Some thoughts on the naturalness of the polis in Aristotle
Thinking of Kevin's arguments today on the naturalness of the polis in Aristotle, it occurred to me that we were not fully clear on the distinctions we were using.
When Aristotle says that the polis comes into being "by" nature he means that nature is casually involved in the emergence of the polis, though "casually" in a teleological, not a mechanistic, sense. Nature is involved as setting (or being?) the end (1252b30), i.e., the completion of the sequence of natural partnerships leading to ever greater degrees of self-sufficiency. For the polis to be by nature is thus simply to be the only complete community. This leads Aristotle to suggest that the city is the nature of the lesser partnerships, just as the adult horse is or exhibits the nature of the newborn horse and the oak tree is or exhibits the nature of the acorn.
The sequence of partnerships exhibits a certain progression in time and necessity: there are daily needs (met by the household: their daily character means that in the household necessity rules supreme), nondaily needs (met by the village: their more sporadic character means that in the village there is some space for freedom from necessity), and then there is whatever the city fulfills which is evidently not a need properly speaking: "living well" (implying something you could do not well and still exist) rather than "living."
If this is so, however, what then is the contrast that Aristotle is drawing on? What is the polar term here? The contrast to nature cannot be freedom, for the city seems to be the fulfillment of freedom - the space where "need" as such is no longer supreme, either on a daily or on a non-daily basis. Is it convention? What would it mean to say, in Aristotle's terms, that the city comes into being by convention (per impossibile, since Aristotle does not say that)?
When Aristotle says that the polis comes into being "by" nature he means that nature is casually involved in the emergence of the polis, though "casually" in a teleological, not a mechanistic, sense. Nature is involved as setting (or being?) the end (1252b30), i.e., the completion of the sequence of natural partnerships leading to ever greater degrees of self-sufficiency. For the polis to be by nature is thus simply to be the only complete community. This leads Aristotle to suggest that the city is the nature of the lesser partnerships, just as the adult horse is or exhibits the nature of the newborn horse and the oak tree is or exhibits the nature of the acorn.
The sequence of partnerships exhibits a certain progression in time and necessity: there are daily needs (met by the household: their daily character means that in the household necessity rules supreme), nondaily needs (met by the village: their more sporadic character means that in the village there is some space for freedom from necessity), and then there is whatever the city fulfills which is evidently not a need properly speaking: "living well" (implying something you could do not well and still exist) rather than "living."
If this is so, however, what then is the contrast that Aristotle is drawing on? What is the polar term here? The contrast to nature cannot be freedom, for the city seems to be the fulfillment of freedom - the space where "need" as such is no longer supreme, either on a daily or on a non-daily basis. Is it convention? What would it mean to say, in Aristotle's terms, that the city comes into being by convention (per impossibile, since Aristotle does not say that)?
posted by Xavier Marquez @ 1:02 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Can something be both natural and artificial?
Clearly the city would not be an artifact like a bicycle is, for example. The bicycle is not the natural end of anything at all. (Though one may wonder: can the precursor of the bicycle show already the telos towards which it tends?).
But it does not seem farfetched to say that the city, which comes into being by (or with the help of) the exercise of human reason, is both artificial and natural, depending on the aspect under which it is considered. (Consider a delicate wine grape vine, or a raspberry bush. It would never survive in the wild, so to speak; it needs a lot of gardening to produce good fruit. Is the final product natural or artificial?)
(One may ask, in passing, whether Aristotle himself disinguishes natural from artificial when talking about the city).
Regarding the immanent necessity argument: this would make sense to me either as an evolutionary argument (most smaller partnerships evolve towards the city, or are absorbed into it) but I don't think this is what Hegel would have in mind.
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