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Unit 4: Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution

While actual governments were bad, democratic government tended to be the best. Here again he Notes
described four kinds of democracy, which follow a progression from a moderate to an extreme
one. Moderate democracy had some sort of property qualifications for officials, with the majority
of people being agricultural and unmindful of political offices. The second type was similar to the
first one, but without property qualifications for officials and granting everyone the right to hold
office as long as they were not disqualified by birth. There would be no payment for performance
of public duties, and government was governed in accordance with law. In the third kind, citizenship
qualifications were relaxed to include all freemen, including aliens and children of emancipated
slaves, who were excluded from the first two types. In an extreme democracy, all restraints were
removed, being totally lawless with full rights to demagogues.
In Aristotle, there was hardly a discussion of the ideal type except sketchy details, but a concern
with the best practicable state, pointing out that a monarchy and aristocracy were best suited for
ideal forms of state, since goodness was their aim. Moreover, monarchy of the ideal type was
suited to domestic rather than political rule. Aristotle believed that politics, like all arts and
sciences, had to not only consider the ideal constitution, but also know what was practicable and
enduring under the given circumstances. In considering the feasibility of a constitution, Aristotle
took into account the virtue and intelligence that an average individual possessed:
The whole bent and bias of his thought must be toward the view that the ideal while
conceded to be an effective force, must still be a force within the actual current of
affairs and not dead against it... . The ideal state represented a conception of political
philosophy which he inherited from Plato and which was in fact little congenial to his
genius. The more he struck out an independent line of thought and investigation, the
more he turned towards the analysis and description of actual constitutions. The great
collection of one hundred and fifty eight constitutional histories made by him and his
students marks the turning point in his thought and suggested a broader conception
of political theory. This did not mean that Aristotle turned to description alone. The
essence of the new conception was the uniting of empirical investigation with the
more speculative consideration of political ideals. Moral ideals—the sovereignty of
law, the freedom and equality of citizens, constitutional government, the perfecting of
men in a civilized life—are always for Aristotle the ends for which the state ought to
exist, what he discovered was that these ideals were infinitely complicated in the
realization and required infinite adjustments to the conditions of actual government.
Ideals must exist not like Plato’s pattern in the Heavens but as forces working in and
through agencies by no means ideal.
Plato classified governments on the basis of their law-abidingness, while Aristotle used the criterion
of general welfare and the number who wielded political power. For Aristotle, “there are two
distinct claims to power, one based upon the rights of property and the other upon the welfare of
the greater number of human beings”. The correction to Plato’s formal classification enabled
Aristotle to consider the justifiable claims to power in a state by adjusting and accommodating all
claimants. He did not question Plato’s proposition that wisdom and virtue had an absolute claim
to power, and tried to make it operative in practice. For Aristotle, a state ought to realize justice in
its fullest and largest sense, for justice meant equality.
Aristotle granted an absolute moral claim to power to those who possessed wealth, for the state
was not a trading company or a contract. He rejected Plato’s solution of community of property as
disastrous, and pointed out that there was not much of a difference between a plundering democracy
and an exploitative oligarchy. However, he thought it unrealistic and unwise not to protect property,
since property guaranteed good birth, sound education, reasonable associations and leisure. While
the proprietied had an important claim to political power, equally convincing was the argument
of democrats that numbers did matter. Aristotle concluded that no class had an absolute claim to

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