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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2021
Aristotle's assertion in Politics 1.2 that there is a natural impulse to form political communities is immediately contraposed with the claim that the person responsible for their foundation is the cause (αἴτιος) of the greatest of goods (Pol. 1253a33). The attribution of an essential role to the legislator as an efficient cause appears to clash, however, with Aristotle's political naturalism. If the polis exists by nature and humans are by nature political animals (1253a1–2), then the question arises as to why active intervention by the legislator is necessary for a polis. Conversely, if the polis is an artefact of practical reason, then Aristotle's distinction between products of the intellect and natural entities seems to preclude the status of the polis as natural. In light of this apparent tension between different aspects of Aristotle's account of the origins of political communities, the current paper seeks to demonstrate their reconcilability. Section 1 considers the role of the Aristotelian legislator in light of broader Greek assumptions regarding law-making. Section 2 then considers the status of law-making expertise (νομοθετική) as part of political science (πολιτική) and examines the mode of practical reason that is exercised by the legislative founder. Finally, in section 3, and building on recent interpretations which have emphasized that Aristotle operates with an extended teleological conception of nature, I argue that acts of legislative founding and nature can consistently serve as joint causes of the polis, because the ‘products’ of the practical rationality of the architectonic legislator are themselves an expression of distinctly human nature.
1 Keyt, D., ‘Three basic theorems in Aristotle's Politics’, in Keyt, D. and Miller, F.D. Jr. (edd.), A Companion to Aristotle's Politics (Oxford, 1991), 118–41, at 118Google Scholar. For the distinction between products of the intellect and natural entities, see Ph. 198a9–10; Metaph. 1032a12–13, 1065b3–4, 1070a6–9; Eth. Nic. 1112a31–3, 1140a14–16; Pol. 1333a22–3.
2 The tension is widely acknowledged by commentators. Keyt (n. 1), 118, for example, argues that the tension between political naturalism and legislative agency points to a ‘contradiction’ at the ‘very root’ of the Politics, whereas Miller, F.D. Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford, 1995), 29Google Scholar notes that Aristotle's political naturalism is ‘muddied’ by the strong emphasis upon legislative agency. Kraut, R., Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2002), 245Google Scholar attempts to resolve the tension by appeal to the fact that ‘many processes of growth are overseen and influenced by human beings.’
3 For a more detailed examination of these different aspects, see Kontos, P., Aristotle and the Breadth of Practical Reason (unpublished manuscript, 2019), 1Google Scholar.
4 Bodéüs, R., The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics (Albany, 1993), 45–6Google Scholar; Keyt, D., Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Leuven, 2017), 166–7Google Scholar.
5 Keyt (n. 1), 118; also Miller (n. 2), 29–30.
6 For earlier defences of this view, albeit with less emphasis on the distinctive features of legislative practical rationality, see Barker, E., The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York, 1959), 7Google Scholar; Miller (n. 2), 40–5; and Miller, F.D. Jr., ‘Naturalism’, in Rowe, C. and Schofield, M. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 321–34, at 328Google Scholar.
7 Ostwald, M., From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London, 1986), 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ostwald cites Antiph. 5.15 and Thuc. 8.97.2 for early uses of νομοθέτης.
8 Ostwald (n. 7), 130.
9 Ath. Pol. 9.
10 Aristotle's analyses in Ph. 2.3 and Metaph. 5.2 suggest that the art of law-making in the foundational sense (νομοθετική), rather than the lawmaker, is the ‘efficient’ cause.
11 For founding legislators in Plato's Republic and Laws, see Lane, M., ‘Founding as legislating: the figure of the lawgiver in Plato's Republic’, in Notomi, N. and Brisson, L. (edd.), Dialogues on Plato's Politeia (Republic): Selected Papers from the Ninth Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, 2013), 104–14Google Scholar.
12 Lanni, A. and Vermeule, A., ‘Constitutional design in the ancient world’, Stanford Law Review 64 (2012), 907–50, at 909Google Scholar. Lanni and Vermeule also note a second unfamiliar feature of ancient constitution-making: the design of constitutions by outsiders or non-citizens of the relevant polis.
13 Lanni and Vermeule (n. 12), 920–5.
14 Lanni and Vermeule (n. 12), 920–5.
15 Gagarin, M., Early Greek Law (Berkeley, 1986), 51–2Google Scholar; Lewis, J.D., Early Greek Lawgivers (Bristol, 2007), 41–2Google Scholar; Szegedy-Maszak, A., ‘Legends of the early Greek lawgivers’, GRBS 19 (1978), 199–209, at 199–201Google Scholar.
16 Szegedy-Maszak (n. 15), 208.
17 Szegedy-Maszak (n. 15), 208.
18 Plut. Sol. 12.2, 13.2; Ath. Pol. 5.2.
19 Ath. Pol. 5–13.
20 Ath. Pol. 11.
21 Gagarin (n. 15), 59.
22 Plut. Lyc. 8.1.
23 Plut. Lyc. 8.1.
24 Plut. Lyc. 4; Ephorus apud Strabo 10.14.9; Hecataeus of Abdera apud Diod. Sic. 1.96.2–3.
25 Ephorus apud Strabo 10.4.19.
26 Hdt. 1.65. Cf. Plut. Lyc. 5.3.
27 See Lewis, B.V., ‘Plato's Minos: the political and philosophical context of the problem of natural right’, Review of Metaphysics 60 (2006), 17–53Google Scholar for the authenticity of the Minos and its place in the Platonic corpus.
28 Keyt (n. 4), 211–15; Bodéüs (n. 4), 64.
29 As Keyt (n. 4), 212 notes, the offices of the juror and the assemblyman are definitive of full citizenship for Aristotle (Pol. 1275b17–21), and hence the virtues of βουλευτική and δικαστική are those of a citizen.
30 Keyt (n. 4), 213.
31 Irwin, T., Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (London, 1999), 321Google Scholar.
32 E.g. Stewart, J.A., Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1882), 65Google Scholar; for instructive critique, see Kontos (n. 3), 2–4.
33 Nielsen, K., ‘Aristotle on principles in ethics: political science as the science of the human good’, in Henry, D. and Nielsen, K.M. (edd.), Bridging the Gap between Aristotle's Science and Ethics (Cambridge, 2015), 29–48, at 35Google Scholar.
34 Reeve, C.D.C., Aristotle Politics (Indianapolis, 2017), xxviiGoogle Scholar.
35 See Reeve, C.D.C., Aristotle on Practical Wisdom (Harvard, 2013), 3Google Scholar. Kontos (n. 3), 25 distinguishes in this context between legislative science and legislative practical wisdom, where the former is the ‘universalist’ or ‘scientific’ component of law-making φρόνησις (and the other variations of φρόνησις).
36 Nielsen (n. 33), 29–48. As C. Shields notes (‘The science of soul in Aristotle's ethics’, in D. Henry and K.M. Nielsen [edd.], Bridging the Gap between Aristotle's Science and Ethics [Cambridge, 2015], 232–53, at 237), ‘precisely because correct action requires a correct understanding of the ends of action, practical science will sooner presuppose theoretical understanding … rather than preclude it’.
37 This interpretation of πολιτική as a practically engaged form of political expertise is consistent with earlier uses of the term. See e.g. Thuc. 2.40.2–3, 3.37; Pl. Prt. 319a, 322b, Grg. 521d7; Democritus 68 B 157 DK.
38 R. Kraut, Aristotle Politics Books VII and VIII (Oxford, 1997) argues at 67–8 that, whereas political and legislative science necessarily on occasion employ force, this is not usually the case with productive sciences.
39 Keyt (n. 1) characterizes these tenets as the three basic ‘theorems’ of Aristotle's political philosophy.
40 M.M. Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good (Cambridge, 2006), 77–86; Miller (n. 2); Miller (n. 6), 343; Reeve, C.D.C., ‘The naturalness of the polis in Aristotle’, in Anagnostopoulos, G. (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle (London, 2009), 512–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 For an attempted reconciliation of the ‘individualistic’ and the ‘holistic’ aspects of Aristotle's account of the polis, see Duke, G., ‘Two functions of Aristotle's common advantage’, History of Political Thought 37 (2016), 195–215Google Scholar.
42 Reeve (n. 40), 512.
43 In Metaph. 5.4 Aristotle distinguishes several senses of nature, which include primary matter, the form or substance, which is the τέλος of the process of becoming, and substances as such. As Miller (n. 6), 322 points out, however, the sense of nature according to which it is the ‘source of the primary movement which is present in each natural entity intrinsically and not accidentally’ seems to be the most basic.
44 A point recognized by Miller (n. 6), 328 and Reeve (n. 40), 513 in their discussions of political naturalism.
45 Cf. Ph. 199a15–16; Reeve (n. 40), 513. Reeve argues that ‘standard natures perfected by craft are not products of craft, since their forms do not flow into them from the souls or minds of a craftsman.’
46 Cf. Nederman, J., ‘The puzzle of the political animal: nature and artifice in Aristotle's political theory’, The Review of Politics 56 (1994), 283–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Cf. Kraut (n. 2), 242.
48 See Yack, B., ‘A reinterpretation of Aristotle's political teleology’, History of Political Thought 12 (1991), 15−33Google Scholar and Zingano, M., ‘Natural, ethical, and political justice’, in Deslauriers, M. and Destrée, P. (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Politics (Cambridge, 2013), 199–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Cf. Cheery, K. and Goerner, E.A., ‘Does Aristotle's polis exist “by nature”?’, History of Political Thought 27 (2006), 563–85Google Scholar.
50 I am grateful to David Keyt for pressing me on this point.
51 Eth. Nic. 1096b28; cf. Aquinas, Sententiae Sexti Libri Ethicorum 7 356.42–3, 357.63–9.
52 See Ambler, W.H., ‘The puzzle of the political animal: nature and artifice in Aristotle's political theory’, The Review of Politics 56 (1994), 283–304Google Scholar.
53 Pol. 1252b23; Hom. Od. 9.112–15.