Aristotle Had It Figured Out Long Ago
By Alan
Caruba
The renowned
Greek philosopher, Aristotle, was born in 348 B.C.E. in northern Greece. When
he was seventeen he moved to Athens to study under Plato. He would go on to
serve Philip II of Macedon as a tutor to his son Alexander who would later be
known as “the Great” for his conquests.
Aristotle set
up his own school in 335 during what would become known as the Hellenistic Age
that would end three hundred years later with the rise of the Roman Empire.
Aristotle would die at age sixty-two in 322. By then he had written on an
extraordinary range of topics—mechanics, the natural sciences, psychology,
physics, astronomy, zoology, botany, biology, medicine, to name a few.
Aristotle
advocated what he called “practical philosophy” that included ethics,
economics, and politics, the science of governing.
It is the last topic that
might help to put what occurred in the recent election in perspective. He
considered man “a political animal” and offered what the author of “The Greek
Search for Wisdom”, Michael A. Kellogg, describes as “a pragmatic, if messy,
vision of free citizens who find their fulfillment in active participation in
the affairs of state.”
“Aristotle,”
writes Kellogg, “never loses sight of his ultimate criterion for the ideal
state: it exists not to benefit a ruling class but to secure the good life of
its citizens.”
Much of the
depression and shock resulting from the election was the realization that, with
the exception of the House, conservatives would continue to live under a regime
that favored its own ruling class—the unions, environmental organizations,
dependent minorities—in opposition to those who have achieved success whether
as small business owners, corporations, professionals, or in the financial
sector.
Many of the
Founding Fathers were familiar with Aristotle, Plato, and other philosophers
and historians of the earliest eras of Western civilization. They subscribed to
a belief in “virtue”; the maintenance of an excellent character. “Such men
were understood to disdain to lie, cheat, and steal not because some moral
theory tells them it is wrong to do so, but because those are base and ignoble
actions.”
This is what
makes President Obama so fearful among conservatives. They concluded long ago
that he is a liar and a man prepared to say or do anything to gain and keep
power. This feeling goes beyond the usual suspicions the opposition has to any
president.
What has
baffled conservatives is that the same people who have brought the nation to a
“fiscal cliff” are those who were
returned to power in the Senate and the White House. When Republicans
regained control of the House of Representatives in 2010, they began by resisting
Obamacare and a whole range of presidential initiatives, but could not even bring
the President to the table for a balanced budget, for any cuts in spending, for
the things that led first to the Simpson-Bowles Commission and finally to
automatic sequestration; deep spending cuts.
The fiscal cliff is Obama’s fiscal
cliff. He no longer has George W. Bush as a convenient whipping boy and excuse.
Here’s what
Aristotle knew so many centuries ago.
“The
household was the critical economic unit of the state. Indeed, the Greek term
for household management, oikonomike,
is the origin of our term economics. The
household or family has always been central to the life of a community or a
nation, but a look at America today shows that the family has weakened with the
advent of unwed mothers, the demands for same-sex marriage, and other attacks
on it.
Artistotle
advocated the need for private property, a factor that has always played an
essential role in the creation of wealth in America.
He regarded
democracy as the “most tolerable” of other forms of government, tyranny and
oligarchy.
And here is where
it gets interesting as Kellogg writes that Aristotle concluded that
“Accordingly, when the many take power in the state they tend to vote for
measures to equalize not just the rights of citizenship, but also the
distribution of property and honors” and that “poverty is the parent of
revolution and crime.”
If there is
widespread fear among conservatives regarding a second Obama term, consider
that two thousand-plus years ago Aristotle wrote that “tyrants preserve
themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by
distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead
a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive
action…”
Nor are we
surprised to learn that Aristotle believed that the most critical component of
a successful state was “a secure and stable middle class” and that “too much
wealth in the hands of a few is as destructive to the good of the state as too
little wealth in the hands of the many.”
This may
explain why the GOP in Congress will likely bow to Obama’s demands for higher
tax rates on the wealthy. That may have been one of the most appealing elements
of his campaign to his supporters and it was a common demand of prior
progressive presidents.
Ultimately,
Aristotle believed that “the very process of collective deliberation and
judgment is likely to reach a better result than the isolated judgments of
individuals, even if those individuals are, by hypothesis, the best and wisest
in the state.” Kellogg writes that “This is perhaps the most profound (and
optimistic) endorsement of democracy ever made.”
Many
conservatives today fear for the preservation of the Republic. To them I would
say there are midterm elections coming in two years. By then, those who voted
for Obama and Democrats may be less pleased with their choice. I am reminded of
1994 when Newt Gingrich and a few others engineered the complete Republican
takeover of Congress. It has happened before and it can happen again.
© Alan
Caruba, 2012
*************************
Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning
Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog
recently passed more than 1.7 million page views. If you love to read, visit his
monthly report on new books at Bookviews.
For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find
Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment