Does Aristotle's Polis Exist by Nature'

DOES ARISTOTLES POLIS EXIST BY NATURE?
K. Cherry
1
and E.A. Goerner
2
Abstract: Aristotle claims man is a political animal and that the polis exists by nature.
Taking literally his analogy between the legislator and the craftsman, Aristotles crit-
ics contend that he blunders because the polis is artificial, devised by a legis-
lator/founder and imposed on a people. We defend Aristotles claims by showing,
first, how Aristotles claim that man is by nature an animal possessing logos
speech/reason grounds his account of the natural development of the polis out of the
earliest partnerships (which the critics concede are natural); second, that the person
who first brought people together in a polis may well have done so without realizing
the scope of his actions; and, finally, that the developmental process is clearly one of
praxis (action), not poisis (making, the imposition of a form on matter). Aristotles
claims are evidenced by the Homeric hero Philoctetes, whom one critic takes to dis-
prove Aristotles theses.
I
Introduction
Perhaps the best known claims of Aristotles political philosophy are that the
polis exists by nature and that man is by nature a political animal (Pol.
1253a23).
3
Yet precisely what he means is a matter of dispute. The ambigu-
ity has led to a divide among commentators on the Politics. Some scholars
have contended that Aristotle simply blunders in saying the polis exists by
nature and that man is by nature a political animal. Some say the mistakes
are intentional. Others, however, have offered various defences of Aristotles
claims in this regard.
Our purpose in this article is hermeneutic. We wish to see whether there is a
reasonable way to interpret Aristotles claim about the naturalness of politics
that clears up the dispute. But what is at stake goes beyond merely hermeneu-
tic accuracy.
By contrast with Aristotelian theory in which man is political all the way
down, so to speak, most modern, liberal political theory from Hobbes
through Kant to Rawls and Habermas is in one way or another con-
structivist. Human beings are by nature non-political animals; polities exist
by human contrivance to master the state of nature. Man makes himself a
political being by a real or hypothetical contract constructing a polity in
which alone a rational order of right comes into existence or, at least, is
HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXVII. No. 4. Winter 2006
1
Dept of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, 217 OShaughnessy Hall,
Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. Email: kcherry@nd.edu.
2
Email: egoerner@nd.edu
3
For the sake of convenience and consistency, all references to Aristotle will be from
the Loeb editions, though we have occasionally altered the translations.
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2011
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
approximated.
4
Some contemporary theorists have turned to Aristotle for help
in trying to work out an alternative to modern rationalistic constructivism.
5
But if Aristotle fails even on his own terms to show that human nature is
directed toward life in the polis and that, in consequence, the polis exists by
nature, then those who have sought in Aristotle an alternative to liberal politi-
cal theory need to re-think that enterprise from the ground up without help
from him.
6
We think that Aristotles claims are defensible and, in light of what he
argues in the Politics, are consistent with perhaps even essential to other
elements of his political and ethical theory. In this article we provide an inter-
pretation of those claims that, by drawing from key passages throughout his
ethical and political works, makes sense of the admittedly problematic argu-
ments Aristotle offered in immediate support of the thesis that the polis exists
by nature and that man is naturally a political animal. His arguments are com-
pressed and elliptical, as commentators have long complained. But we will
endeavour to show that they are nevertheless consistent and persuasive.
564 K. CHERRY & E.A. GOERNER
4
Thus, David Keyt writes: One of the basic issues between Aristotle and Thomas
Hobbes in political philosophy concerns the nature of the political community. Aristotle
argues that the political community, or the polis, is a natural entity like an animal or a
man. Hobbes maintains in opposition to Aristotle that the political community is entirely
a product of art. David Keyt, Three Basic Theorems in Aristotles Politics, in A Com-
panion to Aristotles Politics, ed. David Keyt and Fred J. Miller, Jr. (Oxford, 1991),
p. 118.
5
See Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA, 1996); Ronald Beiner,
Political Judgment (Chicago, 1983); Jill Frank, Citizens, Slaves, and Foreigners: Aris-
totle on Human Nature, American Political Science Review, 98 (February 2004),
pp. 91104; William Galston, Justice and the Human Good (Chicago, 1980); Alasdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN, 1984); Martha Nussbaum, Aristotelian Social
Democracy, in Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald M. Mara and
Henry S. Richardson (New York, 1990); Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of
Justice (Cambridge and New York, 1982); Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, On Civic Friend-
ship, Ethics, 107 (October 1996), pp. 97128; and Thomas W. Smith, Revaluing Ethics
(Albany, NY, 2001). For a critique of this interpretation of Aristotle, see Susan Bickford,
Beyond Friendship: Aristotle on Conflict, Deliberation, and Attention, Journal of
Politics, 58 (2) (1996), pp. 398421; W.R. Newell, Superlative Virtue: The Problem
of Monarchy in Aristotles Politics, Western Political Quarterly, 40 (1) (1987),
pp. 15978; and Bernard Yack, The Problems of a Political Animal (Berkeley, CA,
1993). For an interesting and perhaps more plausible alternative to Aristotle, see Cary
Nederman, Freedom, Community, and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval
Political Theory, American Political Science Review, 86 (4) (1992), pp. 97786.
6
Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty (University Park,
PA, 2005), summarize the neo-Aristotelian communitarian critique of liberalism (pp.
817) but present their own neo-Aristotelian account of politics which supports liberal
politics even as it disagrees with the traditional liberal justifications for liberal politics.
However, Rasmussen and Den Uyl admit that while Aristotle influences their enterprise,
their conclusions, in fact, may not be his (cf. p. 115).
DOES ARISTOTLES POLIS EXIST BY NATURE? 565
Although we think that the critics are wrong to reject Aristotles claims as
blunders, we also think that his defenders have thus far failed to provide an
adequate interpretation of the passages in question. Our interpretation rests on
two fundamental arguments. First, we argue, the polis arises out of a process
of what we will call logos-sociality, the uniquely human capacity for reason
and speech about the just and unjust, the advantageous and disadvantageous,
the good and bad (Pol. 1253a1418). But this capacity, exercised fully only in
the polis, is also characteristic of the household. Therefore, we conclude, the
polis naturally develops out of the household, as Aristotle claims; both the
formation of a polis and the formation of a household result from the exercise
of practical reason and choice.
Second, we argue that when Aristotle praises those who take a significant
role in bringing a polis into existence, he does not mean that these founders
impose a constitution upon a people, as a sculptor imposes a formof the statue
on matter. We provide alternate interpretations of both the case of the one who
first organized a polis (Pol. 1253a3031) and the case of all subsequent
poleis. Regarding the former, we suggest, based on a reading of Book III, that
the one who first brought a polis into being may have had no clear conception
and thus no explicit intention of doing so: the change may be fully identifiable
only in retrospect. Regarding subsequent foundings and re-foundings, we
suggest, based on Aristotles references to Solon and Lycurgus and his dis-
tinction between praxis and poisis (doing and making), that the role of
founders is not imposing form on matter but rather one that is fundamentally
socio-political: proposing, guiding, leading, evoking a poliss human response
of self-transformation. It is through a process of shared logos-sociality a
capacity, we will argue, that is natural that the polis comes into being.
Whence it can rightly be said, on Aristotles terms, to exist by nature.
We conclude by offering an interpretation of the Homeric tale of Philoc-
tetes a story to which Aristotle himself refers but used by a critic as proof
that Aristotles arguments about the naturalness of the polis are, in fact,
flawed. On our reading, however, the story confirms Aristotles theses about
the naturalness of the polis and the fundamentally political nature of human
beings. It is a concrete example of these theses that perfectly illustrates the
arguments we make below.
II
The Debate
One of the more common approaches to these passages is to conclude that
Aristotle simply commits a blunder in claiming that man is by nature a politi-
cal animal and that the polis exists by nature. This interpretation is more com-
mon than one might think. For instance, a version of it was accepted by
C.C.W. Taylor for his essay on the Politics in The Cambridge Companion to
Aristotle. Taylor states that none of Aristotles arguments shows that the kind
of self-sufficiency which is achieved by the polis is natural.
7
Richard Mulgan, to take another example, contends that Aristotle uses the
term political animal in different ways, without realizing that he was
being inconsistent.
8
The problem is that the literal meaning of political
(aoitixov) is belonging to a polis, a city-state; but Aristotle also speaks of
bees, for example, as political animals and human beings as only more politi-
cal than bees.
9
In response to this problem, some translators have substituted
social for political in contexts where Aristotle cannot be referring to the
literal meaning of belonging to the polis. Mulgan considers two possibil-
ities. First, he suggests, Aristotle deliberately used the phrase [political ani-
mal] in two quite different senses in the space of five lines without giving any
indication of such a change, a possibility that he says hardly seems credible.
Second, he says, it is quite possible that he may not have noticed, any more
than most of his subsequent commentators and translators, that he was being
inconsistent. Mulgan opts for the second possibility and concludes that it is a
fallacy Aristotle might well have been tempted into in his desire to accom-
modate his political theory to his general biological principles.
10
We readily grant that Aristotle does easily lead modern readers into the
kind of irritating dead end in which Mulgan finds himself, having to say that
the author of the first systematic books on logic either deliberately or inadver-
tently opens his book on politics with a patent fallacy. But Aristotles linguis-
tic practice here, though not the same as that which we commonly follow, is in
fact quite consistent with his usages elsewhere. Briefly put, while we tend to
use two different terms for a genus and species for instance, we would call
man a political animal within the broader genus of social animals Aris-
totles tendency is to see a genus as hierarchically arranged so that the most
fully realized form within it (the highest species) is simultaneously the form
in terms of which the other, lower, forms are to be understood by disciplined
analogy rather than mere metaphor.
11
This is linguistically reflected in his
simultaneous use of the term for the highest species as the term for the genus
as a whole, the less complete forms pointing towards the completed form.
7
C.C.W. Taylor, Politics, in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. Jonathan
Barnes (Cambridge and New York, 1991), pp. 238, 238 n.4. Taylor explicitly relies on
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems.
8
R.G. Mulgan, Aristotles Doctrine That Man Is a Political Animal, Hermes 102
(1974), pp. 43845, p. 444.
9
Ibid., p. 443 (and Pol. 1253a 79).
10
Ibid., pp. 4445.
11
The clearest example of this is the discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean
Ethics, in which the lesser associations of pleasure and utility are called friendship only
in light of their resemblance however slight to the notion of true friendship. As
careful and subtle an interpreter as Thomas Aquinas notes that Aristotle uses terms in
precisely this way (Summa Theologica IIII. 120.2 c and ad 2).
While Aristotle had available a termsuch as social (xoivo) to describe ani-
mals such as cranes and bees, he chose to use the word political. Obviously
such animals do not live in a polis, but employing the specific term for the
highest form of association as a generic for lower ones also indicates not only
that they have something in common with the political animal that is man, but
also that the lower forms of association can be viewed as less fully realized,
less perfected forms of the associative possibilities of animate material life.
We will claim that, in Aristotles view, one would have to think of the human
species as having suffered fromarrested development (analogous to that of an
individual) if through some accident it had not developed beyond the social
form of the household. Reflecting on that way of using key terms allows one
to make sense of Aristotles claim that the polis is the end of the other human
associations or partnerships, for nature is an end insofar as that which each
thing is when its growth is completed is its nature (Pol. 1252b3134). What
Mulgan takes as an inconsistency is, rather, fully consistent with Aristo-
telian linguistic practice and a practice which, we suggest, is crucial to
understanding Aristotles arguments elsewhere in the Politics.
Other commentators who emphasize the difficulty in making sense of Aris-
totles claimthat the polis exists by nature have a more charitable explanation.
Aristotle makes this claim about the polis, they argue, for reasons other than
because it is simply true.
12
Their suggestion is that the claim is of a suffi-
ciently problematic character that careful readers will note the problems and
therefore recognize the irresolvable tension between political life and the
good life of philosophy.
13
However, Aristotle, on their view, remains inclined
to defend the polis as natural because of the real danger posed by the pure con-
ventionalism of the sophists.
14
While we would not deny that Aristotle sees
the relationship between philosophy and politics as complicated, we disagree
that his claims about the naturalness of the polis are somehow disingenuous
and think our interpretation resolves some of the tensions to which these com-
mentators point. Just as our argument will make a case to the effect that the
very nature of the family in Aristotles view both points beyond itself to the
polis and, reflexively, is shaped by the polis (a relationship that can be fraught
with tension as classical Greek tragedy often points out), our argument about
the nature of the polis allows for its also pointing beyond itself to philosophy
with analogous tensions. But this article is not the place to address that issue.
Yet these commentators even those who think Aristotle blunders
are more cognizant of the breadth of his claim than are many of those who
12
Wayne Ambler, Aristotles Understanding of the Naturalness of the City, Review
of Politics, 47 (1985), pp. 16385, p. 179.
13
Michael Davis, The Politics of Philosophy (Lanham, MD, 1996), p. 29, cf. ch. 1.
14
Carnes Lord, Aristotles Anthropology, in Essays on the Foundation of Aristo-
telian Political Science, ed. Carnes Lord and David K. OConnor (Berkeley, CA, 1991),
pp. 60, 73.
hope to defend Aristotle. This simplest defence is that the polis, insofar as it is
necessary for mans natural development, is likewise natural.
15
Though this
explanation has the merit of simplicity, it fails, as many commentators have
noticed, to take into account what Aristotle actually says.
16
Aristotle does not
only say the polis is natural. He says that it exists by nature (Pol. 1252b30). To
defend Aristotles claims by leaving out part of what he says is not a defence
but a dodge.
Other commentators have offered defences that take seriously the depth of
Aristotles claims. Joseph Chan, for instance, draws a distinction between the
type of human community the polis is as opposed to, say, the family
and a particular polis having a form of the polis-type, e.g. democracy or oli-
garchy.
17
The polis can be said to exist by nature on the level of type, insofar
as the features which define any polis are made necessary by human nature.
The form of a particular polis which includes its particular laws and cus-
toms is, however, determined by the human action of legislators.
Cary J. Nederman, however, notes that Chans distinction between the
form and type of a polis is not a distinction found in Aristotle and seeks to
offer a solution from within the Aristotelian corpus.
18
He argues that while
the polis is natural insofar as it is necessary for the natural human capacity of
choice to develop, the polis exists by nature because citizens individually and
jointly seek the good life and the happiness which is conferred thereby. Legis-
lators and statesman are not an external cause of the polis, but simply facili-
tate the natural desire of people to live together for the sake of the good life.
19
We think that Nederman is, by and large, right about this, but believe there
is more that needs to be said on the matter. For instance, Nederman could
plausibly be said to fall victim to the criticism he makes of Chan; while his
argument is consistent with the general direction of Aristotles corpus, he
nowhere addresses and interprets the explicit arguments Aristotle gives in
support of the claim that the polis exists by nature. Consequently, the argu-
ments of critics who critique these explicit arguments still require comment.
More importantly, although Nederman seems to imply that the polis comes
into existence almost automatically, other commentators deny this and claim
15
For versions of this defence, see Ernest Barker, The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford,
1948); A.C. Bradley, Aristotles Conception of the State, in ACompanion to Aristotles
Politics, ed. Keyt and Miller, pp. 1356; Stephen Everson, Aristotle on the Foundations
of the State, Political Studies, 36 (1) (1988), pp. 89101; and Fred J. Miller, Jr., Aris-
totles Political Naturalism, Apeiron, 22 (1989), pp. 195218.
16
See, especially, David Keyt, Fred Miller on Aristotles Political Naturalism,
Ancient Philosophy, 16 (1996), pp. 42530. Miller responds on pp. 44354.
17
Joseph Chan, Does Aristotles Political Theory Rest on a Blunder?, History of
Political Thought, 13 (2) (1992), pp. 189202, p. 196.
18
Cary J. Nederman, The Puzzle of the Political Animal, Review of Politics, 56
(1994), pp. 283304, pp. 2867.
19
Ibid., p. 303.
the polis comes into being through a discontinuous act.
20
These commenta-
tors are correct to note that Aristotles emphasis on the critical role of the
legislator seems to undermine an argument such as Nedermans.
Indeed, the most comprehensive critique of Aristotles claims is by David
Keyt, who cites Aristotles emphasis on the legislator as the first sign that the
polis cannot exist by nature.
21
Keyt argues that the polis is an artifact of prac-
tical reason, comparing it to objects of art such as paintings, statues, and
poems which are never produced by nature alone. For example, Keyt
argues that the repeated analogies between the legislator and the craftsman
imply that a lawgiver creates a polis by imposing a form a constitution
upon a population of citizens and a territory.
22
Therefore, not only Aristotles
claim that the polis exists by nature, but also his claims that man is by nature a
political animal and that the polis is prior in nature to the individual are, on
Keyts reading, fallacious. Keyt argues that according to Aristotles own
principles the political community is an artifact of practical reason, not a
product of nature, and that, consequently, there is a blunder at the very root of
Aristotles political philosophy (emphasis added).
23
What is necessary to defend Aristotles claim, then, is an account of how
the polis comes about by nature that grants the special role of the legislator
while at the same time denying that this role implies that the polis is therefore
artificial. It is just such an account that we provide below.
III
Nature and Human Nature: Logos-Sociality
Often taken as the opposite of what is by artifice, nature is surely one of the
most polysemous terms in Greek as well as in English, and Aristotles use of
the termis no exception. Nature (uoi, physis) as in the nature of man
is a substantive form of the verb ue, phyoo, meaning to grow, produce, put
forth leaves, etc.; (of humans) to beget, generate; to put forth shoots; also to
grow, spring up, arise, develop; (of humans) to be begotten or born; to be so
and so by nature, to be by nature disposed to so and so.
24
Some of these mean-
ings are still available in English in terms such as physics, physician, physical,
and all the terms constructed fromphyt- or phyto- (plant) such as phytology or
phytosociology or phytoplankton.
What is important for present purposes is to note the deep connection of the
Greek word for nature (as well as its derivatives, such as natural, according to
20
Lord, Aristotles Anthropology, p. 60.
21
David Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, pp. 11819. Cary Nederman and Joseph
Chan wrote explicitly to respond to Keyts article, as did Fred Miller and others.
22
Ibid., pp. 11920.
23
Ibid., p. 118.
24
H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A GreekEnglish Lexicon (New York, 9th edn., 1996),
pp. 19645.
nature, etc.) with the notion of the begetting and growing of different kinds of
things, each of which tends to mature in accordance with the norm of its kind:
as for men to grow a beard (uriv aeyevo, phyein pogona). Nature can, of
course, be used to refer to the essential characteristics of inanimate things,
those which do not have an internal principle of development. But it does so
by extension from the central etymological thrust. The use of nature with
respect to humans is clearly closer to the central etymological thrust, since
humans are developmental, growing things. However, in speaking of the na-
ture of humans one is inevitably confronted with a principle of development
to maturation and completion (or perfection) of the human developmental tra-
jectory that differs specifically from other living things, not only from plants
and animals in general, but also from other social animals.
The nature of human beings, whether referred to as political animals or
rational animals (literally, animals having speech/logos [Pol. 1253a 910]), is
composite in a special way, and consequently Aristotles use of the term na-
ture with respect to humans, is equally complex. For example, Aristotle
refers to the natural desire for reproductive activity as in the other animals
and plants (Pol. 1253a2930). In other words, because generically animals,
humans participate with other animals in processes that are invariable, neces-
sary, biologically determined, e.g. breathing and sexual arousal. So such
activities can properly be called natural, but one needs to understand that
natural in a very broad sense referring to the whole class of living things. At
the other extreme, natural also refers to what manifests the particular (and
biologically determined) difference of the human species, i.e. the possession
of logos (speech/reason, and so judgment and choice).
Unlike voice which man shares with other animals, logos, speech/reason,
is able
to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right
and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the
other animals that he alone has the perception of good and bad and right and
wrong, and the other [ethical things] and it is partnership in these things that
makes a household and a polis (Pol. 1253a1418).
So right from the start of the Politics Aristotle emphasizes the communicative
and community-building character of logos, though he never claims that only
one particular language is natural to man.
We shall call this particularly human kind of sociality which is manifested
in both polis and household, logos-sociality.
In other words, Aristotles account of human nature is such that a human
being is the kind of thing whose inner principle of growth and development is
one that is in significant measure shaped by choices dependent on exercises of
reasoned and communicated judgments about what is to be done, about the
advantageous and the harmful, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust,
and other similar things. That natural, rational activity interacts with the
activity of those aspects of human nature which man shares with other living
things.
25
But logos itself has to discover such things over time for a number of rea-
sons. The advantageous and the harmful, the good and the bad, the just and the
unjust, are not self-evident but have to be thought through; nor are they
unchanging and universal, but must be adapted to time, place and circum-
stance.
26
Further, in the process of thinking through such matters reason and
speech can be mistaken, deformed, and so in need of being reformed. The
whole corpus of Aristotles ethical-political writing testifies to that, for it con-
sists in an attempt to review critically common judgments about such matters
and to lay out guidelines for reforming them where necessary and possible for
both individuals and communities, especially the polis.
Whatever their position on whether Aristotle blunders in asserting that
the polis exists by nature, commentators have uniformly accepted his earlier
assertion that the first partnerships those of husband and wife, and natural
ruler and naturally ruled exist by nature. Many are willing to accept that the
household, comprised of these two, is also natural.
27
Even Keyt believes that
household generates household just as man generates man and that the house-
hold is the one community whose generation does fit Aristotles theory.
28
It is our contention that in admitting the naturalness of these first partner-
ships, Aristotles critics effectively concede too much. Aristotle is explicit
that the proper locus for speech about the just and unjust is not the city alone
but includes the household (Pol. 1253a1418; see also Eudemian Ethics
1242a2225). Whereas man is placed among the genus of animals which
form partnerships (xoivevioi), the specifically human kind of partnership is
tied to the exercise of the specifically human capacity for logos. Now many of
the commentators object that, unlike the household, the polis comes to be
through the intentional action of a human being rather than biological neces-
sity. But as Chan points out, [t]his is true also in the cases of the household
and the village. Now if the mere fact that a certain things existence requires
25
Recent accounts of Aristotles conception of nature tend to emphasize the capacity
for choice as both part of and constitutive of human nature. See, for instance, Jill Frank, A
Democracy of Distinction (Chicago, 2005), especially Chapter One; and J.K. Ward, Ar-
istotle on Physis: Human Nature in the Ethics and Politics, Polis, 22 (2) (2005),
pp. 287308.
26
In the celebrated passage on natural right (NE 1134b18 ff.), he uses natural to
refer not only to immutable and universal physical laws (governing fire) but also to refer
to something that is mutable and not universal, namely what is just, determined by reason
but still natural.
27
Cf. Ambler, Aristotles Understanding, pp.1678; Davis, Politics of Philosophy,
pp.1516; Wolfgang Kullman, Man as a Political Animal in Aristotle, in ACompanion
to Aristotles Politics, ed. Keyt and Miller, pp. 968; Lord, Aristotles Anthropology,
p. 56; and Mary P. Nichols, Citizens and Statesmen (Savage, MD, 1992), pp. 1516.
28
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, p. 122.
human involvement and effort renders that thing unnatural, then all types of
human relation are unnatural.
29
Even within the immediate context of the
household (oixo) it becomes apparent that Aristotle should not be taken to
mean that the household/family exists solely through biological necessity.
This is not to deny that the urge for reproduction that affects men and
women as well as males and females of the other species is a biological neces-
sity, something natural in the broadest sense of the term. This is why Aristotle
is able to say that man is by nature a pairing [animal] even more than a politi-
cal [animal], inasmuch as the household (or family) is earlier and more neces-
sary than the polis, and procreation more common to [all] animals (NE
1162a1619). But prima facie this passage contradicts the assertions of
Book I: The polis is prior in nature to the household and to each of us (Pol.
1253a1920). Can both of those assertions be true?
Here is where attention to context is crucial and reveals Aristotles use of
the term natural in two common but different senses. In the Ethics he is try-
ing to distinguish dialectically a specifically human form of relationship from
that form of relationship that humans share with animals in general. His point
is that the biological drive and activity of procreation is prior and more neces-
sary, invariable and biologically determined, than specifically human and
speech/logos-shaped forms of life (i.e. natural in a way that general biologi-
cal laws can be said to be natural and that even his critics on the issue of the
naturalness of politics are prepared to accept). The human aspect of the pro-
creative relationship (the household or family) rests on the biological neces-
sities that humans share with the other animals and Aristotles argument at
this point in Ethics is to work out the specifics of familial friendships while
respecting the constraints of the fundamental biological components of those
friendships.
In contrast, the context of the argument in Book I of Politics is quite differ-
ent. There, at the opening of the work, he is attempting a dialectical refutation
of those who hold that the polis is essentially the same as a household, the only
difference being size, the number of members. The point of his argument is
not to deny that political life has nothing in common with other forms of ani-
mal and human community, but to show that the specifically political form of
human community is such that it constitutes a whole of which households,
however natural, universal and biologically necessary, are parts, and parts
that are regulated and limited by the activity of the whole. The pivot points in
this dialectic are the assertions that man alone of the animals possesses logos
[speech/reason] (Pol. 1253a910) and that logos is about the useful and the
harmful, and so also about the just and the unjust . . . the good and the bad and
the other judgments, but sharing these things makes a household and a polis
(Pol. 1253a1418). In this context the polis is naturally prior to the household
(and to the individual) not temporally or in terms of universal biological
29
Chan, Blunder, p. 193, emphasis added.
necessity but ontologically.
30
The polis alone, he claims, is the association in
which the human capacity for logos develops to its fullest extent. The house-
hold also involves a sharing of perceptions via reasoning and discourse of
good and bad, the advantageous and the harmful, the just and the unjust; but
only the polis is able to develop fully the activity of ordering human life by
reasoning and discourse, by logos. As such the polis is a more fully human
community of speaking and reasoning than the household. Of course, both are
driven and constrained by biological necessity, by nature in its broad sense.
But in the polis the realm and power of speech and reason the realm and
power of human choice shaped by speech and reason rather than by pre-
rational drives and necessities reaches its natural limits.
In this context, the argument gives full force to Aristotles fundamental
definition of man found not only in the theoretical works but in the Politics
itself as the animal having logos: man cannot but act under the influence
of reason and speech. Speech is the fundamental phenomenon of specifically
human life. It is mans nature to act through reason and choice. This is the pri-
mary argument for Aristotles assertion that the polis exists by nature.
Although humans are motivated by the same urges that lead certain ani-
mals the social animals Aristotle refers to elsewhere to create what
could be called families in a loose sense, something more is going on in
human relationships. The selection of a particular woman by a particular man
(and, thankfully, in our time, vice versa) is one characterized by deliberate
choice. In particular, as Aristotle himself observes (Pol. 1334b29 ff.), human
reproduction is characterized by the capacity to choose the best time for pro-
creation; and, after scientific investigation, he recommends legislative regula-
tion of ages for marriage. Moreover, Aristotle is at pains to note the diversity
of the ways human households structure their activity to satisfy the biological
need for food. Some groups of people structure their household activity
nomadically around herding domesticated animals, some around hunting
including fishing and brigandage, some around agriculture, and then various
mixtures of the above.
These variations in the organization of life are natural, according to Aris-
totle. But note that they are natural in two different ways. First, they are natu-
ral in that they are driven by the universal biological necessity of obtaining
food. Second, they are natural in that the biological necessity is satisfied in
diverse ways devised in the natural human mode of logos-sociality: different
groups of human beings have employed practical rationality and speech to
devise and share distinctly different ways of organizing the activity of the
household in relation to their environments in order to satisfy a biological
necessity common to all animals.
30
It should also be noted that the family is more widespread than the polis because,
on Aristotles account, the conditions for the latter to develop do not occur always and
everywhere.
Both of these elements are in fact natural, the latter because it is natural in
the invariable sense and the former because it represents the exercise of what
is specific to the nature of man.
IV
From the Household to the First Polis
But what of Aristotles claim that the person who first brought people
together in a polis is responsible for the greatest of goods (Pol. 1253a3031)?
Surely such a claimwould not be made if the polis were something that tended
to arise without human rational choice.
31
Given the development of the other partnerships discussed in Book I the
household and village we propose the following account. The first person
who brought people together in a polis may have had no intention of creating a
specifically new kind of partnership, a polis, the nature of which he fully
understood in advance. Rather, just as the village was an outgrowth of the
household made necessary by the increasing size of a household so too
the polis begins as an outgrowth of the village.
32
Of course, any interpretation of the development of the village from the
household is bound to be limited by the little Aristotle says about it. The vil-
lage is said to be a colony (oaoixio, apoikia) from the household, formed by
the sons of one father who remain tied closely to that first household (Pol.
1252b16 ff.). One might reasonably suppose that one household could no lon-
ger support the original father and mother and their grown children along with
their spouses and their children. Therefore, it would make sense for some of
the grown children to form households of their own, partially independent of
that of their parents but remaining closely connected. They would perform
many of the same tasks, each in its own household and farm or pasture, but
some division of labour would tend to take place, enabling the village to pro-
vide better for needs beyond those of day-to-day life.
Hence, we hypothesize that Aristotles argument runs as follows: just as the
first village arose when several households were capable of providing for
non-daily needs, so, too, the first polis arose when several villages, under the
rule of a patriarch, were capable of providing a level of self-sufficiency
31
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, translates the verb in this passage (ouotgoo the
active aorist participle of ouviotgi) as formed, but this seems to presume his interpre-
tation rather than provide a basis for it. Aristotle uses this verb at the very beginning of
the Politics to describe how every kind of partnership comes together (ouvrotgxuiov,
Pol. 1252a2). Indeed, he uses it in discussing both the malefemale reproductive partner-
ship and the household, which, as we discussed earlier, even his toughest critics are will-
ing to concede are natural (Pol. 1252b13, 1259b3).
32
Contra Lord, Aristotles Anthropology, p. 60; Keyt, Three Basic Theorems,
p. 123; and Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 2nd edn., 1998), p. 23, the
polis is not discontinuous from the family and village.
unattainable by a village. As Aristotle suggests in his discussion of the earliest
cities, such self-sufficiency included a more effective organization of
defence, the resources for more impressive religious sacrifices, judicial
means of settling disputes between or among inhabitants of different villages
(Pol. 1285b4 ff.). Even if the first polis were instituted by a patriarch who
united villages at least some of which were not descended fromhis patriarchal
line but were brought together by him under his military, religious and judi-
cial government, there is no reason to think that either he or the people whom
he organized necessarily understood fully how radical a transformation they
had begun. This new level of military, religious and judicial functioning
would eventually provide the economic self-sufficiency not only for mere life
but also for the blossoming of the self-sufficient good life of civilization. This
first founder of a polis might have understood that he was bringing together a
people to do something new in the way of war, the arts of peace, or settling a
new country. But it might be only in retrospect that the change to a form
self-sufficient for the complete flourishing of specifically human capacities
could be fully identified.
There is nothing in Aristotle which explicitly suggests a conscious effort on
the part of someone to bring the first polis into existence in the way that a
shoemaker already has his conception of a shoe in mind before he starts mak-
ing the shoe. Rather, the notion of a household generating a community of
households, called a village, which generates more villages, which are orga-
nized by someone into a larger unit to deal with some perceived needs for
more land, new economic and/or defence problems is entirely consistent with
the argument offered by Aristotle (Pol. 1252b28 ff.). This is not to claim that
these developments are spontaneous or random. They are undoubtedly a mani-
festation of logos-sociality, speech at least about the advantageous and the
harmful, a distinguishing part of human nature (Pol. 1253a1016). But action
guided by speech and reasoning, even if led by someone able to win people
over to a new organization of life to respond to new challenges, is simply not
at all the same as the formation of an artifact by a workman who imposes a
form he has conceived on matter which has no inherent tendency to develop
into his artifact. Both leader and led interact with one another in relation to
their shared capacity to form communities that more fully develop and
employ their innate capacities to meet the needs of life for beings character-
ized by logos-sociality.
Thus far, we have only tried to explain how the first polis could be said to
be by nature. But what of subsequent poleis? They clearly do not develop
naturally in the same way as we have sketched above, but it does not follow
that they are therefore artificial.
V
But If There Is a Founder, How Does the Polis Exist by Nature?
Taking literally Aristotles craftsman analogy, the claim of his critics is that
legislators impose a constitution (form) on a people (matter). For example,
Keyt argues that the repeated analogies between the legislator and the crafts-
man imply that a lawgiver creates a polis by imposing a form a constitu-
tion upon a population of citizens and a territory.
33
Likewise, Hannah
Arendt argues that Plato and Aristotle shared the traditional Greek under-
standing that the laws of the polis were not results of action but products of
making. As a result of their wish to turn against politics and against action,
they emphasized the similarities between legislators and craftsmen:
the result of their action is a tangible product, and its process has a clearly
recognizable end. This is no longer or, rather, not yet action [praxis], prop-
erly speaking, but making [poisis], which they prefer because of its greater
reliability.
In short, Plato and, to a lesser degree, Aristotle . . . were the first to propose
handling political matters and ruling political bodies in the mode of fabrica-
tion.
34
We do not wish to deny the important role played by the ancient Greek legis-
lators such as Solon or Lycurgus. However, admitting that role need not lead
one to conclude that they imposed constitutions on the people. Obviously,
both the craftsman and the legislator have a causal relationship to the form of
an artifact and a polis respectively. So one must look to see whether or not
their generic similarity at the very abstract level of having a causal role in
forming something is then specifically differentiated such that their specific
functions are essentially different.
At the beginning of Book III, Aristotle describes the constitution as some
organization of the inhabitants of the polis (toi ti, Pol. 1274b38), which is
the chief though not exclusive characteristic of the city (Pol.
1276b911). A polis is a whole consisting of many parts, arranged together.
The relevant theoretical question, therefore, is how these parts come to be
arranged. Is it that the arrangement is imposed on the citizens, or does it come
about in some other way? In the case of an artifact like a poem or statue, the
poet or craftsman is the external principle that imposes fromoutside a formon
33
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, p. 119, cf. pp. 120, 122, citing Pol. 1273b323,
1274b1819, 1276b111, 1325b4026a8.
34
Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 1945, 230. R.G. Mulgan, Aristotles Political
Theory (New York, 1977), uses the same terminology: Though men have some sort of
impulse which inclines themtowards the community of the polis, this community is not a
spontaneous creation. It has to be deliberately imposed on men and needs to be reim-
posed on each succeeding generation (p. 24, emphases added).
matter, words or clay which have no internal tendency to develop in that way.
But is that the way Aristotle envisages the role and function of the legislator?
The distinction we wish to drawhere is one familiar to students of Aristotle.
At the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics he distinguishes among the vari-
ous arts and sciences, some of which aim at the activity of practicing the art,
others some product, and still others aim at certain things which result
from the practice of the arts themselves (NE 1094a4 ff.). This distinction is
fleshed out in his discussion of the intellectual virtues in Book VI of the
Nicomachean Ethics, where he discusses the difference between making and
doing (xoi aoigtov xoi aoxtov, 1140a1 ff.). Both making and doing are set
apart from the exercise of the other intellectual virtues insofar as they con-
sider things which are variable rather than invariable. But this seems to be
their only similarity. Making is different from doing in that the former is
directed towards an end separate from the making, while the latter is directed
toward the act itself (NE 1139a36 ff., 1140b46). Making and doing are, in
fact, so different that they require different rational capacities, for doing is
not a form of making, nor making a form of doing (NE 1140a56). Art
(trvg) is said to be the rational quality, concerned with making, and it is
not concerned with doing. The rational quality which is concerned with
doing, then, is said to be prudence (ovgoi), the capacity to deliberate
well about what is good and advantageous for oneself. It is, in short, that
which is concerned with action in relation to the good and bad for men (NE
1140b46) and different from the intellectual capacity for making.
35
Aristotle later indicates that the knowledge of political things (aoitixg ) is
a part of prudence (NE 1141b23 ff.); and within this knowledge of political
things, he suggests, is a particular kind of knowledge which is supreme and
directive as regards the polis. This kind of knowledge is voo0rtixg, legisla-
tive knowledge. By contrast, it is a lesser form of political knowledge, simple
aoitixg , which is compared to craftsmanship.
36
All of this, then, suggests
that Aristotle conceives of the legislator as one who engages in acting, not
35
Sometimes the division is not so obvious. In his treatment of the intellectual virtues
(NE 1139a27 ff.), Aristotle contrasts practical thinking (oiovoio aoxtixg) not with
making but with speculative thinking (oiovoio0regtixg ). The former is said to be con-
cerned with truth about action, while the latter is concerned with the simple attainment of
truth or falsity. The genus of practical activity includes within it both acting and making.
Once again, the difficulty is that Aristotle uses the same term to describe the (broader)
genus and the (narrower) species. But even in this passage Aristotle does indicate that
there is a difference between acting and making (g aoxtixg gor aoigtixg). Mak-
ing results in a product, which is used for the sake of something else; by contrast,
action particularly, Aristotle notes here, good action is its own end.
36
Is this, then, a counter-example to our thesis that Aristotle uses the highest genus as
the species term? We think not, for he laments, while respecting the fact, that it is com-
mon usage for aoitixg to refer to the usual action and deliberation within the polis
rather than to the architectonic legislative science (NE 1141b2426).
making. But the difficulty is to identify precisely how prudence the virtue
concerned with acting, the excellence in deliberating about what is both good
and advantageous is exercised in the legislators activity.
The pivot of the argument here is the drive for what Aristotle calls autarchy
(outoxrio), meaning self-sufficiency in the sense of not being dependent on
the actions of others for full functioning.
37
Thus a child is not self-sufficient
but dependent upon others because unable or only partly able to nourish,
clothe, house and defend itself. Similarly, the household and the village are in
different degrees not fully able to satisfy the economic and security needs of
their members. Only the polis is fully capable of meeting those needs, the
needs of mere life. But the polis is not only a necessary means for achieving
economic and security self-sufficiency, it alone exists for the sake of living
well (ou sa de; tou' eu\ zh'n, Pol. 1252b30). What is crucial here is that the
whole intellectual enterprise of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics is
organized around a search for clarity about the substantive constituent or con-
stituents of happiness or living well, since all, both the many and the culti-
vated, agree that to live well or to do well is the same as to be happy. The
whole of his argument begins from his perception, confirmed by universal
agreement, of this universal human drive to live well. That drive is doubly
natural both in the sense that it is universal and in the sense that how to satisfy
it is a matter of dispute, depending in crucial respects on the specifically
human capacity for logos, speaking and reasoning, about choices regarding
what is to be done, about the advantageous and the harmful, the good and the
bad, the just and the unjust, and similar things.
To take an example from the Politics, a politically organized people, lead-
ers and led, may deliberate over the best paths of communal self-formation
through educational practices (broadly understood), an activity that, Aristotle
claims, lawgivers, with the exception of Lycurgus, have seldom addressed,
leaving it mostly to chance. In a central way the Nicomachean Ethics and the
Politics are designed to promote a fully human approach to self-formation by
societies of social animals the form of whose sociality is not wholly dictated by
instinctive biological drives but rather leaves itself open to reflexive transfor-
mation by what we have called logos-sociality, the sociality characteristic of
human nature in that its form and direction is partly the result of the rational
reflection and communication encompassed in the Greek term logos.
Our argument here is not that he necessarily succeeds in that task, but that
Aristotles Politics is itself a prime example of the way in which political life
develops into the good life. Of course, by the good life many people mean
mainly wine, women or men, and song. But he takes it to be the fullest possible
development and exercise of the capacities inherent in human nature which
would include the things just mentioned in only moderate and prudent doses.
37
See NE 1097b921, 1134a27, 1177a28; Pol. 1252b29, 1253a2, 1253a27, 1256b5,
1257a31, 1275b21, 1321b18, 1326b330.
The phenomenon of scientific philosophy could scarcely have arisen without
the kind of civilizational resources that the existence of the Greek cities made
available; and that philosophic activity gave a new mode in which the
logos-sociality of the city might be exercised. Our claim is that a careful read-
ing of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics makes clear that the rise and
development of the polis is a developmental continuation by nature of human
sociality which already contains the city in larval form, so to speak.
In contrast to the craftsman, Aristotles legislator does not treat humans as
raw material to be sculpted in a manner of his choosing. Rather, the formation
of a constitution is a process of shared logos-sociality, a constituent aspect of
the nature of human beings. Thus, insofar as humans develop their social rela-
tionships by the use of reason, they do so by nature, by an internal, essential
principle. By contrast, the forms of artifacts (the products of making, of
techn) are not expressions of a developmental principle in the materials from
which they are made but are imposed by a maker essentially different from
both the materials that are formed and from the final product.
38
Aristotle speaks of legislators working jointly with the citizenry of a given
polis in forming a constitution. Some legislators like Solon and Lycurgus,
to whom Aristotle often refers may be citizens of the city for which they
legislate, though not all are (e.g. Androdamas of Rhegium who legislated for
the Chalcidians, Pol. 1274b2325, cf. 1273b3034). In discussing the consti-
tution of Sparta in Book II, Aristotle says that the Spartan men handed over
themselves to the lawgiver having been prepared for obedience by their mili-
tary training (Pol. 1270a4 ff., emphasis added). Likewise, Solon was chosen
by the Athenians both the oligarchs and democrats to be both mediator
and archon; there is no suggestion that he simply imposed a set of laws on
them without their consent (cf. Constitution of Athens V.1). On the contrary,
he responded to their appeal to lead them out of a political impasse that
threatened civil war among the classes.
The claim of Aristotles critics that constitution making is artificial in a
radical sense seems in fact to be based on a reduction of leadership to imposi-
tion on a passive, deluded, coerced, bribed or unaware populace. But both in
the case of the Spartan men and in that of the Athenians, Aristotle envisages
38
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, contends that the polis cannot be by nature insofar
as in natural genesis product and producer have the very same form, whereas in artifi-
cial production, the producer has the form of the product only in his mind (p. 121). In
other words, the polis evolves fromthe village and the household, both of which differ in
species (though not in genus) from the polis and therefore does not arise through the
agency of a distinct object that is the same in species as itself (p. 122). But on our read-
ing, the polis is not a product, nor is the legislator a producer. Rather, the polis exists
by nature because it results from the shared exercise of what we have called logos-
sociality, an activity common to household, village and polis. Logos-sociality is the in-
ternal source of motion that Keyt believes is characteristic of that class of things which,
according to Aristotelian principles, exists by nature (p. 123).
members of a polis seeing some pressing need for fundamental institutional
reform and responding to that need by agreeing to have someone, who has
emerged as a leader by acquiring a reputation for sagacity and fairness, pro-
pose a new constitutional arrangement for the whole polis.
Aristotles discussion of the reaction of the Spartan women to Lycurguss
reforms confirms this view. He notes that the Spartan women, who lacked the
military training of the men, refused to accept the laws he had set forth and
remained exempt from them. Were the lawgiver simply imposing form on
matter, we would not expect such resistance to be decisive. But since they
[the women] resisted, he gave it up (Pol. 1269b131270a8).
Still the question remains: how does the polis come into being naturally?
Isnt there a crucially important difference between natural as used in rela-
tion to the social existence of other animals and natural used in relation to
human institutions, devised by human rational reflection, such as a polis?
This seems to be at the root of the critics arguments. Social animals, human
and non-human, create families of one sort or another just by doing what
comes naturally, not only in the begetting but in the rearing of the young. But
political organization seems rather to be the result of debate, argument and
choice among alternative options.
39
We do not want to deny that difference. But we do claim that for humans,
though not for other social animals, doing what comes naturally includes
arranging and re-arranging their common lives in response to common prob-
lems posed for their innate associative tendencies by means of a process of
debate, argument and choice among options in response both to family prob-
lems and to constitutional and legislative matters often mediated or focused
by proposals of a leader or leaders. Yet insofar as (and only insofar as) they
adopt proposals that frustrate some aspects of the full achievement of the nat-
ural drive toward political life, they act against nature. Speaking of the con-
stitutional distribution of offices, Aristotle writes: but equal shares to
unequals and unequal shares to equals is against nature, and nothing against
nature is beautiful (Pol. 1325b810, emphasis added).
Earlier we discussed what we called logos-sociality, which entails discus-
sion about the advantageous and disadvantageous, the just and unjust (Pol.
1253a14 ff.). Speech about such matters occurs in all of the various forms of
human association, because it is simply the distinctive way of human nature.
But only the polis, less bound than other forms of sociality by the narrow
39
Chan, Blunder, pp. 1926, argues that the polis can be said to be natural as a type
of human community, distinguished from the family, in contrast to the particular
arrangements of a particular polis with respect to which he, like Keyt and Mulgan, con-
siders the legislator to act as an external artificer. However, on our analysis the process
of specification, the process of logos-sociality, is equally natural. The type (i.e., the
genus) only exists in particular specifications. Moreover, some species, i.e., constitu-
tions, are more natural than others insofar as they more fully express the natural drive to
full actualization of the human associative capacity.
constraints of necessity, permits indeed demands speech, debate, deliber-
ation and choice about more than mere life, about what Aristotle calls the good
life, about the possibilities for human flourishing that only civilization (taken
in its etymologically literal sense) makes possible. It is precisely in making pos-
sible the start of the full development of speech and reason that Aristotle
regards the one who first brought a polis together as the greatest of benefactors.
However, insofar as speech of this sort also takes place in the lower or ear-
lier associations of the household and village, the polis represents not a dis-
continuous break with such associations but rather their fulfilment.
In this way, too, we do not interpret Aristotle as thinking the polis arises
from the imposition of political form on a people. Rather, it is by engaging in
the same speech which characterizes human communities in general that the
legislator and the people together bring about a particular city. Such speech is
encouraged by both material necessity the city comes into being for the
sake of life and desire for something beyond necessity (it exists for the sake
of the good life). The difficulty, of course, is in harmonizing these two dimen-
sions of human existence, and many commentators have chosen to do so by
emphasizing one over the other. Aristotles man is a composite (NE 1154b2232).
Both material and biological necessity which affects all living things
and logos, speech/reason which is unique to man characterize the for-
mation of the household just as they do the formation of the polis.
But because the trait specific to human nature is logos, the legislator cannot
simply impose his ideal constitution on humans as humans, as a sculptor
would form a statue of clay. The giving of the laws involves the persuasive
speech of leadership.
But what about tyranny? Surely tyrannies rest more on force and fraud than
on persuasive speech about the just and unjust, the good and the bad, the
advantageous and the harmful. No doubt. And that seems to be the reason that
Aristotle remarks: Tyranny is reasonably mentioned last because of all
regimes it is the least a polity, whereas our investigation is about polities
(Pol. 1293b2730). Yet, even a polis ruled by a tyrant may still retain some of
the advantages for mere life that generated cities in the first place.
40
In fact, in one
enumeration of the regimes in Book IV, tyranny is omitted (Pol. 1293a3545).
On our reading, this makes perfect sense: tyranny is the regime which least
involves a process of shared logos-choice, and insofar as that is a central com-
ponent of the naturalness of the polis, then tyranny is the least natural regime
(Pol. 1287b3941).
40
Even the other extreme form of one-man-rule described by Aristotle, absolute
kingship (aoooirio, pambasileia), involves participation by the people who, recog-
nizing his extraordinary excellence, gladly choose to be ruled by him(Pol. 1284b3234,
1287a117, 1288a2629).
VI
Philoctetes
The story of the Achaean hero Philoctetes, retold in Sophocles play Philoc-
tetes, powerfully illustrates our interpretation of Aristotles argument, espe-
cially since David Keyt uses it to showhowAristotles organic thesis fails.
41
The story was well known to Aristotle.
42
The great, semi-divine hero, Heracles,
had given his matchless bow to Philoctetes who was fated to use it in the con-
quest of Troy. But, while sailing with the Greek army to attack Troy, he was
bitten by a snake. The wound festered. Its stench and his cries of pain so exas-
perated those on board that they eventually abandoned him on an uninhabited
island.
Nine years into the siege of Troy, the army received a prophecy: they would
never take Troy without his aid. Their chiefs sent Odysseus and the young
Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, to bring back Philoctetes and his bow.
Keyts construal of what he calls Aristotles organic thesis is that just as a
hand cannot exist as a hand without a body, so a man cannot exist as a man
without a polis. Consequently, the organic thesis entails that any given polis
can exist without Philoctetes but not Philoctetes without a polis . . . [H]e
would cease being a human being.
43
But Aristotle explicitly denies that being
polis-less by chance, rather than by nature, causes a man to cease to be a man
(Pol. 1253a34). Because Philoctetes is polis-less by chance, by Aristotles
own principles Philoctetes while living in isolation remains a human being.
Since the organic thesis entails the contrary, it must be false.
44
But Aristotle does not use the organic analogy as Keyt thinks. He only
treats the relationship between body parts and wholes on the one hand and
community parts and wholes on the other as analogous at the very abstract
level of parts and wholes, not at the level of continuous physical contact. Aris-
totles political community is constituted first and foremost as a common
moral, cultural community of conversation about the good and the bad, and
just and unjust (Pol. 1253a1418). Aristotle puts this starkly later when he
remarks: . . . man is by nature a political animal, and so even when men
have no need of assistance from each other, they nonetheless desire to live
together (Pol. 1278b1829). Obviously, a moral, cultural community,
though attenuated in many ways by absence over a long time by travel or war,
may perdure through time in spite of physical separation. Aristotles organic
41
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, p. 138.
42
He refers to Philoctetes three times in the Nicomachean Ethics, twice in reference
to the play of that name by Sophocles and once to a lost play of Theodectes (NE
1146a1922, 1150b79, 1151b1723). He also refers to the story of Philoctetes in other
places, e.g. Poetics 1458b2122, 1459b5; Rhetoric 1413a7.
43
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, pp. 1389.
44
Ibid., p. 139.
thesis is integrally tied to his linguistic argument that man is a political ani-
mal precisely because man is an animal having speech (Pol. 1253a10).
When Philoctetes first comes into view in Sophocless play, the years of
isolation have indeed brought him significantly closer to being like a wild
beast. His isolation from the Greek army has reduced him to the bare subsis-
tence of a sick hunter-gatherer, living like the wild beasts and even looking
like one (Philoctetes, 1704, 1845, 2256).
But Philoctetes presents at least three major kinds of critical evidence in
support of Aristotles contention that man is political by nature.
First, even after a decade of isolation he often manifests a permanent,
deep-seated drive for what we have called logos-sociality. On first hearing
Neoptolemos speak Greek, he cries: Oh, most beloved speech! (e' itotov
evgo, 234); and he repeatedly begs Neoptolemos to help him get back
home, back to his father (e.g. 468506; 5867; 662670).
45
Second, as Aristotle maintains, the political relationship is constituted in
part by a shared conception of what is just. Grave violations of justice radi-
cally undermine the political relationship, leading to civil war and revolu-
tion, as much of Aristotles Politics argues. Philoctetes shows himself so
innately a political animal, so profoundly concerned for justice, that he is
prepared to commit suicide (9713, 999) rather than return to the Greek
army which, along with its kings and leaders, has treated him so unjustly.
46
His rage and refusal to be treated so unjustly is obviously not in his material inter-
est: he has been promised a cure for his diseased foot by the Aesculapians
(11967, 13334). He is even prepared to give up the enormous honour
(given the agonal character of the Greek ethic in which risking ones life for
honour is the norm) of being judged the very best of the Greeks if he con-
quers Troy with his bow (13456). His very refusal stakes his life on an
affirmative expression of the essentially political nature of the peculiarly
human logos-sociality as focused on justice. His very refusal is political: a
cry against injustice.
Third, the action of the play shows concretely how the nature of man as a
speaking animal makes him by nature a political animal. Neoptolemos, hav-
ing gained his trust and used it to trick him out of his bow (755923),
changes his mind and offers to give him back his bow and take him home, but
discovers that Philoctetes now distrusts whatever he says and curses him
(12621286). He discovers that the bond of politics, a bond of logos-
sociality, is a bond destroyed by lies. Here is a classic case of a man,
45
His thirst for speech and community is not solely political but more widely social
(from our translation of xoivevio, koinonia, and its derivatives).
46
Here a note of precision is in order. The Greek army before Troy, as depicted by
Homer, is not exactly a polis. It is a military league of cities. But while in the field it has
the components of a city: a chief king, a council and an assembly; and their internal rela-
tionships and procedures are those of a polis.
Philoctetes, who, though without a polis by virtue of the ill fortune (dia;
tuvchn, Politics 1253a34) of having had bad fellow citizens, unjust liars,
remains political by nature.
At that very moment Sophocless play comes to its dramatic dnouement:
Philoctetes remembers the heroic labours and sufferings of Heracles who
won deathless excellence (o0ovotov ortgv) and whose successor he is.
47
Heracles tells him to go to Troy, kill the Trojan Paris, conquer Troy together
with Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, and so win through to a glorious life
(ruxro iov).
Re-actualizing ones political nature does not require that every fellow citi-
zen be a just truth-teller, men being such as they are. But it takes at least one,
in this case Neoptolemos.
Philoctetes consents and so re-integrates himself with the political commu-
nity of the Achaean Greeks within which alone, and serving which alone, he
can achieve the highest, most complete telos, the highest fulfilment of his
potential to be by performing in the political community the deeds that
community needs. Rising above the injustice done to him, instead of clinging
to it and to his resentment, will win him the only immortality a mortal can
have, the little immortality of deathless glory in the eyes of the very Greeks
who abandoned him (140950).
Sophocless Philoctetes is, thus, also a kind of illumination of an aspect of
what Keyt calls the telic argument of Aristotle.
48
Not only is the polis the end
or completion of the developmental drive toward successively more complex
forms of specifically human sociality (a sociality built upon material
exchanges but constituted by logos), but an individuals playing his part in the
political community, in spite of wrongs which need to be forgiven, is by the
nature of man the activity or one of the activities in which the ultimate capac-
ity of that nature is actualized.
VII
Conclusion
We have argued, against Aristotles critics, that his claim about the natural-
ness of the polis is, in fact, coherent within his political philosophy. Part of the
reason why commentators think otherwise is a failure to recognize that na-
ture (physis), though it can refer to the character of something uniformacross
time and space, like fire, nevertheless etymologically and in Aristotles usage
regarding living things refers to a developmental process starting from gener-
ation and directed at completion in flourishing in a mature form.
47
In the play Heracles appears and speaks to Philoctetes, a dramatic device of the
Greek tragic theatre roughly equivalent to our cinematic flashback and used to similar
effect.
48
Keyt, Three Basic Theorems, pp. 1313.
Next we have shown that the developmental process of human sociality is
driven by a set of two nested drives: the general biological drive for mere life
in the mode of social animals food, shelter, security and reproduction
and the specifically human drive to live through speech and reason. In Aris-
totles view, while those two drives may be analytically distinguished, they
are not wholly separable but interpenetrate and shape one another in varying
degrees. Even in the simplest social group, the family, the peculiar human
activities of speech, deliberation and choice among alternatives are involved.
Since Aristotles critics concede that the family exists by nature and since its
existence and organization depend, at least in part, on choices made by practi-
cal reason, the fact that every polis is constituted and organized by choices
made by practical reason does not make the existence of the polis artificial
rather than natural. Since the biological drives for food, security and repro-
duction and the specifically human drive to operate through speech and rea-
son interpenetrate, there is no reason to think that the first development of the
polis from a large village or group of villages need be envisaged as by
some of the critics as a radical and discontinuous break. The growth in size
and capacity from village to polis may be such that only by hindsight can one
see that a new species of social life has been achieved.
Though the case of subsequent foundings and re-foundings may seem to
conform to the vision of the founder or reformer as an artisan and the people
as mere matter, we have shown that Aristotles analysis explicitly envisages
the interaction of founder or reformer and the people he leads in terms of
praxis, doing, rather than poisis, making something artificial. The critical
role of the legislators in this process ought not to be denied. However, the
character of that role is not one of imposition but leading a people in a shared
exercise of what we have called logos-sociality: reason and speech about the
good and bad, the advantageous and disadvantageous, and choice about what
is to be done, i.e. what political arrangements will best serve to promote both
mere life and the good life which is possible only in the polis.
K. Cherry and E.A. Goerner UNIVERSITYOF NOTRE DAME

Does Aristotle's Polis Exist by Nature'

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DOES ARISTOTLES POLIS EXIST BY NATURE?

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