Superlative Virtue: the Problem of Monarchy in Aristotle' S 'Politics'

Abstract

ECENT interpreters of Aristotle's writings hope to find in them a communitarian alternative to contemporary liberalism. Although these interpretations vary considerably, they share the hope that the recovery of Aristotelian policial philosophy could mitigate the a priori individualism of the liberal tradition without detracting from its broader democratic impulse. Notable among them is the recent study by Ronald Beiner (1983), who follows the work of H.-G. Gadamer (1975, 1976, 1983) in looking to Aristotle for a philosophy that recognizes communal discourse rather than technical expertise as constituting our political essence. Both believe that a recovery of Aristotle's emphasis on the context of mutual agreement immanent in a healthy society can help to offset the alienating tendencies of the modern technological state.1 Although these are serious and thought-provoking studies, what is absent from them is a consideration of Aristotle's reflection on the good and bad potentialities of monarchical rule as he analyses the prospects for achieving and sustaining political community. Beiner's analysis of Aristotelian prudence, for example, rightly suggests that prudent judgments can be understood by non-expert citizens. But while Beiner hopes to make Aristotelian prudence the basis for wider and more meaningful participation, Aristotle himself never attributes the capacity for making prudent judgments to more than a few leaders in any given time or place. Beiner concedes this difficulty in a footnote, but he does not explore the implications it would have for his main argument that we need to combine the universalism (both logical and political) of Kant with the heteronomy the richness of experience and responsiveness to circumstance of Aristotle (Beiner 1983: 177-78, 48, 63, 68, 103). For if Aristotle does not believe that even a sizable minority, let alone a majority of people in a community are capable of exercising prudent political judgment, what grounds are there for drawing upon his conception of prudence to justify wider and more meaningful political par-

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