Aristotle’s Pambasileia and the Metaphysics of Monarchy

Abstract

Aristotle's account of kingship in Politics 3 responds to the rich discourse on kingship that permeates Greek political thought (notably in the works of Herodotus, Xenophon and Isocrates), in which the king is the paradigm of virtue, and also the instantiator and guarantor of order, linking the political microcosm to the macrocosm of the universe. Both models, in separating the individual king from the collective citizenry, invite further, more abstract thought on the importance of the king in the foundation of the polity, whether the king can be considered part of, or separate from, the polis, and the relationship between polis and universe. In addressing these aspects of kingship theories, Aristotle explores a 'metaphysics of monarchy', part of the long-running mereological problem of parts and wholes in the construction of the polis, and connecting his account of kingship to his thought on citizenship and distributive justice within the polis. Aristotle's theoretical thought on monarchy occupies a peculiar position in the Politics, at the end of Book 3, which investigates the role of the citizen within the polis, largely against the background of democratic Athens. 1 Aristotle completes his radical contribution to the development of political theory with this critical engagement with the novel kingship theories from other Greek political theorists of his time. He responds to new models of the king as exemplar of virtue developed by Isocrates and Xenophon, which in turn develop the account of kingship developed by earlier thinkers, in which the king generates originary processes, uniting the people and instantiating cosmic order in the human world. 2 Aristotle, in responding to the rich discourse on kingship that permeates Greek political thought, must therefore address both the 'virtue' model in which the king is the paradigm of virtue, and the 'cosmic' model in which the king is the instantiator and guarantor of order, linking the political microcosm to the macrocosm of the universe.Both these theories of kingship, in separating the individual king from the collective citizenry, invite further, more abstract thought on the political ontology of kingship inGreek political thought: the importance of the king in the foundation of the polity, whether the king can be considered part of, or separate from, the polis, and the

Ambiguities of Despotic Power in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia

“…The distinctive quality of the ruler, whose capabilities and excellence cannot be compared to those of his subjects, is a feature of the ancient Greek "metaphysics of monarchy" which reserved to such persons the capacity to perform political transformations such as the foundation or synoecism of a political community (Atack 2015 and2020, p. 179-196). In this model, the monarch is conceptualised as a person with distinctive capabilities operating in a way that is not simply a scalar transformation of the capacities of the ordinary citizen but one involving such qualitative difference that mechanisms of comparability and commensurability-such as the geometric equality of the polis that permits equitable change between citizenscannot operate.…”

Diotogène, Sur la royauté. Commentaire historique et politique pour un essai de datation

“…Cf. Carlier 1993Atack 2015. Platon, dans le Politique, insiste en revanche sur la nécessité de la loi écrite : voir la contribution de F. Scrofani dans ce dossier.…”