Along with a number of different ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, Aristotle (384-323 B.C.) is
known for moderation and avoidance of extremes of left and right in his
classic work Politics, as well as in
other writings. His thinking has bearing
on Donald Trump, who has divided Americans with his amoral and cruel ways,
invoking crude and racialized rhetoric to mobilize populist followers and whose aim it is to retain power after the 2020 elections by these same means. It is
worth pointing out that the edition of Politics quoted below was translated by Sir Ernest Barker in England throughout most of World War II: it began in the autumn of 1940 and was finished some
months before the defeat of Hitler’s Germany in May 1945. The culture of the excluded middle prevailed
throughout much of 20th century history and thought, but not in the
USA – unlike today. Perhaps America should
once again take heed of Aristotle where he warns against putting “the will of
the people” ahead of the “rule of law” (See footnote 1). Below is a discussion of some of the prerequisites to a strong constitution - among them a citizenry educated in its spirit.
Three qualifications are necessary to those who
have to fill the sovereign offices. The
first is loyalty to the established constitution. The second is a high degree of capacity for
the duties of office. The third is the
quality of goodness and justice, in the particular form which suits the nature
of each constitution. (If the principle of justice varies from
constitution to constitution, the quality of justice must also have its corresponding varieties.) ….
In addition to all these things, there is
another which ought to be remembered, but which, in fact, is forgotten in
perverted forms of government. This is
the value of the mean. Many of the
measures which are reckoned democratic really undermine democracies: many which
are reckoned oligarchical actually undermine oligarchies. The partisans of either of these forms of
government, each thinking their own the only right form, push matters to an
extreme. They fail to see that
proportion is as necessary to a constitution as it is (let us say) to a
nose. A nose may deviate in some degree
from the ideal of straightness, and incline towards the hooked or the snub,
without ceasing to be well shaped and agreeable to the eye. But push the deviation still further towards
either of these extremes, and the nose will begin to be out of proportion with
the rest of the face: carry it further still, and it will cease to look like a
nose at all, because it will go too far towards one, and too far away from the
other, of these two opposite extremes.
What is true of the nose, and of other parts of the body, is true also
of constitutions. Both oligarchy and
democracy may be tolerable forms of government, even though they deviate from
the ideal. But if you push either of
them further still in the direction to which it tends, you will begin by making
it a worse constitution, and you may end up by turning it into something which
is not a constitution at all ….
The greatest, however, of all the means we have
mentioned for ensuring the stability of constitutions – but one which is
nowadays generally neglected – is the education of citizens in the spirit of
their constitution. There is no profit in the best of laws, even when they are sanctioned by general civic consent, if
the citizens themselves have not been attuned, by the force of habit and the
influencing of teaching, to the right constitutional temper – which will be the
temper of democracy where the laws are democratic, and where they are
oligarchical will be that of oligarchy.
Licentiousness may exist in a state as well as in individual persons,
[and training is thus needed for states as well as for individuals]. The education of a citizen in the spirit of
his constitution does not consist in his doing the actions in which the
partisans of oligarchy, or the adherents of democracy delight. It consists in his doing the actions by which
an oligarchy, or a democracy, will be enabled to survive. Actual practice, to-day, is on very different
lines. In democracies of the extreme
type – the type which is regarded as being particularly democratic[1]
– the policy followed is the very reverse of their real interest. The reason for the aberration is a false
conception of liberty. There are two
conceptions which are generally held to be characteristic of democracy. One of them is the conception of the
sovereignty of the majority; the other is that of the liberty of
individuals. The democrat starts by
assuming that justice consists in equality: he proceeds to identify equality
with the sovereign of the will of the masses; he ends with the view that
‘liberty and equality’ consist in ‘doing what one likes’. The result of such a view is that, in these
extreme democracies, each man lives as he likes – or, as Euripides says, For any end he chances to desire. This
is a mean conception of liberty. To live
by the rule of the constitution ought not to be regarded as slavery, but rather
as salvation.
Aristotle, Politics (Book V, Chapter IX)
[1] [W]here it appears that these democracies
are of the type in which the ‘will of the people’ is superior to ‘the rule of
law’. [Editor’s footnote: See Aristotle, The Politics of
Aristotle, ed., and tr. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980),
p. 233, fn. 3] .
[2] Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, ed., and tr. Ernest Barker (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 230-234.
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