Here Aristotle seems to recognize that while there is a genuine need for political associations, with it comes the risk of unwarranted usurpation of family authority – a very real threat to the basic institution of the family that is a fundamental building block for the polis.

Aristotle presents three arguments for man being social and political by nature.

Argument 1: The polis completes and fulfills natural associations as the final cause, as a natural cause, the most natural, and the “cause of causes.” Family and villages are not enough. They are incomplete for human flourishing. Only in the polis do we find self-sufficiency, meeting the needs of the family and village that are thought of as subordinate in a needs context, i.e., the family needs the village, which in turn needs the polis. Families need food to survive; villages need direction in order to acquire the means to provide food with the polis supplying the direction for the common good of the whole. The example of education comes to mind as the question can be asked, “How many families are capable of providing an adequate education for their children on their own, with no help from the polis? The observation is made that unless one’s parents are poet, artist, public speaker, physicists, and philosopher, the family can’t serve that need. Aristotle was working under the technological restriction of his time. That example is no longer a good argument for many reasons, not the least of which is that the current state of the polis leaves families no choice but to home-school their children if any ethical relationship to politics has a hope for survival. Recall that this was the pre-eminent condition of Aristotle’s thought, the necessary relationship between ethics and politics. With the advent of many excellent home-schooling programs, e.g., Seton, in all subject areas to include the technological means of support available to the teaching parents, and the numerous social support groups for the children involved, the qualification example hold no longer holds water. More importantly, the absolute necessity for home-schooling to keep the minds of our children from being putrefied by the Alan Dershowitzs of the world who confuse education with indoctrination into liberalism run amuck leaves responsible Christian parents no choice in the matter if salvation carries any priority, the focus of Aquinas’s final metaphysical answers to the questions posed by Aristotle in his De Anima.

A better example is that the preservation of life requires greater social and economic complexity such as the division of labor, and commerce, which raises the possibility of trade and war. These activities raise political issues, i.e., what is justice and how can we achieve a just arrangement for labor and distribution of burdens and benefits. This can’t be done on the level of the family or the village because the bigger picture can’t be seen for the common good of society as a whole. The needs of the family or village may not be fully producible by them. Political society serves this function.

Argument 2: Human nature is political when understood for what human beings are, i.e., human beings could not exist without a political society. Man is neither a beast nor a god. Without the polis man is either higher or lower than man. Usually he is a bad man with a predilection for war. The village is no longer enough. It is an association of households, which aims at more than daily needs and wants. However, the question may be asked, “Who gives the law to the village?” Are we at the mercy of tribal tendencies, as man without a polis becomes lawless, i.e., where does the concept of justice come into play for the common good? The tribe can easily ignore political justice, essential to which is the concept of impersonal and impartial law, especially equal justice under such laws. One only has to recall the tragedy of Jonestown in Africa.

Our own Declaration of Independence uses this classic argument with the claim that all men are created equal is a self-evident truth that is affirmed upon understanding the meaning of the terms. To be human is to be neither beast nor god. Thus, to be equal, in a classical sense, means that we are equally below the gods and above the beast. We cannot be treated as property like cattle. Nor can we allow any man to claim the wisdom and power attributable only to the supernatural, to God. This truth is especially relevant today given the utilitarian fashion that man at his most vulnerable stage, his earliest stage of life at conception, is cavalierly referred to as nothing more than a utility for a pseudo-common good by a political society blinded to what the real common good should be. I am, of course, referring to the need for a debate on stem cell research, the truth of which, from a bonafide common good societal standpoint should be self-evident to all, “the end doesn’t justify the means.”

Moreover, we have the capacity for speech, not the guttural utterances of animals. We are rational and, through the use of speech, are able to convey our rational thoughts to others, which by nature is political. The ability to articulate via speech what is advantageous and good as opposed to what is disadvantageous and bad, coupled with the ability to signify what is just and unjust, makes a human political association via an arrangement by which goods and work are distributed for the sake of the political common good. In other words, human speech de facto leads to political participation in this process.

Argument 3 brings together the first two. The polis is prior to the individual and the pre-political associations in the order of final causality, the most basic cause of nature. They are related as a part to the whole. The part cannot function without the whole. Man cannot fully function as man without the polis in that he cannot practice full virtue without the polis. He needs the steadying and stabilizing effect of the polis to perfect himself. In perfecting himself, he perfects the family, the village, and ultimately the polis. It seems to me that this is a two-way street. If man cannot practice full virtue without the polis, how is the polis going to know what full virtue is without the example of man, in particular, virtuous men? Father George Rutler calls this a crisis due to a lack of saints. Of late, the counter examples politically have been too numerous to count, i.e., politicians without virtue promoting their hedonistic agendas with, sadly, many of these politicians calling themselves Catholic.

The family and village, growing naturally, lack justice, the greatest of human goods. Aristotle considers the political founder to be the “greatest of benefactors” because justice is the highest good. Justice helps us to be our best with the polis saving us from savagery, which is the fate of an isolated man or the result of arbitrary rule. Justice is an ordering of the political society. We are asked to recall the observation that we are neither a beast nor a god.

The roots of human sociability for Jacques Maritain are found by way of our deficiency or needs, physical and moral. We depend on our fellow men for the conditions of our existence and our development as humans, an observation of Plato in The Republic. These social roots are also found by way of human perfection or generosity of being as Maritain observed that inscribed in our very ontological structure is the desire to commune with others, to superabound, seeing our good diffuse itself. To ask for dialogue with others, to be with others, is what it means to be a person. [See Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, The Rights of Man and Natural Law.]