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Rational Animal-Political Animal: Nature and Convention in Human Speech and Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Laurence Berns
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Extract

In the beginning of his Politics Aristotle argues that “man is by nature a political animal.” In fact man is more a political animal than any herding animal, for “man alone of the animals has speech,” “man alone of the animals has reason,” “man alone of the animals has logos.” In other contexts the word logos can also be translated as word, account, argument, or ratio. Logos is connected with the verb legōo which means to speak and to gather, to pick out, to select, to count. The English words collect, select, and elect are related to the same verb. Logosis selected, elected, and chosen speech, meaningful speech, thoughtful speech. The traditional definition of man as the rational animal, stemming from Aristotle, goes back to this statement, that man alone of the animals possesses logos, possesses thoughtful speech. Aristotle goes on to say:

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1976

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References

1 Cf. Polities 1276a 34 -b 13, 1289a 13 -20, 1295a 40 -b 1; Nicomachean Ethics 1131a 10 -b 24, 1132b 31 -1133b 29, esp. 1133a 10 -12.

2 See below, note 16, second paragraph.

3 Cf., for exanrole, Weisheipl, J. A., Nature and Gravitation (River Forest. III. 1955)Google Scholar; Simon, Yves, The Great Dialogue of Nature and Space, ed. Dalcourt, Gerard J. (Albany, N.Y., 1970)Google Scholar.

4 The last three oppositions presuppose the nature of modern natural science and are connected with the “conquest of nature.” That is, nature is conceived of at first as nonteleological and everything of human value is regarded as derivative from nature's opposite, from human making. These last three oppositions then could be regarded as variations on the opposition between Nature and Art.

5 This discussion is based primarily on the discussion in Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), chap. 3Google Scholar.

6 These enumerations are based on Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Eerdmans (1955)Google Scholar.

7 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 90Google Scholar.

8 Politics, 1252b 22–23.

9 Trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library (revised by author).

10 Insolent and wild seems to be balanced against loving strangers, and not just against being god-fearing in thought.

11 Consider Euripides’ addition to the story, Cyclops,531–43, and 582–84.

12 One etymology of the word communication traces it back to roots meaning sharing a wall, com-moenia, a city wall. The city wall would seem to be an elementary condition for a more advanced sharing in proportionally linked giving and receiving, charge and privilege, that according to Emile Benveniste, “constitutes the community” (Problems in General Linguistics [University of Miami, 1971], pp. 276–77)Google Scholar.

13 Marx, Karl, Die Deutsche Ideologic, B.I.A.I. in Die Fruehschriften (Kroener, 1953), p. 361 (reading “nach dem” for “auch das”)Google Scholar.

14 Politics 1252b 30. Homer's treatment in the Cyclops story of the theme of shepherd, on the one hand, versus tiller of the soil and man of the city, on the other, should be contrasted with the Biblical account of Cain and Abel (Gen., 4). Cf. Isaac Abravenel, “Commentary on the Bible,” in Medieval Political Philosophy, eds. Lerner, Ralph and Mahdi, Muhsin (New York, 1963), pp. 255–59Google Scholar. Both points of view are to be found in Plato Laws 676 A -681 D and 781 E -783 A. On the Laws see Strauss, Leo, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York, 1968), pp. 39–41. Cf. also Odyssey 10. 302ff. with Deut. 4:19 and Gen. 18:11–15Google Scholar.

15 Thus broadly conceived, the logical works include the Rhetoric and the Poetics. Cf. Alfarabi, , The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Mahdi, Muhsin (New York, 1962), pp. 92–93Google Scholar. The ascent from and descent back into the Platonic cave are to be made, according to Alfarabi, by means of the Orgtmon: the ascent, in order, by means of the Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, to the Posterior Analytics; the descent by means of the Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and Rhetoric, down to the Poetics. Cf. Boggess, William F., “Alfarabi and the Rhetoric: The Cave Revisited,” Phronesis, XV, no. 1 (1970) 86–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle (Albany, 1970), Foreword, pp. 1–3Google Scholar.

16 Aristotle, On Interpretation, Commentary by St. Thomas and Cajetan, trans, and ed. Oesterle, Jean T. (Milwaukee, 1962), pp. 23–29Google Scholar. Cf. Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, chaps. 2, 4, 5 and 6; this volume came to my attention after the writing of this essay.

The word symbolas used here and in Aristotle's text with its ultimate referent understood as naturally given should be distinguished from the modern mathematical symbol whose meaning is determined primarily by those rules of method governing the symbol-generating intelligence itself and the systematic context of symbols within which any particular symbol occurs. See Klein, Jacob, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (M.I.T. Press, 1968)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 9, pp. 117–25; chap. 11, C, 2; chap. 12, A and B, pp. 163–78, 192–211. For Vieta “The letter sign designates the intentional object of a ‘second intention’… namely of a concept which itself directly intends another concept and not a being.” The referent of the letter sign, of the symbol, “in its merely possible determinateness, is accorded a certain independence which permits it to be the subject of ‘calculational’ operations.” These symbolic formations are treated with the aid of the imagination by the symbol-generating intelligence as directly apprehensible beings “whose merely potential objectivity is understood as an actual obectivity” (pp. 174–75 and 207–08). The way is opened for a symbol-generating intelligence which in a sense “prescribes to nature its [possible] laws,” in order to discover laws which would never be “given” to the human understanding by nature left to itself.

17 Consider, for example, what constitutes the unity of the pollsin Plato's Republic 414 B -415 D. We ignore here the distinction between logos and mythos. See Berns, Laurence, “Aristotle's Poetics,” in Ancients and Moderns, ed. Cropsey, Joseph (New York, 1964), pp. 77–78Google Scholar, and esp. n. 16 on pp. 85–86; note 1, above; Montesquieu. De L'Esprit des Lois, 29:19; Lincoln, Abraham, ”Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” in Collected Works, ed. Basler, (New Brunswick, 1953), vol. 4, p. 168–69; Aristotle, Politics1336b 2 -6 and 12 -14, and Plato, Cratylus388 D -390 D.Google Scholar

18 See Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima (New Haven. 1951), pp. 416–19Google Scholar; and Klein, Jacob. “Aristotle, An Introduction.” in Ancients and Moderns, ed. Cropsey, , pp. 53–66Google Scholar; and A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chanel Hill. 1965). op. 112–25Google Scholar.

19 Cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1155a 20, 1170a 26 -b 14.