Aristotle Politics Book II

• Overall, book II canvases Aristotle's predecessors and existing constitutions to prepare the ground for Aristotle's own ideas.
• Plato and his Socrates loom large: this gives us an idea of what political theory we have lost: it turns out we have the major documents, namely Republic and Laws.

• Major factors to consider:
• unity of the state: extreme unity v. a sort of pluralism?
  
• property private or common?
• limits to accumulation?
  
• rulers one, many, or all citizens?
• rulers stay the same or rotate?
  
• household: women and children in common or separate households?
• population: limits to it? and how?
• education: common or private? and what kind?

• Important and interesting, mostly 'programmatic' statements worth noticing:
• We must examine not only this but other constitutions, both such as actually exist in well-governed states, and any theoretical forms which are held in esteem, so that what is good and useful may be brought to light.... ... all the constitutions which now exist are faulty. 1260b35
  
• I.e. comparative political systems and political theory: both are useful and important: empiricism and theoretical considerations both
  
• but also he is claiming not to be partial
  
• In framing an ideal we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities. 1265a17
• There are many difficulties in the community of women (speaking of Plato's Republic: this applies to several other ideas in Republic as well). And the principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an institution evidently is not established by his arguments. Further, as a means to the end which he ascribes to the state, the scheme, taken literally, is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is nowhere precisely stated. 1261a10
• the most important and absurd example is the mathematics of the breeding festivals in Republic.
• Analogies can be dangerous (remember that a very large part of Republic is kicked off by an analogy between dogs and people, and an even bigger part by the analogy between individual and state:
• ... it is absurd to argue from the analogy of animals, that men and women should follow the same pursuits, for animals have not to manage a household. 1264b
• a step backward here: a step forward there: Plato seems to think men and women can do the same jobs, but A may like a division of labor...
  
• There is unity and unity: some are more unified, some are differently unified: Aristotle is a pluralist and moderate about how unified the state should be, and he has reasons:
  
• ... the elements out of which a unity is formed differ in kind. That is why the principle of reciprocity, as I have already remarked in the Ethics is the salvation of states. 1261a29
  
• And in the next breath, in a connected thought, he seems to approve of rotation of office-holders.
  
• Even among freemen and equals...they cannot all rule together, but must change at the end of a year or some other period of time or in some order of succession. ... it is just that all should share in the government... . In like manner when they hold office there is a variety in the offices held. 1261a31ff.
• Self-sufficiency of a state
• If then self-sufficiency is to be desired (it definitely is in A's political theory), the lesser degree of unity is more desirable than the greater. 1261b15
• Friendship we believe to be the greatest good of state and what best preserves them against revolutions; and Socrates particularly praises the unity of the state which seems and is said by him to be created by friendship. 1262b6
• Communism: not quite our 'communism,' but a proto-form of it: the idea that property and people are to be held 'in common'
  
• That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest... everybody is more inclined to neglect something which he expects another to fulfil. 1261b34
  
• (about making all property common) Such legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence: men readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend--especially when someone is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states. 1263b15
• And some women, like the females of other animals--for example mares and cows--have a strong tendency to produce offspring resembling their parents. 1262a23
• this is a problem for A, because he thinks the male provides the form whereas the female provides the nutrients
• also salient for A because he wants to say that it makes it hard to hold children (or wives) in common: people will inevitably recognize who is whose biological parent
• Property
• the present arrangement, if improved as it might be by good customs and laws, would be far better, and would have the advantages of both systems. Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private. ... everyone will attend to their own business. And yet, by reason of goodness, and in respect of use, 'Friends,' as the proverb says, 'will have all things in common.' Even now there are traces of such a principle, showing that it is not impracticable. ... the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition. 1263a24ff
• although selfishness is rightly censured: this, however is not the mere love of self, but the love of self in excess .... And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends or guests or companions, which can only be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost by excessive unification of the state. The exhibition of two excellences, besides is visibly annihilated in such a state: first, temperance toward women (he does generalize that beyond women elsewhere at 1265a35, but he is addressing Republic here)... secondly, liberality in the matter of property. 1263b2
• the avarice of mankind is insatiable (1267b1)
  
• In the opinion of some, the regulation of property is the chief point of it all, that being the question upon which all revolutions turn. This danger was recognized by Phaleas of Chalcedon, who was the first to affirm that citizens of a state ought to have equal possessions. He thought that in a new colony the equalization might be accomplished without difficulty, not so easily when a state as already established; and that then the shortest way of compassing the desired end would be for the rich to give and not to receive marriage portions and for the poor not to give but to receive them. 1266a37
  
• Whose happiness?
• He (Plato) deprives the guardians even of happiness and says that the legislator ought to make the whole state happy. But the whole cannot be happy unless most, or all, or some of its parts enjoy happiness. ... if the guardians are not happy, who are? Surely not the artisans, or the common people. 1264b15
• is a large crowd of sailors a crowd of large sailors? Is a happy community a community of happy individuals?
• Population
• One would have thought it was even more necessary to limit population than property: and that the limit should be fixes by calculating the chances of mortality in childern and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. 165b6
• note the importance of marriage: i.e. household
• Accumulation of land or property
• Plato in the Laws was of the opinion that, to a certain extent, accumulation should be allowed, forbidding, as I have already observed, any  citizen to possess more than five times the minimum qualification. But those who make such laws should remember what they are apt to forget--that the legislator who fixes the amount of property should also fix the number of children. 1266b5
• Laws were made by Solon and others prohibiting an individual from possessing as much land as he pleased... 1266a17
• Education
• ...for it is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized, and this is impossible, unless a sufficient education is provided by the laws.... Phaleas will probably reply  that this is precisely what he means; and that, in his opinion, there ought to be in states not only equal property but equal education. 1266b30
• Crime
• Phaleas suggests equalization of property will alleviate crime: A responds: What is the cure of these three disorders (hunger/cold, desire to enjoy oneself, desire not to be in a state of desire)? of the first, moderate possessions and occupation' of the second, habits of temperance; as to the third, if any desire pleasures which depend on themselves, they will find the satisfaction of their desires nowhere but in philosophy; for all other pleasures we are depend on others. The fact is, that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrans in order that they may not suffer fold; and hence great is the honor bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant. Thus we see that the institutions of Phaleas avail only against petty crimes. 1267a9
• At the end of book II, A goes thru the Spartan, Cretan, Carthaginian, and other 'constitutions' and 'lawgivers': there is much there of value and interest, but there is not enough time, for the moment, to go into those. We need to get to books III and following.