The Machines of Daedalus - Aristotle on the Truth and Potential of Political Science

Hull, Andrew Tyler

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-1xde-kp06

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The Machines of Daedalus - Aristotle on the Truth and Potential of Political Science

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Aristotle says that true assertions in practical philosophy are true “for the most part.” I argue an assertion is true “for the most part” if it refers to the hypothetical realization of a substance’s essential capacities under some set of impediments. The removal of impediments to the full realization of human capacities is the ultimate goal of legislation and political science, and this insight underlies much of Aristotle’s influence in contemporary political philosophy. The first two chapters address the prevalent view that Aristotle’s methodology discourages pursuing a scientific and systematic basis for ethics and politics. The common interpretation is that Aristotle’s theorizing concerns reconciling the conflicting “credible opinions” [endoxa] of the well-educated societal elite. Due to this limited starting point and method, his conclusions in practical philosophy can only describe what tends to happen and nothing more “precise.” In contrast I argue endoxa take a plurality of forms including common opinion, laws, societal customs, traditional sayings, and scientific discoveries. Second, endoxa can be used in a variety of contexts to settle both general and specific issues in practical philosophy. Third, the theories reached from the method are designed to be highly revisable, aiming towards a progressively more precise account of ethics and politics. He expects us to repeat this method continuously throughout time since, as he claims, we are designed to seek what is good and not just what is traditionally taken as good (Politics II.8). Aristotle is confident that, under a proper application of dialectic, the “most authoritative account” will arise among the endoxa. There is no hard limit on how exacting investigations can be in practical philosophy with my interpretation of endoxa. While some levels of theoretical exactness may be unnecessary in a given practical context, that does not mean such exactness is conceptually impossible. In the third through fifth chapters, I argue that, despite the common view that “for the most part” refers to statistical frequency, in reality for Aristotle a proposition is true “for the most part” if it correctly describes the realization of a substance’s capacities under given conditions. It is the additional information available from my expanded scope of endoxa which provide the needed data for these claims. In politics, assertions are true “for the most part” if they correctly detail the realization of a person’s capacities under some social or political condition. Importantly, as “for the most part” refers to capacities under hypothetical conditions, it is possible for assertions to be true for the most part in political science even if they rarely obtain. The phrasing “for the most part” extends from his studying current conditions in Greece, but it hides a more powerful concept. The assertion “wealth is beneficial” is true for the most part because, even if people are rarely wealthy, it expresses the idea that wealth provides conditions for the fulfillment of our political and rational capacities. With plenty of money, I can go to the assembly and read philosophy as I will be relieved of time-consuming manual labor.A full understanding of the phrase “for the most part” reveals that Aristotle’s practical philosophy contains the needed tools for constructing a truly “human science.” My concluding chapter considers how this capacital interpretation motivates later receptions of Aristotle from a variety of points on the political left. I consider three figures and their projects: 1) Martha Nussbaum’s project of “Aristotelian social democracy” and engagement with Rawlsian liberalism; 2) Karl Marx’s reception of Aristotle in his view of species-being and comments on what a communist society would look like (Gotha Program, P&E Manuscripts); and 3) Murray Bookchin’s eco-anarchism as found in The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, which takes Aristotle’s biological understanding of the polis as a product of our political capacities and the foundation for his vision of an anarchist society.

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