Abstract
The two watchwords of ancient Greece democracy were ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’. Aristotle is sharply critical of the democratic understanding of both terms but, as a champion of true aristocracy, does not wish to surrender such rhetorically charged words to his ideological opponents. He thus tries to preserve a portion of the concepts signified by each of these terms for his favored political system. With respect to equality he is explicit. He distinguishes proportional equality from numerical equality and associates the former with aristocracy and the latter with democracy. With respect to freedom he is not so explicit. Although he often uses the term ‘free’ (eleutheros) and its cognates in the Politics to signify a freedom that is more robust than democratic freedom, he never discusses or analyses such a concept. But by using a general analysis of freedom as a triadic relation involving an agent, a goal, and an (obstructing or disabling) obstacle, one can piece together Aristotle’s understanding of ‘true’, or aristocratic, freedom. It thus turns out that ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ can be watchwords, not only of democracy, but of true aristocracy as well.
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Notes
- 1.
The discussion of equality and of democratic freedom in this paper draws heavily on Keyt (1991), and Keyt (1999), and much of the material on Aristotelian freedom is taken verbatim from Keyt (2018). The last two are used by permission of Oxford University Press. All translations of Aristotle are my own.
- 2.
The distinction between egalitarian and proletarian democracy is explained below.
- 3.
In the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that “the man is free … who exists for the sake of himself and not of another” (I.2 982b26), and in the Rhetoric he says that “it is the mark of a free man not to live by reference to another” (I.9 1367a32-33).
- 4.
This kind of freedom must be distinguished from natural freedom, the freedom that in Aristotle’s view distinguishes men who are free by nature from those who are slaves by nature (Pol. I.5 1255a1–3). Natural freedom is the mere capacity to deliberate, whereas freedom as understood here is this capacity in a developed state. Aristotle makes a similar distinction in the De Anima between two senses in which somebody is a ‘knower’: in the first, he is the sort of being (namely, a human) capable of acquiring knowledge; in the second, he has acquired knowledge and is capable of exercising it whenever he wishes if nothing external prevents him (II.5 417a21–b2).
- 5.
The term eleutherios, ‘suitable for a free person’, is derived from eleutheros, ‘free’, by paronymy (see Cat. 1 1a13-16). The close connection between the two terms is obscured by those translators who render eleutheros as ‘free’ and eleutherios as ‘liberal’.
- 6.
This is the manuscript reading. Ross accepts Susemihl’s emendation eleutheriois.
- 7.
Discussed earlier in Politics I.3, 7, 12.
- 8.
Previously mastership was counted as a part of household management (Pol. I.3 1253b1-4, I.12 1259a37-39).
- 9.
Metaphor is discussed at length in Poetics 21. The metaphor in question is what Aristotle calls a metaphor by analogy. When A is to B as C is to D, then one can put A in place of C or C in place of A (Poet. 1457b16–19). Thus, since old age is to life as evening is to day, one can speak of old age as the evening of life or evening as the old age of day (Poet. 1457b22–25). In the case in point since self-regarding rulers stand to their subjects as masters stand to slaves, one can speak of the former as (metaphorical) masters of (metaphorical) slaves.
- 10.
Though the polis of these two books is never explicitly called an aristocracy, it fits Aristotle’s definition. See Keyt (2017, p. 156, note 48).
- 11.
The sudden appearance in this paper of ‘liberty’ as a synonym for ‘freedom’ is due to the fact that it is natural, given its etymology, to use the term to render ‘liberté’ in the French original of Constant’s speech. In rendering the French term translators do, however, often switch back and forth between the two English words. We shall treat the two words as synonyms.
- 12.
See also Hansen (1991, pp. 97–99) on the rights of citizens in the ancient Athenian democracy.
- 13.
See Hansen (1996, pp. 91–104) for further discussion of these parallels and the problem Athenian democracy presents for Constant’s contrast between ancient and modern liberty.
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Keyt, D. (2018). Aristotle on Freedom and Equality. In: Anagnostopoulos, G., Santas, G. (eds) Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 132. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96313-6_9
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