Endangered Excellence: On the Political Philosophy of Aristotle (SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy)

A fresh look at Aristotle’s political theory with attention to the resonance of his thought for contemporary concerns. In Endangered Excellence , Pierre Pellegrin provides a fresh interpretation of Aristotle’s Politics , revealing the extent to which Aristotle diverged from other ancient writers on politics, and the extent to which many of his positions resemble modern attitudes in political philosophy. Pellegrin highlights a number of strikingly original positions in his thought. Aristotle took humans to be inherently political, for example, even as he believed this characteristic developed more completely in men than in women, and in Greeks more than in barbarians. He maintained a nuanced and flexible conception of the way that cities ought to develop their constitutions, one that would be responsive to their particular social and historical contexts. Realist enough to recognize that virtuous men are rare and that class conflict is inevitable, Aristotle envisioned a political system that would be resilient in navigating the choppy waters of civic life. With this original approach to Aristotle’s Politics , and incorporating key developments in European and English-language scholarship on the subject, Pellegrin demonstrates Aristotle’s important and often unrecognized innovations in understanding political life. Contents 6 Translator’s Note 8 Abbreviations 10 Introduction: “Our Ancestors the Greeks” 12 The Greeks, That Is to Say, Aristotle 24 Chapter 1 The Philosopher in Politics 28 The Missed Birth of Ethics 48 The Politics, a Split and Twilight Work 59 Appendix to the First Chapter 66 Chapter 2 A Biological Politics? 78 Aristotle’s Social Naturalism 80 The Origin of the Family and of the City 83 “Man as a Political Animal in Aristotle” 91 Chapter 3 The Endangered Happiness of the City 106 The City Is Autonomous 106 Man Is Not Only a Citizen 112 “Aristotle Discovers the Economy” 116 Familial Counterfeits of Political Power 122 Aristotle Is Proslavery 127 “Friendship is the greatest of goods for cities.” 153 Political Friendship and Ideology 162 A Few Words about Women and, Again, about Slaves 175 Chapter 4 Citizen, City, Constitution 182 The Citizen and Power 182 Excellence Is Plural 193 Ethical Virtue and Political Virtue 199 A New Shape for Constitutional Excellence: Mixture 208 Class Struggle: Danger and Safety for Cities 220 The Laws and Justice 233 Chapter 5 On the Positive Use of Deviance 246 Not All Wolves Are Gray 264 What, After All, Is a Polity? 275 Chapter 6 The Legislator 280 The Legislator and the Magistrate 280 What Are the Means That the Legislator Must Put into Operation? 294 The Laws 295 The Situations in Which the Legislator Intervenes 301 Functional Excellence 304 Chapter 7 The Theoretical Tools of the Legislator 316 The Diversity of Constitutions 317 To Save the Constitutions 334 Aristotle’s Stasis 338 Aristotle versus Plato, Again. 353 Chapter 8 Political Matter 356 The Order of the Books of the Politics Is Anti-Platonic 374 The Prologue to Book 7 382 Conclusion 394 Bibliography 412 Index 420 __A fresh look at Aristotle’s political theory with attention to the resonance of his thought for contemporary concerns.____Endangered Excellence____Politics____Politics__