Aristotle: Democracy and Political Science

271 Pages·2018·0.983 MB·English

by  Delba Winthrop

Aristotle

Aristotle
Democracy and Political Science
DELBA WINTHROP
Foreword by
Harvey C. Mansfield
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2019 by The University of Chicago
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Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 55354- 2 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 55368- 9 (e- book)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226553689.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Winthrop, Delba, author.
Title: Aristotle, democracy and political science / Delba Winthrop ; foreword
by Harvey C. Mansfield.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018031114 | ISBN 9780226553542 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780226553689 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Aristotle—Political and social views. | Democracy. | Political
science.
Classification: LCC JC75.D36 W56 2018 | DDC 320.01/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031114
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Foreword / vii
INTRODUCTION / 1
ONE / 8
1. Beginnings (1274b32– 41) / 8
2. Citizens (1274b41– 1276b15) / 11
3. To Be or Not to Be (1276a6– 1276b15) / 25
4. To Be and to Be (1276b16– 1277b32) / 37
5. Noncitizens (1277b33– 1278b5) / 55
TWO / 66
1. “The Few in Opposition” (1278b6– 1279a21) / 66
2. From a Man’s Point of View (1279a22– 1280a6) / 77
3. Ignoble Division (1280a7– 25) / 84
4. The Oligarchic Logos (1280a25– 1281a10) / 89
5. Unreason Is the Reason (1281a11– 39) / 100
6. The Multitude, the Demos, and Free Men (1281a39– 1282b13) / 107
THREE / 124
1. Political Philosophy (1282b14– 1284a3) / 124
2. Hares and Hermaphrodites (1284a3– 1284b34) / 145
3. Kings (1284b35– 1286a9) / 157
4. The King of Kings (1286a7– 1286b40) / 167
5. The King of the Beasts (1287a1– 1288b6) / 178
Appendix 1: A Note on the Translation / 203
Appendix 2: Translation of Aristotle’s Politics, Book III / 207
Notes / 235
Bibliography / 249
Index / 251
FOREWORD
“Nothing is so obscure that it is not meant to be found. . . .”
— Delba Winthrop, on Aristotle’s text
This study of Aristotle is the doctoral dissertation of my late wife, Delba
Winthrop (1945– 2006), submitted to the Harvard Government Depart-
ment in 1974 but not to a publisher during her lifetime. Published now with
every word of hers unchanged, it is an interpretation of Book III of Aristotle’s
Politics. Without getting ahead of the reader’s judgment, one can say with
some confidence that no other study of Aristotle is quite like it.1
Aristotle’s interpreters may be divided into the philosophical and the
philological, though not distinctly, because each makes unacknowledged
use of the other. The philosophical ones were the dominant voices of phi-
losophy in the medieval era, and they were disparaged if not refuted in the
early modern era, as shown in the sarcastic formulation of “Aristotelity” by
Thomas Hobbes, and by the huddled shame they reveal in the presence of
their master in the underworld of Glubbdubdrib in Jonathan Swift’s Gulli­
ver’s Travels (3:8). Dr. Winthrop, however, had to deal with the authority of
Aristotle’s philological interpreters, particularly the half dozen she names
as editors of rival texts of the Politics, for whom knowledge of Greek takes
precedence over Aristotle’s lost philosophical eminence. In judging the work
of these eminent scholars, she took refuge and modest satisfaction in a re-
discovery of Aristotle’s eminence. She had no authority of her own, and she
was not one to broadcast her own originality.
Yet in the “Note on the Translation” (appendix 1), a personal statement
from which the reader might want to begin, she made her situation quite
plain— though it still requires an inference on the reader’s part. Remarking
viii / Foreword
on her translation rather than her interpretation, she says that she was forced
to make her own translation because previous translators were not literal
enough. They did not reproduce Aristotle’s ambiguities, but rather narrowed
them, foreclosing possibilities that Aristotle had left open. With a more lit-
eral translation a more imaginative interpretation becomes possible, indeed
necessary; for “nothing is so obscure that it is not meant to be found.” Ambi-
guities must be explained— not set aside, overlooked, or ignored. “Most au-
thorities are not on my side,” she admits, or rather asserts. Her “argument”
has to be “judged on its merits.” The literal translation serves her argument,
her interpretation; and the error of “previous translators” supports an error
of interpretation. Nonliteral translations are the consequence of a lack of
“serious reflection” not compensated for by superior knowledge of Greek.
Dr. Winthrop means to restore the superiority of Aristotle’s philosophical
interpreters over the philological ones. Most authorities are against her, and
she does not cite any on her behalf except for Thomas Taylor, a now obscure
figure of the early nineteenth century whom she discovers and appoints as
a predecessor.2 Her interpretation is rather terse and demanding; it serves
as both an education and a test of the reader’s interpretive capacity. As one
reads through it, one becomes aware of the maturity and quiet insistence, as
well as the boldness, of the tester.
Dr. Winthrop’s argument, as stated very briefly in this “Note,” is that Aris-
totle’s Politics is “intentionally written in an ambiguous manner” because,
though philosophers do not tell untruths, not all their truths or specula-
tions “can be baldly announced.” This is as if she were announcing that
she is a member of the school of Leo Strauss (1899– 1973), an historian
of philosophy well known for his rediscovery of the fact that philosophers
once wrote in an intentionally ambiguous manner of this sort and for this
reason.3 But Dr. Winthrop does not acknowledge this authority for her
proceeding. Instead, she says that her “procedure in translating” is not a
“presupposition,” as if of a school of thought, but “a conclusion painfully
arrived at.” She was indeed a “Straussian,” but not one who took Strauss’s
premise for granted. Or one could say that when accepting the Straussian
premise, the hard work of applying it is equivalent to the task of proving
it. To specify— and connect— the many ambiguities in Aristotle’s text is to
justify, and not merely presume upon, the premise that Aristotle put them
there intentionally.
What are the distinctive features of Dr. Winthrop’s understanding of Aris-
totle’s Politics? She presents them in contrast to the many modern scholars,
not philologists, who have attacked Aristotle, and also to the not so many
who lately have defended him. First, there is the fundamental ambiguity
Foreword / ix
underlying the many other ambiguities in Aristotle’s text: this is that he
speaks at the same time and in the same words of politics and philosophy.
Thus “democracy” refers both to a political regime and to an understand-
ing of nature, a demos or democracy of matter, one that understands the
whole of things as body and all things as bodily quantities. Some have seen
metaphysical implications in his political remarks but have not gone so
far as to imagine and develop an entire metaphysical argument from all of
his words.4 In Dr. Winthrop’s examination, democracy is shown first as the
simple numerical equality of material bodies and then qualified and cor-
rected to comprise an equality of worth or virtue. This reforming occurs in
politics, obviously, and at the same time but more hidden in metaphysics.
To identify and elaborate what is hidden gives her account a much greater
emphasis on Aristotle’s ontology and a fuller consistency of detail, going
beyond isolated suggestions, than in other accounts. The political reform
requires that political thinkers move to metaphysics on the one hand and,
on the other, that metaphysical thinkers not depart from politics. Political
thinkers must examine and go beyond the “inclusiveness” of today’s political
discourse to consider the content of what, as well as whom, it is necessary
to include.
The whole of a political community must be made a genuine whole.
A genuine whole as one would define it turns out to be an articulated whole
of differing parts, no longer a “democracy” of matter. Here is support for the
politically ambitious who are unsatisfied with mere numerical equality that
will also be news to the natural philosophers powerful in Aristotle’s time
and ours. The two reforms, political and philosophical, are mixed with each
other as well as parallel to each other. To explain this distinction, Dr. Win-
throp discerns a difference in Aristotle’s text between “the common benefit
(or good)” and “the benefit in common.” The common benefit is a sum of
benefits to each as equal members of an “all”— a raw democratic or demotic
addition of the necessities of bodily survival, as in today’s welfare benefits
taken individually. The benefit in common is the whole with parts that make
diverse and unequal contributions to it— for example, the whole welfare
state as an experiment in common living, with earners, old folks, congress-
men, and bureaucrats serving partial roles in it.
Second, Aristotle’s argument addresses both philosopher and citizen,
teaching each party the virtues of the other. He begins with the natural phi-
losopher and turns him into the political philosopher, or political scien-
tist. The philosopher is not to turn his back on politics or merely criticize
politics, or even rise above politics, but to learn from politics. Nor is he to
learn that nature is an “organic” whole, in the way that some interpreters