Book: The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought, Essay Example

Aristotle distinguished between a number of different types of democracies on the basis of their political and legal foundations: whether or not the democratic polis (city-state) is administered by a code of laws as opposed to the will of the electorate, and which classes constitute the electorate, or the degree to which the polis is democratic (Bailey et al., 2008, pp. 223-224). Aristotle compares and contrasts such democratic governance with polity, which he describes firstly as a kind of fusion of democracy and oligarchy (p. 225).

In essence, polity differs from pure democracy in that it does protect an established elite of some kind: it is not purely democratic, but rather favors a certain degree of elite power (p. 225). Polity is also constitutional: it has an established constitutional form to guide its jurisprudence (pp. 224-225). For a polity to be well-governed, Aristotle argued, it was not enough for it to have good laws, though this is of course important: not only must it have good laws, but those good laws must also be obeyed by its citizenry (Bailey et al., 2008, p. 225). Ideally, the polity should be governed by an elite comprised of the best of the citizens, the most virtuous: not simply the best-bred or richest, the traditional nobility and the like, but rather those that are of the highest character and best virtue (p. 225). Such a polity will be better-governed than one that is not ruled by the best of its citizens. And yet, Aristotle also believed in a form of democracy: democracy wherein the freedom of the citizens was protected by law from tyranny, such that the citizens could pursue eudaimonia, the good life (p. 225). As far as Aristotle was concerned, the pursuit of eudaimonia was what the state was for, the reason that it existed. Because of this, Aristotle argued, it would therefore be best for there to be a democratic principle as well as a more aristocratic one, aristocracy in this context meaning ‘rule by the best’ (p. 225). As with so much of his thought, Aristotle approached this topic with nuance and sophistication, and middle ways rather than extremes.

References 

Bailey, A., et al. (2008). The Broadview anthology of social and political thought: vol. 1, from Plato to Nietzsche. 2 vols. Buffalo, NY: Broadview Press.