Kingship and Philosophy in Aristotle's Best Regime

Waerdt, Paul A. Vander

doi:10.1163/156852885x00093

Cited by 102 publications

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“…Interpretations of kingship in the Politics fall into roughly two groups. According to the first, Aristotle had a March 1994 genuine interest in and (qualified) preference for absolute monarchy, either on political grounds (Kelsen 1937) or philosophical grounds (Newell 1987;Vander Waerdt 1985). According to the latter, Aristotle denied the possible goodness of kingship and consistently preferred a more "republican" form of government.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aristotle's Science of the Best Regime

Bartlett

1994

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aristotle's Science of the Best Regime

Bartlett

1994

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Friedrich Nietzsche, when discussing his assertion that truth is yet another ascetic ideal in the Genealogy of Morals, writes that the key characteristics of interpretation are "violating, emending, abbreviating, letting go, filling in the cracks, composing, forging, and the other actions which belong to the nature of all interpretation" (Nietzsche, 2009: 126). I have argued elsewhere that Nietzsche's genealogical account of interpretation as misinterpretation is radically different from interpretation understood within the tradition of hermeneutics, thus it should be avoided when 1 Although this debate is ongoing and positions vary, there are two major camps: those who argue that monarchy (and aristocracy) is the best form of constitution (e.g., Newman, 1887;Newell, 1987;Vander Waerdt 1985;Keyt 1991;Lockwood 2006, Inamura 2012Buekenhout 2018) and those who favour politeia as "good" democracy (e.g., Lintott, 2017: 46;Kraut, 2002: 357-361;Everson, 1988: 90;Rowe, 2005: 386-387;Stark, 1965;Frank 2005). The closest to my reading of Aristotle's account of best constitution is C. C. W. Taylor argument that, given "the ideal phronimos is the politikos", "the citizens of a polis must participate in its government; every polis, not merely the best, must be a participatory democracy" (Taylor 1999: 242).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Best Constitution for the Flourishing Lives: Aristotle’s Political Theory and Its Implications for Emancipatory Purposes

Bielskis

2023

PRB

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The aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of the best constitution given Aristotle’s account of human flourishing articulated in the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle claims that monarchy is the supreme form of constitution. A similar claim is repeated in Politics. The paper argues that these claims sit uneasily with Aristotle’s teleological accounts of the polis, the citizen, and his discussion of the virtues of the citizen and the good man in Politics. Given Aristotle’s philosophical definition of the state as “an association of equals for the sake of the best possible life” and his notion that “the best is happiness, and that consists in excellence and its perfect actualization and its employment”, and Aristotle’s argument on the relationship between the good man and the good citizen, this paper concludes that the best constitution is politeia. Yet, simply to argue so is not enough if we are to rescue Aristotle from his inconsistencies and his claims on “natural inequalities”. Finally, a more radical interpretation of Aristotle is outlined, which rejects Aristotle’s separation between the oikos and the polis and argues that the verticality of the former is philosophically arbitrary and contradicts the revolutionary implications of Aristotle’s normative teleology.

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“…1279a26-39. There is very little literature on the nature of kingship in the Ethics. For analysis of kingship in the Politics, see: Bates 1997, Carlier 1993, Kelsen 1937, Miller 1998, Nagle 2000, Newell 1991, and Vander Waerdt 1985b Aristotle's predecessors such as Herodotus, Plato, and Isocrates provided different ways to divide constitutions, and there was significant disagreement over whether all regimes could be reduced to two types (oligarchy and democracy), three types (monarchy, oligarchy and democracy), or, with the addition of tyranny, aristocracy, and polity, possibly four, five, or even six types. See Herodotus, Histories iii 80-82; Isocrates, Panathenaicus 132; Plato, Statesman 301a-303b, Republic 544b-d, Laws 712b8-715e; cf.…”

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The Best Regime of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Lockwood¹

2006

Ancient Philosophy

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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is closely related to his Politics. Aristotle calls his Ethics a politikAE tiw or 'sort of political science', numerous times he emphasizes the practical nature of his inquiry, and the closing pages of the Ethics are the introduction to the Politics; further, in numerous places the Ethics refers to discussions which take place in the Politics, and the Politics, in turn, explicitly refers to discussions in the Ethics. 1 The two works taken together are a diptych or greater whole composed of two parts. And yet, the fit between the two works is not always smooth and sometimes it is unclear. Although both the Politics and the Ethics raise the question of what is the best regime or constitution (≤ ér¤sth polite¤a) in numerous places, it is difficult to determine the identity of the best regime in the Politics. Although EN viii 10 explicitly endorses kingship (basile¤a) as the best regime, many commentators agree with Richard Kraut's claim that 'unfortunately Aristotle does not explicitly say why, here or elsewhere'. 2 Trying to reconcile what Aristotle says about the best regime in both the Ethics and Politics simply complicates matters further.Much work has been done on the question of what is the best regime in Aristotle's Politics, but the same question has received much less scrutiny in the case of the Ethics. 3 Although the Ethics is a kind of political science, for the most part it ignores political regimes or constitutions to keep its applicability as wide as possible. 4 Nonetheless, in EN viii 10 Aristotle claims that kingship is the best regime, and elsewhere in the Ethics he makes remarks about regimes which yield

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Kingship and Philosophy in Aristotle's Best Regime

Cited by 102 publications

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Aristotle's Science of the Best Regime

Aristotle's Science of the Best Regime

The Best Constitution for the Flourishing Lives: Aristotle’s Political Theory and Its Implications for Emancipatory Purposes

The Best Regime of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

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