Plato and Aristotle

1.

Introduction to Political Theory
Plato and Aristotle
Irakli Javakhishvili
30.08.2022

2.

Plato
• Ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates,
teacher of Aristotle
• 427-347 BCE
• Forms – Justice, Beauty and Equality
• Soul – Reason, Spirit and Appetite
• Plato’s Academy founded in the 380s BCE

3.

Plato
System of three different classes:
1. Rulers, of philosopher-Kings
2. Auxiliaries – city’s fighting force, trained to obey
the Rulers and to defend it from enemies
3. Productive class – farmers, craftsmen and traders
(city’s entire economic life)

4.

Plato
Four traditional virtues:
1. Wisdom
2. Courage
3. Temperance
4. Justice
“Principle of specialization”

5.

Unjust cities
• Timarchy – resembling Sparta by Plato (Auxiliaries elevate
themselves to the position of Rulers)
• Oligarchy – Auxiliaries give in to their desire for wealth and
rule explicitly in its pursuit
• Democracy – when the poor conquer the rich
• Tyranny – mob’s intolerance leads to political instability,
opening the door for the emergence of tyrant

6.

Republic
• Written in 360 BCE
• Is it always better to be just than unjust?
• Contribution to ethics: what is virtue justice and why a
person would be just.
• Ethics and politics

7.

Politics – ideal constitution
1. Utopianism
2. Communism
3. Feminism
4. Totalitarianism

8.

Just city
Unless cities have philosophers as kings... or the people
who are currently called kings and rulers practice
philosophy with enough integrity—in other words,
unless political power and philosophy coincide, and all
the people with their diversity of talents who currently
head in different directions towards either government
or philosophy have those doors shut firmly in their
faces—there can be no end to political troubles... or
even to human troubles in general. (Rep. 473c–d)

9.

Republic
• Community of property
• Community of Family
• Criticism of Democracy

10.

Aristotle
• Ancient Greek philosopher, scientist, intellectual
figure
• 384-322 BCE
• Lyceum of Aristotle in 335 BCE
• “exoteric” and “esoteric” writings
• Politics
• Politics – sort of knowledge to be studied through the
accumulation of particular facts

11.

Polis
• Distinctive Greek form of political organization
• Polis – a form of association, or community, aiming at some
good
• Polis is the highest association and its good is highest
• Household and village
• Household – natural distinctions between men, women and
slaves
• Village – combination of a number of households

12.

Polis
“While it comes into existence for the sake of mere life, it
exists for the sake of a good life.”
Polis is “natural” (against Sophists’ conventional argument)
Polis is “a guarantor of just claims”
“it is evident that the polis belongs to the class of things
that exist by nature and that man is by nature a political
animal.”
“He who is without a polis, by reason of his own nature and
not of some accident, is either a poor sort of being, or a
being higher than man.”

13.

Primacy of Polis on human being
• Single person is a “part” of the polis
• [T]he whole is necessarily prior to a part. If the whole
body is destroyed, there will not be a foot or a hand,
except in that ambiguous sense in which one uses the
same word to indicate a different thing, as when one
speaks of a “hand” made of stone; for a hand when
destroyed [by the destruction of the whole body], will
be no better than a stone “hand.”
• “compound whole” – Polis –good life – inculcate
virtue

14.

Natural slavery
Slaves are obviously not full members and appear to
share little (if at all) in the benefits of community.
“The soul rules the body with the authority of a
master... In this sphere it is clearly natural and
beneficial to the affective part of the soul that it
should be ruled by the reason and the rational part;
whereas the equality of the two elements, or their
reverse relation, is always detrimental.”