David Keyt

John Rawls, in his distinguished revival and animation of the theory of the social contract, maintains that “the procedure of contract theories provides … a general analytic method for the comparative study of conceptions of justice ”. As a corollary, he holds, secondly, that “if one interpretation [of the contractual situation] is philosophically most favoured, and if its principles characterize our considered judgments, we have a procedure for justification as well ”. Finally, Rawls uses the social contract as a critical or polemic device; he is prepared to reject a conception of justice if the contractual situation associated with it contains objectionable features.

What is the nature of law? Does our obligation to obey the law extend to unjust laws? From what source do lawmakers derive legitimate authority? What principles should guide us in the design of political institutions? The essays in this collection, written by prominent contemporary philosophers, explore how these questions were addressed by ancient political thinkers, including the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics and Epicureans. Classical theories of human nature and their implications for political theory are examined, as is the meaning of freedom and coercion in Plato's thought. Plato's idea that philosophers should be political rulers receives scrutiny, too. Other essays ask what we can learn from ancient thinkers like Aristotle about the principles of constitutional design or the limits of political obligation.

This distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker’s ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato’s Socrates, focusing on his views of moral psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato’s Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul’s non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato’s analysis of logos which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy.

This book completes the Clarendon Aristotle Series edition of the Politics. One might assume that, since David Keyt’s contribution is the last of the four on the Politics, when Aristotle scholars agreed to write these volumes, he was fourth in line and so got stuck with Politics V–VI. Surely, one might think, few would choose Politics V–VI over Politics I–II, with its fascinating discussions of the fundamental nature of the polis, the infamous chapters on slavery, and the critique of the communism of Plato’s Republic; or over Politics VII–VIII, which contains Aristotle’s presentation of the best political system; or even over Politics III–IV, with its important classification and discussion of the different types of political systems. But in fact, Keyt had been thinking about writing a commentary on Politics V–VI for some time: “The idea of writing a commentary on Aristotle’s study of faction and constitutional change was formed in the late 1960s during the period of political unrest in the United States connected with the Vietnam War. In the summer of 1971 I discussed the possibility of doing this volume in the Clarendon Aristotle Series with John Ackrill”. We can be happy that Keyt and Ackrill returned, over two decades later, to the idea of such a commentary, because the result is an excellent addition to the Clarendon Aristotle Series.

This essay deals with Aristotle's complex account in Politics III.4 of the good man and the upright citizen. By this account the goodness of an upright citizen is relative to the city of which he is a citizen, whereas the goodness of a good man is absolute. Aristotle holds that the goodness of a good man and the goodness of an upright citizen are identical in one case only, that of a full citizen of his ideal city. In a non-ideal city the two are always distinct. One would expect, then, that cases would arise where the goodness of an upright citizen would demand, and the goodness of a good man forbid, the very same action. Aristotle, however, never discusses such cases directly, and many scholars have thought that he skirts the issue entirely. I argue, on the contrary, that Aristotle believes that there are cases where a good man will act differently from an upright citizen and that, consequently, he believes, as we would hope he would believe, that there are limits to political obligation. Footnotesa I am indebted to Fred Miller, the other contributors to this volume, and especially my wife, Christine Keyt, for helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

The symbolism introduced earlier provides a convenient vehicle for examining the status and consistency of Aristotle's three diverse justifications and for explaining how he means to avoid Protagorean relativism without embracing Platonic absolutism. When the variables ‘ x ’ and ‘ y ’ are allowed to range over the groups of free men in a given polis as well as over individual free men, the formula for the Aristotelian conception of justice expresses the major premiss of Aristotle's three justifications: (1) (∀ x )(∀ y ) (P(x)·W(x)/P(y)·W(y)=V(T(x))/V(T(y)))Democracy is justified by adding a minor premiss to the effect that as a group the many ( m ) are superior (>) in virtue and wealth to the few best men ( f ): 85 (2 d ) (P(m) · W(m)) > (P(f) · W(f)) (3 d ) V(T(m))>V(T(f))Absolute kingship is justified when a godlike man ( g ) appears in a polis who is incommensurably superior (≫) in virtue and wealth to all the remaining free men ( r ): (2 k ) (P(g) · W(g)) ≫ (P(r) · W(r)) (3 k ) V(T(g)) ≫ V(T(r))True aristocracy requires a more complex justification, which was symbolized in Section 4. These justifications are compatible with each other since they apply to different situations. The polises where democracy and true aristocracy are justified contain no godlike men, and the polis in which democracy is justified differs from that in which true aristocracy is justified in containing a large group of free men who individually have little virtue ( Pol. III.11.1281b23-25, 1282a25-26). Each of the justifications is a valid deductive argument. Aristotle affirms the major premiss they share on the basis of a twofold appeal to nature. The principle of distributive justice, the concept as distinguished from the various conceptions of distributive justice, is itself according to nature ( Pol. VII.3.1325b7-10) and so too is one particular standard of worth, the standard of the best polis. Consequently, the question of the status of these three justifications, whether they are purely hypothetical or not, is a question about the minor premiss or premisses of each. In the case of the democratic premiss Aristotle's answer is straightforward: it is sometimes but not always true ( Pol. III.11.1281bl5-21). Hence the justification of democracy is not purely hypothetical. Nor is the justification of absolute kingship. The man who is “like a god among men” ( Pol. III.13.1284a10-11) would be a man of heroic virtue (see VII.14.1332bl6-27); and such a man, Aristotle says, is “rare” ( σπávιoη ) (not nonexistent) ( E.N. VII.1.1145a27-28). The minor premisses of the aristocratic argument describe a situation where all of the free men in a given polis have sufficient wealth for the exercise of the moral and intellectual virtues and where all of the older free men of the polis are men of practical wisdom. In the Politics Aristotle makes only the modest claim that such a situation is possible: It is not possible for the best constitution to come into being without appropriate equipment [that is, the appropriate quality and quantity of territory and of citizens and noncitizens]. Hence one must presuppose many things as one would wish them to be, though none of them must be impossible ( Pol. VII.4.1325b37-38; see also II.6.1265al7-18). But Aristotle appears to subscribe to the principle that every possibility is realized at some moment of time ( Top. 11.11.115bl7-18, Met. Θ.4.1047b3-6, N.2.1088b23-25). This principle together with the claim that the situation described is possible entails that the situation sometimes occurs. Thus even Aristotle's justification of true aristocracy is not purely hypothetical. The final question is Aristotle's way of avoiding Protagorean relativism without embracing Platonic absolutism. The relativist, along with everyone else ( E.N. V.3.1131a13-14, Pol. III.12.1282bl8), can accept the principle of distributive justice: Q(x)/Q(y) = V(T(x))/V(T(y)) And he can concede that particular instances of this principle, particular conceptions of justice, accurately describe the modes of distributing political authority that appear just to particular polises and to particular philosophers. What he denies is that there is any basis for ranking these various conceptions of justice or for singling one out as the best (Plato, Theaet. 172A-B). Aristotle, following in Plato's track ( Laws X.888D7-890D8), maintains against the relativist that nature provides such a basis. But he departs from Plato in his conception of nature. For Plato “the just by nature” ( τó ρυσει δίκ↑oν }) ( Rep. VI.501B2) is the Form of justice, an incorporeal entity ( Phdo. 65D4-5, Soph. 246B8) that exists beyond time and space ( Tim. 37C6-38C3, 51E6-52B2), whereas for Aristotle the sensible world is the realm of nature ( Met. A.1.1069a30-b2). Thus in appealing to nature Aristotle does not appeal to a transcendent standard. Nor does he appeal to his main criterion of the natural, namely, happening always or for the most part. Aristotle's theory of justice is anchored to nature by means of the polis described in Politics VII and VIII, and he regards this polis as natural because it fosters the true end of human life and because its social and political structure reflects the natural hierarchy of human beings and the natural stages of life. Thus the nature that Aristotle's theory of justice is ultimately founded on is human nature