Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease: An Inquiry into Stasis (S U N Y Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy)

"This book explores Aristotle's theory of stasis, a word usually translated to mean "revolution," "civic disorder," or "sedition." It examines Aristotle's writings on stasis, especially Book 5 of the Politics, within the tradition established by ancient Greek poets, medical writers, philosophers, and orators, who held that the root sense of stasis was in fact nosos, or "disease." Aristotle's theory of the causes of stasis is presented in a cohesive manner, as factors that can account for political disease within the entire range of diverse constitutions. Aristotle is shown to have proceeded from the standpoint that the polis had to be cast in a mode of political friendship, what the Greeks called homonoia or "political friendship", and that when other standards for friendship such as wealth or liberty are practiced to an extreme, then the function of the polis may be "arrested." The telic functions of the polis are replaced by disordered "movements" whose paralyzing effect - as evidenced by transformations in values and language, and the pursuit of private-interest ends - is typical of a dysfunctional condition that often ends in senseless violence and civil war."--BOOK JACKET Title Page 1 Contents 3 Acknowledgments 7 Abbreviations 9 Introduction 11 1 The Tradition 17 2 Plato: Stasis as the "Work" of Injustice 31 3 The Primacy of Political Justice 49 4 Recognizing the Political Friend 67 5 Stasis as a Privation of Friendship 103 6 The Matiral and Final Causes of Staseis 119 7 Solon: The Corrector of the Constitution 151 8 The Formal Cause 165 9 The Beginnings of Stasis 173 10 Preventing Stasis 195 Notes 207 References 231 Untitled 245 Kostas Kalimtzis. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.