The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  In this way he would seem to contradict himself; for to be39 concerned above all [15] with honour, and yet to disdain the multitude and40 reputation, are inconsistent. So we must first distinguish. For honour, great or small, is of two kinds; for it may be given by a crowd of ordinary men or by those worthy of consideration; and, again, there is a difference according to the ground on which honour is given. For it is [20] made great not merely by the number of those who give the honour or by their quality, but also by its being precious; but in reality, power and all other goods are precious and worthy of pursuit only if they are truly great, so that there is no excellence without greatness; therefore every excellence, as we have said, makes a man magnanimous in regard to the object with which that excellence is concerned. [25] But still there is a single excellence, magnanimity, alongside of the other excellences, and he who has this must be called in a special sense magnanimous. But since some goods are precious and some as we distinguished earlier, and of such goods some are in truth great and some small, and of these some men are worthy [30] and think themselves so, among these we must look for the magnanimous man. There must be four different kinds of men. For a man may be worthy of great goods and think himself worthy of them, and again there may be small goods and a man worthy of them and thinking himself worthy; and we may have the opposites in regard to either kind of goods; for there may be a man worthy of small who thinks himself worthy of great and esteemed goods; and, again, one worthy of great but [35] thinking himself worthy only of small. He then who is worthy of the small but thinks himself worthy of the great is blameable; for it is stupid and not noble that he should obtain out of proportion to his worth: the man also is blameable who being worthy of great goods, because he possesses the gifts that make a man worthy, does not think himself worthy to share in them. There remains then the opposite of these two—the [1233a1] man who is worthy of great goods and thinks himself worthy of them, such being his disposition; he is the mean between the other two and is praiseworthy. Since, then, in respect of the choice and use of honour and the other esteemed goods, the best [5] condition is magnanimity, and we define the magnanimous man as being this, and not as being concerned with things useful; and since this mean is the most praiseworthy state, it is clear that magnanimity is a mean. But of the opposites, as shown in our list, the quality consisting in thinking oneself worthy of great goods [10] when not worthy is vanity—for we give the name of vain to those who think themselves worthy of great things though they are not; but the quality of not thinking oneself worthy of great things though one is, we call mean-spiritedness—for it is held to be the mark of the mean-spirited not to think himself worthy of anything great though he possesses that for which he would justly be deemed worthy of it; hence, it follows that magnanimity is a mean between vanity and [15] mean-spiritedness. The fourth of the sorts of men we have distinguished is neither wholly blameable nor yet magnanimous, not having to do with anything that possesses greatness, for he neither is worthy nor thinks himself worthy of great goods; therefore, he is not opposite to the magnanimous man; yet to be worthy and think oneself worthy of small goods might seem opposite to being worthy and [20] thinking oneself worthy of great ones. But such a man is not opposite to the magnanimous man, for he is not to be blamed (his habit being what reason directs); he is, in fact, similar in nature to the magnanimous man; for both think themselves worthy of what they really are worthy of. He might become magnanimous, for of whatever he is worthy of he will think himself worthy. But the mean-spirited man [25] who, possessed of great and honourable qualities, does not think himself worthy of great goods—what would he do if he deserved only small? Either41 he would think himself worthy of great goods and thus be vain, or else of still smaller than he has. Therefore, no one would call a man mean-spirited because, being an alien in a city, he does not claim to govern but submits, but only one who does not, being well born and thinking power a great thing. [30]

  6 · The magnificent man is not concerned with any and every action or choice, but with expenditure—unless we use the name metaphorically; without expense there cannot be magnificence. It is the fitting in ornament, but ornament is [35] not to be got out of ordinary expenditure, but consists in surpassing the merely necessary. The man, then, who tends to choose in great expenditure the fitting magnitude, and desires this sort of mean, and with a view to this sort of pleasure, is magnificent; the man whose inclination is to something larger than necessary but [1233b1] out of harmony, has no name, though he is near to those called by some tasteless and showy: e.g. if a rich man, spending money on the marriage of a favourite, thinks it sufficient to make such arrangements as one makes to entertain those who drink to the Good Genius, he is shabby; while one who receives guests of this sort in the way [5] suited to a marriage feast resembles the showy man, if he does it neither for the sake of reputation nor to gain power; but he who entertains suitably and as reason directs, is magnificent; for what looks well is the suitable; nothing unsuitable is fitting. And what one does should be fitting. For in what is fitting is involved suitability both to the object42 (e.g. one thing is fitting for a servant’s, another for a [10] favourite’s wedding) and to the entertainer both in extent and kind, e.g. people thought that the mission conducted by Themistocles to the Olympian games was not fitting to him because of his previous low station, but would have been to Cimon. But the man who is indifferent to questions of suitability is in none of the above classes.

  [15] Similarly with liberality; for a man may be neither liberal nor illiberal.

  7 · In general of the other blameable or praiseworthy qualities of character some are excesses, others defects, others means, but of feelings, e.g. the envious man and the man who rejoices over another’s misfortunes. For, to consider the habits to [20] which they owe their names, envy is pain felt at deserved good fortune, while the feeling of the man who rejoices at misfortunes has itself no name,43 but such a man shows his nature by44 rejoicing over undeserved ill fortune. Between them is the man inclined to righteous indignation, the name given by the ancients to pain felt at [25] either good or bad fortune if undeserved, or to joy felt at them if deserved. Hence they make righteous indignation (νέμεσις) a god. Shame is a mean between shamelessness and shyness; for the man who thinks of no one’s opinion is shameless, he who thinks of everyone’s alike is shy, he who thinks only of that of apparently [30] good men is modest. Friendliness is a mean between animosity and flattery; for the man who readily accommodates himself in all respects to another’s desires is a flatterer; the man who opposes every desire is prone to enmity; the man who neither accommodates himself to nor resists everyone’s pleasure, but only accommodates himself to what seems to be best, is friendly. Dignity is a mean between self-will and [35] too great obligingness; for the contemptuous man who lives with no consideration for another is self-willed; the man who adapts his whole life to another and is submissive to everybody is too obliging; but he who acts thus in certain cases but not in others, and only to those worthy, is dignified. The sincere and simple, or, as he is [1234a1] called, straightforward man, is a mean between the dissembler and the boaster. For the man who knowingly and falsely depreciates himself is a dissembler; the man who exalts himself is a boaster; the man who represents himself as he is, is sincere, and in the Homeric phrase honest; in general the one loves truth, the other a lie. Wittiness also is a mean, the witty man being a mean between the rustic and the [5] buffoon. For just as the squeamish differs from the omnivorous in that the one takes little or nothing and that with reluctance, while the other accepts everything readily, so is the rustic related to the vulgar buffoon; the one accepts nothing comic without difficulty, the other takes all easily and with pleasure. Neither attitude is [10] right; one ought to accept some things and not others, as reason directs—and the man who does this is witty. The proof is the usual one; wittiness of this kind, supposing we do not use the word in some transferred sense, is the best habit, and the mean is praiseworthy, and the extremes blameable.
But wit being of two kinds—one being delight in the comic, even when directed against one’s self, if it be [15] really comic, like a jest, the other being the faculty of producing such things—the two sorts differ from one another but both are means. For the man who can45 produce what a good judge will be pleased at, even if the joke is against himself, will [20] be midway between the vulgar and the frigid man; this definition is better than that which merely requires the thing said to be not painful to the person mocked, no matter what sort of man he is; one ought rather to please the man who is in the mean, for he is a good judge.

  All these mean states are praiseworthy without being excellences, nor are their opposites vices—for they do not involve choice. All of them occur in the [25] classifications of affections, for each is an affection. But since they are natural, they tend to the natural excellences; for, as will be said later, each excellence is found both naturally and also otherwise, viz. as including thought. Envy then tends to [30] injustice (for the acts arising from it affect another), righteous indignation to justice, shame to temperance—whence some even put temperance into this genus. The sincere and the false are respectively sensible and foolish.

  But the mean is more opposed to the extremes than these to one another, because the mean is found with neither, but the extremes often with one another, [1234b1] and sometimes the same people are at once cowardly and foolhardy, or lavish in some ways, illiberal in others, and in general are lacking in uniformity in a bad sense—for if they lack uniformity in a good sense, men of the mean type are produced; since, in a way, both extremes are present in the mean. [5]

  The opposition between the mean and the extremes does not seem to be alike in both cases; sometimes the opposition is that of the excessive extreme, sometimes that of the defective, and the causes are the two first given—rarity, e.g. of those insensible to pleasures, and the fact that the error to which we are most prone seems the more opposed to the mean. There is a third reason, namely, that the more like [10] seems less opposite, e.g. foolhardiness to bravery, lavishness to liberality.

  We have, then, spoken sufficiently about the other praiseworthy excellences; we must now speak of justice.

  BOOK VII

  1 · Friendship, what it is and of what nature, who is a friend, and whether [20] friendship has one or many senses (and if many, how many), and, further, how we should treat a friend, and what is justice in friendship—all this must be examined not less than any of the things that are noble and desirable in character. For it is thought to be the special business of the political art to produce friendship, and men say that excellence is useful because of this, for those who are unjustly treated by [25] one another cannot be friends to one another. Further, all say that justice and injustice are specially exhibited towards friends; the same man seems both good and a friend, and friendship seems a sort of moral habit; and if one wishes to make men not wrong one another, one should46 make them friends, for genuine friends do not [30] act unjustly. But neither will men act unjustly if they are just; therefore justice and friendship are either the same or not far different.

  Further, men believe a friend to be among the greatest of goods, and friendlessness and solitude to be most terrible, because all life and voluntary [1235a1] association is with friends; for we spend our days with our family, kinsmen, or comrades, children, parents, or wife. The private justice practised to friends depends on ourselves alone, while justice towards all others is determined by the laws, and does not depend on us.

  Many questions are raised about friendship. There is the view of those who [5] include the external world and give the term an extended meaning; for some think that like is friend to like, whence the saying ‘how God ever draws like to like’; or the saying ‘crow to crow’; or ‘thief knows thief, and wolf wolf. The physicists even [10] systematize the whole of nature on the principle that like goes to like—whence Empedocles said that the dog sat on the tile because it was most like it. Some, then, describe a friend thus, but others say that opposites are friends; for they say the [15] loved and desired is in every case a friend, but the dry does not desire the dry but the moist—whence the sayings, ‘Earth loves the rain’, and ‘in all things change is pleasant’; but change is change to an opposite. And like hates like, for ‘potter is jealous of potter’, and animals nourished from the same source are enemies. Such, [20] then, is the discrepancy between these views; for some think the like a friend, and the opposite an enemy—‘the less is ever the enemy of the more, and begins a day of hate’; and, further, the places of contraries are separate, but friendship seems to [25] bring together. But others think opposites are friends, and Heraclitus blames the poet who wrote ‘may strife perish from among gods and men’; for (says he) there could not be harmony without the low and the high note, nor living things without male and female, two opposites. There are, then, these two views about friendship; [30] and they are too general and far removed. There are other views that come nearer to and are more suitable to the phenomena. Some think that bad men cannot be friends but only the good; while others think it strange that mothers should not love their own children. (Even among the brutes we find such friendship; at least they choose to die for their children.) Some, again, think that we only regard the useful [35] as a friend, their proof being that all pursue the useful, but the useless, even in themselves, they throw away (as old Socrates said, citing the case of our spittle, hairs, and nails), and that we cast off useless parts, and in the end at death our very body, the corpse being useless; but those who have a use for it keep it, as in Egypt. [1235b1] Now all these things seem opposed to one another; for the like is useless to the like, and contrariety is furthest removed from likeness, and the contrary is not useless to [5] its contrary, for contraries destroy one another. Further, some think it easy to acquire a friend, others a very rare thing to recognize one, and impossible without misfortune; for all wish to seem friends to the prosperous. But others would have us distrust even those who remain with us in misfortune, alleging that they are deceiving us and making pretence, that by giving their company to us when we are [10] in misfortune they may obtain our friendship when we are again prosperous.

  2 · We must, then, find a method that will best explain the views held on these topics, and also put an end to difficulties and contradictions. And this will happen if the contrary views are seen to be held with some show of reason; such a [15] view will be most in harmony with the phenomena; and both the contradictory statements will in the end stand, if what is said is true in one sense but untrue in another.

  Another puzzle is whether the good or the pleasant is the object of love. For if we love what we desire—and love is of this kind, for ‘none is a lover but one who ever [20] loves’—and if desire is for the pleasant, in this way the object of love would be the pleasant; but if it is what we wish for, then it is the good—the good and the pleasant being different.

  About all these and the other cognate questions we must attempt to gain clear distinctions, starting from the following principle. The desired and the wished for is [25] either the good or the apparent good. Now this is why the pleasant is desired, for it is an apparent good; for some think it such, and to some it appears such, though they do not think so. For appearance and opinion do not reside in the same part of the soul. It is clear, then, that we love both the good and the pleasant.

  This being settled, we must make another assumption. Of the good some is [30] absolutely good, some good to a particular man, though not absolutely; and the same things are at once absolutely good and absolutely pleasant. For we say that what is advantageous to a body in health is absolutely good for a body, but not what is good for a sick body, such as drugs and the knife. Similarly, things absolutely [35] pleasant to a body are those pleasant to a healthy and unaffected body, e.g. seeing in light, not in darkness, though the opposite is the case to one with ophthalmia. And the pleasanter wine is not that which is pleasant to one whose tongue has been spoilt by inebriety (for they47 add vinegar to it)
, but that which is pleasant to sensation [1236a1] unspoiled. So with the soul; what is pleasant not to children or brutes, but to the adult, is really pleasant; at least, when we remember both we choose the latter. And [5] as the child or brute is to the adult man, so are the bad and foolish to the good and sensible. To these, that which suits their habit is pleasant, and that is the good and noble.

  Since, then, ‘good’ has many meanings—for one thing we call good because its nature is such, and another because it is profitable and useful—and further, the pleasant is in part absolutely pleasant and absolutely good, and in part pleasant to a [10] particular individual and apparently good; just as in the case of inanimate things we may choose and love a thing for either of these reasons, so in the case of a man loving one man because of his character or because of excellence, another because he is profitable and useful, another because he is pleasant, and for pleasure. So a man [15] becomes a friend when he is loved and returns that love, and this is recognized by the two men in question.

  There must, then, be three kinds of friendship, not all being so named for one thing or as species of one genus, nor yet having the same name quite by mere accident. For all the senses are related to one which is the primary, just as is the case with the word ‘medical’; for we speak of a medical soul, body, instrument, or act, [20] but properly the name belongs to that primarily so called. The primary is that of which the definition is contained in the definition of all;48 e.g. a medical instrument is one that a medical man would use, but the definition of the contained is not implied in that of ‘medical man’. Everywhere, then, we seek for the primary. But because the universal is primary, they also take the primary to be universal, and this [25] is an error. And so they are not able to do justice to all the phenomena of friendship; for since one definition will not suit all, they think there are no other friendships; but the others are friendships, only not similarly so. But they, finding the primary friendship will not suit, assuming it would be universal if really primary, deny that the other friendships even are friendships; whereas there are many species of [30] friendship; this was part of what we have already said, since we have distinguished the three senses of friendship—one due to excellence, another to usefulness, a third to pleasantness.