Political Philosophy in Ancient Greece: An Analysis of Plato and Aristotles Theories - Term Paper Example

Political Philosophy in Ancient Greece: an Analysis of Plato and Aristotle’s Theories I. Introduction The long conflict which shaped the concern of Thucydides’ uncompleted history was terminated with the defeat of Athens in 404 B.C. Following a rapid phase of misrule by the Thirty, a government established by the Spartan conquerors, the democratic structure was renewed in 403 B.C. Thucydides met his death about that time; Socrates gulped the hemlock in 399. Of scholars whose work has lived to tell the tale in any way and who had established their status in the fifth century, only Aristophanes and Andocides the orator remained vigorous. But several of the scholars of the new century had matured to manhood at Athens at some stage in Peloponnesian War and had been familiarized to pay attention to discussions regarding the concerns which shaped the fate of Socrates and his followers. It would hence be a mistake to exaggerate the change in viewpoint at Athens after the defeat of her empire (Powell 2001). On the contrary, it was unavoidable that this post-war era should be characterized by social and economic in addition to political modifications and that these should abandon their legacy on political thought. The overturn of this process, political thought influencing political change, is much less unknown in the modern period than in the ancient period. The Athenian empire was constructed by men who had contributed in the educational movements of the fifth century; out of back the relationship was even intimate, and Solon could unite the tasks of intellectual, teacher, lyricist and statesman. In the fourth century such a mixture would have been unattainable in accomplishment, and it was in the fourth century that the greatest student of Socrates lived, Plato; the one person whose intelligence would have been matched to the task and who craved for the opportunity to achieve it (ibid). II. Ancient Greece: Breeding Ground of Brilliant Political Thinkers The final stage of the Peloponnesian war was not succeeded by an era of tranquillity but by persistent conflicts between the Greek polis. The Spartan dominance was questioned and had to preserve itself through force. The Thebans and Corinthians eventually submitted to their co-victors. The Athenians had endured mammoth losses both of population and resources. The wreckage had been tremendous and did not stop; farmlands were sown with an extremely doubtful possibility of reaping the harvest; and as the population grew, the demand to bring in foodstuff became greater. The peace enjoyed during 386 B.C. resulted in a number of improvements, and the latter part of the century attempts were exerted to investigate agriculture more empirically (Ludwig 2002). But landed prosperity, which had previously suffered the rivalry of the more mobile types in the middle-class revolution of Cleisthenes, was in a lot of regions diminishing in value as measured up to the wealth that could be amassed by the production of weaponries and implements, through slave labour, through endorsing and insurance at unreasonable premiums and most trendy of all, because it demanded no investment, military service under the supervision of some competent employer in lands exceptionally richer in treasure. But those who were not shrewd enough or mighty enough to obtain wealth normally far overwhelmed those who were; and the unavoidable increase in prices benefited those who had loads of resources, produced, ransacked or inherited, and augmented to the agony of those who had not (ibid). At Athens there were efforts to restore the balance through the apparent and then conventional means of enlarged taxation on the one hand and improved giving out of state assistance on the other. But nothing could mask the broadening gap between rich and poor, or, as Greeks occasionally refer to it, between ‘those who could’ and ‘those who couldn’t’ (Sinclair 1952, 118). The wits of Aristophanes, which a generation beforehand had contemplated the recent controversies on ethics and politics, nowadays face humanity with this social dilemma and, remarkably enough, with a woman’s visualized solution for it. “All men ought to be partners, sharing all things with each other; all should live on the same income instead of having one man rich, another poor; one man tills land in abundance, another has not enough for his own grave; one has many servant, another has no one to attend him. I want one way of living, common to all and the same for all... (Then) poverty will never be the mainspring of any action; for all will have all they need, food, drink, clothing and amusement” (ibid, 119). Further investigation of the circumstances in the Greek world subsequent to the Peloponnesian war would be improbable, and the reader must be recommended to manuscripts addressing Greek history. But possibly enough has been stated to demonstrate what type of thing must have been consistently in the imagination of any political theorist. Such things are more openly discussed in Isocrates, who wrote somewhat with a perspective to translating a wide public to his manner of thinking about the Hellenic world, rather than in Plato, who had no such objective (Ludwig 2002). For instance, writing regarding the events in 380 B.C. Isocrates claims, “Already there are many evils which in the course of nature afflict mankind; but we have gone out of our way to discover others beyond those which necessity imposes; we have inflicted on ourselves wars and civil war. Some meet their end in lawless anarchy in their own cities, others with their wives and children move from place to place in foreign lands; many in order to get daily bread are driven to become hired soldiers and die fighting for their foes against their friends” (ibid, 48). Hence, Isocrates view more broadly than Plato at circumstances in the Aegean world, and is probably more dynamic to the economic influence and social predicaments of the wars. But Plato is more severely conscious of the narrower, but in his perception more basic, problems which faced the city-state. If he does not carry on implying directly to current events or situations, he has two reasonable, but completely different, justifications; one is that the dilemmas of political theory are for him at the end at all times the same and at all times moral; the other is that the Socratic method or dialogue, the form which he taken advantage of for a greater number of his works, required a striking context within the lifetime of Socrates (ibid). Even so, Plato’s examination of political immoralities is founded just as much on his studies of post-war Athens as on his contemplations of Athenian democracy throughout the war period. Yet again, Isocrates was most profoundly moved by the sins of recurrent fighting among the Greeks and by the quantity of good which a mighty but compassionate monarch like Evagoras of Cyprus might do; Plato, dejecting of all statesmen ever since the putting to death of Socrates, saw the immediate need for unbiased public service, and attempted to formulate an education which would instil it. The expansive gap between the rich and the poor extremely distressed him that he became fearless as much as the dividing of the society into two distinct nations. His almost sinister firmness on the unity of the state has its origin here. Equally distressing was the concentration of a greater portion of wealth on the hands of the few, causing him to despise capitalism in all the versions of it known to him (Flathman 1973). The demand for enhanced technical competence in times of scarcity resulted in improved specialization, particularly in military science. This is deliberated in both Plato and Xenophon. The power of well-organized military despotism to generate order out of disorder was manifested by the profession of Dionysius I of Syracuse and motivated a restoration of the ‘strong man’ myth and the conviction in the guidance of a single man. The flaw of the smaller states as weighed with the greater resulted in the formation of organizations and leagues (ibid). III. Plato’s Republic An intimate reading displays Plato at several points indicating some of the attributes of the ruler which he eventually designed; that rule should be put into effect for the advantage not of the leader but the subordinates, that power from wealth and politics should be separated, that assuming office in the State should be uninviting and unrewarding, that conflict and disorder in the State are similar with the conflict and disorder in human mind. No one, nevertheless, could predict what was bound to come; but readers will be sufficiently conscious of how much was embraced in the Greek concept of the public, the title which people falsely translate Republic. Definitely, the emphasis given on the education of monarchs will come as no revelation to readers of Isocrates of Plato, even if its substance hits a recent and unforeseen note; but the worry with nursery and elementary education is surprising, its emphasis on environment, on the education of the moral through imitation and the prohibiting of all that is improper (Strauss 1963). These have received the interest, significant and insignificant, of educationists; here people must see that is always directed towards the requirement of the public. Education is esteemed not for its personal sake but since it be capable of and should make an individual a strong citizen of his State. For even though the discourse obtained its start from personal morality and thought of the moral life of the just man, people eventually become aware that for Plato fair dealing is the greatest excellence of the community. Justice or morality and prejudice are the good quality and evil of the State, as of the individual. This changing of the fundamental interest from the citizen to the civilization shows a difference in perspective between Socrates and Plato, but not any detachment from Socratic principles. Plato was confronted with the reality that there was no position for a Socrates in the public dimension of a Greek state, but a Socrates, he sensed, was presently what politics mainly required. To establish a state in which the genuine philosopher should be a leading influence, and not hated as worthless or feared as treacherous, was a mission which Plato takes on himself (Flathman 1973). Probably he did not make it; the philosopher Socrates would have died earlier in the Platonic city than in the Athenian; but Plato was not actually deliberating of the past Socrates but of the ideally impartial man, who could not fall short to be at home in the faultlessly just State (ibid). III. Aristotle’s Ethics Aristotle disagrees so much with Plato that it is occasionally said that “all thinking men must, knowingly or unknowingly, be followers of one or the other” (Sinclair 1952, 209). All such sweeping statements are at best biased and uncertain; and to those who take into account the political philosophy of Aristotle and Plato there surfaces initially to be trivial truth in the remark; they share striking similarities. To begin with, there is the entire context of political thought and moral and learning assumption from Homer and Socrates. This legacy fitted in to both; but Aristotle acquired it a generation later, with but another dimension of idea and experience supplemented. Both looked with distress on the shakiness of Greek political life and on the ethical disorder which they deemed to be its root; and both consequently understood that the remedy rest in education for an improved way of life. Both supposed that the moral life could only be achieved in a state of average size, could not be achieved by every man, but only by those who had adequate means and adequate education to do so (ibid). Both thus aimed to restrict citizenship in order to make this achievable, and both realized it appropriate that all physical labour should be carried out by slaves or by non-citizens. It would, nevertheless, be an inaccuracy to conclude that Aristotle has but insignificant to supplement to Plato or to the Greek worldview, and a mistake to believe that Aristotle’s articulate disapprovals of Plato are all that pencils in the dissimilarity between them. These are certainly often, at times relevant, sometimes insignificant and fault-finding, but they are by no means that separate them. Aristotle was not a pure blooded Athenian. His father was medical doctor to the monarch of Macedon yet the family was neither Macedonian. Aristotle was born in Stagira which makes him an Ionic Greek, and his early education would be founded on Homer, similar to that of any other Greek boy. To these dissimilarities in background include the difference between an average specialized man, a spouse and a father, logical observer and realistic administrator and Plato as an Athenian member of the aristocracy, spiritualist, Spartan, puritan (Powell 2001). Readers should not then be astonished to discover the political deliberation of Aristotle characterized by such non-Platonic qualities as the importance of family life, the quest for wellbeing and contentment, the significance and value of property, esteem for public opinion and for the experiences and inclination of the man in the alleyway, mainly, his sense of the potential, his faith that one half at least of politics is building the best of what people have. What people might do, if people could ignore it and throw it all away and begin once more, is not definitely a pointless concern; on the opposite, it is well valuable of philosophy, for the investigation of excellence is never to be loathed. But the establishment of perfect states is not the entirety of political philosophy; to enhance and safeguard reality is mutually a part (Sinclair 1952). The political art is encompassing. It is nothing less, Aristotle informs people at the opening of the Ethics, than the wisdom of the paramount good. He comes at this conclusion through a typically teleological premise which may be briefed hence, “All that we do or think or say has for its end some good, medicine has health, and shipbuilding ships and so on. The supreme good must be one which we pursue for its own sake, not because it helps us to some other end. A knowledge of it will therefore be a great influence in our lives, so mush so that, as it is the part of the art of medicine to have knowledge of health, so to have knowledge of the supreme good is the part of the art of living itself” (Sinclair 1952, 211). For the moral life can only be achieved in a state, and to preserve the moral life for the entire society of citizens is better valued persevering for than the morality of an individual. Most people are decided that the goal of the state should be contentment, but there is a big difference of judgment about what makes up contentment. Aristotle could not imagine of a man being contented unless he were accomplishing something, deciding, acting or contemplating, and unless his conducts, words and thoughts had value; therefore, his renowned definition of happiness (Ludwig 2002). Acknowledging that this condition demands financial sustenance, he appends the condition that a man to be contented and happy must be adequately granted with external resources. The good qualities and evils which help or hamper the realization of the moral life are discussed in the ethical works of Aristotle, and towards the closing chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics he comes back to relate this concern with that of the state. Moral attributes, he argues, will not be obtained through attending speeches on ethics delivered to adult crowds, but only by early instructing and training in ethical manners. Thus, the first obligation of a state for Aristotle, just like Plato, is to school its citizens in harmony with its own duties and laws; its second obligation to rehabilitate and discipline those who violate the laws (ibid). IV. Conclusion Ancient Greece was beset by warfare abroad as well as domestic conflicts which spawned the brilliant minds of philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle. These two masters were anxious about the future of Greece since they had witnessed the foreboding permanence of political instability and personal immorality. Hence, the pillars of ancient Greece’s political philosophy were constructed by these two philosophers through devising an ideal state wherein there is just hierarchy and dominance of a good or a moral life. They both influenced the direction of Greek political thought through emphasizing the noble mission of a monarch or a ruler, which is to preserve and protect the wellbeing of its subjects or citizens. Authority should not be a means to corruption and other vices because these immoralities will not only feed the destructive elements in a state but as well as motivate class consciousness that would topple down the aristocracy. Therefore, Plato argued that in order to avoid this catastrophic event from occurring, a ruler must also be a philosopher, which is supported by Aristotle. Furthermore, Plato and Aristotle share the same opinion that the members of a state should be given with proper education in order for them to be productive citizens and to be personally moral and just. For both of them, education is the most powerful solution against the transgressions of moral standards in a state. People who are sufficiently informed and aware will on no account violate the moral codes of conduct. Nevertheless, the prominent flaw with Plato and Aristotle’s political philosophies is the exclusion of the women from political and social life. A reader will obviously notice, even at first glance, the excessive use of the pronoun ‘he’ and the noun ‘man’ in their literary works. This error has proven to be immortalized. Works Cited Flathman, Richard E. Concepts in Social & Political Philosophy. New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1973. Ludwig, Paul. Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Powell, Anton. Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History. London: Routledge, 2001. Sinclair, T.A. A History of Greek Political Thought. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. Strauss, Leo. History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963. Read More