According to an influential line of scholarship, Aristotle’s best city has to be interpreted as a politeia (πολιτεία). This line of thought is still dominant among German scholars. As a champion of “Aristotelian Social Democracy”, Martha Nussbaum is part of this line as well. Against such interpretations, this paper substantiates the thesis that Aristotle belongs in the tradition of aristocratic political thought. That tradition goes back to Theognis, Heraclitus, and Plato. It started with a critique of both the decline of aristocratic virtues and the rise of democratic and egalitarian values.
This paper demonstrates that Aristotle understands the different forms of constitution as embodiments of different conceptions of distributive justice. It shows that Aristotle has a clear preference for the aristocratic conception and, as a consequence, for aristocracy. The constitution of the best city, which he outlines in Books VII and VIII of the Politics, has to be understood as a “true aristocracy” in which the political offices are distributed according to worth (κατ᾽ ἀξίαν) to the morally and intellectually best citizens.
Keywords:
Aristotle, aristocratic political thought, distributive justice, aristocracy, best city
Knoll, M. (2017). Aristotle and aristocratic political thought. Revista De Filosofía, 73, pp. 87–106. Retrieved from https://investigacionesgeograficas.uchile.cl/index.php/RDF/article/view/47649
