1

Leo Strauss

Introduction to Political Philosophy (1965)

Sessions 10-16 (Aristotle)

A course offered in the winter quarter, 1965

The Department of Political Science, The University of Chicago

Edited and with an introduction by Catherine Zuckert

With assistance from Les Harris and Philip Bretton

Catherine Zuckert is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of political science at the University of Notre
Dame. She is author of Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss and Derrida
(University of Chicago Press, 1996), Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues
(University of Chicago Press, 2009) and other works on political philosophy.

©2016 Estate of Leo Strauss. All Rights Reserved.

 i

Table of contents

Editor’s Introduction i-xxii

Note on the Leo Strauss Transcript Project xxiii-xxv

Editorial Headnote xxv

Session 10: Classical Political Philosophy: Aristotle, Politics 1 1-18

Session 11: Aristotle, Politics 1-3 19-38

Session 12: Aristotle, Politics 3 39-57

Session 13: Aristotle, Politics 3 58-76

Session 14: Aristotle, Politics 7, 4 77-96

Session 15: Aristotle, Politics 4, 5, 6 97-116

Session 16: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6, 4; Plato and Aristotle 117-135

 i

Strauss’s Introduction to Political Philosophy

Catherine Zuckert, University of Notre Dame

Leo Strauss taught very few large lecture courses during his eighteen years in the political
science department at the University of Chicago. Most of his courses were graduate
seminars devoted to the works of specific philosophers. i In the winter term of 1965,
however, Strauss offered an “Introduction to Political Philosophy” open to undergraduate
as well as graduate students. It attracted so many students that the course had to be
moved from the medium-sized classrooms in which Strauss usually held his seminars
before an audience of 40-50 students to the large, wood paneled lecture room on the first
floor of the Social Sciences Building, room 122.

The transcript of this course reveals some of the reasons Strauss was such a remarkable
teacher. Not merely did he try whenever possible to find American examples to illustrate
points for American students, he also encouraged students to ask questions and displayed
a genial sense of humor; the transcript notes repeated instances of laughter. The function
of an introductory course is to persuade students to engage in further study, and Strauss’s
lectures in this course range over the entire history of political philosophy. He was
extraordinarily successful in convincing members of his audience to undertake more
advanced studies. As the names of students who asked questions in this course show,
many of them later became professors of political science and philosophy.

Introducing students to political philosophy, Strauss also introduced them (and the
readers of this transcript of his lectures) to his own distinctive approach. ii Marking the

i
For a list of the courses Strauss offered at the University of Chicago see George Anastaplo, “Leo
Strauss at the University of Chicago,” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, Leo Strauss,
the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 14-18.
The descriptions of the courses can be a bit misleading. For example, and most relevant to this
transcript, the first course listed for spring quarter, 1960 as an “Introduction to Political
Philosophy: Study of Aristotle’s Politics” was, in fact, a seminar, as the transcript of that course
shows. I remembered the winter 1965 course by the same title as being “primarily on Aristotle’s
Politics,” as Anastaplo comments. In fact, however, Strauss devoted only seven of the sixteen
lectures to Aristotle.
ii
Strauss did not associate introductory courses per se with lectures or a survey. He seems to have
thought more in terms of the subject matter and the correct approach to take in studying it. At the
beginning of the seminar he gave on Aristotle’s Politics in the spring quarter of 1960, he
explained that he called this course an “Introduction to Political Science,” because he wanted to
make clear that he did “not regard Aristotle’s teaching as a historical subject.” After presenting a
very brief account of the history of political philosophy in his first lecture, Strauss concluded not
merely that “the mature approach of present day social science presupposes the experience of the
failure of the earlier approaches,” but that “we cannot know that [Aristotle’s] teaching was wrong
if we do not know first what his teaching was.” And that “means that we have to understand him
in his own terms.” Strauss then divided the Politics into fifteen segments for the sake of
assigning students papers, two per book except for one on book 8. In that seminar he spent much
less time than in the 1965 course bringing out the problematic character of the contemporary
 ii

death of Winston Churchill at the beginning of lecture six, Strauss gave one of his most
concise statements of his understanding of the glory as well as the limitations of politics
and the duty of one who studies it. Recalling Churchill’s adamant opposition to Hitler,
Strauss proclaimed that “the contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous
statesman and the insane tyrant . . . was one of the greatest lessons which man can learn,
at any time” (session 6). Yet, Strauss continued, “No less enlightening is the lesson
conveyed by Churchill’s failure—the fact that Churchill’s heroic action on behalf of
human freedom against Hitler only contributed, through no fault of Churchill’s, to
increasing the threat to freedom which is posed by Stalin or his successors.” Churchill’s
writings were “not a whit less important than his deeds and speeches.” So, Strauss
reflected,

The death of Churchill reminds us of the limitations of our craft, and

therewith of our duty. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty,
than to remind ourselves and our students of political greatness, human
greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train
ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all
in seeing their greatness and their misery. iii

And he concluded, “In our age this duty demands of us in the first place that we
liberate ourselves from the supposition that value statements cannot be factual
statements” (session 6). The critique of positivism Strauss gave in the first third of
this lecture course was designed to effect just such a liberation.

I. The Contemporary Obstacles to the Study of Political Philosophy: Positivism

and Historicism

Strauss begins his “Introduction to Political Philosophy” by emphasizing the importance

of the subject. “All political action points toward the question of the good society, and the
good society is the theme of political philosophy” (session 1). In seeking knowledge of
the best form of political association (and thus of all lesser forms which could be
understood to be such only in the light of the best), classical political philosophers like
Plato and Aristotle did not distinguish between political philosophy and political science.
Today, however, political philosophy and political science are not merely thought to be

denial that political philosophy is possible any longer and correspondingly more time on a
detailed commentary on the Politics itself. As in this 1965 course, so in the lecture course he gave
on the “Basic Principles of Classical Political Philosophy” in autumn 1961, Strauss began with
eight lectures on “the crisis of our times” which duplicate many of the arguments he gives in the
1965 course concerning the problems posed by positivism and historicism, but the treatment he
gives of Aristotle’s Politics in “Basic Principles” does not follow the text as closely as these
lectures do.
iii
A fuller statement of Strauss’s views on education can be found in “What Is Liberal
Education?” and “Liberal Education and Responsibility” in Liberalism: Ancient and Modern
(New York: Basic Books, 1968), 3-25.
 iii

different: political philosophy has become incredible because people no longer believe
that it is possible to know what the good society really and truly is.

Strauss begins his lectures, therefore, by critically examining the two contemporary
schools of thought that have led many people to believe that political philosophy is no
longer possible: “positivism” and “historicism.” Similar critiques can be found in Natural
Right and History, “An Epilogue” to the Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, and
“What Is Political Philosophy?” iv The presentation and critique of these schools of
thought in this lecture course is more historical than these. The course is designed to
show, first, that both positivism and historicism depend upon claims about the history of
human thought that need to be tested by an independent examination of that history. In
the second part of the course Strauss thus presents a curtailed account of that history to
show that according to the testimony of the philosophers involved, the central issue
dividing the ancients from the moderns concerns the character of nature as a whole and
whether it supplies a standard of justice or right. Having argued that modern philosophy
leads to Kant’s denial that nature supplies such a standard but that Nietzsche reveals the
difficulties resulting from such a denial, in the third part of the course Strauss reexamines
the classical statement in Aristotle’s Politics of the ancient position that the moderns
opposed.

By identifying the specific origins of positivism in the works of Auguste Comte and
Georg Simmel, Strauss shows that neither the original nor the contemporary form of
positivistic social science was a necessary or logical consequence of either philosophy or
modern natural science. In “What Is Political Philosophy?” Strauss also names Comte as
the first philosopher who argues that the development of modern natural science
necessarily culminates in a “positive political philosophy,” but in these lectures Strauss
goes on to explain what Comte taught. Strauss acknowledges that the Comtean position is
by no means identical to current positivism, but he declares that “we cannot understand
the positivism of today without having first understood Comte” (session 1).

Comte’s “positive philosophy” consisted of an argument about the history of the

development of the human mind and the necessarily comprehensive, self-reflective
character of social science. In his two chief works, Strauss explains, Comte traced the
intellectual development of humanity in three stages. In the first, “theological” stage
human beings thought they could answer the grandest questions and exercise unlimited
control over the world by substituting for the things wills they could influence. In the
second, “metaphysical” stage these willing beings were replaced by abstract forces or
“entities.” But in the third, positive stage man abandoned the question of the origin and
destiny of things, i.e., the why, and began asking merely how things are related. v

iv
Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 35-80, hereafter NRH;
“An Epilogue,” Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Herbert J. Storing (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Co., 1962), 307-27; and What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Glencoe,
IL: The Free Press, 1959), 9-55.
v
Strauss observes in passing that Comte’s claim about the questions raised has been refuted by
modern biology, but that his thesis about science addressing the question of how rather than why
has nonetheless survived.
 iv

Although the theological and metaphysical approaches retained a certain practical

superiority at the time because they claimed to answer all questions, Comte thought that
the victory of positive philosophy was inevitable. He observed that the human mind is
powerfully disposed to unity of method. However, as a result of the metaphysical critique
of religion and the development of the modern sciences—beginning with mathematics,
but then extending to physics, chemistry and biology—human beings at his time lived in
a state of intellectual and therefore moral and political anarchy. The development of a
comprehensive science of man was thus imperative, both theoretically and practically.
This science, for which Comte coined the terms “sociology” and “positive philosophy,”
was not merely the last science to develop. Although it presupposed biology in the way
biology presupposes chemistry and physics presupposes mathematics, Comte recognized
that his positive philosophy had to be the science of science, because he saw that science
is a human activity and needed to be understood as such. He also observed that human
beings cannot live together except on the basis of some fundamental agreements; but the
critiques leveled by “metaphysical” philosophy in the seventeenth century had destroyed
belief in Catholicism, the religious dogma of the Middle Ages. Science had become the
only possible source of intellectual authority; but the goal and character of the science of
science had not become clear until the French Revolution and its aftermath showed that
humanity had a common destiny, because history is progressive.

Like contemporary positivists, Strauss points out, Comte insisted that science is the only
form of true knowledge. Unlike contemporary positivists, however, Comte also thought
that science could show us the best form of government. His “positive philosophy” was
not value-free, and Comte continued to describe his investigations as “political
philosophy.” Comte’s scientific approach did lead him to deny that there is any essential
difference between human beings and animals. Like earlier modern philosophers he
observed that human beings are driven primarily by their passions. But he opposed the
“metaphysical,” abstract notion of a “state of nature” in which individuals contract with
one another to construct a government by observing that human beings live in society
with one another at all times and in all places and that these societies are not the products
of intentional design so much as spontaneous growths. Comte nevertheless thought that
the progressive development of the distinctively human rational faculty would gradually
change the way in which human beings organize their common life. As the division of
labor that constitutes society becomes greater, individuals lose a sense of the common
good. Coercive authority thus becomes necessary to check the selfish, asocial passions of
individuals. In earlier times the subordination of the productive classes to the rule of
warriors had to be justified by theology; but with the advance of science and industry,
religion could be replaced by positive philosophy, and the military by captains of industry
and bankers. Positive philosophers would not hold explicitly political offices; they would
tend to the spiritual development of their people by shaping public opinion and using a
free press to critique the government.

Strauss concludes that Comte vastly overestimated the power of reason. His vision of an
ever more pacific, prosperous, and rational future was not consonant with his
understanding of human nature as basically passionate. Although Comte acknowledged
 v

the natural right of every human being to be treated in accord with the dignity of man,
Comte’s emphasis on the intellectual development of a few individuals in a system of
every greater specialization meant that human beings would become increasingly
unequal. He also thought that the fate of half the human race was biologically
determined. In contrast to the “traditional” view that Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great
were quite good at governing, Strauss reports, Comte declared that women are not
naturally fit to govern. Ability to predict the future course of events is not necessarily a
test of the truth of a philosophical claim, Strauss concedes, but a mistaken prediction does
count against a thinker who claims to know the necessary course of history. Alexis de
Tocqueville proved to be a better predictor of the future course of history than Comte
when he declared that progressive democratization, rather than science, would make
government more stable.

Strauss emphasizes two differences between Comte and present-day positivism. First, for
Comte positive science is merely the rationalization and universalization of common
sense. He observed that human beings at all time and places perceive the need for a
theory on the basis of which to select relevant facts to bring order to their common lives.
For contemporary positivists, however, there is a radical difference between science and
common sense. vi The second and more practically important difference is that, unlike
Comte, contemporary positivists insist that social science must be value-free. This
demand might appear to arise from the “Is-Ought” distinction, i.e., from the proposition
that no statement about what ought to be can logically be derived from a statement about
what is. But, Strauss reminds his auditors, neither of the two philosophers who first
announced the “Is-Ought” distinction (David Hume and Immanuel Kant) thought that it
was impossible to know what ought to be. What is characteristic of contemporary
positivism is the further assertion that we cannot know the Ought whereas we can have
scientific knowledge of the Is. And, Strauss argues, this positivist assertion rests on the
conviction that there are many ultimate values (extending beyond moral duties to beauty
and other non-moral choices or commitments) that are fundamentally incompatible and
hence irreducible to one.

Strauss explains that this view emerged in the last decade of the nineteenth century in
Germany, but became accepted in the U.S. only after World War I. The first statement of
it is to be found in the two volume, six-hundred-page Introduction to Moral Science
(Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft) Georg Simmel published in 1892. “What is called
‘normative science,’” Simmel explained, “is in fact only science of the normative.
Science itself does not establish or prove norms, but merely explains norms and their
correlations. For science always raises only causal, not teleological questions” (session
3). But Strauss objects that the causal rather than teleological character of modern science
cannot possibly be a sufficient reason for the view that social science must be value-free.
Spinoza was the greatest and most outspoken enemy of all teleology, and his chief work
is entitled Ethics. On his first reading, Strauss admits, he had not perceived the
revolutionary character of Simmel’s claim, because Simmel announced it so matter-of-

vi
In this respect, Strauss comments, contemporary positivists are truer descendants of Descartes,
who introduced the notion that everything must be doubted and all knowledge rationally
reconstructed.
 vi

factly.vii Simmel could completely “break with the whole tradition of ethics in all its
forms, without any apparent awareness of the immensity . . . of this change,” Strauss later
concluded, only because Simmel was writing in a nation that had been bombarded for a
decade with Nietzsche’s “immoralist” argument that no knowledge of good and evil is
possible (session 3). (And Nietzsche had clearly announced the revolutionary character of
his teaching.) Reading Simmel in light of Nietzsche, Strauss saw that Simmel still
accepted the positivistic view of the objectivity of science, but combined it with
Nietzsche’s view of the non-objectivity of values. Max Weber announced the same view
later with much greater passion; and after Weber, proscribing value judgments from
scientific studies became a matter of intellectual integrity.

Strauss treats Weber’s arguments in much greater detail in Natural Right and History.
The point of the history of positivism he presents in these lectures is to show that the
philosophical reasons frequently given for the now widely-accepted distinction between
“facts” and “values” do not justify or explain the emergence of the doctrine. People may
believe that the only genuine form of knowledge is scientific knowledge, but such a
conviction did not prevent Comte from thinking that science could—and should—tell us
how to live. Earlier modern philosophers had emphasized the causal rather than
teleological character of modern science and distinguished the “Is” from the “Ought,” but
neither causal analysis nor their recognition of the logical distinction between the Is and
the Ought prevented these philosophers from putting forth moral arguments. The claim
that human beings do not and cannot know what is good or evil originated with
Nietzsche, and Nietzsche pointed out that “truth” and “knowledge,” i.e., “science” itself,
is among the unjustified and unjustifiable “values.”

Positivistic social science cannot demonstrate that social science itself is good, Strauss
concludes, because that would be a value judgment. Positivist social science cannot even
describe human social life accurately, because it is impossible to account for phenomena
like corruption, crime, or degeneracy without using evaluative terms. Most
fundamentally, social science presupposes the ability to tell who or what is a human
being, and that ability is based, more or less articulately, on understanding what is a
normal or completely developed human. Social science thus depends on prescientific
“commonsense” knowledge that not only distinguishes human being from all other forms
as a matter of fact but also entails an evaluation.

As in his published writings, so in these lectures Strauss insists that the positivist demand
that a social scientist treat good and evil equally and indifferently necessarily produces
moral obtuseness. But, Strauss also observes, most social scientists take a very definite
moral, even political position. They do not perceive the nihilistic consequences of the
fact-value distinction, because they think that if there is no reason to prefer one value to
another, all values must be equal. And if all values are equal, they ought to be treated as
equal. So if there is a conflict among the values people hold, the majority ought to decide.
In other words, there is a close if unacknowledged connection between the widespread

vii
In his 1960 seminar on Aristotle’s Politics Strauss suggests that he learned that Simmel was the
first man to argue for a value-free social science from Arnold Brecht’s Political Theory. Strauss
responds to Brecht’s criticism of his own arguments in NRH later in these 1965 lectures.
 vii

acceptance of the “fact-value” distinction and liberal democratic political prejudices. viii
People have not perceived the blatant inability of a “value-free” social science to provide
them with politically relevant information and guidance, because the outcome of World
War II and its aftermath made scientific progress and the spread of egalitarian politics
appear to be “the wave of the future.” And it does not make sense to ask about what is
good or bad, if the future is already determined.

If positivism arises as a compromise between Nietzschean historicism and objective

science, as in Simmel, but science itself proves to be an unjustifiable value as much as
any moral judgment or religion, we should not be surprised to learn that positivism
collapses ultimately into historicism. In a rare response to his critics, Strauss shows how
and why.

In Political Theory: The Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (1959),

Arnold Brecht accused Strauss of misrepresenting Weber’s position in Natural Right and
History.ix According to Brecht, Weber did not argue that all values are equal; he
maintained simply that their validity was “equally undemonstrable” (session 5). That was
true, moreover, only of “ultimate” values. Weber “recognized of course that each value
can be judged scientifically as to its accordance with known standards, as long as these
standards are not themselves at issue.”x Strauss objects, however, that “from the point of
view of social science, the standards are necessarily at issue, since all value judgments
are rationally questioned.” Social scientists have to use words like “crime” in quotation
marks, because the words themselves convey disapproval. Brecht also challenged
Strauss’s claim that positivist social scientists cannot recognize the superiority of
civilization to cannibalism. In reply Strauss points to the work of anthropologists like
Ruth Benedict, and then states more generally: if social scientists could demonstrate the
superiority of civilization to cannibalism, they would have shown that value judgments
can be validated scientifically and so disproved the fundamental positivist contention.

Strauss then suggests that Ernst Nagel’s response to his arguments in Natural Right and
History goes further. In The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific
Explanation (1961) Nagel concedes that “a large number of characterizations sometimes
assumed to be purely factual descriptions of social phenomena do indeed formulate a
type of value judgment.”xi He admits, moreover, that it is often difficult to separate means
entirely from ends, and that values can be attached to both. Nagel thinks that he can
rescue the positivist position by distinguishing value judgments that express approval or
disapproval from those that express an estimate of the degree to which some commonly
recognized type of action, object, or institution is embodied in a given instance. The key

viii
Strauss makes a similar argument in “An Epilogue.” See note iv above.
ix
Strauss incorporates many of the arguments and some of the same examples he gave in his
critique of Weber in NRH into these lectures.
x
Arnold Brecht, Political Theory: The Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 262.
xi
Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 491-92.
 viii

point, Strauss thinks, is that Nagel admits that such “characterizing” value judgments are
inevitable (session 5).

By characterizing the principle of causality, upon which all modern science rests as “only
a contingent historical fact . . . for it is logically possible that in their efforts at mastering
their environments men might have aimed at something quite different,” Nagel, Strauss
argues, shows how positivism leads eventually to historicism without realizing that he is
doing so. The reason positivism collapses into historicism is that modern science cannot
answer the question, why science? “Teleological” philosophers like Aristotle had argued
that science or knowledge is the fulfillment and thus the perfection of human nature.
Having cut free from such a teleological view of nature, early modern philosophers like
Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes suggested that science could relieve the human
condition. But that did not explain or justify mathematicians’ study of prime numbers, for
example, i.e., science merely for the sake of science. Nor was it clear to later thinkers
exactly what would benefit or please most if not all human beings. It was at least partly
the difficulty of defining what precisely constitutes “the greatest good for the greatest
number” that led social scientists like Simmel and Weber to jettison utilitarianism in
favor of their positivist assertion of the indemonstrability of all ultimate values.

Strauss concludes that the inadequacy of the positivist contention that all genuine
knowledge is scientific knowledge is revealed by the dependency of all social “scientific”
knowledge on a prescientific understanding of humanity. Historicism constitutes a more
serious challenge to the possibility of political philosophy, because historicism begins by
recognizing that human existence is not like all other existence. Contrary to certain
popular forms of “cultural relativism,” historicism does not rest merely on the
observation that human beings disagree about the answers to the most fundamental
questions. Like positivism, historicism grows out of a certain understanding of the history
of philosophy. The disagreements among past philosophers about the answers to the most
fundamental questions may have appeared scandalous in the eyes of others, but each
philosopher continued to pronounce what he thought was true in opposition to the errors
of others. Only after Jean-Jacques Rousseau suggested that human nature was
changeable, and that the changes occurred particularly in the rational faculty as a result of
a process of socialization, did philosophers begin to think that the differences in
comprehensive views from time to time and place to place might not merely be
significant but had a progressive order. Both the rational and the progressive character of
the development could be established, however, only after the process or change had
come to completion. That argument was first made by G. W. F. Hegel. With the
secularization of Christianity in the declaration of the universal rights of man during the
French Revolution and the subsequent institution of states in Europe explicitly based on
that principle, Hegel contended that the question which had animated political
philosophy—namely, what is the just society?—had been definitively answered, and that
it could not have been correctly answered earlier.

Strauss observes that Hegel’s claims about the achievement of knowledge and the just
state were subject to proof or disproof like any previous claims. The problem posed by
history came to light only when nineteenth century historians like Leopold von Ranke
 ix

accepted the notion that every epoch has its own truth but denied that history is rational
or progressive, because they thought that history is an ongoing process that has no end in
the sense of completion. The historical insight thus culminated in the proposition that
there is no eternal truth.

Nietzsche first disclosed the problematic consequences of this historicist insight in his
essay “On the Use and Abuse of History.” “History teaches a truth that is deadly,”
according to Nietzsche. “It shows that culture is possible only if men are fully dedicated
to principles of thought and action, which they do not question” (session 6). But history
also shows us that the principles of previous thought and action do not possess the
validity they claim and do not, therefore, deserve to be regarded as simply true. The
answer might seem to lie in the fabrication of a new myth, but Nietzsche saw that would
involve a kind of deliberate self-delusion impossible for men of intellectual probity. The
true solution comes to sight only when one realizes that scientific history suffices to show
the relative validity of all previous principles of thought and action, but it does not allow
the uncommitted “objective” observer to understand the vital source of previous history,
precisely because he does not share or have a commitment. The principles that claimed to
be rational or of divine origin were, Nietzsche argued, human creations. What was
necessary now was for human beings to do consciously what they had done
unconsciously in the past. But, Strauss explains, Nietzsche’s further suggestion that all
these goals were products of a universal will to power looked like a relapse into
metaphysics.xii Later historicists attempted to retain Nietzsche’s insight that there cannot
be historical objectivity but to avoid asserting a transhistorical truth.

In explicating and critiquing the “radical historicist” position, Strauss confronted the
difficulty that the thinker he considered to be the most competent exponent of that
position, Martin Heidegger, had not written in English. xiii As in Natural Right and
History, so in these lectures Strauss thus gives a brief summary of the problem as
Heidegger presents it at the beginning of Being and Time without grounding his
discussion explicitly on Heidegger’s text. xiv As in the lecture course Strauss gave in 1961,
“Basic Principles of Classical Political Philosophy,” he then tries to explain the basic
claims and the difficulties with those claims on the basis of an admittedly less satisfactory
presentation of the position in English by the historian R. G. Collingwood.

Reflecting on his own practice as an archaeologist in his Autobiography, Collingwood

first came to a new understanding of knowledge as composed not simply of propositions,
but of propositions that were answers to questions. In reading the political theories of
Plato and Hobbes Collingwood then discovered that they were not giving answers to the
same question. They were writing about different things: Plato about the best form of the

xii
Strauss gives a more detailed analysis of Nietzsche’s argument and the difficulty in which it
culminates in “Note on the Plan of Beyond Good and Evil” in Studies in Platonic Political
Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 174-91.
xiii
In session 6 Strauss comments: “Vulgar historicism is traced to man; in the subtle and
theoretical historicism of Heidegger, it is traced to what he calls Sein, which is x, the ground of all
history, working in and through man.”
xiv
NRH, 25-33.
 x

ancient polis, and Hobbes about the modern state. xv Collingwood concluded that there are
no eternal questions. All human thought rests ultimately on absolute presuppositions,
which differ from historical epoch to historical epoch. These absolute presuppositions
cannot be judged to be true or false, because they are not answers to questions but the
presuppositions of the questions. The most an historian can do is to trace the changes in
comprehensive views that arise as a result of changes in these absolute presuppositions. xvi
The problem with this view, Strauss points out, lies in the status of the historicist
presupposition itself—that each era has its own presuppositions. The historicist
contradicts himself by treating the presupposition of his own age as simply true. Because
he believes that his own age is superior, he cannot take the thought of past ages
seriously.xvii

II. The Necessity of Studying the History of Political Philosophy

Although Strauss concludes that the historicist position articulated by Collingwood is

untenable, he nevertheless agrees with the historicists that in our time philosophy must to
a certain extent become fused with history. The reason Strauss gives differs, however,
from those Collingwood gave in his Idea of History. Strauss argues:

Every attempt at rational knowledge, philosophic or scientific, consists in

replacing opinions by knowledge. This cannot be conscientiously done if
one does not first know the opinions from which one starts. But . . . what
we regard as our opinions consists to a considerable extent of the
sediments of past discussions . . . in earlier centuries, and now we live on
their results. Hence the nonhistorical concern with the clarification of our
opinions insensibly shifts into historical studies. (Session 8)

Positivist political science discourages the study of the history of political

philosophy, but, Strauss reminds his auditors, Comte founded positivism on the

xv
Speaking as an historian, Strauss agrees with Collingwood that the ancient polis and the
modern state are not the same. He uses the opportunity, in fact, to urge students to learn as much
of the original languages as possible so that they will not remain victims of well-intentioned but
often inaccurate translators.
xvi
Strauss explicitly incorporates sections of his review of Collingwood’s Idea of History, “On
Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” Review of Metaphysics 5 (1952): 559-86.
xvii
A historicist can avoid this contradiction, Strauss observes, if he argues that his age constitutes
an “absolute moment” at which the truth about the historicity of all thought becomes (and can
only become) clear, and gives reasons for that conclusion. In “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,”
Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 32-33, Strauss attributes such an argument to Hegel,
Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In these lectures he states that Heidegger developed the
historicist argument much more subtly than Collingwood. He refers particularly to Heidegger’s
call for the initiation of a dialogue between East and West. Such a dialogue would expand the
horizons of both the Easterner and the Westerner, Strauss suggests, but Heidegger does not think
that either would ever have the same view as the other. Strauss also comments on the significance
of Heidegger’s calling for a dialogue between the Far East and the West in “Existentialism,” the
first of “Two Lectures by Leo Strauss,” ed. David Botolin, Christopher Bruell, Thomas L. Pangle,
Interpretation 22 (1995): 317.
 xi

basis of a history of human thought. In order to determine whether current

opinions are true or false, it thus seems necessary from any point of view to study
the history of political philosophy. In opposition to both the positivists and the
historicists, however, Strauss insists that we must be open to the possibility that
past thinkers knew something that we have forgotten.

To study the history of political philosophy, Strauss then observes, we need to

divide it into parts or periods. Looking to find divisions within the material itself,
he finds the clearest break with previous thought in the works of Thomas Hobbes.
Presenting a much-abbreviated version of the history he gives in much greater
detail elsewhere, Strauss notes that the decisive break actually took place before
Hobbes, when Machiavelli announced in chapter 15 of his Prince that he was
departing from the writings of others in teaching a prince how not to be good if he
wants to maintain his state. Strauss nevertheless concentrates on Hobbes, because
he formulates the modern position in terms of natural law, and, Strauss
emphasizes, “the lowering of the standards has to do with a profoundly changed
posture toward nature” (session 8). Plato, Aristotle, the whole tradition of
“classical political philosophy” that stems from Socrates sought “to delineate the
character of the just society by taking their bearings by men’s perfection, by the
highest in them. And these modern thinkers . . . tried to take their bearings by the
lowest, but for this very reason the most powerful, in man” (session 8).

According to Hobbes, Strauss reminds his auditors, human life in the “state of
nature” is “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” Because human desires can never
be satisfied, it is impossible to achieve “the repose of the mind satisfied. For there
is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good), as is
spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers” (Leviathan, chapter 11).
Human beings must have some fixed point by which to take our bearings, and
“Hobbes finds it in the beginning” (session 8). Although human beings cannot
achieve happiness, Hobbes maintains that we can attain a certain amount of
security and peace by fleeing the state of nature and contracting with others to
relinquish our natural right to everything to a sovereign who will see that the
“natural law” is enforced.

Admitting that the practical consequences Locke draws are far different from
those to be found in Hobbes, in these lectures Strauss nevertheless skips Locke
because he thinks that in many respects Locke’s fundamental scheme is not so
different from that of Hobbes. Strauss concentrates instead on Rousseau’s critique
of Hobbes, because this critique brings modern political philosophy to its first
crisis.xviii If human beings are solitary or presocial in the state of nature, Rousseau
pointed out in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, human beings must also
be prerational. Rousseau thus challenges the traditional definition of man as a
rational animal in a way Hobbes had not. It might seem that a stupid animal could

Strauss presents a fuller version of this argument in NRH, chapters 4-6, and “The Three
xviii

Waves of Modernity,” in Hilail Gildin, ed., An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays
by Leo Strauss (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 81-98.
 xii

not serve as a standard of natural right. Rousseau argues that natural liberty
merely allows a person to become a slave to his passions. True human liberty can
be achieved only in a society where no one is subject to a law he does not take
part in making. Both the rationality and the justice of the “general will” are
guaranteed by its form: each wills what he desires not only for himself but for all
others as well. By living according to the general will, Rousseau adds, a person
acquires moral as well as civic liberty. Rousseau does not make the grounds of
this moral freedom clear, however. In the profession of faith of the Savoyard vicar
in his Emile, Rousseau presents the issue of moral liberty in terms of traditional
dualistic, metaphysics. “But,” Strauss observes, “according to Rousseau himself,
that metaphysics is exposed to insoluble objections” (session 8). Rousseau also
clings to a notion of natural goodness, rooted in the sentiment de son existence,
that is fundamentally different from rational moral liberty. One of Rousseau’s
objections to Hobbes is that human beings would not strive to preserve
themselves if they did not perceive that life is good.

Strauss then explains how “Kant solved Rousseau’s problem, and put therewith
moral and political philosophy on an entirely new basis. And the net result . . . is
that from Kant on the moral law is no longer a natural law”xix (session 8).
According to Kant, morality cannot be based on dualistic metaphysics, because
God and the soul are unknowable. That does not mean that the opposite view, that
everything is corporeal, is true. “Materialism, or the view underlying modern
physics, has as its premise the principle of causality. And this principle of
causality . . . had been subjected to a radical critique by David Hume” (session 9).
The “gist of Hume’s critique” was that science or rationality in the highest sense
rests on an irrational foundation of mere custom. In opposing Hume, Kant asserts
that science is rational, but that it is limited to the phenomenal world. “Reason
supplies only the form of knowledge; for its content, it depends on sense
experience” (session 9).

Although in his Critique of Pure Reason Kant shows that reason is weak in the
sphere of theory, he argues that it is sufficient to guide human practice. “Practical
reason prescribes, without any borrowings whatever from experience, universally
valid laws of action” (session 9). And because the moral law is not based in any
way on experience, it can no longer be called, as it had before, the natural law.
The moral law must be valid, not only for men, but for all intelligent beings. But
if the moral law is to apply to God, it cannot be based on human nature. And it
must apply to God, Kant would say, because if God’s actions are not to be
understood in terms of the moral law, then God might conceivably do unjust
things. The moral law cannot be based on anything else or deduced from anything
else—God or nature. It is the law of reason, pure reason, in no way dependent on
experience. If one asks where it gets its content Kant, like Rousseau, answers:
from its form—the form of law, meaning generality, universality, and rationality,

xix
I do not know of any other place that Strauss emphasizes Kant as the turning point away from
a notion of nature as a source of standards of right except the transcript of the seminar he devoted
to “Kant’s Political Philosophy” the year after these lectures.
 xiii

is sufficient to supply the moral law. And if this is the moral law, Strauss points
out, it becomes impossible to criticize political proposals like universal peace or
the United Nations on the grounds that they disagree with human nature or
experience.

“Morality as Kant understands it liberates man from the tutelage of nature”

(session 9). And Strauss quickly traces the consequences of that liberation. If man
owes his dignity to the moral law alone, Fichte concluded, man’s duty consists in
subjugating everything else, in him and without him, to the moral law, because
nothing else has any intrinsic worth. Marx then showed that if the moral law
demands virtuous activity in the Aristotelian sense of the full development of
one’s distinctively human faculties, but the division of labor makes that
impossible, it is necessary to abolish and overcome that division with technology.
Nature is only an obstacle to be overcome; nature does not supply guidance in any
way. Strauss quotes statements from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil to show
that in modern political philosophy nature is not merely understood to be
“immoderately wasteful, immoderately indifferent, devoid of intentions and
considerateness, devoid of compassion and sense of justice, fruitful and desolate
and uncertain at the same time” (§ 9), but that “every morality . . . is a work of
tyranny against ‘nature,’ and also against ‘reason’” (§ 118; session 9). “That
which for Kant was the justification of nature, namely that nature is the only
rational interpretation of sense data,” Strauss concludes, “has become doubtful for
Nietzsche” (session 9). In other words, the understanding of nature characteristic
of modern science has become, in Nagel’s terms, “a historically contingent way of
interpreting things” (session 9). Rather than knowledge of nature, modern
“natural” science appears to be a human construct.

Strauss then contrasts this modern understanding of nature as the rational ordering
of sense data with the classical understanding of nature as a term of distinction.
The term (physis) first appears in Odyssey 10.300 where Hermes informs
Odysseus about the “nature” of a certain herb—in effect, its look (eidos) and
power (dynamis). It is then to be found in Thucydides’s observations about the
“nature” of a place, which he proceeds to describe as “the place itself” (4.3-4),
and thus points to the difference between nature (or what is there) and art (what is
made of it). Finally and most famously, Herodotus observes that fire burns in
Persia just as it burns in Greece, xx although the laws differ. On the basis of this
distinction between nature and convention (which Strauss insists was not the
invention of the sophists), classical political philosophers raised the question
whether there is anything just and noble by nature. xxi

In opposition to Collingwood, Strauss suggests that ancient and modern political

philosophers ask the same question. He emphasizes, however, that they answer that
question in importantly different ways and quotes Hegel’s description of the difference:

xx
Nicomachean Ethics 1134b25-27.
xxi
Strauss here gives an extremely abbreviated form of the argument he presents more fully in
chapter 3 of NRH, “The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right,” 81-164.
 xiv

The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of modern times,
in that the former consisted in the veritable training and perfecting of the
natural consciousness. . . . Philosophizing about everything it came
across—the natural consciousness transformed itself into a universality of
abstract understanding. . . . In modern times, however, the individual finds
the abstract form ready made. (Session 9)

“What happened in classical philosophy, especially political philosophy,” Strauss

emphasizes, “is the primary acquisition of concepts . . . as distinguished from the
use of concepts already acquired . . . There is not a single technical term in the
properly political writings . . . of Plato and Aristotle. . . . What they do, especially
Aristotle, is to define [these terms] more precisely and this more precise definition
became then the great heritage of the West” (session 9). In order for us “moderns”
to unearth the experiences upon which the concepts in terms of which we
understand our own experience are based, we must, therefore, study classical
political philosophy—in its own terms, and not in ours.

III. The Classical Work of Classical Political Philosophy: Aristotle’s Politics

Where, then, should we begin our study of classical political philosophy? Strauss
suggests that we begin with Aristotle, rather than with Plato, the tragedians, or
Thucydides, all of whom wrote earlier, because unlike Plato, the tragedians, or
Thucydides, Aristotle speaks directly in his own name.

Because Aristotle begins his Politics with a definition of the political association or polis,
the question immediately arises about how the word should be translated. Strauss agrees
with Collingwood that polis should not be translated “state,” because the ancients did not
distinguish between “state” and “society.” Polis can be accurately translated as
“commonwealth,” but, Strauss comments, selection of an appropriate term does not
resolve the substantive issue. Aristotle defines the polis in terms of its end, the
achievement of eudaimonia or happiness, which he equates with a life of virtue. We
moderns tend to think that happiness is subjective. Schooled in the logic of the
Declaration of Independence, Americans believe that people have many different notions
of happiness, but they recognize the necessity of securing the conditions for the pursuit of
happiness. Since the conditions are means to achieving another end, what the state does
is, in one respect, lower than the private ends it serves. However, because private notions
of happiness are merely subjective, whereas the conditions of pursuing it are objective,
what the states does is, in another respect, higher. Modern people have invented a
concept or term for the matrix of which state and society are a part: culture. But our
concept of culture includes art and thought, whereas the classics thought that “polis and
wisdom are not only distinguishable, but have a fundamentally different character,
insofar as the polis is always this or that polis, whereas wisdom is universal.” We no
longer recognize the tension the classics saw between the polis and philosophy, because
of a great movement called the Enlightenment, which suggested that wisdom could be
 xv

diffused among the whole population so that the difference between the theoretically wise
and theoretically unwise ceases to be important.

Aristotle argues not only that the polis is the highest and most comprehensive
form of human association, because it has the highest and most comprehensive
end, but also that both that end and the polis are natural. The polis is natural not
merely because it is composed of smaller associations or parts, households, which
develop naturally. It is natural because human beings can achieve their full
development or completion only in such an association. So understood, the polis
embodies the understanding of nature as a term of distinction and, Strauss points
out, nature so understood can be used in the plural. Each kind of thing has its own
nature. That nature defines it and its limits. Later in the Politics Aristotle thus
suggests that the polis is natural in a third respect as well: it is a society large
enough to fulfill all of man’s essential natural needs, but small enough to be
commensurate with the limitations of man’s natural powers of knowing and
caring. The proposition that the polis is natural also means that, in contrast to the
poets, Aristotle does not think that the polis is sacred.

Having examined Aristotle’s argument that the polis as a whole is natural, Strauss
follows Aristotle by looking at its parts. Aristotle begins with the association
between master and slave that he argues is a necessary part of the household
(oikos), and asks whether slavery is natural or conventional. Once again, Strauss
notes that nature provides the standard of what is just or unjust. Using the relation
between soul and body as his primary example, Aristotle first suggests that nature
as a whole is hierarchical. He then maintains that a human being who can
understand and obey the commands of reason but cannot formulate such
commands for himself is naturally a slave, but that it is unjust to enslave prisoners
of war who are not naturally slaves as the Greek customarily did.

The art of household management includes knowledge of how to acquire and use
the non-human as well as human forms of property necessary to live a good life.
But Aristotle distinguishes this natural form of acquisition, which is limited to
what one can use, from the unlimited and therefore unnatural art of making
money. Aristotle points out that everything has two kinds of uses—one proper to
itself and another not. A shoe, for example, can be worn or exchanged for
something else. Strauss observes that Marx picked up this Aristotelian distinction
between use and exchange value but that Marx gave it a very different
interpretation, because he combined it with Locke’s labor theory of value.
According to Locke and Marx, the origin of all true wealth is human production;
nature merely supplies the almost worthless materials. At this point early in the
Politics Aristotle suggests, on the contrary, that nature provides us with what we
need. Modern thinkers consider nature to be something to be conquered but,
Strauss points out, this modern view faces the difficulty that man owes his ability
or potential to conquer nature not to himself but ultimately to nature itself.
Aristotle’s contention that the polis is natural also means that it is not, contrary to
early modern political philosophy, the product of a contract or convention.
 xvi

In contrast not merely to modern political philosophers but also and more
immediately to Plato, as Strauss emphasizes, Aristotle argues that the polis is a
distinct kind of association, not only different from but also higher than the
household.

Recognizing his inability to comment on all parts of the text, Strauss selects the
arguments in book 2 which reflect Aristotle’s distinctive approach. In contrast to
all his other treatises, Strauss observes, Aristotle begins his examination of the
ideas of others about the best regime by explaining that he is not criticizing the
others from ambition, because ambition is a passion that is particularly prominent
in politics.xxii He then argues that the communistic institutions Socrates proposes
in the Republic would not be desirable, because human beings care only for things
and people they understand to be their particular responsibility, i.e., because of
their natural limitations as human beings. Strauss also points out that Aristotle
appeals to the sense of decency of the well-brought-up people he explicitly said
he was addressing in the Nicomachean Ethics (1.1095b5-7), by arguing that the
abolition of the private family would result in incest and that the abolition of
private property would make it impossible for anyone to be temperate or
generous.

Although Aristotle acknowledges both the novelty and beauty of the proposals
Socrates makes in the Republic, he concludes that “if these proposals were sound,
then people would have become aware of them” (2.1264a1-3). And Strauss
comments: “Aristotle does not say that everything that is, is reasonable. But he
says that what is reasonable is somehow known” (session 11). The political
consequences of Aristotle’s contention become manifest in his criticism of
Hippodamus. Aristotle shows that Hippodamus’s apparently simple scheme of
dividing everything—citizens, laws, land—into thirds results in immense
confusion, because he does not take account of the distinctively political but tries
to interpret it on that basis of concepts supplied by science that deal with the
subhuman. The most important example is his proposal that anyone who invents
something of use to the city should be honored. Aristotle does not deny that
human beings have made great progress since ancient times, not only in the arts
and science, but also in politics. But, he warns, improvement in politics always
comes at a cost because law owes it power to custom or habit alone—not to its
intrinsic reasonableness. Any change in the law thus weakens the law. Strauss
observes that this problem is still with us. The polis as polis has a recalcitrance to
reason which cannot be overcome. That thought is expressed by Plato in his
simile of the cave, but there are many other statements of it, especially in the

In his Nicomachean Ethics, which constitutes the first part of Aristotle’s study of
xxii

politics, Aristotle insists (1.1094b13-29) that the study of any subject must be suited to
the character of the subject. Later in these lectures Strauss observes that the Politics
contains the only two oaths to be found in Aristotle’s entire corpus, and he suggests that
the use of oaths reflects the controversial and passionate, because partisan, character of
political arguments.
 xvii

Anglo-Saxon world, e.g., in Federalist 49, Edmund Burke, and Macaulay’s

History of England.xxiii

Strauss makes only one more point about the contents of book 2 before he goes on
to book 3, which contains “the fundamental discussion of Aristotle’s Politics”
(session 11). One of the three actual regimes which are supposed to be good—
Sparta, Crete, and Carthage—is not a Greek city. Contrary to some historicist
claims, Aristotle’s analysis of the polis was not limited to “Greek city-states.”

At the beginning of book 3 Aristotle again raises the question, what is the polis?
That’s strange, Strauss comments, because Aristotle has apparently already told
us what the polis is in book 1. Aristotle raises the question again because the polis
is shaped or defined most decisively by its form of government or politeia.
Politeia is often translated as “constitution,” but that is too legalistic. The politeia
refers to the group of people who factually rule and thus make or determine what
the law is. The question that animates political life is not whether people should
live in a political association or not, but who should rule. xxiv

Recognizing that there are different forms of government, Aristotle develops a

basic table of six forms on the basis of the number of people ruling and whether
they rule for the common benefit or in their own interest: The one monarch, few
aristocrats, or many people in a polity rule for the common good, whereas a single
tyrant, few oligarchs, and the multitude in a democracy rule in their own interest.
As Aristotle makes clear in later books, there are varieties of these basic types and
there can be mixtures.

Strauss admits that at first glance Aristotle’s understanding of democracy as the

rule of the many poor in their own interest appears to be very far from modern
liberal or representative democracy. But Strauss points out that by “poor”
Aristotle means those who have to work for a living. Modern and ancient
democracies have something fundamental in common because neither has a
property qualification for holding office. Modern democracy is more egalitarian
than ancient democracy inasmuch as it does not recognize the legitimacy of
slavery, but it is less democratic insofar as it does not select public officials
primarily by lot. Election of individuals on the basis of merit is from an
xxiii
Strauss admits that Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus’s proposal seems to contradict
what he says later (Politics 3.1287a30) about law as reason (nous). But, Strauss notes, in
the Ethics (10.1180a22) Aristotle says that it is speech derivative from some practical
wisdom. There is moreover another reason for the difference between the Thomist and
Aristotelian teaching concerning the relation between reason and law. According to
Aristotle, laws differ according to regime, and most regimes are defective. Hence their
laws cannot be simply reasonable.
xxiv
This emphasis on the essentially controversial, because divisive, character of political life and
debate most distinguishes Strauss’s attempt to revive an Aristotelian understanding of politics
from the attempts of contemporary scholars such as Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), and Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), to revive Aristotelian “virtue ethics.”
 xviii

Aristotelian point of view an aristocratic institution; it characterizes the mixture of

democracy and aristocracy that Aristotle later suggests is the best regime
generally possible.

Political life is characterized by conflict because different groups raise claims to

rule on the basis of different understandings of justice. Democrats say that equals
should receive equal amounts, but oligarchs retort that unequals should be
rewarded unequally. Citing his discussion of justice in his Ethics (5.1134b18-
1135a8), Aristotle agrees that justice is proportional. He asks, however, equal and
unequal in what? Democrats assert that they are equally free; oligarchs seek
recognition for their superior wealth. But, Aristotle observes, a political
association is not merely a defensive league or a trading alliance. It exists for the
sake of living a good or noble life. Therefore, those with the most virtue have the
best claim to rule. The question, then, is how this virtue is actually distributed.
Each member of the demos may be less noble than one of the few gentlemen, but
the demos as a whole may possess more virtue than a few. Likewise, if virtue
gives someone a right to rule, the one best man may have the most. Aristotle thus
presents his strongest argument on behalf of democracy followed by the case for
the other extreme, rule by the one best man. Not merely may a democratic people
possess more virtue in sum than its few most distinguished citizens. Using the
example of an architect and the inhabitants of a house, Aristotle observes that
there are some decisions that can be made better by the many people who receive
services than by the few who provide them. However, although the members of a
particularly virtuous demos would be able to participate in making deliberative
and judicial decisions, they are not capable of serving in the highest offices. xxv
Because not all peoples are virtuous and their virtue is in the best case limited,
Aristotle then turns to consider the claims of the one best man. Someone might
object that not a man but the law should rule because law is intellect without
passion, but, Aristotle observes, laws have to be formulated and administered by
human beings. Because human beings are passionate and tend to favor
themselves, it is best for more than one to rule and for them to rule and be ruled in
turn. However, if there is one person so obviously superior to all others as to be
virtually a god among men, it would not be just for that person to be ruled by
anyone else.

Although book 4 clearly follows book 3, Strauss observes, the last sentence in
book 3 points to the discussion of the best regime in books 7 and 8. The reason for
this ambiguity in the order of the text is that “one cannot see the more or less
imperfect regimes discussed in the central books without awareness of the best”
(session 14). Because Strauss has emphasized Aristotle’s contention that the

xxv
Athenian democracy was not, in fact, as purely democratic as Aristotle’s description, Strauss
observes, but Aristotle’s “democracy” is not an “ideal type.” It was not Aristotle’s discovery; he
simply took the claims democrats actually made, extended and clarified them. Modern readers
tend to take their understanding of Athenian democracy from Pericles’s funeral oration, but
according to Thucydides (2.65) Athens under Pericles was the rule of one man and a democracy
only in name.
 xix

nature of a thing can be understood only from its complete development, he thus
turns to Aristotle’s discussion of the best regime before he comments on
Aristotle’s discussion of the lesser, but more frequently encountered regimes in
the central books of the Politics.xxvi

To determine what the best regime is, Aristotle reasons, we need to know what is
the most choiceworthy form of life. In his Nicomachean Ethics he showed that
there are three kinds of goods. Since both external and bodily goods are means to
the achievement of the goods of the soul or virtue, he reasons, both individuals
and polities should devote themselves to the acquisition and exercise of virtue.
The end of the polis and the individual are thus the same. Aristotle observes,
however, that there are two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. Because
happiness consists in activity and the moral virtues are matters of practice, it
might seem that they are the end. However, activity does not have to involve other
people; on the contrary, Aristotle argues, contemplation is the highest and most
self-sufficient form of activity. And Strauss comments that that means the end of
the polis and the end of the individual are only analogous, not identical.
According to Aristotle, a polis should concentrate on perfecting its internal order
rather than expanding imperialistically, but a polis does not philosophize.

In constructing the best regime, Aristotle begins with the matter. There must be a
large enough number of people to make the polis self-sufficient, but not too many
to prevent them from knowing, trusting, and supervising each other. Aristotle then
observes that there are seven indispensable kinds of work in every city provided
by farmers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, the wealthy who supply a store of goods,
priests, and the government. Some people may perform more than one function,
e.g., farmers can be soldiers. But, Aristotle insists, those who do not contribute to
the end of the polis should not be citizens. Farmers, artisans, and merchants
should be excluded, because they do not have the leisure required to acquire and
exercise virtue. In the best regime, Strauss comments, there is no demos. The
necessary tasks will be performed by slaves. To prevent them from rebelling, as in
Sparta, the slaves should be promised emancipation if they behave. But, Strauss
points out, if the slaves are capable of living as free men, they are not slaves by
nature. This necessary injustice could be defended so long as there is an economy
of scarcity. Most people would not have had the leisure needed to acquire the
education requisite for ruling, and no one wants to be ruled by the unwise.

In the seminars Strauss devoted entirely to Aristotle’s Politics in spring 1960 and fall
xxvi

1967 he follows the order of the text indicated by the Bekker numbers and takes up books
4-6 before 7-8. The emphasis Strauss puts on Aristotle’s discussion of the best regime in
these lectures distinguishes his presentation of Aristotle’s Politics here from the chapter
“On Aristotle’s Politics” in The City and Man (the only essay Strauss published that was
devoted exclusively to Aristotle). In concluding that chapter Strauss observes that “the
guiding question of Aristotle’s Politics is the question of the best regime,” but is that
question is “better discussed on another occasion.” The City and Man (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964), 48-49.
 xx

Aristotle goes into great detail about the generation of children, but the most
important question is education. Those who would participate in ruling needed to
be educated “liberally,” i.e., not as a slave. Although Aristotle recognizes that
skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic can be used in trade, he argues that
citizens need to learn them in order to contemplate (but not make) beautiful works
of music. Such contemplation, Strauss suggests, is a reflection, but merely a
reflection, of the excellence of the truly contemplative, philosophical life.

At the beginning of book 4 Aristotle insists that political science must do more
than describe the best regime, as Plato does, or praise an existing regime like
Sparta. To be useful to a legislator, political science must include knowledge of
all regimes, which sort is appropriate for what kind of people, how to preserve or
change each regime, and what the best generally possible regime is. People often
see two and only two kinds of imperfect regimes: democracy and oligarchy. In
fact, however, there are several kinds of democracies and several kinds of
oligarchies. The differences arise from differences in the occupations or sources
of wealth of the dominant class. In the best, because least extreme and thus least
unjust form of democracy, as in the best because least extreme form of oligarchy,
citizens are farmers who do not have time to gather in the city to attend political
meetings; as a result the laws rule. Better still is a regime which mixes democratic
and oligarchic elements so that rich and poor both share in rule and neither is
expropriated or oppressed.xxvii To indicate how such a mixture can be constructed,
Aristotle distinguishes three functions of government: deliberative, magisterial,
and judicial. This distinction differs from the “separation of powers” Montesquieu
later advocates, Strauss points out, because Montesquieu’s overriding interest in
checking and balancing the powers of the government is the security of the
individual whereas Aristotle declared in book 1 that the polis is prior to the
individual.

Investigating the causes of the preservation or change of regimes, Aristotle

emphasizes that the decisive factor is “that the number of those who wish a
regime to continue be greater than the number of those who do not” (1309b20).
As we might infer from Aristotle’s initial definition of political rule as the rule of
other free and equal people in turn, in contrast to the rule of a master of slaves or
father over children, Strauss points out that the polis is fundamentally democratic.
The principle of democracy is freedom, and Aristotle shows that that means that
democracy has two fundamental characteristics: first, ruling and being ruled in
turn means that no citizen is simply a subject; and, second, each is to live as he
pleases. “Some things in Aristotle remind one of Rousseau, but there is a very
great difference. . . . Aristotle does not suggest for one moment that in a
democracy there must be a total submission of everyone in every respect to the

Strauss explains that the “middle class” that holds the balance in such a regime is not
xxvii

“bourgeois.” Rousseau coined the term “bourgeois” to distinguish merchants from the “citizens”
willing to fight for their country. In ancient cities, Aristotle observes, those who bear heavy arms
became citizens (session 15).
 xxi

general will” (session 15). The permissiveness of ancient democracy is as

important as its egalitarianism.

The most obvious limitation of Aristotle’s political science from a contemporary

point of view is that he does not include the regimes that concern us most—liberal
democratic, fascist, or communist—in his sixfold schema. But, Strauss contends,
Aristotle enables us to understand their distinctive principle. By emphasizing the
polarity between the fundamentally democratic character of the polis with the
virtue and wisdom of the one best man, Aristotle lets us see that modern regimes
presuppose the harmonization of the ends of the people and the philosopher.
Modern science promises not only to enlighten the people but also to overcome
the economy of scarcity. Modern democracies are based on technology, as Comte
recognized when he predicted the rule of scientists (or, we would say,
technocrats).xxviii

And, Strauss suggests, the most fundamental limitation of Aristotle’s political

science comes to light from the most obvious difference between his political
science and ours. Aristotle understands politics in terms of its end, happiness, and
he understands happiness to be a life of virtue. Aristotle therefore devotes the first
part of his two-part treatise on politics to ethics. That would be inconceivable for
a contemporary positivist political scientist.

What, then, does Aristotle understand the end of politics—or virtue—to be? There
are two peaks of moral virtue, as Aristotle presents it in his Nicomachean Ethics:
justice in one’s relations to others, and magnanimity as the sum of all virtues in an
individual. In defining justice, Strauss observes, Aristotle distinguishes between
conventional and natural but he declares that both kinds of justice are variable.
Human beings can discern what is right (or just) under the circumstances, if they
are prudent. But prudence also has two parts or aspects. A prudent person must be
able not only to calculate the best means to any given end, but also to choose the
right end. And to be able to choose the right end, a person must have been brought
up well. But, Strauss asks, how do we know what constitutes a sound upbringing?
The answer we get from looking at the characteristics Aristotle attributes to the
magnanimous man is this: opinion.

Strauss contrasts Aristotle’s treatment of the moral virtues with Plato. In the
dialogues we not only hear characters like Callicles and Thrasymachus ask, as
Aristotle’s decent auditors never would, why be decent or virtuous? In the
Republic we also see Socrates provide a theoretical foundation for the virtues in
an analysis of the parts of the soul. Aristotle never does that. In De Anima he
states that theoretical wisdom is the end of man, but he never presents the moral
virtues merely or explicitly as the means of achieving that end. If the moral
virtues are seen merely to be means, he recognizes, they are no longer chosen for
their own sake or truly virtuous. The problem becomes even worse, Strauss

Cf. NRH, 36: “The difference between the classics and us with regard to democracy consists
xxviii

exclusively in a different estimate of the virtues of technology.”

 xxii

observes, if the virtues, like justice, are seen to be the necessary means of
achieving the common good. As Machiavelli dramatically points out, if virtue
consists in doing what is necessary to achieve the common good, what is usually
considered to be vicious behavior will in certain circumstances be virtuous. To
avoid Machiavellianism, we have to understand the polis as being for the sake of
moral virtue. That is what Aristotle explicitly does. He recognizes that moral
virtue is necessary to acquire theoretical virtue, but he does not pay attention to
theoretical virtue in the Politics, because philosophy is not part of the city. He
presents moral virtue as irreducible to any other end, not because it is absolute as
in Kant, but because moral virtue is the place where the requirements of the two
fundamental ends of man—theoretical life and society—meet. By arguing that
evils in cities will not cease until philosophers become kings but then showing
that is impossible by requiring the expulsion of everyone more than ten years of
age from the city, in the Republic Plato reveals the limits, character, and nature of
political things more clearly than Aristotle does. As illustrated by the noble lie,
“the political community must be ascribed a naturalness, a sacredness, which it
cannot truly claim, but which is necessary for its being a unity” (session 16).

At the end of his “Introduction” Strauss thus indicates more clearly than he does
in The City and Man why he begins his examination of classical political
philosophy with Aristotle, but moves back first to Plato and ultimately to
Thucydides. These lectures are explicitly only an “introduction.” In them Strauss
explains perhaps more clearly and directly than in his published works why he
thought political philosophy, which is not inherently an historical study, must
begin in our time with a study of the history of political philosophy.
 xxiii

The Leo Strauss Transcript Project

Leo Strauss is well known as a thinker and writer, but he also had tremendous impact as a
teacher. In the transcripts of his courses one can see Strauss commenting on texts,
including many he wrote little or nothing about, and responding generously to student
questions and objections. The transcripts, amounting to more than twice the volume of
Strauss’s published work, will add immensely to the material available to scholars and
students of Strauss’s work.

In the early 1950s mimeographed typescripts of student notes of Strauss’s courses were
distributed among his students. In winter 1954, the first recording, of his course on
Natural Right, was transcribed and distributed to students. Professor Herbert J. Storing
obtained a grant from the Relm Foundation to support the taping and transcription, which
resumed on a regular basis in the winter of 1956 with Strauss’s course “Historicism and
Modern Relativism.” Of the 39 courses Strauss taught at the University of Chicago from
1958 until his departure in 1968, 34 were recorded and transcribed. After Strauss retired
from the University, recording of his courses continued at Claremont Men’s College in
the spring of 1968 and the fall and spring of 1969 (although the tapes for his last two
courses there have not been located), and at St. John’s College for the four years until his
death in October 1973.

The surviving original audio recordings vary widely in quality and completeness, and
after they had been transcribed, the audiotapes were sometimes reused, leaving the audio
record very incomplete. Over time the audiotape deteriorated. Beginning in the late
1990s, Stephen Gregory, then the administrator of the University’s John M. Olin Center
for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy funded by the John M. Olin
Foundation, initiated the digital remastering of the surviving tapes by Craig Harding of
September Media to ensure their preservation, improve their audibility, and make
possible their eventual publication. This remastering received financial support from the
Olin Center and a grant from the Division of Preservation and Access of the National
Endowment for the Humanities. The surviving audio files are available at the Strauss
Center website: https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/courses.

Strauss permitted the taping and transcribing to go forward, but he did not check the
transcripts or otherwise participate in the project. Accordingly, Strauss’s close associate
and colleague Joseph Cropsey originally put the copyright in his own name, though he
assigned copyright to the Estate of Leo Strauss in 2008. Beginning in 1958 a headnote
was placed at the beginning of each transcript, which read: “This transcription is a written
record of essentially oral material, much of which developed spontaneously in the
classroom and none of which was prepared with publication in mind. The transcription is
made available to a limited number of interested persons, with the understanding that no
use will be made of it that is inconsistent with the private and partly informal origin of
the material. Recipients are emphatically requested not to seek to increase the circulation
of the transcription. This transcription has not been checked, seen, or passed on by the
lecturer.” In 2008, Strauss’s heir, his daughter Jenny Strauss, asked Nathan Tarcov to
 xxiv

succeed Joseph Cropsey as Strauss’s literary executor. They agreed that because of the
widespread circulation of the old, often inaccurate and incomplete transcripts and the
continuing interest in Strauss’s thought and teaching, it would be a service to interested
scholars and students to proceed with publication of the remastered audio files and
transcripts. They were encouraged by the fact that Strauss himself signed a contract with
Bantam Books to publish four of the transcripts, although in the end none were published.

The University’s Leo Strauss Center, established in 2008, launched a project, presided
over by its director Nathan Tarcov, and managed by Stephen Gregory, to correct the old
transcripts on the basis of the remastered audio files as they became available, transcribe
those audio files not previously transcribed, and annotate and edit for readability all the
transcripts including those for which no audio files survived. This project was supported
by grants from the Winiarski Family Foundation, Mr. Richard S. Shiffrin and Mrs.
Barbara Z. Schiffrin, Earhart Foundation, and the Hertog Foundation, and contributions
from numerous other donors. The Strauss Center was ably assisted in its fundraising
efforts by Nina Botting-Herbst and Patrick McCusker, staff in the Office of the Dean of
the Division of the Social Sciences at the University.

Senior scholars familiar with both Strauss’s work and the texts he taught were
commissioned as editors, with preliminary work done in most cases by student editorial
assistants. The goal in editing the transcripts has been to preserve Strauss’s original
words as much as possible while making the transcripts easier to read. Strauss’s impact
(and indeed his charm) as a teacher is revealed in the sometimes informal character of his
remarks. Where no audio files survived, attempts have been made to correct likely
mistranscriptions. Brackets within the text record insertions. Ellipses in transcripts
without audio files have been preserved; whether they indicate deletion of something
Strauss said or the trailing off of his voice or serve as a dash cannot be determined.
Ellipses that have been added to transcripts with audio files indicate that the words are
inaudible. Administrative details regarding paper or seminar topics or meeting rooms or
times have been deleted without being noted, but reading assignments have been retained.
Citations are provided to all passages so readers can read the transcripts with the texts in
hand, and footnotes have been provided to identify persons, texts, and events to which
Strauss refers.

Readers should make allowance for the oral character of the transcripts. There are
careless phrases, slips of the tongue, repetitions, and possible mistranscriptions. However
enlightening the transcripts are, they cannot be regarded as the equivalent of works that
Strauss himself wrote for publication.

Nathan Tarcov Gayle McKeen

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor

August 2014
 xxv

Editorial Headnote

This transcript includes sessions 10 to 16 of the course Introduction to Political

Philosophy. These sessions address Aristotle’s Politics and in session 16 provide
reflections on the differences between Aristotle’s thought and that of Plato. The transcript
of sessions 1 to 9 has been published by the University of Chicago Press as Leo Strauss
on Political Philosophy: Responding to the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism
(2018) and will be added to the Center’s website in 2020. Those sessions, as editor
Catherine Zuckert notes in her introduction, begin with a critical examination of “the two
contemporary schools of thought that have led many people to believe that political
philosophy is no longer possible: ‘positivism’ and ‘historicism.’” Sessions 1-7 deal with
Comte and post-Comtean positivism (Simmel, Weber, Arnold Brecht and Ernst Nagel)
and with the historicism of Nietzsche and Collingwood. Session 8 turns to the break with
classical political philosophy effected by Hobbes, followed by a discussion of Rousseau
and Kant in sessions 8 and 9. Strauss’s discussion of classical political thought begins
with a consideration of “nature” in Homer in session 9.

The edition of the Politics assigned for the course is The Politics of Aristotle, edited and
translated by Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).

The transcript of session 10 is based upon the existing audio file. The transcript of the
remaining sessions, 11-16, for which there are no surviving audiotapes, is based upon the
original transcript, made by persons unknown to us. Ellipses in the original transcript
have been retained; ellipses in brackets ([. . .]) indicate replace the transcriber’s
“inaudible” unless otherwise noted.

This transcript was edited by Catherine Zuckert, with assistance from Les Harris and
Philip Bretton.
 1

Session 10: no date

Leo Strauss: [in progress]—prescientific or prephilosophic thought, whereas in modern

times, these concepts are inherited and they are ready for use. Used, therefore, and which
is more important, transformed, but no longer originally required, which implies that if
we wish to understand the modern concepts which came into being through the
transformation of those concepts inherited from classical antiquity, 1 we have to return
first to the classical basis if we wish to understand the modern concepts. Classical
political philosophy, we can also say, is related to political life directly, not through a
nonpolitical medium [such] as the tradition of political philosophy or a nonpolitical
political science, as in our age. And the simple sign of that is that in classical political
philosophy there are no technical terms to speak of. The terms are terms used in ordinary
political life—in the marketplace, in senates, in cabinets—but not peculiarly scientific or
academic terms, whereas the opposite is true in modern times and [was] already to some
extent in the Middle Ages. The classical political philosophers tried to understand
political life as the citizen and the statesman understand it, with this difference: that they
tried to look further ahead or afield than the practical men do, but not in a different
perspective. They are not standing as it were outside and observing political life, the big
fishes swallowing the small ones, but in the perspective in which they are seen in political
life.

One can also say that the method of classical political philosophy is presented by political
life itself. In all political life we find conflicts between individuals and groups, the
conflicting parties asserting opposed claims, ordinarily in the name of justice. Now both
sides use arguments in support of their claims. Not all these arguments are solid, but they
supply nevertheless the starting point for any proper understanding of what supports the
claim of the opposed parties. The method is therefore to follow up and consider critically
the arguments presented on both sides and on this basis reach an impartial decision,
because this is the primary form in which the political philosopher appears: as the arbiter,
the impartial arbiter between the groups opposing opposed claims, an arbiter who will
give each side its due. So the political philosopher is then primarily the umpire par
excellence, the underlying thought being: he is a good citizen, and the duty of the good
citizen is to make civil strife cease and to create by persuasion agreement among the
citizens. He must not be a partisan.

Now in order to understand more fully the phenomenon of the political philosopher in its
original form, we have to consider the fact that, as the umpire, the political philosopher is
a citizen like every other citizen: he belongs to this or that city, as a rule, by birth: son of
a citizen father and citizen mother. As such, he cannot fulfill his function in a city other
than his own. His work is not transferable from his city to any other city. Yet one
observes soon that2 while this work as such seems to be nontransferable, there are
necessarily in political life some skills which are [transferable]. For example, a general
may be lent to an allied city, in ancient times as well as in ours. Or someone may be
banished from his city, like Themistocles was from Athens, and he may prove to be an
 2

excellent advisor to the enemy of Athens, the king of Persia. Or later on, Alcibiades, who
also had to flee from Athens and yet was the best advisor whom the Spartans could find:
since he knew the weaknesses of Athens better than anyone else, he could become an
excellent traitor to his fatherland. i

So there are skills which are transferable, and to the extent to which they are transferable
they are also teachable, in principle, like any other art. The teaching of the political arts
developed first as that of one important part of the political art, which is the art of
speaking. All political action, if it is reasonable, is based on deliberation. The deliberation
takes place by means of speech. In a democracy, surely that means of public speech. And
the art of public speech proved to be susceptible of being taught by teachers of that art, of
the art of rhetoric. And prior to classical political philosophy, we can say, political
science as a transferable thing had emerged as the art of rhetoric. And at the end of his
Ethics, Aristotle takes issue with those people who say the political art is simply the art of
rhetoric, a view which according to Aristotle is very erroneous. ii But at any rate, this was
a fact, and this is surely not an accident, that the part of the political skill which was
originally raised to the level of a teachable art was the art of rhetoric.

Now this is insufficient, from the classical point of view. Deliberation deals in the first
place with measures, as we would say—say war and peace, and the other things—but
also with things of a more permanent character: war or peace now, the question of the
moment. And these permanent things are the laws; therefore the more important, the
broader object of deliberation is legislation. And that political science in the original
sense of the term, where it is identical with the political skill, the skill of the statesman,
was raised to the level of a transferable teaching when it could become the teaching of the
art of legislation, the highest political art—as Aristotle says, the architectonic art, related
to all other arts as that of the architect to that of the carpenter and other artisans
connected with building houses. iii As the net result, the political philosopher then comes
to sight not simply as a legislator, but as a teacher of legislators. Every legislator has to
do with the particular situation of this city, located here and there with these and these
enemies, these and these resources, and so on, and he tries to do the best for that city. But
he cannot do this without having implicitly notions of what is simply good for the city as
such, notions which he adapts to this particular city, not necessarily being aware of the
universal principles of preference implied in what he is doing here and now. The teacher
of legislators, i.e., the teacher of men who are supposed to give laws or to elaborate codes
for the most different cities, cannot possibly be bound by the requirements of this or that

i
Themistocles, an Athenian general and statesman, was the great hero of the Persian War who
later fell out of favor and was exiled from Athens. He gained the confidence of the Persian king,
who assigned to him several cities in Asia Minor; see Thucydides 1.135-138. Alcibiades was a
prominent Athenian political figure who fled the city in 415 under suspicion of various religious
offenses and generally of harboring subversive ambitions. He took refuge among the Spartans,
whom he persuaded to establish a permanent fort at Decelea in Attica, to the detriment of the
Athenian war effort. He later lost credit with the Spartans and eventually returned to Athens. His
exploits are described in Thucydides, books 5-8.
ii
Nicomachean Ethics 10.1181a14-15.
iii
NE 1.1-2.
 3

situation of this or that city. He must think primarily in universal terms. Now these are
then the two figures, we can say, in which the political philosopher primarily appeared in
Greece: the umpire par excellence, and the teacher of legislators. There is a connection
between these two things. The umpire has to do with the settlement of controversies.
Now the fundamental political controversy concerns, as we may provisionally say, the
form of government: should it be a democracy, oligarchy, and so on. This is the
fundamental controversy. And the settlement of this controversy is prior; [it] precedes
legislation proper, for all laws are to be made with a view to the form of government.
Inheritance, publicity of speech, whatever you have, depends on the form of government.
Therefore, by being the teacher of legislators, the political philosopher is the umpire par
excellence.

Now these two considerations of which I reminded you—the distinction between physis
and nomos, and what is implied in Hegel’s remark about the difference of study in
ancient and modern times iv—these two general considerations indicate the minimum
conditions with which one must comply in order to have an access to classical political
philosophy. But this is only a minimum condition. In order to understand classical
political philosophy, or in order to study it properly, we have to wonder where we should
begin our study of classical political philosophy. My answer would be: with Aristotle’s
Politics. Not with Plato, for the writings of Plato, the Republic especially but the others
too, are dialogues [and] not, as Aristotle’s Politics is, a treatise. In the dialogues Plato
never speaks. One could say: Well, while Plato never speaks, Socrates speaks, and
Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece. Yet this is not so simple, as is sufficiently indicated by
the fact that Socrates was most famous for his irony. Never to speak oneself and to have a
spokesman who is famous for his irony: this is almost the same as if one were never to
speak. More specifically, irony, the word, has undergone many changes in the course of
the centuries, but in the primary meaning, or secondary meaning which for us is most
important, it means to speak with a view to somebody: ad hominem, as the Latins say. So
all remarks which, say, Socrates makes or any other Platonic spokesman, are made with a
view to the interlocutors: their situation, permanent or momentary, their character, their
abilities, their social position. And in order to find out what Socrates would say about the
same subject absolutely, not with a view to this or that kind of man, one would have to
translate the explicit statement into one which would be meant to be absolutely true. One
would have to transform the relative statements into absolute statements, and this is not
so easy to do, whereas in Aristotle we hear Aristotle himself talking to us all the time.
This difference between Aristotle and Plato is also the reason why it is not wise to begin
one’s study of classical political thought with the dramatic poets, who of course speak as
little by themselves as Plato does, and it would be a great mistake to believe that the
choruses present directly the view, say, of Sophocles. Even in the case of the historian
Thucydides, the most important, broad statements are not made by Thucydides himself
but by his characters in his speeches. And then again the question arises: What did
Thucydides think of the wisdom and understanding of the particular speaker?

So it is most prudent to begin the study of classical political thought with Aristotle. As
for the so-called pre-Socratic philosophers, we have only fragments of them, and to
iv
See session 9.
 4

interpret fragments, to understand them properly, is infinitely more difficult than to

understand complete books.

Now as for how to study Aristotle’s Politics in a very external way, meaning which
translation to use, I would think that the best translation available is that by Ernest
Barker, in the Oxford edition, which is also available, I believe, in paperback. v The
translation is useful especially for this reason, that Barker gives in brackets explanation of
the very terse statements which Aristotle makes and which to begin with would be wholly
unintelligible. It is true that in this respect Aristotle becomes much more loquacious or
talkative than he in fact is, and the peculiar charm that is characteristic of Aristotle is lost
in that way. But you cannot have it both ways and, to begin with, one must be grateful for
every help one can get. Barker has also written in this book a very useful introduction, in
which he takes up an issue which is quite confusing and quite useless, namely, the
question of the development, the so-called development of Aristotle’s thought from his
early time, when he was sitting at Plato’s feet, until his old age, something which some
philologists believed they could find out about, and Barker very wisely reaches the
conclusion that it is impossible to say anything about that. But since you may be
confronted with this issue of the development of Aristotle, it is quite good to read
Barker’s sober argument.

Let us then turn without any further ado to the beginning of Aristotle’s Politics. And we
will read at the beginning. Does every one of you have the edition? Well, I will read.

Observation shows us, first, that every polis (or state) is a species of association,
and, secondly, that all associations are instituted for the purpose of attaining some
good—for all men do all their acts with a view to achieving something which is,
in their view, a good. We may therefore hold vi that all associations aim at some
good; and we may also hold that the particular association which is the most
sovereign of all, the most authoritative of all, vii and includes all the others, will
pursue this aim to the highest degree, and will thus be directed to the most
sovereign, the most authoritative, of all goods. This most authoritative and
inclusive association is the polis, as it is called, or the political association. viii

Now Aristotle goes, as you see, immediately into the midst of things. The Politics
naturally deals with the polis. Now the first question which arises, to which we have
alluded before, is how to translate polis. Barker follows the usual procedure by saying

v
The Politics of Aristotle, ed. and trans. Ernest Barker (New York: Oxford University Press,
1962). Barker and Strauss use different translations of the key terms polis, politeia, and arête.
Barker renders these words state, constitution, and goodness respectively, whereas Strauss
translates them city, regime, and virtue. Strauss and his students substitute Strauss’s translations
of these key terms for Barker’s in many, but not all, of the citations of Barker presented
hereinafter. Substitutions of Strauss’s translations of these words are not indicated in subsequent
footnotes due to the frequency of their occurrence.
vi
Barker’s interpolation “[on the basis of what we actually observe]” is omitted.
vii
The words “the most authoritative of all” are not in Barker.
viii
Politics 1.1252a1-7.
 5

“the polis, paren: or the state.” But we have been reminded by Collingwood in some
passages which I read to you that this is a grave question, whether one can translate it in
this manner. Some people say today, in order to avoid the difficulty, “the city-state”—
which doesn’t make it better, because then we imply of course that we know what “the
state” is and think there is a kind of state called the city-state—and believe3 [they] solve
the question in this way.

Now let us look at a later political thinker and his definition of what Aristotle means,
roughly, by the polis, and that is Thomas Hobbes. Let us see how he defines the polis.
“This done”—I will not read what that is—“the multitude so united in one person, is
called a commonwealth; in Latin, civitas.”ix But “civitas” was the traditional translation
into Latin of the Greek “polis.” So “commonwealth” would be a tolerably good
translation of polis. Let us also see another translation of the term by Hobbes, which is
somewhat closer to our concern, in the Elements of Law, part 1, chapter 19: “This union
so made is that which men call nowadays”—he doesn’t say “a state”—“a body politic, or
civil society, and the Greeks call it polis, that is to say, a city.”x

So you see, even in the seventeenth century, the word “state” was not yet necessary, was
not the most natural4 [term] for a man like Hobbes to use.5 Hobbes translates “polis” by
“city,” which is the best translation of the word, and he gives the equivalent in English of
“a body politic or civil society.” Now we shall then not hesitate to translate “polis” by
“city,” but we must be clear that this is only replacing one riddle by another: the riddle
being the Greek word “polis,” and then we replace it by the riddle in English, called the
“city.” For when we speak of city, we surely do not mean the polis. Think of the city of
London, or the City in London, which has an entirely different connotation.

We have therefore to raise the question: What is the equivalent of “polis” in our world, in
our language? Surely not “the state,” for when we speak of the state, we imply a
distinction between the state and society, and the very beginning of the Politics which I
read to you shows that this is excluded. If we speak of state and society, we do not say
the state is the all-inclusive society and society is only a partial society. The simple and
best equivalent in English to what the Greeks meant by the polis is the country. When
you speak of the country, say, “the country is in danger,” you also don’t make a
distinction between state and society: you mean a single whole. The polis consists of the
town and countryside, and so does the country, which consists of towns, cities, and
countryside.6 “Country,” we may say, is the equivalent of “polis” on the level of our
everyday citizen’s understanding. But this is not sufficient, because we are not simply
thinking on that everyday level. I wonder whether the term “the country” is ever used in a
scientific treatise within political science or sociology, although it will occur frequently
in political speeches. This shows you the cleavage between prescientific understanding
and scientific understanding which is so characteristic of our age.

Now the passage which I read to you from the very beginning of the Politics shows that
the polis is concerned with the most comprehensive good, whereas the other associations,

ix
Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 17.
x
Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, pt. 1, chap. 19, sec. 8.
 6

the associations subordinate to the city, are concerned with subordinate, partial goods.
Now the term which Aristotle uses for this comprehensive good is in Greek
“eudaimonia,” ordinarily translated into English by “happiness.” Let us not go into this
great question of how to translate “eudaimonia”; let us simply use the word “happiness”
for the time being: the complete human good. Now the polis is concerned with the
complete human good. By happiness Aristotle understands above all virtuous activity,
and of course this means that you dispose of the conditions of virtuous activity. So if you
are very sick, for example, and for this reason not able to act virtuously in every respect,
this shows indirectly that health is a part of happiness. But7 of course different people
have different views of happiness, and even the same people at different times of their
lives. So one can assume—as men were more inclined to assume in modern times than in
ancient times—that happiness is strictly subjective, and then of course it becomes
impossible to define the end of the state in terms of happiness.

Political society cannot be defined, then, as a society devoted to happiness. This is

perhaps the best starting point for understanding the peculiar obstacle which we have in
understanding “polis.” Yet when we look around and admit that there is an innumerable
variety of notions of what happiness is, we can nevertheless hold that there is something
in common despite this enormous variety, and that is certain conditions of happiness.
Whatever you may understand by happiness, you need to be alive to pursue your
happiness. Furthermore, you must have the possibility of circulation: you must be free; if
you are chained or jailed, you are not likely to pursue your happiness, however you may
understand that happiness. And thirdly, you must have the possibility of pursuing
happiness as you understand happiness. I refer to a formula known to you all from the
Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are
understood here in the Declaration as man’s fundamental, natural rights, but one can also
look at them from the other point of view, in no way contradicting, that they are the
conditions for happiness, however happiness may be understood.

Now here we have then this strange situation. Men are striving for happiness. Life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are only in the service of their enjoyment of
happiness. Happiness is the end; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are means, and
therefore lower. But on the other hand, whereas happiness is wholly subjective—
everyone understands something different by happiness—life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness are objective. Whatever you understand by happiness, you need life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Now men pursue happiness as each one understands
happiness, and this takes place partly in cooperation with others, and partly in
competition with others. This cooperative, competitive activity, where each aims at his
happiness, produces a kind of web, we can say; and this web is society, in
contradistinction to the state. The state only is concerned with the conditions as specified
before.

Now in this understanding of the relation of state and society, there is a peculiar
ambiguity. In one respect, the state is higher: it aims at something which all need,
something of objective validity. But these are all only means, and therefore lower. The
highest is no longer objective. In order to overcome this difficulty—this dualism where
 7

the order of rank between the two elements, state and society, is ambiguous—one must
turn to something broader, of which state and society as hitherto understood are parts, and
modern man succeeded in discovering such a thing, or in inventing it. And this matrix, of
which state and society and some other things are parts, is exactly what is ordinarily
understood by culture. When you speak of the culture of a tribe or a nation, or a city, it
means this broader thing, this broader association of which state and society are parts. I
would say that the concept of culture, now so widely used, is the equivalent of “polis” on
the level of theory, on the level of academic thought as distinguished from citizen-
thought, on which level the equivalent of “polis” is the country.

We would say, for example, that tragedy, dramatic poetry, belongs to culture—belongs to
culture, but not to the state. Yet according to the classics, tragedy has a certain moral
function—say, the purification of certain passions—and the moral function is inseparable
from the political function, therefore tragedy belongs to the polis, as it in fact did in
Athens. Surely tragedy is not exhausted by that moral-political function, but to the extent
to which it transcends it, it belongs to the sphere of wisdom—of wisdom which is no
longer a part of the polis. So in other words, what we would call culture is from the
classical point of view a composite consisting of the polis on the one hand, and of
wisdom on the other. And we learn from this, incidentally, that our concept of culture
presupposes a much closer connection between polis and wisdom than the classics’ did,
that so to speak every polis has its peculiar wisdom, a thought which the classics
implicitly rejected. Wisdom proper is universal, de jure—whether de facto is another
question.

Now by making this reflection (which could be enlarged) on the modern equivalents of
“polis,” we do justice to the truth of historicism, namely, to the fact that radical changes
have in fact occurred, so that the understanding of the most important and fundamental
terms has changed. Now is there any point which you think needs some further
clarification, or where you feel it could now be given? The last point is perhaps most
difficult to understand, 8 that polis and wisdom are not only distinguishable but have a
fundamentally different character insofar as the polis is always this or that polis,
particular society, whereas wisdom is universal—de jure, as I said, if not necessarily de
facto—whereas our modern concept of culture implies an assimilation of these two
things. Yes?

Student: But doesn’t the fact that the Greeks regarded tragedy as having a moral function
which in turn was inseparable from a political function imply that they regarded wisdom,
at least in the form of poetry, as being more subordinate to political—

LS: Ya, well, the word “wisdom” has many meanings. There is a practical wisdom which
essentially belongs to practical, political life. I meant now “wisdom” in a severer and
stricter sense, where it is theoretical wisdom, say, the understanding of man—in tragedy,
for example.
 8

Student: Well, the fact that tragedy and the tragic view has some theoretical wisdom in
it, and yet you say that the moral function of tragedy in Greece was inseparable from the
political function . . . .

LS: The moral function belongs together with the political function. It is the purpose of
the city to make the citizens good and doers of noble deeds, as Aristotle says. xi That is
inseparable. And Aristotle calls the whole teaching, which includes his Ethics, a kind of
political investigation. That is not the point—I mean, the difficulty doesn’t lie there.
Well, let me start from another phenomenon which I have to touch upon later, without
which one cannot understand this whole of classical [thought]. Our present-day thought,
and already since some centuries, is based on a fundamentally different understanding of
the relation between theoretical wisdom and ordinary human life than the classics had,
and especially Aristotle had. And the change was effected by that great movement
popularly called the Enlightenment, but which is much more than the Enlightenment of
the eighteenth century, which comprises already the seventeenth century. 9 According to
the Enlightenment, wisdom can be spread, can be diffused among the whole population,
and therefore the difference between the theoretically wise and the theoretically non-wise
ceases to be very important. Does this thought make sense to you? The very notion of an
enlightenment of this kind is absent from classical thought, and therefore there is no
simple harmony between philosophy and the polis, between wisdom and the polis.
Wisdom10 is, according to its own intention, universal; the polis is necessarily particular.

You see, what we have done in modern times is also shown by the following fact. The
word “culture,” which means only cultivation in itself—or say, of the soil; but of course
men then speak also of the cultivation of the mind—was also used in former times in the
singular: cultura mentis. But then in the nineteenth century people began to use the term
“culture” in the plural: “cultures.” That is to say cultures were now understood to be
particular in the same way, or almost the same way in which political societies are
particular, you see, whereas according to the older notion there is only one culture of the
mind or of the heart. This assimilation of the culture of the mind to political life is a
modern phenomenon 11underlying our present use of the term “culture.” Today in the
ordinary meaning, even in anthropology, culture has nothing whatever to do with any
cultivation of the mind. When you speak of the culture of juvenile delinquents of a
certain district, you do not think seriously of any cultivation of the mind. That is a still
further step. But originally, in the nineteenth century “culture,” even if used in the plural,
meant high culture. Then it was applied to every “quote culture” of every tribe, and then
finally of course also to every subdivision of any society, however small and deplorable.

Now let us first follow Aristotle’s argument. Aristotle goes on to prove that the polis is
the highest and the most comprehensive association, and he tries to prove that by
considering the most important among the other associations. These are the family or the
household, and the village. 12 At this point we take up his discussion.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but if he be isolated from law and
justice he is the worst of all. Injustice is all the graver when it is armed injustice;
xi
Possibly a reference to Politics 3.1281a2-3.
 9

and man is furnished by nature with arms xii which are intended to serve the
purposes of prudence and virtue, but which may be used in preference for
opposite ends. That is why, if manxiii be without virtue, he is the most unholy and
savage being, and worse than all others in the indulgence of lust and gluttony.
Justicexiv belongs to the polis; for justice, which is the determination of what is
just, is an ordering of the political association. xv

Now what has he in mind here? Let us first take another consideration. The polis comes
into being out of natural associations, such as the household; it comes into being out of
natural associations, therefore it is itself natural. In a sense, it is even more natural than
the preceding associations. That is here Aristotle . . . difficulty . . . the translation . . . In a
sense, the city according to Aristotle is even more natural than the household and other
preceding associations. Why? Because all the other associations are in a way imperfect.
They do not fulfill all of man’s natural needs. Being imperfect, they point to the city as its
perfection. The end of a natural thing is most emphatically the nature of the thing. A
simple example: [if] we want to know the nature of a horse, we look at a grown-up horse
in a good state of health, etc., meaning that a colt or a sick horse is a defective horse. The
nature of a thing is the thing in its perfection. The point with which Aristotle is here
concerned is not only that the polis is natural, but above all that it is natural as city,
namely, as essentially different from the household. Some other thinkers to whom
Aristotle alludes, the most important of whom is Plato, had asserted there is only a
quantitative difference between the household and the city. xvi Aristotle says: No, there is
a qualitative, an essential difference, and that is to say, in other words, the polis is natural
precisely in its character as polis and not merely as an overgrown household. The key
implication of that is that if the polis is by nature—the thesis with which in a way the
whole book begins—13 [then] the polis is not by convention. It is not by contract, to use
the term used later on very frequently.
14This being the case, that the polis is by nature, it follows that man is by nature the
political animal. By nature. And why? Because what is the peculiarity of man, the thing
characteristic of man, the specific difference of man? The fact that man possesses logos,
speech or reason. And speech or reason is the reason why man is political. Aristotle says
man is more political, more social, than all other social animals. Logos, speech or reason,
socializes much more than anything else could, for without logos there would be only a
sensual awareness, in particular, awareness of pleasure and pain. And this does not bind
men together to the same degree as other kinds of awareness. Through logos we have
awareness also of just and unjust. We can go a step further and say that the perfect union
of two human individuals, of two individuals in general, is possible only in and through
thought: if they think identically the same. Such an identity regarding feelings can never
be known, even if they use the same words. If you take the simplest case: they follow the

xii
Strauss omits from his reading Barker’s interpolation “[such as, for instance, language].”
xiii
In the place of “man” Barker has “he.”
xiv
The interpolation “[which is his salvation]” is omitted.
xv
Politics 1.1253a31-39.
xvi
Politics 1.1252a7 ff.
 10

same demonstration of the same theory, there can be no doubt that their thoughts are fully
united. They think exactly the same.

The polis is natural to man also in another sense. As Aristotle explains [more fully] later
on in book 7,15 the city is what we would call a fairly small society: a society in which
everyone knows not everybody else (that would be a village), but in which everyone can
know an acquaintance of everybody else, so that he can find out about that man—for
example, if he is running for office—by direct knowledge. Also, the polis as Aristotle
understands it is a society large enough to fulfill all man’s essential natural needs, and
small enough so that it is commensurate with the limitations of man’s natural powers of
knowing and of caring. We can know, in a way we all know President Johnson and Vice
President Humphrey, but in which way? From the TV. That is not knowledge in the sense
in which you know someone with whom you have grown up, or who has grown up with
your parents, and so on. In other words, one can say that a polis is a society small enough
so that it can be addressed [by a speaker] without the help of any artificial things. 16 They
can be assembled in body and addressed by17 [him].

In the passage which I read to you, Aristotle makes it clear that man, to the extent to
which he is not political, to which he is prepolitical or apolitical, [and] not by accident
but incapable of living with others, is very bad. What Aristotle speaks 18 about [here]
reminds of what Hobbes said of the state of nature, and what Hobbes expresses by saying
that man is by nature—i.e., without social discipline, without being subject to laws—
19asocial. But what is the precise difference between Hobbes and Aristotle? That is of

some importance. Now why is man such a nasty being according to Hobbes? What makes
him so nasty? What Hobbes calls pride: concern with being superior to others and with
being recognized as superior by others. This is the reason why Hobbes regards him as
asocial. Now Aristotle would reply: But what you say proves men’s asociality proves
men’s sociality: a being who is radically dependent on the opinions of others is a
radically social being. In other words, Hobbes has not thought deeply enough; he
mistakes antisociality for asociality. But these antisocial people you see and hear a lot
these days, and they are of course in a very radical sense social. They are so much
concerned with being important, as they call it, and since they cannot become important
by legal ways, they try to get it by illegal ways. But “important” means of course being
looked up to by others, a radical sociality. Hobbes mistakes sociality for benevolence.
But malevolence also is social, also antisocial. And a radically asocial being would not be
in this sense malevolent.

Now the Aristotelian doctrine that man is by nature social became the traditional doctrine
throughout the ages until it was attacked, especially by Hobbes, in the seventeenth
century. And in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a running controversy
between those who said that man is by nature social and those who denied it. The
doctrines asserting men’s natural sociality were at that time called the socialist doctrines,
and the others the antisocialists. You see how much the meaning of these terms has
changed. By the way, what is true of socialism applies of course, in a way, still more to
individualism. For example, the Stoics are famous for their individualism, but in this
 11

sense they are of course socialists because they too teach the natural sociality of man.
This only in passing.

Now when Aristotle says that the polis is by nature, he means more than [that] the polis is
not conventional. He excludes also the view that another kind of political association is
by nature, at least to the same degree as the polis, and that is the ethnos, in Greek. We can
translate it by “tribe” or “nation”: a nonurban association of nomads, or tillers of the soil,
or whatever have you. One can 20explain the exclusion of the ethnos in the following
way. Man is born for civilization. “Civilization” is derivative from civis (citizen) and
civitas; and21 there is also a Greek equivalent for that, pointing to polis. Man is born for
civilization, and in a tribal life he cannot find that.

The proposition that the polis is natural means furthermore that the city is not sacred.
When Homer and other poets speak of the city, say of Troy, they call it the “sacred city.”
Aristotle calls it natural. This is also an important consideration. It is confirmed by the
fact that in Aristotle’s discussion of the virtues in the Ethics, piety does not occur.
Aristotle emphasizes in the Politics that the concern with divine things is a part of the
concerns of the city—temples, sacrifices, and so on. But he indicates the ambiguous
position of this concern by the following remark. In enumerating what the concerns of the
city are—one, two, three, four, five, and so on—he says, at the fifth and at the first place,
the concern with the divine things. In other words, from one point of view this is of
course the most important, the first place. But from another point of view it is not. This is
a hint which needs thinking through. The concern with the divine things is a part of the
concerns of the city but also it transcends the city, namely, in the form of philosophy,
which from Aristotle’s point of view is of course the highest form of the concern with the
divine things.

This view is, by the way, also confirmed by the Republic. The 22venerable old man
Cephalus, the father, at the beginning goes out to sacrifice, whereas Socrates discusses
the best political order with the younger men. One could find other examples. Surely this
peculiar secularism must not be identified with the modern secularism, for the simple
reason23 [that] Aristotle was not a man of the Enlightenment. But the situation is clearly
enough indicated at the beginning of Plato’s dialogue Timaeus, where a man, an
interlocutor, 24has been reminded by Plato’s Republic of the old Egyptian order, in which
the place occupied in Plato’s Republic by the philosophers is occupied by priests, and he
is not aware of the difference as Socrates or Plato were. It is definitely not a priestly
order, the polis, although it necessarily includes priests.

Now the bulk of the first book of the Politics is devoted to the household as the most
important part of the city, or to the management of the household. Management of the
household is in Greek oikonomia, from which the English word “economics” is derived.
In a way, Aristotle takes up the economic questions, but all within the context of the
management of the household. The question of finance and any public economy is not
taken up in any way. xvii

xvii
The tape was changed at this point.
 12

—except that he defended slavery. Now that is true, he defended slavery. I shall speak of
that immediately. But it is not sufficient to know only this fact, because then one doesn’t
know why he defended it and what are the conscious limitations of his defense. Aristotle
starts from the fact that slavery is a controversial thing. Some people say [that] to rule as
a master over slaves is against nature, for it is merely by nomos that one man is a slave
and the other a freeman, and by nature there is no difference. And since it is not based on
nature, it is unjust: it is merely an act of violence. Nature is violated by that institution.

Aristotle states the problem in these very simple terms: Is slavery natural or
conventional? If it is only conventional, it is, as matters stand, unjust. In order to answer
this question he must of course first define what is a slave. The answer is: a possession, a
piece of property which is animate. Not like a pot or a hammer, but more specifically, an
animate tool, not for the purpose of production of things, but for the purpose of life or
use, or action. Life is action, not production. Action or use, not production. Production is
only in the service of life, but not life itself. In other words, a slave is not understood here
as a tool of producing things in mines underground or in factory-like undertakings, but as
a household slave, as a helper for man in his life. 25Aristotle asserts that slavery properly
understood is natural. In order to show that, he starts from the fact that the whole of
nature has a hierarchic character. Everywhere we find higher and lower: something which
by nature rules, and something which by nature is ruled. The example nearest home is the
difference between the mind—the soul—and the body. Desire, passions: they belong to
the soul in contradistinction to the mind. And the mind is by nature the ruler of the
desires and the passions, and the soul in its turn is the ruler of the body. Also the
difference between the male and female, which is not limited to the human race, is 26a
sign of the hierarchic character of the whole, the male being the ruling part. The soul
rules the body, Aristotle says, like a master does, i.e., as if the body were a slave, namely,
by sheer command, not by persuasion. We cannot talk to our body as we can talk to our
anger, for example, and therefore the mind, the soul, rules the passions politically by
persuasion.

Now the slave participates in speech sufficiently as to be able to listen to speech, but not
to have logos within himself. This is Aristotle’s definition. And such a man is therefore
justly enslaved and no violence is done to him—on the contrary, for him it is useful to be
a slave, just as it is useful to his master to have him as a slave. Now what then is a natural
slave? A man who can understand in the way in which no animal can understand, no
brute animal can understand, and yet not sufficiently that he can guide his own life. He
needs someone else to guide him. Take an example of someone who can understand the
command: Bring five logs into the house—one, two, three, four, five. He can do that; no
dog could do that. But on the other hand, he couldn’t take care of himself because he
might be wholly incapable of controlling his desire for alcoholic beverages and for other
things. The greatest presentation of what Aristotle understands by a natural slave, now
from the less amiable side, is the presentation of Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest,
where, if you remember 27 the situation, the thought that Caliban deserves to be controlled
by Prospero, and at Prospero’s command to be tricked by Ariel and so on, is not a
shocking suggestion. The question is: How great can the political relevance of this fact
 13

be? Aristotle thought it is very great. So slavery is therefore natural if applied to people
who are by nature slaves. If it is applied to people who are not by nature slaves, it is
plainly injustice, so, for example, to enslave people merely because they have been taken
as prisoners in war, this is unjust.

Now we will see later on that this is not the last word of Aristotle on the subject. Later
on, in books 7 to 8, where he describes the best commonwealth as he sees it, slavery is
taken for granted, and he proposes there that the slaves be given the prospect of
emancipation. Now this would be clearly impossible in the case of natural slaves, because
they are by definition people who cannot be emancipated because they cannot take care
of themselves. Therefore Aristotle must there assume that you will have also slaves who
are slaves only by convention, i.e., who are unjustly slaves. How this can be reconciled
with what we read in book 1 we must postpone.

Now Aristotle continues the discussion as follows.

It is clear from this explanation of what the slave is that the rule of a master and
political rule are not the same [as Plato among others seems to have considered
it—LS] For the one, political rule, is rule over free men, the other is over slaves.
And the rule within the household is monarchical, for every household is ruled by
one man; while political rule is the rule over free and equals. The ruler is not
called ruler with a view to the knowledge which he possesses [as when we say a
man is a physician with a view to the fact that he possesses the ability, skill, and
knowledge of the physician—LS] but because he is such a one [meaning, because
he is a master—LS] And the same applies also to freemen and slaves [they are not
freemen or slaves because of peculiar knowledge which they possess—LS].xviii

Aristotle goes on to say that this does not mean that there is not a certain kind of
knowledge which slaves, for example, must have. There was a man in Syracuse, he tells,
who had a school for slaves where they learned the kinds of things they had to do in the
household. And it is also possible to say there is a kind of knowledge which the master
needs in order to give commands to the slaves. But Aristotle says this is not something
grand, this kind of knowledge, and he who can afford it will have a bailiff who takes care
of this kind of knowledge, and the masters themselves will lead a political life or will
seek for wisdom. Here you have the simple alternative: the truly human life is either
political life or the life of quest for wisdom: “philosophy” in Greek, an alternative to
which we shall have to come back more than once.

Now the next great theme, also belonging to economics, is that part which has to do not
with human beings, in particular slaves, but with other kinds of property. And here the
greatest question is the relation of moneymaking to management of the household.
Aristotle asserts that they are two entirely different things. The 28 distinction between
moneymaking and management of the household is based on a distinction between the
natural forms of property, of acquisition or possession, and those which are not natural.
The natural ones are essentially limited by what a man and his family can reasonably use.

xviii
Politics 1.1255b16-22. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
 14

The art of acquiring money is essentially unlimited, and therefore there is something
wrong with it, that a finite being should seek for infinite money. And among the natural
forms of acquisition, the most important is agriculture. Agriculture has a much higher
status, according to Aristotle and according to Plato, than commerce, industry, and
especially, which is the lowest, the lending of interest, which from Aristotle’s point of
view is altogether unjust or immoral.

Now we do not have to go into the details of Aristotle’s economic teaching, his teaching
regarding the natural and the unnatural forms of acquisition. [Some of these] points29
have a direct importance, and I will mention only one point. The distinction which Marx
makes with particular clarity between use-value and exchange-value is literally taken
from Aristotle. Marx makes of course a very different use for it, and naturally, because
for Marx the fundamental phenomenon in the sphere of economics is production, which
is not so in Aristotle. For Aristotle, the fundamental thing is the purpose of use—or if you
look at the other side, the gifts of nature rather than that which exists by means of human
production. Into this I cannot go. The main point which is so striking here as elsewhere is
the orientation by what is natural and not natural. Without it one cannot understand
anything of Aristotle’s teachings at any point. There is a natural way of earning a
livelihood and an unnatural [one], and the criterion is, for example, whether it is
determined, whether it has limits, or whether it is unlimited. What is natural is necessarily
limited, has a specific character. Nature means primarily the nature of a particular kind of
things, whether they are men or dogs or horses, i.e., things distinguished from others,
separate from the others, having a limit with a view to others. The unlimited is from this
point of view not natural. After having gone through the economic question, of which the
issue of slavery is a primary and in a way the most important part, Aristotle turns in the
second book to a new subject.

We have learned in our way that the polis is natural, its parts are natural, that there is a
natural slavery, there is a natural way of acquiring property. And now we turn to the
polis, but in which sense? Book 2 begins as follows.

Since we have the intention to contemplate regarding the political association,

which is the best of all, for those who can live to the highest degree as they would
wish, we must consider also the other forms of government, which some of the
cities use, those cities which are reputed to be well-administered, and if there
should be any others, which have been said (pronounced) by some people, and
which have the reputation of being good, so that we will see what is correct and
useful in them and what is not. xix

And so on. Now Aristotle turns then here to the question of the best form of government
(I will leave it at this provisional translation of the Greek word politeia). But before he
turns to this question, he looks at what we can learn from what others present us: 30[first],
cities which are reputed to be admirable; second, blueprints of cities which are reputed to
be admirable. You see, Aristotle proceeds in a strictly commonsensical way. He finds his
bearings by reputation, assuming that reputation is never entirely unfounded, surely not in
xix
Politics 2.1260b27-33. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
 15

reasonably free societies, and therefore it is of some help. But the strange thing is—for us
it is strange—that he treats the commonwealth, or the political orders which exist in fact,
say, in Sparta, in the same way in which he treats, say, Plato’s Republic. In other words,
whether this is an actual or a blueprinted order does not make any difference for
Aristotle. This is quite remarkable. The procedure is, incidentally, not historical; he
begins the discussion of these various regimes with Plato’s proposals in the Republic and
the Laws, then takes up the proposals by some earlier thinkers, and only then he turns to
the actual orders which have a good reputation, such as Sparta. Characteristically, not
Athens: Athens is, among the people whom Aristotle addresses, not reputed to be a good
polity, therefore it is treated with silence. We will discuss this next time.

Now among the discussions of the second book, the criticism of Plato is of course most
important, because Aristotle does here something which he did not do in book 1, namely,
show that the household—the family, as we can also say—is necessary. He only showed
that the polis is superior [to], is essentially different from, and broader and more
comprehensive than the family. But he did consider the possibility that there might be a
family-less, a household-less polis, which theoretically is possible: that is exactly what
Plato does in the Republic.xx So in the criticism of Plato’s Republic he shows why the
household, and private property, and private family are necessary. And this is one very
important point which Aristotle makes in book 2, and the other is his discussion of the
earliest political philosopher, as we can call him, Hippodamus, which you will also find
there, and I think it would be helpful if you could have read it next Wednesday. That will
facilitate the discussion. Now we have a minute or so left. Is there any point—yes?

Student:xxi I’m not sure exactly why Aristotle thinks that moneymaking is
unlimited . . . energy and cleverness of a man, and conventionally, by the nature of the
business, by laws—

LS: No, but a man has, say, acquired a hundred thousand dollars. There is nothing in the
nature of the case, 31as far as the economic situation is concerned, against his making, if
he can, a million dollars, a billion dollars, and so on and so on. But 32 if you do not
absolutize money, if you look at the whole context—and the whole context is human use,
use of the property by the property owner—then you arrive at limits. Unless you can say:
Well, instead of accumulating money, he will go in for ever more luxury; he will have
fifty yachts, and twenty country houses, and fifty whatever you do. But Aristotle would
say [that] if you look at it again concretely from the point of view of use, of good use, of
virtuous use, which would not 33exclude showing off, mere conspicuous consumption, as
well as stinginess, of course, then you would see you cannot go beyond a certain point,
that it is in itself limited. This is what he means. That you can accumulate as many
houses, or pieces of land, or diamonds in the same way in which you can accumulate
dollar bills, Aristotle knew (although he didn’t know of paper money), but he thinks
simply that money is a very great convenience but it has the temptation in it to make us
forget what it is for, that it is only a convenience. And this is a good example of what the
ancients meant by mere convention. A mere convention is a convenience, but a

xx
Republic, book 5.
xxi
This speaker is erroneously identified in the transcript as Mr. Levy.
 16

convenience which somehow pretends to be independent and therefore as it were runs

away from us. 34Is this not clear? Mr. Levy?

Mr. Levy: For Hobbes, the prepolitical state is one of war. What was the prepolitical
state or way of life of men, as Aristotle saw it? And also, why was the prepolitical state
insufficient . . . ?

LS: Well, have you ever lived in a village?

Mr. Levy: Yes.

LS: Not Greenwich Village. [Great laughter] Well, then you see there are certain things
which you cannot easily get there. The chances that you would meet there someone with
whom you can talk about the things which interest you are smaller than in a larger
[society]. Your natural needs, the needs of your mind, cannot be so easily fulfilled. And
you must not forget, of course, that any village in this country, or for that matter in
Europe, is a part of a larger whole and therefore not—you know? Disregarding that
entirely. Yes?

Mr. Levy: On the second point . . . in reply one could say, in Aristotle’s own terms,
forgetting about the present company, the many have no regard for the mind because only
force . . .

LS: Yes, well, as Aristotle says in the first book of the Politics, if we want to find out
what is natural, we must look at the healthy, and in this sense normal members of the
species and not at those who are in one way or the other corrupt or deficient. That there
are people who are perfectly happy without any cultivation of their mind is undeniable,
but there is something wrong with them.

Mr. Levy: What you’re saying is—

LS: They are—we call them sometimes dumb and other terms of this kind, which you
doubtless know as well as I do. And we cannot take our bearings by them. We should not
despise them, but we cannot take our bearings by them; and if they can be satisfied in a
very dull community, that doesn’t mean that we should be satisfied with that.

Mr. Levy: So what you’re saying is that two students of political philosophy who lived in
two different villages and wanted to go off and get married would make a city?

LS: Well, no, Aristotle would say if it is truly a village and not a part of a polis, then
there will not be any students of philosophy.

Mr. Levy: Ah, well, where did the city come from? Who knew to make a city?

LS: How will it come about? Well, 35 there are two ways of understanding that. That there
is a kind of need, say, common defense—I mean one of these crude needs which
 17

everyone can understand—and then some villages settle together, and out of this a polis
comes into being. And then once the polis is there, there is at least a chance for the higher
things to develop. As Aristotle puts it, the polis comes into being for the sake of life, i.e.,
of mere life—self-defense and so on—but it is for the sake of living well.xxii Living well,
not in the sense of what a glutton understands by living well, but living nobly. Now
whether36 this settling together of the city presupposes men of the greatest stature,
surpassing the greatest philosophers, the founders, that is a long question, you know, say
a man like Theseus, the mythical founder of Athens. That is a long question. According
to the popular view, of course, he was a hero, hērōs, and not merely a philosopher.
Whether Aristotle would accept that is a long question.

Mr. Levy: You mention civil defense. Was there generally war going on in the
prepolitical world, for Aristotle?

LS: I beg your pardon?

Mr. Levy: Was generally war going on in the world prepolitically according to Aristotle?
In the prepolitical world—

LS: I suppose both. There are peaceable and non-peaceable people, and also
communities. Ça dépend. There can be war, there will also be peace, that would not be
the point. But people can defend themselves better by settling together and living
together. Good. Well, then—

[end of session]
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xxii
Politics I.1252b29-30.
 18

23
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36
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Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 19

Session 11: no datei

Leo Strauss: [In progress] —theoretical knowledge of one kind or another in modern
times. Needless to say, in present-day positivistic political science, there is such a
mediation through positivistically-understood science; and therefore an external sign, the
importance of a technical vocabulary, something wholly alien to classical political
philosophy.

We turn then to the study of Aristotle’s Politics, to the first book, and there we see the
importance rather of the first consideration, of the difference between physis (nature) and
nomos, and then their direct relation to political life. How does this come [about]?

Aristotle takes issue there with Plato’s assertion that the city and household differ only
quantitatively, not qualitatively. In other words, he defends the dignity of the city against
an attempt to reduce the city, as it were, to the same status as the household. Furthermore,
Aristotle takes issue with those who assert that slavery is only conventional. Here again
he defends what he regards as a basic institution of the city. Now this defensive character
of the argument is connected with a fundamental problem, which we may state as
follows. The whole sphere of political life, or of political understanding, is attacked on
theoretical grounds, i.e., on grounds which are outside political life itself, and therefore
political life and political understanding is in need of a theoretical defense. To take a
present-day example: a defense of political prudence, of the particular ways of
understanding peculiar to political life, this is today endangered by Marxism, by the
assumed knowledge of the character of the whole historical process. You cannot simply
argue prudentially, practically, against Marxism: the defense of the sphere of prudence
must be theoretical because the attack is theoretical. Now the concept of physis, of nature,
especially in contradistinction to art, is of course at home in pretheoretical,
prephilosophic life. But the distinction between physis and nomos, which plays such a
great role in the discussion of theory, arises in theoretical reflection and therefore this
goes beyond the realm of prephilosophic understanding. Is this point clear? I will try to
restate it.

Aristotle, in contradistinction to modern thought but in particular also to Plato, assumes

that the political-moral sphere has a certain independence of all studies of a physical or
metaphysical nature, the reason being that the standards in the light of which we judge
morally and politically are accessible directly, without any theoretical deduction. We
know in a sufficient manner what moderation, magnanimity, and these other things are.
Aristotle does not even make the attempt to deduce these various virtues from something
more fundamental, as Plato does in the Republic, where he tries to show there are these
and these virtues and only these virtues, with a view to the fact that the soul has these
parts and order. Aristotle doesn’t do that. He doesn’t give a theoretical deduction; he
simply takes for granted that properly-bred men know these virtues from their training,
from their life, and what Aristotle does is he spells out what every gentleman would
know as a matter of course. Now this sphere, the ceiling of which is the understanding of
i
In the original transcript, the order of sessions 11 and 12 was reversed.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 20

the noble and the just, of the virtues, is not in need of being deduced from higher
principles or in need of being theoretically justified. But if this whole sphere of practice,
of prudence, is as such attacked, then it becomes necessary to defend it. And the attack
will of course be theoretical, and the defense will be theoretical. You seem to have
some . . .

Student: Well, can you really say, if in fact it turns out that prudence needs to be
defended on theoretical grounds from these theoretical attacks, that ordinary men, who
have certain opinions of virtues, know them? Or can you only say that they have true
opinion about them but that they really don’t know?

LS: Yes, but that would be in the main sufficient—true opinion.

Same student: But it’s only sufficient for practical purposes, they really don’t know
these the way they . . .

LS: But this is a very great question, whether they cease to be more than true opinions
within the context of Aristotle’s Ethics, because this would require a theoretical
deduction. 1The fundamental difficulty can be stated as follows. If you try to deduce
morality from something higher, then you believe you can answer the question: Why
should men be decent? But from the point of view of the decent man, the question must
never arise. Now Plato of course discusses this question. That is the meaning of this
famous argument of Socrates against people like Thrasymachus in the Republic and
Callicles in the Gorgias: that here are people, more or less clever, who refuse to
acknowledge the ordinary principles of decency, and Socrates is therefore compelled to
defend them. But such a defense you will seek in vain in Aristotle’s Ethics. Surely not in
the fundamental part, the first five or six books.

Now Aristotle, I said, looks at the polis in the light of nature. “Nature” means here
something different2 [from] the totality of phenomena. “Nature” is here used as a term of
distinction, namely, in contradistinction to art and nomos. “Nature” is understood in the
way in which we found it understood in the passage of the tenth book of the Odyssey,
which I read to you:ii “nature” is a term susceptible of being used in the plural. There are
natures. Each kind of thing, say, man or dog or horse, has its nature. The nature of man is
something radically different from the oak tree, for example. And furthermore, it is
implied and is stated by Aristotle explicitly [that] the nature of a thing is the end, telos.
For the nature of a thing is as a thing is when its coming-into-being has been completed.
Completed: the word in Greek is derived from the noun telos. Therefore the polis’s
naturalness is emphatically human association in its completed form. Nature is here
understood as it shows itself in living beings most clearly: we have a beginning, seed;
toward a peak; and then decay. But the end is the peak; in other words, the end does not
mean the sense in which death is the end of human life.

ii
See session 9, which appears as chapter 9 in Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy: Responding to
the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism, ed. Catherine H. Zuckert (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2018). The transcript of the first nine sessions of the course will be added to the
collection of transcripts on the Leo Strauss Center website in 2020).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 21

Just as there is a nature of a horse, there is a nature of man. That which makes man man,
which determines the nature of man, is logos, speech or reason. Hence the perfection of
man is above all the perfection of his speech or reason, more so than the perfection of his
body, although that is also important. Man has a variety of such perfections, and this is
one of the most striking differences between man and the brutes, a variety of excellences
or virtues. The most important here is a distinction between practical and theoretical
wisdom. There is a great difference among men in regard to reasoning, and these
differences are due not only to differences in training and exercise but also to nature.
There are, as the classics say, good natures and bad natures. That doesn’t mean good-
natured and bad-natured people, but gifted and non-gifted people. We notice [this] even
today when people speak of IQ’s, which is one part of this story, but also something else
which is not considered an IQ: if someone has by nature a very small power over his
desires—for example, if he is what is called “oversexed”—this is also part of a bad nature
from this point of view. So a well-tempered mixture of the temperaments is also
important, and in a way more important than the mere IQ. Now once we understand this
difference of natures, we see what the difference regarding the natural slave is. This is the
extreme case, the flooring as it were: a human being who is as strong and as stupid as an
ox. But still he is not quite as stupid, because otherwise he would be unable to understand
“one, two, three, four,” which obviously the ox cannot understand.

Now Aristotle turns in the second half of the first book to the investigation of property
and wealth, also from the point of view of nature. True wealth is wealth according to
nature.3 True wealth consists of things which by their nature are capable of being used for
what they are: food, for example, in contradistinction to money, as one sees clearly in
times of scarcity or especially of famine, when you cannot eat the money but you can eat
the food. Now let us see here a remark of Aristotle:

Of every piece of property there is a twofold use; and both uses belong essentially
to the thing, but not in the same manner. For the one use is peculiar to the thing
concerned, and the other is not. For example a shoe: you can use it for wearing it,
and you can use it for bartering it or selling it. For both are uses of the shoe.
Because even the man who gives the shoe to somebody else for money or for food
uses the shoe as shoe, because the other man, the buyer, wants to have a shoe and
not something else. But this bartering is not the proper use of it; for the shoe has
not come into being for the sake of exchange. iii

This is the distinction between use-value and exchange-value which has 4 [been made] so
famous by Karl Marx. But what is the difference for Marx? Let us see what Aristotle says
about that.

Property of this kind iv i.e., for the purpose of subsistence v is evidently given by
nature to all living beings, from the instant of their first birth to the days that their

iii
Politics 1.1257a6-13. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
iv
In Barker: “order.”
v
In Barker: “[that is to say, for the purpose of subsistence].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 22

growth is finished. There are animals which, when their offspring is born, bring
forth along with it food enough to support it until the animal can provide for
itself: this is the case with insects which reproduce themselves by grubs, and of
animals which do so by eggs. Animals which are viviparous have food for their
offspring in themselves, for a certain time, of the nature of what is called milk.

If it is evident that there is such a natural provision for food for growth
from birth (i.e., by nature), vi it is equally evident that we must believe that similar
provision is made for adults. Plants exist to give subsistence to animals, and
animals to give subsistencevii to men. Animals, when they are domesticated, serve
for use as well as for food; wild animals, too, in most cases if not in all, serve to
furnish man not only with food, but also with other comforts, such as viii clothing
and similar aids to life. Accordingly, as nature makes nothing purposeless or in
vain, all the aforesaid ix animals must have been made by nature for the sake of
men.x

That is the passage I had in mind.

Now what can this tell us about the difference between Marx and Aristotle? According to
Aristotle the origin of true wealth is nature: nature supplies these things to us, which we
modify, naturally, but the origin is nature. What is the Marxist view? Not only the
Marxist view, Marx only radicalized it—the very clear statement, much prior to Marx, is
Locke’s: the origin of all wealth is labor. And Locke makes clear the implication of that:
nature supplies us only with the almost worthless materials. We cannot deny that we need
some gifts of nature, but they are so to speak nothing: they are almost worthless
materials.xi In other words, according to that Lockean-Marxian view, the origin of true
wealth is human production. This is not a doctrine limited to the sphere of property but
[one which] has universal significance. From the Aristotelian point of view, knowledge is
the adequation of the intellect to the thing to be understood, i.e., knowledge is
fundamentally receptive, dependent. According to the modern view knowledge is
something like organization of sense data. Knowledge is fundamentally constructive, not
receptive. In other words, there is a strict parallel here to what we have observed
regarding wealth.

Now you see5 also in this passage that here “nature” is used in the singular. It is the same
nature which supplies food to men, beasts, etc. Nature is the source of everything which
is not made by man. 6 In order to bring out the relation between “nature” understood in the
plural and “nature” in the singular, you may say nature is the source of the natures. Now

vi
Barker indicates that these words are an interpolation: “[If it is evident that there is thus a
natural provision for food at birth, and during growth].” The clarification “i.e., by nature” is not
in Barker.
vii
Barker has “it” in the place of this occurrence of “subsistence.”
viii
Barker’s “the provision of” is omitted.
ix
The reader here inserts into Barker’s text “the aforesaid.”
x
Politics 1.1256b7-22. Barker translation.
xi
Locke, Second Treatise, chapter 5, section 43.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 23

in this passage which I read to you—this is a most striking and extraordinary passage—
nature is presented as very friendly to man. Aristotle seems to express a very optimistic
view, a naively optimistic view. Let us leave it at this appearance for the moment and
consider only the modern alternative, which is beautifully expressed in the very
frequently used phrase “conquest of nature.” You don’t conquer something kind to you.
Nature is here understood as enemy by implication. The difficulty which is faced by the
modern view of course is that the fact that man can conquer nature, that he has this in
himself, he does not owe to himself, but to nature: that he is so equipped, if only with a
potentiality, that he can become the master and owner of nature, in the words of
Descartes.

Now if we look at the [first]xii book of the Politics as a whole and the selection of the
themes therein, we find first the proof that the polis is by nature, that is to say that the
polis is a natural perfection of the natural associations, of the associations which are parts
of the polis; and the most important of these parts is the family or household. And
secondly, we find a discussion of the household—very reasonably, because it is the most
important part of the city. In the household as Aristotle understands it three associations
are united: male-female or husband-wife association; parent-children association; and the
master-slave association. But only slavery is discussed here in the first book, the reason
being that any relevant details regarding the parent-child and husband-wife relation
depend on the peculiar character of the political society; say in a stern, Puritan society,
these relations differ very much from what they would be in a very permissive society. So
you have to consider the society within which they occur, whereas the master-slave
relation is relatively independent of this whole as Aristotle implies.

Aristotle discusses there also the art or skill of acquisition, and especially the acquisition
of money. In the first book he shows that the family needs the city, that it is incomplete
without the city. But this leads to a new question: What is the other way around? Once
you have this city, a society large enough to defend itself, do you still need the family, the
smaller association? This is the issue of communism, in the way in which it is a concern
to Aristotle, and is taken up by Aristotle in the second book.

The second book is devoted to the examination of those political associations or

communities which were regarded as being outstanding. For the fact that the city is
natural does not mean, of course, that every city is in every respect according to nature.
This is true even of a horse; a horse is a natural being but it may be crippled by disease or
by accident. So not every natural being is in every respect according to nature, and
therefore we have to find out precisely what would be a city which is in every respect
according to nature, according to the nature of the city. Aristotle pays equal attention to
those which are famous and reputed to be good, and to those which are, as he puts it,
“merely written” or, as we would call it, blueprinted. You see how little Aristotle is
“quote a realist” in the colloquial sense of the term. And the reason is [that] it is by no
means certain that any actual political order is simply good, therefore we have also to
consider the blueprinted ones. Maybe they are superior in one respect or another.

xii
The transcript has “third,” which is clearly an error.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 24

Now Aristotle has however a special reason for the examination of the available political
orders, and this he states at the beginning: “We will engage in this examination in order
to see what is correct and useful of the various institutions, and furthermore to avoid the
impression that we are trying to show off our wisdom by presenting some other
proposal.”xiii By showing that the now-available political orders in fact or in blueprint are
not good enough, Aristotle justifies 7 [engaging] in an investigation of his own. He
excuses himself for his work, a thing which he does not do in his other writings. For
example, when he begins to set forth his physics, where he discusses also the views of
other people, he does not go on with fear that he might be misunderstood as someone
who will show off his wisdom. The appearance of ambition, of the desire to show off, is
more likely from Aristotle’s point of view in political matters than in other matters.
Among purely theoretical men—this is the tacit assumption of Aristotle—this motive is
not so powerful as in a sphere which at least borders on the marketplace.

Now the question guiding Aristotle’s examination of the available, reputedly good
associations is this: Does political association mean a community of everything or only of
some things? Of course it cannot be communion in nothing, being a community. Now the
maximum which is possible would be the community of women, children, and property.
There could not possibly be a community of bodies. It is absolutely impossible to
socialize a toothache or any other bodily affection; this is by nature private and can never
be collectivized. But things which are not as much one’s own, as he puts it—things like
women, wives, children, and property—can be collectivized. Now this of course is a
proposal made in Plato’s Republic by Socrates, and it is the first theme of Aristotle’s
criticism. The reason why Socrates tries to socialize or collectivize everything—going
much, of course, beyond present-day communism—is that the city should be one to the
greatest possible degree. Aristotle questions this attempt because a certain multiplicity is
essential to the polis: if one makes it one too much, it will no longer be a city. The city 8 is
by nature a multitude, and this means there is an absolute limit to unification. The city
consists not only of many human beings, which no one denies, but of essentially different
human beings, and different members of the political association fulfill different
functions. If they all had the same function, it would no longer be a polis. This of course
is admitted by Plato. As you know, in Plato’s Republic everyone is supposed to have an
art, and accordingly there is a great variety of arts. The criterion for the goodness of a city
is not according to Aristotle unity in any way, but self-sufficiency. More particularly,
Aristotle objects to communism on the grounds that, as experience shows, common
things are neglected. Everyone will think that somebody else will take care of it. In other
words, there will be no individual responsibility. The trust that “George will do it” will
lead to no one doing it. Or in regard to the family, to be the son of all citizens, as in
Plato’s Republic the children will be, means to be no one’s son. The affection, friendship,
of parents and children which becomes so universal becomes very watery, as Aristotle
puts it, to say nothing of the fact that the communistic scheme as developed by Socrates
wouldn’t work, because people will recognize their own children and then it will be
impossible to maintain the universal relation.

xiii
Politics 2.1260b32-34. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 25

Now it is unnecessary and unimportant to discuss all the Aristotelian arguments here, so I
select some which are particularly characteristic. Now let me see.

There are also other difficulties regarding a community of wives and

children,xiv which its advocates will not find it easy to meet by any precautions.
We may take for example a case of assault, unintentional or intentional homicide,
fighting, and slander. xv All these offenses, when they are committed against father
or mother or a near relative, differ from offenses against human beings who are
not so related, in being breaches ofxvi piety. Such offenses must happen more
frequently when men are ignorant of their relatives than when they know who
they are; and when they do happen, the customary penance can be made when
men know their relatives, but none can be made when they do not. xvii It is also
surprising that Plato, after having made all the youngerxviii men of the polisxix the
common sons of thexx citizens, should content himself with debarring older men
who are “lovers” of the young from carnal intercourse with them, and should not
debar them from behaving as “lovers” or practicing other familiarities. Such
familiarities, if practiced between son and father, or brother and brother, are the
very height of indecency, all the more as the mere cherishing of this form of love,
without giving it actual expression, is in itself indecent. xxi

Now this is a very characteristic argument of Aristotle: he appeals here to the accepted
notion of decency without in any way making an attempt to prove9 to people these sound
notions. In connection with what I said before about the fact that decency and its specific
meaning in various respects, [this] is simply taken for granted and not deduced by
Aristotle.

To come to a broader argument: what makes men care for other men to the highest degree
is the private—one’s own—and preciousness. But these two conditions will not be
fulfilled if women and children are in common: they will be no one’s wives or children,
and since there are innumerable females who are called his wives and innumerable
children who are called his children, they lack the quality of preciousness. Aristotle also
refers to a great difficulty in Plato’s Republic, namely, that the gifted children of the
lower class will be transferred to the upper class, and they of course would know their
natural parents and might even become attached to them, because 10 [it] is not
recognizable at the moment of their birth whether they have a high IQ or other important
qualities or not.

xiv
In Barker: “There are also other difficulties in a system of community of wives and children.”
xv
The exact wording in Barker: “We may take as examples cases of assault, unintentional (and,
we may also add, intentional) homicide, fighting, and slander.”
xvi
Here the reader omits “natural.”
xvii
Barker’s exact rendering of the phrase: “and when they do happen, the customary penance can
be made if men know their relatives, but none can be made if they are ignorant of them.”
xviii
In Barker: “young.”
xix
In Barker: “state.”
xx
Barker here inserts “older.”
xxi
Politics 2.1262a25-37.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 26

Regarding property, Aristotle points out the great nuisances which result if men have
everything in common. He refers to the experiences of fellow-travelers (not in the
metaphorical sense, of course, but in the simple sense): the collisions with one another on
trifling matters when you are in a small space and together all the time. So without
private property, without a private sphere, human life would be absolutely unbearable.
But there is something true in communism which however cannot be brought about by
communism, namely, that what belongs to friends is absolutely common. In other words,
this precisely means that everyone has his own which he shares with his friends.

Now let us see . . .

It is clear from what has been said that the better system is that under which
property is privately owned but is put to common use; and the function proper to
the legislator is to make men so disposed, to educate them in such a manner, that
they will treat property in this way.

There is a further consideration, namely that of pleasure: here too to think

of a thing as your own makes an unsayable difference.xxii The satisfaction of a
natural feeling brings pleasure;xxiii and it may well be that regard for oneself, or
self-love, and by extension, for what is one’s ownxxiv is a feeling implanted by
nature, and not a merexxv impulse. Self-love is rightly censured, but what is
trulyxxvi censured is not so much love of oneself as excessive love of oneself—xxvii
just as we also blame the lover of money not so much for loving money as for
loving it in excess;xxviii the simple feeling of love for any of these things xxix is
more or less universal. We may add that a very great pleasure is to be found in
doing an act of kindness, in giving help to friends or guests or comrades; xxx and
such kindness and help become possible only when property is privately owned.
But not only are these pleasures xxxi impossible under a system of excessive
unification of the city. The activities of two forms of virtue are also obviously
destroyed. The first of these is temperance in the matter of sexual relations (it is

xxi: In Barker: “There is a further consideration which must be taken into account. This is the
consideration of pleasure. Here too [as well as in the matter of goodness] to think of a thing as
your own makes an inexpressible difference.”
xxiii
Barker indicates that “[The satisfaction of a natural feeling brings pleasure]” is interpolated.
xxiv
In Barker “[and, by extension, for what is one’s own]” is an interpolation.
xxv
The insertion of “random” occurs here in Barker.
xxvi
In the place of “truly” Barker writes “really.”
xxvii
Barker uses the phrase “love of oneself in excess.”
xxviii
Barker indicates interpolation of “[not so much for loving money as for loving it in excess].”
xxix
The reader omits Barker’s interpolation “[self, or property, or money].”
xxx
The phrase is worded so in Barker: “We may add that a very great pleasure is to be found in
doing a kindness and giving some help to friends, or guests, or comrades.”
xxxi
Here Barker inserts the interpolation “[that arising from the satisfaction of a natural feeling of
self-love, and that arising from the satisfaction of our impulse to help others].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 27

an act of decency and virtue to refrain from loving the wife of another): and the
second is liberality in the use of property. xxxii

So you see here the kind of argument. We know by virtue of being properly brought up
that temperance and self-control on the one hand, and liberality on the other are virtues.
The practice of these virtues becomes impossible if there is no private property and if
there is no privacy of wives, and therefore communism contradicts the fundamental
requirements of morality.

Now what is the overall impression which Aristotle has of Plato’s Republic? He is very
much impressed by the attractiveness of the Republic. I believe for quite a few modern
readers, whatever they may think about the wisdom of the proposition, it is attractive.
What is the secret of that attractiveness according to Aristotle? If I could elicit from you a
reaction, what you find attractive in the Republic, it would be quite helpful and
illuminating . . . But I expected not to get an answer. [Laughter]

Aristotle says that this arrangement as suggested by Socrates in the Republic is “beautiful
to look at,” and “the hearer accepts it gladly.” Why? Because he thinks “there will be a
wonderful friendship toward all human beings in such a society. Especially when
someone criticizes things as they are now, and says they are so bad now because of the
lack of the community of property, meaning lawsuits and false witnesses, and flattery of
the rich.” All these kinds of things which we have in our society and all societies which
ever were, they will be absent from such a society. But Aristotle says these vices, these
things which are truly ugly, “are caused not by the absence of community of property, but
by human wickedness.” Therefore the way of curing these ills, to the extent that they can
be cured, is good upbringing and not communism.

Aristotle gives an additional reason against Plato’s Republic. He says: “if these proposals
were sound, then people would have become aware of them before. Because everything
has been discovered already, in a manner, but some of the things have not been brought
together, and others, things which are known, in fact are not used.”xxxiii

So you see the claim to novelty which Aristotle can raise: that he may be able to bring
together institutions which have hitherto not been brought together. But he denies that
there are any institutions which as such have not become known. Aristotle does not say
that everything that is, is reasonable. But he says what is reasonable is somehow known,
which is obviously not the same.

Finally, he gives the following broad argument. The recommendation of the scheme of
the Republic is that it contributes most to the happiness of the citizens. Then somewhere
in the Republic the question is raised: Who is happy there? The answer is, roughly: Well,

xxxii
Barker specifies his rendering of the two kinds of virtuous activity so: “The first of these is
temperance in the matter of sexual relations (it is an act of moral value to refrain from loving the
wife of another in the strength of temperance): the second is liberality in the use of property.”
Politics 2.1263a37-b11.
xxxiii
2.1263b15-23, 1264a1-5. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 28

no one in particular, but the city as a whole. xxxiv Aristotle says: Well, happiness is not of
the nature of such things as odd numbers or, for that matter, even numbers. xxxv You can
easily get an even number by adding two odd numbers; you cannot get a happy society by
adding together unhappy individuals. So this much about . . . This only shows again the
crucial importance of the individual and his satisfaction, which is the argument of
Aristotle against Plato’s communism. Aristotle does not speak of the right of individuals;
one could say [that] on the one hand he speaks of the responsibility of the citizen, of the
good man, of the virtue of the individual, and on the other hand of the pleasures which
the individual needs for feeling well. The concept of right in our sense is absent from
here.

We now turn to a discussion of another blueprint which is the most important of these,
apart from the Platonic ones, which Aristotle discusses. I will begin to read it. This is the
scheme of a man called Hippodamus. [LS writes on the blackboard] You may not have
heard his name; almost nothing is known of him except what Aristotle tells us here in the
Second Book of the Politics. But he is nevertheless obviously not a great man, as you will
soon see, but a remarkable man. Now what does Aristotle tell us about him? He begins as
follows.

Hippodamus the son of Euryphon, citizen of Miletus, was the first man
without having engaged in politics, who attempted to handle the theme of the best
constitution. xxxvi He was a man who invented the planning of towns in separate
quarters, and laid out the Peiraeus with regular roads. In his general life, too, xxxvii
he was led into some eccentricity by a desire to attract attention; and this made a
number of people feel that he lived in too studied and overdone xxxviii a manner. He
wore his hair long and expensively adorned: he had flowing robes, expensively
decorated, made from a cheap but warm material [laughter], which he wore in
summer time as well as in winter; and he aspired to be learned about nature
generally.xxxix

Now this is not Aristotle’s way of speaking about other people. That sounds like rather
malicious gossip [laughter]. So he must have another reason. For example, when he
discussed Plato or Socrates, he said something about the Socratic speeches, their peculiar
charm, attractiveness, and gracefulness. And he said: Well, it is too much to expect that
in addition they should be true!xl That is obviously something quite different.

xxxiv
Rep. 419a-421c; see also 466a, 519e-520a.
xxxv
At Politics II.1264b15 ff.
xxxvi
This reading differs slightly from Barker’s translation: “Hippodamus the son of Euryphon, a
citizen of Miletus, was the first man without practical experience of politics who attempted to
handle the theme of the best form of constitution.”
xxxvii
Barker inserts here the interpolation “[apart from these innovations].”
xxxviii
The reader substitutes “overdone” for “artificial.”
xxxix
Barker concludes this statement with the interpolation “[as well as about town-planning],”
Politics 2.1267b22-30.
xl
Politics 2.1265a10 ff.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 29

In order to understand, [to] appreciate fully this remark, we must give proper weight to
what Aristotle said: that he was the first man not engaged in politics who attempted to
discuss the best political order. A man not engaged in politics who attempts to discuss the
best political order: one can say that is Aristotle’s definition of the political philosopher.
Therefore, we can say Hippodamus was the first political philosopher. But what a terrible
thing, that the first political philosopher cut such an atrocious figure. That has something
to do with this problematic character of politics, to which we have already alluded and to
which we will come back very soon. Now a scheme of Hippodamus, with which I will
not bore you, consists of dividing everything—citizen body, laws, etc.—into three. The
number three is apparently supplied by a certain philosophy of nature on which he drew.
The consequence is of course that everything is very simple and clear: everywhere you
find three. But as Aristotle makes tacitly clear precisely for this reason, because of its
extreme simplicity, very great confusion follows. That is to say, Hippodamus doesn’t
give attention to what is peculiar to the political, that this doesn’t have the clarity and
simplicity which the starred heaven, at least to the unarmed eye, possesses. In other
words, no understanding of the fact that the political is in a class by itself and cannot be
interpreted on the basis of concepts supplied by science dealing with the subhuman.

There is one proposal of Hippodamus which is especially important for Aristotle, one
among many, only Aristotle thinks that it is crucial. Hippodamus proposed that those who
invent something useful for the city would receive some honor. Well, we take this for
granted, that it is a wise practice, but for Aristotle that is questionable. Aristotle discusses
this proposal at great length, because this proposal, which seems to be trivial, goes in his
opinion to the root of things. I read to you:

In regard to the further question raised by Hippodamus—whether some

honor ought not to be conferred on those who suggest an improvement which is of
benefit to the city—we may argue that legislation in such a sense cannot be safely
enacted, and has only a specious sound. It might encourage false accusations xli
against the reformers, and perhaps lead xlii to political disturbances. But the
proposal also involves another problem, and suggests a further argument. There
are some thinkers who raise a doubt whether states lose or gain by changing their
traditional laws when some other and better law is possible. If, on this issue, we
take the line that change is not a gain, it is difficult to agree readily with the
proposal made by Hippodamus; for changes which are in fact xliii subversive of the
laws, or of the whole political order, xliv may be proposed on the plea that they tend
to the common good. However, as the issue has now been mentioned, it will be as
well to define our views about it a little further. It is, as we have said, an issue
which we can debate;xlv and a case can be made for the view that change is the
better policy. Certainly in other branches of knowledge change has proved
beneficial. We may cite in evidence the changes from traditional practice which

xli
Barker interpolates here “of revolutionary plans.”
xlii
Here Barker inserts “in this way.”
xliii
Barker puts “really” in the place of “in fact.”
xliv
In the place of “the whole political order” Barker writes “the constitution.”
xlv
In Barker: “which is in debate.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 30

have been made in medicine, in physical training, and generally in all the arts and
forms of human skill; and since politics has to be counted as an art or form of
humanxlvi skill, it can be reasonably argued xlvii that the same mustxlviii be true of
politics. It can also be argued that the actual facts xlix provide an indication of the
benefits of change. l The usages of old times were exceedingly simple and
uncivilized: Greeks went about armed, and bought their brides from each other.

Imagine.

Indeed the relics of ancient customs which are still in existence, here and there,
are utterly absurd: there is, for example, a law at Cyme, relating to homicide, that
if an accuser can produce a definite number of witnesses from his own kinsmen,
theli accused shall be liable to the charge of murder. [Laughter] All men, as a rule,
seek to follow, not the ancestral, but the good; lii and the earliest known human
beings, whether they were “earth-born,” or survivors of some cataclysm, were in
all probability similar to ordinary or even foolish people today. liii It would
therefore be an absurdity always to stick toliv their notions.lv

I think I will leave it at that. What is the point which Aristotle makes? . . . Aristotle does
not deny that in the arts, medicine, etc., progress has been made. On the contrary, in
parallel passages you will find he has said that progress is of the essence of the arts.
There are always greater refinements possible, and that is the law of an art or skill, to
progress indefinitely. But the question is: Is what is true of the arts true of laws or
politics? The first argument is: Why not?11 Politics too is a form of art or skill. But the
difficulties to which he alludes at the beginning, I must not forget. Technological
changes, he will say, may very well lead to political changes; therefore you cannot simply
approve of technological change, you must have your eyes open regarding possible
political change. And if the political change is desirable change for the better, then all
right; but if the political change is not a change for the better, then you have to wonder
whether technological progress should be promoted. You have to take first the simpler
view, the view held by Hippodamus: it is obviously sound to change laws because the
laws stem from the olden time, from a time when men were less enlightened and less
civilized than now, naturally. And especially the principle [that] we—all men—who
know, who have any understanding, seek not the ancestral as ancestral, the traditional as
traditional, but the good; and if there is a difference between the traditional or ancestral
and the good, we will choose the good.
xlvi
The repetition of “human” is not in Barker.
xlvii
In Barker: “it can be argued logically.”
xlviii
Barker inserts here “also”
xlix
Barker interpolates “[of history].”
l
Barker presents as an interpolation “[of the benefits of change].”
li
Barker inserts here the word “person.”
lii
In Barker: “not the line of tradition, but some idea of the good.”
liii
The reader omits this parenthetical insertion: “(Indeed that is actually the tale that is told of the
‘earth-born’ men.)”
liv
In Barker, not “always to stick to” but “to remain constant to.”
lv
Politics II.1268b22-1269a8.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 31

Now there is a connection between this view and Hippodamus’s simple and clear
proposal regarding the number three. As we easily can see, this phenomenon of
Hippodamus has in a somewhat modified form renewed itself in modern times [in] a
phenomenon called political radicalism. It has a different name in this country. I believe
it is called liberalism. It is characterized by reliance on simple proposals and [the view
that] what is true of technological change is also true of political change. Now after
having stated the12 [case] for Hippodamus and his life, he states the case for the other
point of view, what we can call the conservative argument to the extent to which we can
apply this notion to ancient discussions.

Now while these arguments go to show that in some cases and at some times law ought to
be changed, there is another point of view from which it would appear that change is a
matter which needs great caution. When we reflect that the improvements likely to be
effected may be small, and that it is a bad thing to accustom men to abrogate laws
lightly—lvi

—to change the practice of an art is not the same as to change the practice of law. It is
from habit, and only from habit, that law derives the validity which ensures obedience.
But habit can be created only by the passage of time, and the readiness to change from
actually existing to new laws will accordingly tend to weaken the general power of law.

This is not so easy for us to understand because in modern times generally, owing to the
concept of the sovereign and sovereignty, lawmaking and quick changes of law have
become more or less a matter of course. We need therefore some effort of imagination to
understand the older point of view. The key point which Aristotle makes is, I think,
directly intelligible: the analogy of art and law, of art and politics, of art and the polis, is
questioned, because, while the arts owe their power to their evident reasonableness, [in]
that this manipulation, this operation, is manifestly conducive to bring about the desired
result, law owes its power to custom or habit alone, as Aristotle says here . . . not to its
intrinsic reasonableness. And therefore it must be treated in a radically different way
from the arts. This is an issue which is of course still with us. 13 What Aristotle has in
mind may be developed along these lines: that the polis as polis, in contradistinction to
the arts as arts, has a recalcitrance to reason, a recalcitrance which cannot be overcome—
a thought which is expressed by Plato in his simile of the cave. The cave is a sphere
beneath the earth. Political man as political man lives in that cave, and he can never leave
it and live in the light of the sun. I read to you from a Federalist paper of uncertain
origin, at least as my edition says. It is number 49.

If it be true that all governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength
of opinion in each individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend
much on the number which he supposes to have entertained the same opinion. The
reason of man, like man himself, is timid and cautious when left alone, and
acquires firmness and confidence in proportion to the number with which it is
associated. When the examples which fortify opinion are ancient as well as
lvi
The tape was changed at this point.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 32

numerous, they are known to have a double effect. In a nation of philosophers,

this consideration ought to be disregarded.

because neither the antiquity of the opinion nor the number of people holding it is, of
course, of any relevance philosophically.

A reverence for the laws would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an

enlightened reason. But a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the
philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato. And in every other nation, the
most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the
prejudices of the community on its side. lvii

There are many other statements, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, of this kind. I
remind you of Edmund Burke’s saying, a very extreme statement: “In proportion as the
primitive rights of man are metaphysically true [meaning theoretically true—LS] they are
morally and politically false.”lviii

A very strong statement, “in proportion” . . . But the most amusing formulation of this
which I know you will find in some passages in Macaulay’s History of England, from
which I will read. It deals with something recognized by present-day political science, but
I believe not properly interpreted. Speaking of the abdication of James II, Macaulay says:

It was not easy to draw up any form of words which would please all whose
assent it was important to obtain; but at length, out of many suggestions offered
from different quarters, a resolution was framed which gave general satisfaction. lix

This resolution has been many times subjected to criticism as minute and
severe as was ever applied to any sentence ever written by man [that is a typical
exaggeration of Macaulay’s—LS] and there perhaps never was a sentence written
by man which would bear such criticism less.

Then he gives some examples of that.lx

It is idle, however, to examine these memorable words as we should examine a

chapter of Aristotle or Hobbes. Such words are to be considered not as words, but
as deeds. If they effect that which they are intended to effect, they are rational
lvii
Federalist 49 (Madison), The Federalist, introduction by E. M. Earle (Washington, D.C.:
National Home Library Foundation, n.d.).
lviii
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in Works, 2:335. The actual
quotation reads: “The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as
they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.”
lix
Macaulay continues: “It was moved that King James the Second, having endeavored to subvert
the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between King and people, and,
by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and
having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and that the throne
had thereby become vacant.”
lx
Some sentences intervene before the occurrence of those quoted next.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 33

though they may be contradictory. If they fail of attaining their end, they are
absurd, though they carry demonstration with them. Logic admits of no
compromise. The essence of politics is compromise. lxi

I will look at a few others in the same History. Here he speaks of the Toleration Act,
passed by Parliament shortly after the Revolution:

Of all the acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act is
perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peculiar
excellences of English legislation. lxii The perfect lawgiver is a just temper
between the mere man of theory, who can see nothing but general principles, and
the man of business, who can see nothing but particular circumstances. lxiii In
English legislation, the practical sentimentlxiv has always predominated, and not
seldom unduly predominated, over the theoretical. lxv To think nothing of
symmetry, and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly merely
because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt;
never to innovate except insofar as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down
any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which it is necessary
to provide; these are the rules which have, from the age of John to the age of
Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty
Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science
amounts undoubtedly to a fault. [He does not think of Lord Bertrand Russell lxvi
here, of course—LS] Yet it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have
been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in other
countries there may occasionally have been more rapid progress, it would not be
easy to name any other in which there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English
law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately acquainted
with the temper of the sects and parties in which the nation was divided at the
time of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos and
contradiction.lxvii It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it
will not bear to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. lxviii

lxi
Macaulay, History of England, chapter 10, in Works of Lord Macaulay Complete in Eight
Volumes (London: Longmans, Green, & co., 1873), 2:366-67.
lxii
Text is omitted from the quotation.
lxiii
Lines are omitted.
lxiv
In the place of “sentiment” Macaulay has “element.”
lxv
In the place of “theoretical” Macaulay has “speculative.”
lxvi
Mentioned in session 7.
lxvii
Macaulay has “chaos of absurdities and contradictions.”
lxviii
The reader omits text from the end of this paragraph (in Macaulay) and from the beginning of
its successor.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 34

. . . But these very faults may appear to be merits, when we take into account lxix
the passions and prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. lxx

I do not wish to continue this now, but there is another discussion of a British measure of
the late seventeenth century, where he argues as follows: the major—there is of course a
syllogism there, the major and minor and conclusion—the major did not fit the minor,
and the conclusion did not follow from the major and the minor. But the major brought
two hundred votes and the minor two hundred, and the conclusion: the same, therefore
the thing passed.lxxi This he thinks is characteristic of political arguments as distinguished
from theoretical arguments.

This,14 [and] also what Burke says, [goes of course] much beyond what Aristotle says,
but there is something important in common, which one can call in general terms
fundamental recalcitrance of the polis to strictly theoretical reasoning. Aristotle says here
in the Hippodamus section that the law’s power is due entirely to custom or habit, not to
its intrinsic reasonableness. This seems to contradict another statement of his according
to which the law is a dictate of reason: as he puts it, it is a speech, or pronouncement,
stemming from practical wisdom and understanding. lxxii Law is a dictate of reason:
classical and Thomistic definition. But Aristotle says, you will note, in the Ethics: speech
derivative from some practical wisdom. lxxiii But another reason why there is a difference
between the Thomistic and the Aristotelian teaching is this. According to Aristotle
laws—that is, all interesting laws—must be given with a view to the political order.
Democratic laws differ from monarchic laws, oligarchic laws differ from democratic, etc.
But most political orders you will find in effect are more or less defective, hence the laws
given for them, to the extent to which they are given for them, cannot be simply
reasonable. A certain adaptation to the political order, that is to say, to the opinions
regarding justice which were known to these orders, is necessary. Now this leads me to
the discussion given by Aristotle in book 3, to which I will turn after mentioning only one
point regarding Aristotle’s discussion of the actual regimes which are supposed to be
good, namely, Sparta, Crete, and Carthage. Now only one point must I mention: that one
of these beautiful cities was Carthage, not a Greek city. This alone suffices to prove that
the translation of polis by “Greek city-state” is impossible. “City,” yes, but not “Greek.”
It is an accident that there are more Greek cities than non-Greek cities. The city is not as
such a Greek institution.

Book 3, to which I will turn now, contains the fundamental discussion of Aristotle’s
Politics. Of course one should read if one can the whole Politics, but precisely if one does
so, one will find that the fundamental discussions are those in the third book. Let us read
the beginning: “He who makes inquiries about the politeiai, which each of them is and
what their character is, for him about the first inquiry is regarding the polis, what then a

lxix
Macaulay has “consideration.”
lxx
Macaulay, History, chap. 11, in Works 2:463-65.
lxxi
Evidently a reference to Works 2:367 (“They cared little whether their major agreed with their
conclusion, if the major secured two hundred votes, and the conclusion two hundred more”).
lxxii
Politics 3.1287a30.
lxxiii
NE 10.1180a22.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 35

polis is.”lxxiv Now this is a very strange beginning, for we know already what the polis is,
don’t we? Of course the polis is the theme of political philosophy. Why then does
Aristotle raise the question of the polis again? We learn now from this very beginning—
we might have learned before if we had read every passage, but nowhere as visible as
here—that the theme of political philosophy for Aristotle is not the polis but the politeia.
I will now just use the Greek term, because the question of how to translate it is not easy
to answer. I would like to mention only one fact: that Politeia is the Greek title, the
correct title, of Plato’s Republic. So not polis, but politeia.

Here Aristotle makes the strange proposal that we are interested in the polis and must
find out what the polis is only because we are interested in the politeia, in the various
forms of politeia. What is the reason? Hitherto we have learned that the polis is by
nature; that it is by nature the peak or end of all other associations; that the polis is
all-comprehensive and therefore directed towards the highest good; that it must recognize
the independence of the private, namely, of the family or household, not so much in the
sense of a private sphere in which everyone can do what he lists, but rather in the sphere
of individual responsibility. “Political” is what has to do with the polis, and therefore
people can ask, what is the political? and give all kinds of more or less far-fetched
answers which would not be possible if the polis were remembered. Everyone knows, of
course, in a way what the political and nonpolitical are. Voting is a political action;
buying food is not as such a political action but it can become [so] by accident, such as if
you fetch some sandwiches for a man running for office who has no time to buy them
himself. But this is an exception, it proves the rule. Yet the word “political” has another
meaning, with which you are all familiar: This is politics, I don’t want to have anything
to do with it. Now what does “politics” mean here? Not simply dirty business, of course,
because that you can find in other spheres of life. But the key point is [that] this is
divisive. Say, what an Internal Revenue collector does is not as such political, because
this is the law that you have to pay taxes and that is no longer, at least, a political issue.

When we speak of “political” in a negative way, we mean its divisive character in the
first place. Now this divisive character of politics is taken up by Aristotle, but strangely
and remarkably not as the seamy side of politics, as we would first see it, but as essential
to the highest purpose of the polis. Aristotle goes on to say: So why must we ask what the
polis is although we are concerned with the politeia? I believe it would be very
unfriendly not to explain what “politeia” means, very briefly. The usual translation, I
suppose also followed by Barker, is “constitution,” a translation one could accept if
“constitution” were meant in the way one may speak of a man’s strong constitution, for
example. In this sense it would be tolerable, but this we do not mean when we speak of
constitution. Our understanding of constitution has gone through, presupposes
historically the concept of fundamental laws of the land, a distinction which began to be
made in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, I don’t remember which one. For example,
[that] the king in France had to be a man—no woman could become sovereign—or that
the royal domain could not be disposed of by the king, and so on, these were fundamental
laws which would not be changed except by the king. All other laws were non-
fundamental,15 [they] could be changed. The key point is that politeiai are not any laws.
lxxiv
Politics 3.1272b32-34. Strauss’s translation.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 36

“Politeia” is used by Aristotle frequently in contradistinction to laws, fundamental or not

fundamental. It would be simpler to say that “politeia” designates primarily the factual
order of ruling, of power, which is at the very bottom of any legislation and which is in a
way the cause of all legislation because the ruling part of the city gives the laws with a
view to its ruling. That does not necessarily mean to its own advantage—that is a nasty
interpretation, because it is at least thinkable that a ruling group rules with a view to the
interests of the whole. Now if this is so, the key question in any political order is this:
What kind of men are preponderant in this political society, rule in their own right, not by
any delegation? President Johnson of course doesn’t rule in his own right; he rules by
elected delegation. In every society we find some man or body of men who rule in their
own right. May I ask you who that is in the United States?

Student: The people.

LS: Yes, some men or body of men who rule in their own right, not by derivation. And
the key question for Aristotle is: What kind of men rule in political society? This question
in Aristotle’s view is inseparable from the question: To what end is that society
dedicated? Decent men—to take a very simple case from a children’s book—decent men
will be dedicated to decency and indecent men will be dedicated to various forms of
indecency. We can make subdivisions, as we shall see. So the question of the politeia—I
translate it by the term “regime,” the best that has occurred to me, and I shall accept a
better one as soon as I learn of it—the various regimes, the variety of regimes, not the
polis as polis, is the subject of Aristotle’s political science. The point is this. The political
issue is not the polis. People are not concerned politically with whether they should live
in political society and have governments or not but in what kind of society and what
kind of government. The practical issue is not the issue which never becomes a political
issue, but a divisive issue, namely—well, in a happy society it does not become
practically divisive, but in principle it is divisive. We understand this today immediately
because we are in the very unfortunate situation of the Cold War; and the Cold War is of
course not merely a conflict between two states, the United States and Russia, but
between two kinds of regimes . . . what we call liberal democracy on the one hand, and
communism on the other.

In the nineteenth century and in the halcyon days prior to World War I, this fact was
greatly obscured. Men like Plato and Xenophon were severely criticized by modern
historians of Greece as bad citizens because they did not simply and unqualifiedly
identify themselves with the city of Athens. But after we have seen how many people
were compelled to fight on the wrong side from the point of view of simple patriotism in
these last twenty or thirty years, we see again that the simple, unqualified identification
with the country of one’s birth is possible only in very [happy] or at least in relatively
happy times. In the early twentieth century, patriotism or, as it was called at that time,
nationalism, could be taken for granted, there was no question about that. Most regimes,
at least in the Western world, were relatively decent and no fundamental issue arose.
Patriotism and/or nationalism were taken for granted as always [having] a natural basis.
The possibility of fundamental dissension, of civil war, was not taken seriously enough,
except of course by the communists. In the English Civil War, in the seventeenth century,
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 37

patriots were a party: the patriots here, the Royalists there. At that time patriotism was
not taken for granted. It meant to take the side of the sovereignty of the people against the
sovereignty of the king. Now the defeat of the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which
was completed by the French Revolution and its consequences, made the sovereignty of
the people the basis of political theory. And this is of course true today everywhere: the
communist doctrine [and] the fascist doctrine are explicitly based on the sovereignty of
the people—only they have some qualifications: that it is best for the sovereignty of the
only part of the people that is truly people: that is, the proletariat, that there be a
dictatorship of the proletariat. This is only a modification of the doctrine of the
sovereignty of the people. On this basis the doctrines of Aristotle were simply
unintelligible. We begin to understand them now out of our experience.

I will leave it at that. Is there any point which one could take up in the few minutes we
still have?

Mr. Bruell: Would you say that the subject of the Republic is more the polis?

LS: That is a long question, because politeia has more than one meaning, and the most
important one is the one which I sketched: regime. But it can also mean to lead the life of
a citizen. This ambiguity is very important in that case.

Student: Could we, from a close reading of Aristotle’s Politics, see that he has seen
implications of his teaching for collectivization of thought, as distinguished from
collectivization of . . .

LS: No, in the sense in which we mean it we couldn’t, because what we call ideologies
did not exist. When you read the discussion of the variety of regimes in the eighth or
ninth book of Plato’s Republic (that is clearer than in Aristotle’s Politics), there are
certain opinions which go with different regimes. For example, the opinion going with
democracy is that the end of political life is freedom, whereas oligarchy thinks in terms of
wealth. These are opinions going with certain parts of society. I mean, ordinarily a rich
man is not democratic and a poor man is not oligarchic. Aristotle makes very clear that
the rivalry between oligarchy and democracy, very crudely speaking, is that of the rich
and the poor. But there is no ideology for the very simple reason that everyone says in a
very straightforward manner exactly what he is after. Of course, a certain element of
hypocrisy—if it was hypocrisy, it can also have been self-deception—naturally went with
those things. The honest democrats and the honest oligarchs believe that freedom as the
democrats understand it and wealth as the oligarchs understand it is the best for the polis,
but not in the name of some ideology but simply saying: How can you have a city which
defends itself well, which has the proper naval and other equipment, if there are not
wealthy people around to pay for that? And similar considerations regarding freedom, of
course. And that is not an ideology; an ideology is some form of theoretical thing—I
would say pseudo-theoretical, but let us take a more lenient view and say: something
which seems to stem from theoretical considerations and that is absent from these earlier
doctrines.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 11 n.d., 1965 38

Student: Just straightforward selfishness.

LS: It does not have to be selfishness, but it does not go beyond the political. For
example, if, say, somewhere a tribe in Africa refuses to be ruled by people wholly alien
to them, I would hesitate to call this nationalism, because nationalism is a certain theory
and you don’t need a theory. This grows up with men living together with people whose
language they do not understand. They may permit them to live among them, but they
don’t wish to be ruled by them. Do you see this simple difference between a natural
reaction which doesn’t match any elaboration and theoretical considerations?

Student: There would be, for example, rights of Englishmen but no rights of man.

LS: Yes, you can put it this way. The natural right of man is a doctrine of philosophic
origin, in other words. We may have an occasion to speak of that later.

We must now make this deplorable interruption of three meetings, one and a half weeks,
after which we will return, if everything goes well, to the question of the politeia—I
mean, of the potentiality of civil war. Nothing less than that is implied in the Aristotelian
doctrine of politeia.

[end of session]
1
Deleted “and”
2
Deleted “than.”
3
Deleted “Things are.”
4
Deleted “become.”
5
Deleted “here.”
6
Deleted “You may.”
7
Deleted “that he engages.”
8
Deleted “consists not only—the city.”
9
Deleted “them.”
10
Deleted “this.”
11
Deleted “because.”
12
Deleted “point.”
13
Deleted “One may speak.”
14
Moved “goes of course.”
15
Deleted “which.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 39

Session 12: no date

Leo Strauss: Political life or political action is concerned with either preservation or
change: the preservation of what is good and change for the better. This implies some
opinion of what is good or bad, and opinion as such points to knowledge. The complete
knowledge of what is involved in political things would be the knowledge of what
constitutes the good society. This is the full political good, the common good, and this
was the concern of political philosophy as long as it was recognized. Now we are
concerned today with the situation in which political philosophy has lost its plausibility,
the belief in its possibility, although the general reasoning which I sketched now and
again has still its former evidence. Now this is due in the first place to the power of what
we call positivism . . . the view that the highest form of knowledge, nay, the only form of
knowledge, is scientific knowledge . . . the view which we traced to August Comte, who
coined the term “positive philosophy.” Now in Comte’s point of view, [at] the stage in
which science is predominant, there must be rule of the men of science as a kind of
spiritual power belonging to the modern world. We all know that this notion has lost all
credibility, although it still lingers on in various places. For example, the Supreme Court
makes decisions on the basis of pronouncements of social science; then we see something
of this kind. It is nominally referred to as the problem of technocracy, which as
technocracy is not democracy.

Now the key point concerning Comte’s doctrine of the three stages, theological,
metaphysical, and positive, [is this]. In the earlier stages, theological and metaphysical,
men were concerned primarily with the Why, with first causes and ultimate ends. But in
scientific study it can be limited to the How. The difficulty here is that the theological
and metaphysical questions, while being excluded by science, still remain; they remain
questions. To avoid the difficulty one must declare that these questions are not only not
answerable scientifically but that they are meaningless. As a moment’s reflection shows,
this fails, however.

This is not the immediate difficulty we have, for it is caused by a development long after
Comte: the distinction between fact and value, that no value judgment as such can be a
rational judgment. We must take this together with the rejection of metaphysics. The
questions which concern men most deeply, the most important questions, are beyond the
competence of science, and this leads necessarily to the flight from scientific reason—a
triumph of science itself, about which you are aware, if not from books, at least from
articles in the most sophisticated magazines. The key consideration, the only one which I
would like to repeat because it goes to the root of the matter, is that according to the strict
understanding of positivism, only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge. This is in
blatant contradiction to the fact that science, and especially positivistic science, rests on
prescientific knowledge or commonsense knowledge, and this commonsense knowledge
can in no way be transformed into scientific knowledge, as can be shown by looking at
the most interesting cases. Commonsense knowledge, which is the basis of scientific
knowledge, is unaware of the distinction between facts and values. And here in the matrix
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 40

of all social science, one finds no basis for this distinction which is now regarded by
many as self-evident.

But one can say this is of no importance to political philosophy because commonsense
knowledge, common sense, is variable historically, and so there was Greek common
sense, Babylonian common sense, and so on. If there is no possibility of an invariable
answer, an answer for all men at all times, then political philosophy is impossible. What
should happen to it is another story, but it is no longer possible. Now this view, that there
is no possibility of invariable answers, is called historicism. All thought rests ultimately
upon absolute presuppositions, as Comte would put it, which differ from epoch to epoch
and which are not susceptible of rational criticism. As a consequence of the cooperation
of positivism and historicism, political philosophy is today radically problematic. There
is no longer any possibility of starting with the premises that existed surely up until about
two generations ago. There is however some consolation, some kind of universal
agreement, namely, as regards the possibility and the necessity of studying the history of
political philosophy. Therefore we have no choice but to learn to replace for the time
being, as it were, political philosophy by its history. The study of the history must be
done properly, open-mindedly, namely, open-minded to the possibility of political
philosophy and not merely closed to it, as is the case in most approaches.

Now we turn therefore to the study of the history of political philosophy, and here we
observe that the primary issue is the quarrel of the ancients and moderns. Political
philosophy emerged in Greece. Socrates appears to be the founder, and this led to the
kind of political philosophy we call classical, which includes medieval to the extent we
can call it medieval political philosophy and not theology. The break with this tradition
occurred in modern times; most vividly in Hobbes, but if you dig a little bit you come
across Machiavelli, a man who prepared the great changes effected by Hobbes. The
theme of the history of political philosophy is to understand this fundamental difference
between ancient and modern—the quarrel.

Now then we discussed briefly the grounds on which Machiavelli, Hobbes, and their
successors turned against practical political philosophy. And we discussed then the
characteristics of classical political philosophy generally and we turned then to
Aristotle’s Politics to acquire a more concrete understanding of1 what political
philosophy originally meant. We observed that in Aristotle’s Politics there is a twofold
beginning, in the beginnings of books 1 and 3, and this twofold beginning has substantial
reasons. The Politics begins with the discussion of the polis, the city, and its relation to
the household or family. The family needs the polis and, it is argued by Aristotle against
Plato, the polis needs the family, the household. The subject in book 3 is not the polis but
the politeia, a term which we translate by “regime.” And we saw from the beginning of
the third book that it is the politeia, the regime, and not the polis which is the theme of
Aristotle’s Politics. The difference between the discussion in book 1 and that in book 3 is
simply stated as follows: in the first book the parts of the city, the most comprehensive
association, appear to be the smaller associations, among which the family is most
important; but in book 3, the parts of the city appear to be not any association but the
citizens. We will see immediately what this means.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 41

The theme becomes the regime in contradistinction to the city. This Greek word politeia
is ordinarily translated by the term “constitution.” I gave reasons why I think “regime” is
a better translation. Now what is the issue of the politeia? It is the political issue, meaning
the divisive issue. That there should be families is not a political issue; only some
crackpots suggest from time to time the abolition of the family. But the regime is always
actually or potentially a political issue. Whether or not there should be a political
association is not a political thought, but the regime necessarily is. When Lasswell
defines the subject matter of political science as who gets what, when, one has to say:
Yes, one can say that provisionally, but who gets what, when depends on who has the
power and to what degree or extent, and that is a question of the regime. i Obviously, in a
feudal monarchy other people get what and when very differently from what they would
get in a democracy. So the question of power, as it is ordinarily called, is more precisely
stated [as] the question of the form of power, the question of the regime.

It is immediately intelligible today from the Cold War, with which we are all more or less
familiar, that the issue is of course not this country and Russia, but the difference of
regimes, liberal democracy and communism. I do not deny that 2 between these two
enormous territorial areas, one located in Eurasia and one located in this hemisphere, 3
there might be all kinds of tensions even if they had the same regime. But as it is, the
conflict as it actually exists is not understandable without taking into account the
difference of regimes. The Cold War shows us directly that Aristotle’s question regarding
the regime is the question guiding present-day political life, and to some extent even
academic political science. For an important part of that, as you know, is comparative
government. But what is comparative government? Fundamentally, comparison of the
various regimes or, in another respect, a discussion of the “isms”: the “isms” are the
justifications of the various regimes. This is quite different from the situation of political
science in the nineteenth century, where it could simply be said [that] the subject matter
of political science is the state, which is not in itself divisive. By virtue of the fact that
civil wars played, and play, such a tremendous role in the twentieth century, whereas they
played a much smaller role in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this explains
again why we understand Aristotle and Aristotle’s Politics in a peculiar light, because we
are again in the grip of a radical political crisis.

It is a crisis which was not visible in the nineteenth century for a variety of reasons, the
most striking one being belief in progress: the certainty that the most desirable regime,
that of maximum freedom and equality, was bound to win. That is no longer such a
certainty, and therefore we have to dig somewhat more deeply. Russia or, for that matter,
Upper Volta, is a theme for geography and history, or sociology, but the regimes of these
countries are the themes of political science. So we see then that what Aristotle regards—
and he more emphatically and clearly than any other political writers—as the theme of
political science, the regime, is evidently still the theme for us. The fundamental problem
is identical, but when one speaks of fundamental and invariable problems one must not
assume that they are accessible equally to all times. There are times when the
fundamental problems are covered over, perhaps these are the happiest times. But they
i
Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 42

are also, precisely because they are happy, 4 an inducement to falling asleep. And
therefore, to the extent to which we are theoretical men, men of science, we must not be
concerned primarily with the happiness of the age in which we live but rather with the
opportunity or necessity it imposes upon itself to think about the fundamental issues.

Now we turn then to Aristotle’s discussion of this key subject in the third book. We have
read and discussed the very first lines of the third book. You have the Barker translation.
In the first sentence of the third book, Aristotle makes it quite clear that we are interested
in the polis only to the extent that we are interested in the politeia, the regime. Here there
arises a question: Because we are interested in the politeia, we must know what the polis
is. Now what does Aristotle mean by raising this question again? He goes on as follows.
Is there anyone who could sit and read to the class these passages? Mr. Reinken, who
does this excellently, isn’t here. Is there anyone who has taken lessons in elocution?
Well, then I will simply dictate: Mr. Bruell, sit down and bring your Barker with you. At
the second sentence. To repeat, before we hear Mr. Bruell, the question is: Why must we
be concerned with what the polis is? After all, we have heard it before.

Mr. Bruell: “What is the nature of the polis?”ii In the first place, the nature of the “polis,”
or city, is at present a disputed question—

LS: No, wait. “For now they are engaged in controversy. Some say the polis has done the
actions, and others say, not the polis, but the oligarchy, or the tyrant.”iii Is this
intelligible? Think of what happened in Russia after the communist revolution: the debts.
Not the polis has done it, not the Russian people, but this clique. Who is speaking here?
Who makes this argument? Obviously not an adherent of the tyrant, nor of the oligarchy.
The speaker is a democrat. What does he imply? Democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny are
of course examples of regimes. If there is no democracy, if the people do not rule, there is
no polis. The polis has been destroyed for the time being. “Forms of government,” we
say, which is tolerable as a phrase, but “regime” is clearer, I think you will see for certain
reasons. There is a work of Alexander Pope: “Our forms of government let fools
contest/Whichever is best administered, is best.”iv This much we can discern now: that is
not Aristotelian. There are regimes which cannot be well-administered, because nothing
would be improved if they were. If a tyrant administers his tyranny well, that might be
worse for his subjects than if he were very inefficient. Now what is the next argument he
uses?

Mr. Bruell: “In the second place, all the activity of the statesman and the lawgiver is
obviously concerned with the state—”

LS: “With the city. And the regime is some form of order operational”—let us say “of the
inhabitants of the city.”v

ii
Here Barker interpolates “[There are three reasons for so doing],” that is, for beginning the
present inquiry about the polis with the question just raised.
iii
Politics 3.1274b33-36.
iv
From Pope’s Essay on Man, Epistle 3, ll. 303 ff. Pope has “For forms,” not “Our forms.”
v
Politics 3.1274b36-38.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 43

That is the first definition we get. You see, it is an order of the inhabitants of the city. Of
the inhabitants of the city; he doesn’t say “of the citizens.” Why? Because one depends
already on the regime or he is not a citizen, and this precisely is the divisive issue: who is
or is not a citizen. If there are various degrees of citizenship, full and not so full—this of
course, as we know from every daily newspaper, is today an issue, from what they say
about the goings-on in Alabama and other places.vi The city consists on the one hand of
households, and on the other of citizens. The formal issue is non-divisive. It is politically
neutral, we can say: there is no difference between democrats and oligarchs or tyrants
about the fact that there should be families. But the question of who is or is not a citizen
is fundamentally controversial. The political par excellence—this one cannot emphasize
strongly enough—is what is divisive. The reason is this. There is no city without some
order, without a form. The inhabitants are the matter, to use Aristotelian language. The
order gives the city its character. When we speak of the state and forms of the state, we
obscure that fact. The question then for Aristotle, as it appears immediately, is: Who is a
citizen? Because we know this much: that who is or is not a citizen differs from regime to
regime. Now Aristotle gives a definition of a citizen which is this: he is a citizen who
participates in judging and in ruling. “Ruling” means here “giving commands.” But
Aristotle says this definition which suggests itself so naturally, so easily, applies
primarily to the citizen in a democracy. But why does he come up first with the
democratic definition of a citizen? I would say this is not an accident, just as it is not an
accident that political philosophy emerged in democratic Athens. Democracy, debate,
public debate—there is some connection between that, as we all know, and political
philosophy.

But still, the definition, being tailored to democracy, is for this reason too special. We
need a generalized version. And then Aristotle says a citizen is a man who participates in
unlimited ruling, literally translated. What does he mean by that? There is no limit in two
respects: no limit regarding time—a citizen is a lifelong participant in ruling, and no
limitation regarding subject matter. A general has his rule limited to war, a treasurer has
rule limited to fiscal matters, but there is some man or body of men, as someone said later
on, who must have unlimited rule. We will soon see the difference.

The rule is unlimited regarding time. The rule of the citizen is not on the basis of any
election as, say, a president may be—that is a kind of delegated rule. What Aristotle says
here must remind every one of you, I think, of a concept which has become very
powerful in modern times. How would this be called, what Aristotle calls here unlimited
rule, in modern times? We find in the early definitions of rule in modern times, and
especially in Hobbes, exactly this unlimitedness. The thing which is in common is this:
there are always men who rule in their own right and not by delegation. Since they rule in
their own right there is not necessarily any limitation regarding the [. . .] It is also implied
there is no possibility of appeal from their decision to any higher authority. Now what is
the difference between the modern doctrine of sovereignty and the Aristotelian doctrine?
If you want to simply arrive at an answer which cannot be altogether wrong, you may
read the classic statement in Hobbes, especially in Leviathan, chapter 18. We would see
vi
Strauss is referring to the Civil Rights Movement.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 44

then immediately that Hobbean doctrine—the same is true also of [. . .]—is a legal
doctrine: What are the rights which the sovereign has?

Aristotle’s doctrine can negatively be described as not being a legal doctrine, and this has
grave implications. Let us turn to 1275bl7-21.

Mr. Bruell: “But our definition of citizenship vii can be amended. We have to note that in
constitutions other than the democratic, members of the assembly and the courts do not
hold that office for an indeterminate period. They hold it for a limited term; and it is to
persons with such a tenure (whether they be many or few) that the citizen’s function of
deliberating and judging (whether on all issues or only a few) is assigned in these
constitutions.”viii

In other words, the specifically democratic institutions are the jury and the assembly.
They would not exist in the same way in an oligarchy. And yet there is citizenship there,
obviously: these men have perhaps the political power. There must be a definition of the
citizen applicable to them as well as to the democratic citizen.

Mr. Bruell:
The nature of citizenship in general emerges clearly from these considerations;
and our final definitions will accordingly be: (1) “he who enjoys the right of
sharing in deliberative or judicial office ix attains thereby the status of a citizen of
his state,” and (2) “a polis, in its simplest terms, is a body of such persons
adequate in number for achieving a self-sufficient existence.”x

LS: “Office” is of course a slightly misleading translation because the word is archē,
which is simply ruling, having the rule, having the initiative. “He who has the privilege to
participate in deliberative and judging ruling,” meaning, giving commands. Obviously a
judge gives commands, but the deliberator also gives commands because deliberation
necessarily issues, or should issue, in a decision—say, a law, declaration of war, or
whatever it may be—and this is a command given to others. So in other words, in every
society there are some men, more or less, from whom all power of commanding stems,
and in such a way that their power is not a delegated power. The individual citizen may
be elected to a magistracy and that of course is a delegated power, but the power he has
as member of a sovereign body is not a delegated power. The sovereign, as we say in
modern language, cannot be called to account. So we know now what a citizen is: men
who participate in three functions above all—the deliberative, which is the same as what
we would call today decision making. It is quite interesting that it is not called decision
making by Aristotle, but deliberation. When you speak of decisionmaking you may forget

vii
Here Barker adds an interpolation in reference to difficulties involved with the task of defining
the citizen: “[may still be maintained, in spite of these difficulties, since it].”
viii
Politics 3.1275b13-17. Note: There is no indication in the transcript whether it is Strauss or the
student who reads this passage. Here and in what follows, where the transcript is unclear, it will
always be assumed that passages from the Politics are read out by the student.
ix
Barker interpolates “[for any period, fixed or unfixed].”
x
3.1275b17-21.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 45

that the decision is meant to be the outcome of deliberation. When you speak of
deliberation, this danger is obviated. Mr. Levy?

Mr. Levy: Mr. Strauss, I’m sorry, but I don’t see the difference between Aristotle’s first
definition, the one that belongs with democracy, and his second definition, the one that’s
supposed to be general. What would the difference be?

LS: Now let me see this wording, the precise wording. “To participate in judgment and in
ruling.”

Mr. Levy: Would that be from election, meaning “elected”?

LS: No, ruling is much larger. You must not forget that there are also what we now call
executives, say, a general, and even down to a simple policeman. They also have the right
of command. But in this case it is perfectly clear that these rights are all delegated
powers, and what we are concerned with is the non-delegated powers, the original
powers.

Mr. Levy: Wouldn’t that rather be a right of electing?

LS: Electing magistrates? Sure, but Aristotle sees it concentrated, not in this elective
power, but in the deliberative and judging power.

Mr. Levy: The word used for judging in the first definition—could that possibly be
translated “electing” instead of “judging”?

LS: No. It could be stretched, but I don’t think it means that. Later on he has long
discussions about the order of rank between the various functions which the ruling body
has. But the deliberative one, which includes the legislative, is always the most
important. Yes?

Student: At the end of the second definition he said, “the city is a body of such citizens,
large enough to be self-sufficient.” But according to the second definition, in a tyranny or
an oligarchy you would only have one or a few citizens.

LS: Not only one or a few, that would be very extreme.

Student: Well, in a tyranny the only person who would rule in his own right would be the
tyrant.

LS: Yes, but the question is whether that can be called a regime, and we will come to that
later. The question would be the absolute monarchy, a subject so interesting Aristotle
devotes to it the second part of book 3. Aristotle proceeds step by step. He starts from
what everyone knows from experience—in this case, in Athens, in a democracy. Then he
sees that this is not sufficient because there are regimes other than a democracy, [and]
therefore this great enlargement is still not broad enough. In what sense you can speak of
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 46

citizens in an absolute monarchy is difficult to say. You know, it was not so very long
ago that in a great modern democracy called Great Britain there were no citizens, but
subjects. It happened I think in the last generation that they became citizens. Now this
was more a quaint antiquarianism of the British, I think, than anything of importance
politically, but it indicates that for a long time there were no citizens. In an absolute
monarchy there is no one who participates by his own right in judging and deliberating. If
so, the king has appointed him.

Now let us read the next section, because 5 this is a relatively theoretical level on which
we speak, but we must never forget the simple level, of which he speaks immediately 6
[following].

Mr. Bruell: “For practical purposes—”

LS: more literally, that is “for use”

Mr. Bruell: “it is usual to define a citizen as ‘one born of citizen parents on both sides,’
and not on the father’s or mother’s side only; but sometimes this requirement is carried
still further back, to the length of two, three, or more stages of ancestry.”

LS: So in other words, sometimes also the grandparents must have been citizens, and it
can go on and on.

Mr. Bruell:
This popular and facile definition has induced some thinkers to raise the question,
“How did the citizen of the third or fourth stage of ancestry himself come to be a
citizen?” Gorgias of Leontini—perhaps partly from a sense of this difficulty and
partly in irony—said, “As mortars are things which are made by the craftsmen
who are mortar-makers, so Larissaeans are persons who are made by the
‘craftsmen’ who are Larissaean-makers.”

LS: Perhaps he means here at the same time the magistrates of Larissa.

Mr. Bruell: “Butxi the matter is really simple. If, in their day, they enjoyed constitutional
rights in the sense of our own definition, xii they were certainly citizens.”

LS: The main point is, if they participated in ruling and in judging, then they are citizens,
regardless of whether their parents were. Yes?

xi
Barker inserts here this interpolation: “[there is no reason to raise any difficulty about the title
of the earlier citizens].”
xii
An interpolation appears here in Barker: “[i.e. the right of sharing in judicial or deliberative
office].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 47

Mr. Bruell: “It is obviously impossible to apply the requirement of descent from a
citizen father or a citizen mother to those who were the first inhabitants or original
founders of a state.”xiii

LS: Do you see the absurdity which follows from the political definition which Aristotle
calls “political and crude”? Everything political is necessarily crude, and therefore
Aristotle is compelled in his deeper discussion to go beyond that. But for the crude view,
a citizen is a descendant of another citizen, yet who is a citizen in an oligarchy differs
from the citizen in a liberal democracy. For the notion of what this means, to be a good
citizen, differs profoundly. The good citizen is relative to the regime. But this, Aristotle
points out, does not change a fundamental non-relativism: there is a kind of goodness
which has no relativity to the regime, and that is the goodness of man as man. By a good
man, thoughtful, unbiased people mean everywhere the same: a just man, a moderate
man, brave, and the other virtues. And therefore the good man could possibly act as a
standard allowing us to distinguish between preferable and less preferable regimes.
Aristotle does not go into this at this point. He only stresses this identity of the good man
compared with the variability of the good citizen, and he gives us an inkling of a solution
by saying that the good man and the good citizen coincide only in one case, namely, in
the citizen of the best regime when he is exercising a ruling function, because then all the
virtues which he has in the highest form come into play when he is politically active.

After these remarks, Aristotle turns now to an explicit discussion of the various regimes.
He has given us an indication of why the questions of regime are the most important
questions, and he has always understood without any proof because everyone knows it,
that there is a variety of regimes. But now it becomes necessary for him to have a
comprehensive notion of these varieties. After all, we must know how many and what
kind these regimes are and how they differ from each other. Aristotle determines the
variety of regimes on the basis of two considerations. First, what is the purpose of the
city? And second, how many kinds of rule over men 7 exist? The purpose of the city is
necessary to consider because otherwise we will have no criterion for distinguishing
between good and bad regimes or between better and worse. That regime is better which
is more in accordance with the purpose of the city; and this question of better and worse
regimes leads of course eventually to the question of the best regime, as I believe I do not
have to make clear.

Now what are these purposes for which men live in civil society? There are three. First,
man is by nature a political animal. This is here understood in a strict sense. Men love
living together as such, independent of considerations of benefits, advantages. I think we
can always check that to some extent: only in certain extreme situations would we wish
to live in complete solitude and never to see another human being. Ordinarily we like
human company. The second purpose is the common good, and the common good is to
live nobly. Without proving it here, Aristotle assumes that living nobly is essentially
living together. Living nobly means the practice of the virtues, and the practice of the
virtues requires, not necessarily in all cases of all virtues but generally speaking, living

xiii
Politics 3.1275b22-34.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 48

together. But there is also a third purpose which he mentions, and that is mere life, in a
word, mere survival. This passage is of some interest to a broader question . . .

Mr. Bruell:
The good life is the chief end, both for the community as a whole and for each of
us individually. But men also come together, and form and maintain political
associations, merely for the sake of life; for perhaps there is some element of the
good even in the simple act of living, so long as the evils of existence do not
preponderate too heavily. It is an evident fact that most men cling hard enough to
life to be willing to endure a good deal of suffering, which implies that life has in
it a sort of healthy happiness and a natural sweetness. xiv

LS: So that is very interesting, that people enter civil society for the sake of mere life, not
for the good life. Does this remind you of the argument of another political philosopher?

Student: Rousseau.

LS: No . . .

Student: Hobbes.

LS: Yes, the teacher of self-preservation as best. You are quite right about Rousseau, but
this is on a somewhat deeper level than I would like to go at this point. So what a
difference! What does Hobbes say about our clinging to life? Does he speak of a natural
sweetness of life? No! The terror of death. That is so characteristic of Hobbes, that he
never speaks of the natural sweetness which Achilles, for example, when he is in the
netherworld, describes: he says it is better to be a day-laborer and slave on earth than a
king in Hades.xv This is quite remarkable. To make this very clear: it is quite necessary
for Hobbes to have this teaching. According to Hobbes, there is no summum bonum, no
highest good, whereas Aristotle says: Of course there is a highest good. But Hobbes
teaches that on the other hand there is a summum malum, a highest evil. A very
paradoxical expression. Of course, that is death. Here is one beautiful illustration of what
happened. And don’t think that it is only Hobbes, because what Locke teaches about
pleasure and pain is in a milder form of expression, Locke being a much less nasty and
naughty man than Hobbes was, [but] the same thing fundamentally.

What was mentioned with Rousseau a moment ago is correct. It is one of the points
where Rousseau returns in a way to the ancients against Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau’s
argument being that self-preservation would not have this fundamental importance if life
itself did not have this natural sweetness. He does not use exactly the same words, but
almost: he speaks of the sentiment of existence, which is simply pleasant and which is the
deepest thing in man.

xiv
Politics 3.1278b23-30. For “sweetness” Barker has “quality of pleasure”; the substitution
suggests that Strauss may be reading.
xv
Odyssey 11.489-91.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 49

But let us return to Aristotle. We have seen the three reasons, grounds [for] why man
enters society. Now we must consider: How many kinds of rule over men are there?
Aristotle gives here three. The rule of the master over the slave: in Greek, despotikē, from
which “despot” is misderived. Despotism and tyranny have totally different meanings in
the classical tradition, and the identification of tyranny and despotism which has taken
place in the eighteenth century is a minor historical question. The despot means simply
the rule of master over slave and of course, if the man is a natural slave, there is nothing
wrong with that according to Aristotle.

Then there is economic rule: rule within the household, that is, which as rule over slaves
is fundamentally in the interest of the master. I mean, that this poor fellow is prevented
from mischief, from harming himself by his extreme stupidity, is accidental: the main
point is the master gets someone who shaves him and takes care of a few other things
which are below his dignity. But the rule of a husband over his wife or a father over his
children is primarily in the interests of the ruled.

Then there is a third kind of rule, which is political rule, where there is ruling and being
ruled in turn. Clearly, the wife is not supposed to rule over the husband the next day, and
even less so the children, but in political rule there is such a thing, the assumption being
that the political community is a community of free and equal men—there may be unfree
and unequal ones outside. This is indeed for the benefit of the ruled. That is to say, if
8President Johnson is still ruling, it is understood that he will rule for the benefit of the

U.S. Of course it is also understood that is for the benefit of President Johnson, because
he is after all a citizen of the U.S. Aristotle has a nice comparison: 9 if someone, a
gymnastic trainer, who trains his pupils in the interest of the pupils that they should
become fit bodies, should himself join in the training by showing the motions which they
make, his own body becomes fitter. Accidentally it is in the interest of the trainer, and in
this case of President Johnson. We can say that political rule is rule for the common
good.

Now from these characterizations of rule it follows that despotic rule, the rule of master
over slave, is always against the character of the political association. But the two others,
economic rule, rule of the father, and political rule proper, are in themselves possibly
good. The argument leads up to a simple schema which you must learn by heart if you do
not know it. It is very simple, but it turns up again and again and you need it to see how it
is modified by other thinkers. [LS writes on the blackboard] There is the good and the
bad—first distinction. The other is the number of rulers.

One: The good ruler is kingship; the bad ruler is tyranny.

Few: Good rule of few, aristocracy; bad rule of few, oligarchy.
Many: Good rule of many, he calls polity (with the same word, politeia, which is used for
regime in general);10 the bad rule of many11 is democracy, according to Aristotle.

Nothing is here omitted. There are of course mixed forms. This division has been made
by Plato in his Statesman before, though there is one difference and that is that Plato does
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 50

not make a distinction between a good and bad democracy, because democracy is a weak
regime and therefore it cannot be too much bad and too much good either way. xvi

But this is of course a merely external schema and in itself not quite intelligible, because
it is this kind of form. And Aristotle has proof for that because he gives a long discussion
which we cannot read now on the following consideration:12 by oligarchy is understood
the rule of the rich, though it is not stated here; similarly, by democracy everyone means
the rule of the poor. No one denies that this is the most common problem, especially
during the Peloponnesian War. But much beyond that, every city has two kinds of men,
the most massively important distinction: the rich and the poor. Machiavelli says the
same thing many years later, and even today we can still recognize it. “Poor,” by the way,
never means beggars but people who have to earn their living, whereas the rich are
people who do not have to work. I think we can even today make that distinction. So the
practical standpoint is not this schema—although we need this to make sure, lest anything
has been forgotten—the practical standpoint is from the difference between democracy
and oligarchy, the rule of the rich and the rule of the poor. Aristotle has a very amusing
discussion: Why should there not be a regime in which the few are poor and the many are
rich? [It is] theoretically possible but not practical, to say the least.

But this much is clear: one form is defective because wealth is not the most important
consideration for rule, nor freedom, because a freeborn citizen may be very stupid and
very wicked, just as a rich citizen may be very stupid and very wicked. So we wonder
whether there is not a kind of mixture of the two which might be superior. Aristotle says
there is.13 He first speaks of the politeia, the regime, in which all men able to serve as
heavy-armed infantrymen are citizens. This means of course, in a word, property
qualifications.14 The arms of a light-armed soldier are much less expensive than heavy
armor, therefore they are more or less substantial citizens. Now you will see the way in
which Aristotle argues this out. The principle is to be or [to] have been a heavily-armed
soldier, that is to say, not mere wealth or mere freedom but the patriotic view which sees
that it is the same fatherland despite the changes in regime. From this it follows that he
takes a patriotic view of the good citizen. A good citizen is the man who continues to
serve his country despite all changes of regime. You know, in recent times there was
some controversy in France [about] whether those magistrates who served under Vichy
loyally, and then under de Gaulle, and so forth—whether they are not, after all is said and
done, better citizens, better Frenchmen, than those who were loyal to one particular
regime.xvii

The democrats and oligarchs are those whom we call partisans; the patriots are not
partisans, and the partisan is to that extent not a patriot because he regards something as
more important than the fatherland. 15 The partisans are those who adhere to a particular
regime, who say there is no polis if the right kind of regime is not established. Now
people do not necessarily say, as in our case:16 The city didn’t do it, the tyrant did it. In

xvi
Statesman 291c-292a, 302c-303b.
xvii
Strauss is referring here and in the next paragraph to officials who served under the
collaborationist government after the French defeat and occupation by Nazi Germany during
World War II, and later the restored republic after liberation.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 51

our time, I believe the oligarchs would say: The country is going to pieces. Well, the
country, if it is going to pieces, is no longer in existence and its final disappearance will
follow. This we call the partisan view. And clearly the partisans will call the patriots
turncoats: because they served the Third Republic, they served Vichy, they were
turncoats.

There was a man somehow connected with Athens, Theramenes, who did exactly this—
whether from purity of heart or less pure motives is of course impossible to discern—but
he was called a turncoat, whereas people who admired him said: No, he is the good
citizen; he put a higher value on Athens, the permanent substance, than the superficial
regime.xviii Do you see how important that issue is and how it undercuts all other political
discussions? And only in very happy times, when a regime is firmly established and there
are no considerable clouds on the political horizon, does this question not arise.

We see it in the following manner. People like Xenophon—and especially Xenophon,

who fought in the Peloponnesian War on the Spartan side, i.e., on the wrong side, against
his father—in the early nineteenth century, when political historians influenced by the
French Revolution went over these old facts, they thought what Xenophon had done was
terrible. He fought against his own country! Traitor. This was the first time that
Xenophon’s wreath was taken off his head, on this ground. If this historian, Niebuhr was
his name, had lived a hundred fifty years he would have seen that there were people born
in Germany who fought against Hitler’s German army, and we do not wish to say they
were morally inferior people. xix Only in simple and quiet times do such questions not
come up. Needless to say, that is legally insoluble because every law will identify itself
with some type of regime, but not all legally insoluble questions are for this reason
nonexistent questions.

So the political question as Aristotle presents it is this: What makes a city the same city?
What makes a country the same country? The patriots are wrong and the partisans are
wrong. The patriots say: There is always the same country. The partisans say: Only if that
regime we favor is established, the city is what makes the country. Aristotle says: Since
the regime is able to change from an oligarchy to a democracy, the city is a place by
nature. But to judge one city by another city—this is the apparently paradoxical character
of Aristotle’s teaching. Or you might say Aristotle is very precise and follows what is
said in our common way of speaking, [the] sensible judgment. Let us now read further.

Mr. Bruell:

xviii
Theramenes was a fifth-century Athenian politician who was involved in both the oligarchic
coup of 411 and the regime of the Thirty Tyrants established under Spartan auspices after
Athenian defeat in 404. In both cases he eventually clashed with the more extremist elements
within the government, in the latter case fatally. The controversy surrounding his legacy is
attested at Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 28.5.
xix
See Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, trans. L. Schmitz, vol. 2 (London:
Taylor, Walton, and Maberly, 1852), 36.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 52

Still assuming a single population inhabiting a single territory, shall we say that
the state retains its identity as long as the stock of its inhabitants remains the same
(although the old members are always dying and new members are always being
born)?xx Or must we take a different view, and say that while the population
remains the same, for the reason already mentioned, xxi the city may none the less
change?xxii

If a polis is a form of association, and if this form of association is an

association of citizens in a polity or constitution, it would seem to follow
inevitably that when the constitution suffers a change in kind, and becomes a
different constitution, the polis also will cease to be the same polis, and will
change its identity. We may cite an analogy from the drama. We say that a chorus
which appears at one time as a comic and at another as a tragic chorus is not
continuously the same, but alters its identity—and this in spite of the fact that the
members often remain the same. What is true of a chorus is also true of every
other form of association, and of all other compounds generally. If the scheme of
composition is different, the compound becomes a different compound. A
harmony composed of the same notes will be a different harmony according as
the “mode”xxiii is Dorian or Phrygian. If this is the case, it is obvious that the
criterion to which we must chiefly look in determining the identity of the state is
the criterion of the constitution. xxiv

LS: Now this seems a very strange example, but it makes everything quite clear. You
have the chorus serving in a tragedy, and then the same chorus serving in a comedy. It is
a different chorus, although they are the same individuals, because the principle of
composition and the purpose for which they are composed differs radically. Aristotle says
this helps in understanding what constitutes the unity of the city above all. You see here,
when you read especially the last sentence, Aristotle does not deny the continuity which
we imply when we speak of the history of the British constitution from the time of Alfred
the Great up to Elizabeth II, but he says it is the continuity of the matter: the English
people generate other Englishmen. Furthermore, he does not say the sameness of the city
depends only on the regime. That would be plainly absurd because if this were so, then
all democracies would be a single regime. There wouldn’t be n democracies. Through
change of regimes, the city becomes another city [though] not simply. It also becomes
some other things,xxv for example, if all moved out and went to a new land, it would also
be another city. But through change of regimes the city becomes another city in the most
important respect, for it becomes a different regime regarding its end, the purpose to
which it is dedicated. That is the most important consideration. No change is as important

xx
The reader has omitted the words “and shall we thus apply to the state the analogy of rivers and
fountains, to which we ascribe a constant identity in spite of the fact that part of their water is
always flowing in and part always flowing out?”
xxi
Barker interpolates “[i.e. that the stock of the inhabitants continues to be the same].”
xxii
In Barker the next paragraph begins with the interpolation “[The latter view carries the day.]”
xxiii
Here Barker interpolates “[or scheme of its composition].”
xxiv
Politics 3.1276a34-b11.
xxv
“it also becomes some other things”: suggest “it also depends on some other things”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 53

as the change from virtue to vice, or the reverse. What change can be compared to that in
significance? It is of course not a different city in every respect, for example, not
regarding treaty obligations, the difference with which he started. Aristotle does not give
the answer explicitly here but it is obvious, for the very same reason that Aristotle was
the same man. Since the tyrant made the obligation for the benefit of the city—after all,
he might say: I want to adorn my capital, and the citizens like these beautiful streets and
buildings—but if he incurred the debts in order to maintain a bodyguard which
maltreated the citizens, then of course: “Let these foreign bastards who gave him the
money see how they can get it.”

Now we in our discussions today come across this question in a very simple thing, that is,
the question of loyalty. What does loyalty mean? “To the United States” is not enough. A
Communist could say: “I am loyal to the people of the United States. I want the best for
them, and for this reason I wish to abolish the liberal democracy.” Loyalty simply is
loyalty to the established regime as characterized by the established regime. This
question is illustrated in another manner by the question of citizenship. If we consider
again the regime in which all men able to serve as heavy-armed infantrymen are citizens,
it follows that the consideration of virtue comes in. But military virtue, that of the citizen
soldier, while highly respectable, is not the complete virtue. And therefore we can
visualize a still higher regime between democracy and oligarchy having the advantages of
both but avoiding their disadvantage: and that is the rule of the virtuous men simply, and
this is aristocracy. So this is more “quote realistic unquote,” at least as revealing
Aristotle’s intention, than the other one.

This—that the mean, the middle, is higher than the extreme—is characteristic of the
Ethics also. From a simple point of view, one doesn’t see from our modern point of view
why what is in the middle should be higher than the extremes, the reason being that the
mean is not merely the arithmetic average but it has a different principle than the
extremes: the principle of moderation, for example. Aristotle also says, without
contradicting himself (and this had an effect of sorts in the last election), that the mean of
any virtue compared to the two opposing vices is in a sense also an extreme—especially
[LS writes on the blackboard] because it stands out. Virtue is an excellence: compared
with the average, it is an extreme. This landed somehow in the acceptance speech of
Senator Goldwater and gave people who didn’t know Aristotle an occasion to be
surprised.xxvi Yes?

Student: In what sense is the aristocracy unlike the oligarchy?

LS: Because it avoids the mere principle of wealth and the mere principle of freedom. In
other words, they must be between the two, while not deprived of either. But their title

xxvi
A reference to the notorious line in Barry Goldwater’s speech at the Republican convention in
July 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice
is no virtue.” Goldwater was a U.S. Senator from Arizona and the Republican party nominee for
President in the 1964 election. It may be noted that an older student of Strauss, Harry V. Jaffa, is
commonly credited with inserting this line, adapted from Cicero, into Goldwater’s speech.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 54

derives ultimately not from that great wealth on which the oligarchy relies, but from
being a model for activity.

Student: In other words, the very fact that virtue is held to be an extreme seems to make
aristocracy more than simply in deed, because it would be in deed only to the extent that
virtue is dependent upon having to be upheld.

LS: But the point is this—[and] Aristotle does not make this in vain: you cannot
understand virtue unless you see that it is essentially opposed to two extremes. For
example, take the simple case of liberality. If you understand liberality as a virtue only in
opposition to profligacy, you do not understand it. You must also see it in relation to, in
opposition to, extreme stinginess. I mean, proceeding empirically, you see that. You say:
A liberal man, a free spender. But is all free spending virtuous? Then you see some cases
of wholly irresponsible playboys, and you say: No, there is also something in the middle.
But the deeper reason why it is in the middle is not merely a statistical average, but
because it has a higher principle than the principle of reasonableness, a consideration
which is absent from the extremes. Yes, Mr. Wyatt?

Mr. Wyatt: In the other cases, the extremes are in some way intentional. Here it doesn’t
seem in any way that they are—or that aristocracy, while it may be a mean between
extremes, is in any way at all a derivative from good influence, whereas in the case of
liberality the beginning is . . .

LS: Well, you see, the discussion hitherto is of course provisional and not concrete
enough. Look at it this way. What is virtue as Aristotle understands it, especially in the
political context? Moral virtue as it is described in the Ethics requires equipment, ektos in
Greek. Now what does this mean in plain English? You must have some money. For
example, how can your liberality be visible if you do not have something to spare? You
see, Aristotle is in this respect quite tough. He knows that among very poor people there
can also be the virtues, but they are immanifest, they don’t strike you. As an example of a
liberal man, you would not, unless you are a kind of sophisticated novelist, give an
example of two inmates of Skid Row. Aristotle does not doubt there is liberality also in
Skid Row, but we would not seek our examples there just as we would not seek our
examples of martial prowess in homes for people older than ninety. So there is a certain
equipment needed, and therefore aristocracy requires some wealth. And similarly, he
must be a free man, because he wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance to be recognized as a
ruler if he were a slave or even a freedman.

Student: Is there something 17 besides the mere fact that they are prerequisites, I mean, is
there any common characteristic that makes . . .

LS: No, only this, that the matter with which they deal enters into the higher levels, the
matter of wealth, and the other, of freedom. In the lower cases, the matter is not
transfigured from a higher point of view, and they remain therefore in simple opposition.
Here are the merely free men; here are those who are in addition also rich; and both
considerations are not sufficient. What the so-called realistic men try to do is of course to
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 55

get rid of virtue. The word “virtue” has become so ridiculous that it is a kind of snobbery,
I believe, to use it, at least in certain circles. But why not forget about it and speak only of
the rich and the poor, or, with Mr. Lasswell, who gets what and when? The trouble is that
even if you want to be completely down to earth, you have to bring in, in a strictly
subservient fashion, the virtues. I mean, however down to earth you may be, you would
prefer in a pinch to be judged by a just jury, by a just judge, and you would like to have
civil servants perfectly immune to bribes on the part of these goof-pill sellers—is this the
proper expression? [laughter]—and you know that. Even Lasswell has to bring in such
concepts as integrity and other considerations. That the virtues are needed in a
subservient, instrumental fashion if society is not to go to pieces is not too difficult to
prove, and I believe it would be readily admitted.

The key question, then is this: Can virtue be understood as merely instrumental? That is
the divisivexxvii issue on the theoretical plane. If virtue is only a means for the well-being
of civil society, then the benefit of civil society alone determines the use or nonuse of
virtue. That was Machiavelli’s doctrine: you are virtuous when it is good for your
community, but if not—when it is bad—then you are vicious. These considerations, more
nobly expressed in the form in which they were by Augustine: Is there not a difference
between a gang of robbers and civil society? Because you know there is also a certain
morality in a gang of robbers. They would not last for one day if there were not a certain
trust that each will get his share and that if you have a contract, as I believe they call it—
that someone will be transported to a safe place until the whole thing has blown over and
other niceties—it will be kept. What Augustine means of course by saying that civil
society differs from a gang of robbers is that it is more consistent in trying to be virtuous
than a gang of robbers, who take very narrow views of the virtue which they demand. xxviii
But above all, that virtue must be not merely instrumental but the purpose of civil society,
this is Aristotle’s view. But there is nothing wrong in starting from the lowest view and
simply saying: Dog eats dog, the rich eat poor and vice versa, and let us see where we
come from there. There is only group politics, no one cares for the common good, the
common good is simply the outcome of power relations between the various groups. But
[then] you will only be able to account for a limited range of phenomena.

In this respect, the same difficulties come out with the simplest view of citizenship as
defined by birth from citizen parents, and grandparents, and so on. Carried far enough, it
would follow that the first citizens, the founding fathers, were not citizens. This is the
most absurd thing to imagine, that the parents of George Washington were not American
citizens. But when Aristotle points to this, he uses the opportunity to make something
else clear. The joke of Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric, he says, is this: that
“Larissa-makers” means in the first place the people who generate citizens: parents. But it
has also a double meaning because in the case of naturalization, for example, there the
Larissa-makers are magistrates who naturalize the citizens. So whereas in the first place
citizenship seems to be something entirely natural, as natural as generation—being
generated by a human father and a human mother—in the second place we see it can be
something entirely dependent on law, entirely conventional. That this view is in a sense

xxvii
“divisive”: suggest “decisive”
xxviii
The reference appears to be to Augustine’s City of God, part 4, book 4 ff.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 56

more true becomes clear if we reflect about the fact, pointed out by Aristotle, that who is
or is not a citizen depends not on nature simply but on the regime. This throws some light
on the character of the city: the city is by nature, yet not simply, and this follows clearly
from the fact that every city must have a form, a regime. And the variety of regimes leads
him to the question: Which of these regimes, if any, can be said to be natural? In the
extreme case, if no regime can be said to be simply natural, then the city is as much
conventional as it is natural. But there may be the possibility that there is a single regime,
the only one according to nature, which would mean that the others are not natural, that
they are forms of political sickness.

Now hitherto we have seen that the regime is a form of the polis. All things have their
forms, their shape, their characters—horses, dogs, oak trees, and so on. When they lose
their form, they cease to be. If you have ever seen a living being in a state of advanced
decay, say, a rabbit, you will know what I mean. Furthermore, these forms are not
changeable. A horse cannot take on the character of a dog, except in Arabian tales. But
here we come to another consideration. The same city can have successively different
regimes—in other words, a kind of miracle, that something which has been a cat becomes
a dog. These changes of regimes are now popularly called revolutions. The question is:
How deep do these changes go? Let us remind ourselves of the thesis of the democrats,
whom we have heard: Not the polis did it, but the tyrant; while the tyrant ruled, there was
no polis. The houses were there, the matter was there, the human beings, but there was
not a polis, a commonwealth. But when we speak today of English constitutional history,
for instance, we imply there always was England. The same substance remained despite
the changes it underwent. It was feudal, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy with
a kind of oligarchy, and then democracy, but the same England, the same substance,
remained despite the changes: the same land, the same fatherland. One needs to spell that
out, and that you still need a government instead of a computer to do that is quite
interesting and seems to have something to do with the fact that man is still in a sense
understood to be a rational animal.

The key point regarding the number of rulers: there is the rule of one, of few, and of
many. There is not any rule of all. That has extraordinary implications. There is always
the rule of a part or of a combination of parts. Such a combination is this kind of rich may
go together with that kind of poor—you can easily figure out for yourself. The rule of a
combination of parts would be a mixed regime. Aristotle has referred to this already in
the second book when speaking of Sparta and other things. This question of the mixed
regime became historically relevant for the United States, as you see from Federalist 10.

What I wish to discuss next time is this question: Can we learn anything from Aristotle’s
schema for the variety of regimes toward the understanding of modern democracy? That
we can learn something in general, namely, that the concern of regime, and not the very
vague word “power” is that which is a peculiarly political phenomenon—this I think I
have shown. Because power—there is electrical power, there is the power of the chief
rooster in the yard, there is that of a nasty husband over his wife, and vice versa: these are
all wholly uninteresting politically. The peculiar thing is the regime. This is obviously
sound and very topical, but if we turn to our more immediate task, that is connected with
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 12 n.d., 1965 57

the question of democracy. So the point which I would like to take up next time is: Can
we learn from Aristotle something about a democracy?

[end of session]
1
Deleted “how.”
2
Deleted “the difference.”
3
Deleted “that.”
4
Deleted “they are.”
5
Deleted “this shows us.”
6
Deleted “after.”
7
Deleted “do there.”
8
Deleted “Vice”
9
Deleted “That is, as.”
10
Deleted “of many.”
11
Deleted “and here there.”
12
Deleted “Democracy—well.”
13
Deleted “You know.”
14
Deleted “You know.”
15
Deleted “The partisan says, there is no polis, if the right kind of regime is not established.”
16
Deleted “that.”
17
Deleted “behind.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 58

Session 13: no date

Leo Strauss: [In progress]—of which Aristotle did not even dream. Think of
communism and fascism. So you had to consider this question for one moment: how far
Aristotle’s specific analyses of regimes are relevant for our understanding of the regimes
with which we are confronted today. And I limit myself to the question of democracy.

Now Aristotle defines democracy as a regime directed toward the benefit of the poor.
“Poor” does not mean here what it means in President Johnson’s “war against poverty” i;
1it means those who have to earn their living. The distinction is clearly made in

Aristophanes’s comedy Ploutos, literally translated Wealth. Poverty as a woman appears

defending poverty against the claims of wealth, and she emphasizes the fact that the poor
are those who, like the farmers, have to earn their living; and the others, the beggars, are
of course not even considered.

To repeat, Aristotle defines democracy as a regime directed toward the benefit of the
poor and2 indifferent to the common good, i.e., the good of all citizens. Now this is quite
shocking to us but, on the other hand, not unintelligible. Now we have heard in modern
democracies expressions like “milking the rich” through inheritance taxes and
progressive income taxes. We have heard, although this may very well be apocryphal,
“we tax, we tax, and we tax; we spend, we spend, and we spend; and we elect, we elect,
and we elect.” This is ascribed to Harry Hopkins, probably untrue. ii Now we solve the
difficulty by assuming that the common good, with which every decent society must be
concerned, consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And then of course
we have the democratic implication immediately. Or to use the formula well known from
the Communist Manifesto: a movement of the great majority on behalf of the great
majority—of course, against the exploiters of the toilers.iii This is in a way a solution.

Now can this analysis of democracy as Aristotle presents it be of any relevance for a
discussion of present-day democracy?3 What do we understand by democracy? We do
not take these extreme statements to which I referred. Let us consider Lincoln’s:
“government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Now what is the key point
here? Government for the people—that goes without saying here. This is of course also
true of absolute monarchy, according to its claim, or enlightened despotism—paternally
taking care of the people. Government of the people is entirely different. It implies the
i
The “war on poverty” refers to initiatives, announced by President Johnson in his State of the
Union Address in January 1964, “not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and,
above all, to prevent it.” These included Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the expansion of
social security benefits for retirees, and financial subsidies for elementary and secondary school
districts that contained sizeable percentages of impoverished children.
ii
Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946), close aide to President Franklin Roosevelt and architect of
the New Deal. He is alleged to have uttered the words, “we will spend and spend, and tax and tax,
and elect and elect.”
iii
“The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense
majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of
the Communist Party (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1906), 30.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 59

ultimate sovereignty of the people, i.e., the exclusion of kingship by the grace of God.
Government is not due to an act of divine grace as such, but to the people. The people
may delegate government to a king, or to a king and Parliament. This view is familiar to
all of you, of course, from your school days, because that is the view stated on the first
page of the Declaration of Independence. In case anyone has forgotten it, I remind you of
it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and
to institute new Government [that is, the same people who originally established
it—LS], laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Now the implication of the whole attack, of the long list of grievances, is that the British
king and Parliament have lost their claim to rule 4 because of these terrible things—
quartering soldiers, and taxation without representation, and the other points—but it is of
course implied that the government itself was legitimate. It became illegitimate by the
tyrannical use of the power. The Declaration of Independence is perfectly compatible
with constitutional monarchy in the eighteenth-century sense, or with king and
Parliament. The peculiarly democratic element of Lincoln’s famous statement is
“government by the people,” meaning the people governs itself . . . which it wouldn’t do
in a constitutional monarchy, where the king and Parliament govern. In other words, it is
implied there is no government distinct from the people. The people governs itself
through men of the people, who come from the people and return to it after very short
tenures of office. There is no one who governs in a democracy in his own right, but only
by virtue of delegation and election. In other words, the government is not a different
breed from the ruled, as it would be in the case of a nobility, where they are a different
breed from the commoners, [and where] there is always a difference between the
government and the people; there is no self-government of the people strictly understood.
To say there is no government distinct from the people is a proposition only literally true
if one identifies the government with the legislative, deliberative part of the government
as distinct from the executive or the magistrates, and if the legislative-deliberative part
consists of the whole citizen body assembled. Is this clear? In that case you can say
government of the people, self-government literally understood: no distinction between
government and the people because government by laws is the deliberative part, the
legislative part, and this is the people. The town meeting, for example. In
contradistinction to any representatives of the people, or in contradistinction to
parliamentary democracy, the Lincolnian formula draws our attention to direct
democracy as the democracy par excellence.

From this it follows that modern democracy, even in Lincoln’s time of course, is not truly
democratic. Now this view of democracy has been attacked frequently and is still being
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 60

attacked as misleading, because it is based on what people call a romantic conception of

democracy in contradistinction to a realistic one. The word “romantic” can here be
understood to have precise meaning because the theorist of direct democracy was
Rousseau, and Rousseau is the father of romanticism, one can say.

Now what is the meaning of this criticism of the romantic conception of democracy? A
very well-known fact, that people cannot govern themselves but must have leaders. It is
added, there are always actual or potential leaders around, elites, and, negatively stated,
the phenomenon of electoral apathy shows how little you can count on self-government
of the people in a strict sense. A very well-known representative of this view, Robert
Michels, has spoken of the “iron law of oligarchy,” which means there is never a
democracy.iv So always an oligarchy rules: if you have absolute monarchy there is a
clique around the king because very few things can be done by the king himself, and in
democracy there is also an oligarchy, or rather a number of oligarchies competing with
each other.

Now the so-called realistic concept embodies notions which were originally advanced by
critics or opponents of democracy, by people who tried to show that democracy in any
strict sense, self-government of the people, is impossible. While the romantic notion is
based on a fantastic notion of equality, namely, that all are equally capable of being
leaders, the realistic notion claims to recognize the crucial importance of inequality—for
what else does the emphasis on leadership mean but the recognition of the crucial
importance of inequality? There is a simple example: one of the best known radical
democrats a generation ago was Henry Wallace, and he was particularly concerned with
“the Common Man,” a phrase which he liked to use. And his biographer called the story
of his life An Uncommon Man.v So in other words, precisely if you want to have the rule
of the common man, this rule will not work except through uncommon men. You cannot
have equality except via inequality.

Up to this point [. . . ]vi the present-day view that the Lincolnian conception of democracy
is romantic or fantastic—which is now, I take it, preponderant for modern political
science—up to this point it is sound. Yet one can also not deny the fact that modern
democracy is in fact and not merely in its aspiration or claim egalitarian, and if one does
not consider the other side, the criticism remains wrong. Tocqueville’s famous book on
democracy in America has exactly this thesis, as you know: that there is an egalitarian
movement from the late Middle Ages on which is ever increasing in power. A simple
example which everyone knows: in a democracy strictly understood, there cannot be any
hereditary aids or privileges to public power, no abridgment of rights on account of

iv
Robert Michels, Political Parties, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: The Free Press,
1962).
v
Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) was FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940) and Vice
President (1941-1945). He later ran as the Progressive Party candidate in the 1948 presidential
election and was a prominent critic from the left of Truman’s Soviet policy. The title referred to
here is Frank Kingdon, An Uncommon Man: Henry Wallace and 60 Million Jobs (New York:
Readers Press, 1945).
vi
The transcript has a blank space here.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 61

birth,5 [nor] on account of sex, 6 [nor] of race. Here we see the clear egalitarian view. To
this extent, present-day democracy still asserts, differing from what the Declaration of
Independence explicitly says, all men are by nature equal. The differences due to birth,
like family, sex, race, are irrelevant. Hence one man, one vote, which is still admitted
today, is a necessary consequence of that egalitarianism. 7 In other words, present-day
representatives of democracy are much more democratic than the earlier representatives
were. But in one respect they are less democratic in the strict sense. This shows itself in
the emphasis on political inequalities, meaning the inequalities of the leaders and the led.
But this is justified from the democratic point of view by the demand that the political
inequalities should correspond to the natural inequalities, say, to the inequality of talents,
and of course also of the cultivation of the talents.

So it is misleading to contrast the now-prevailing view of democracy as a realistic view

to the older view as a romantic or idealistic one. There is as much idealism in the now-
prevailing view of democracy as there was in the older one, but a different kind of ideal.
The democratic ideal has changed. The present-day radical democrats are not interested
in the closest approximation to the rule of the simple people, but rather in a
transformation of the simple people—making them more educated and so on.
Incidentally, the public opinion polls, which are apart from the legal institutions which
were devised, like referenda, are also a means 8 [of bringing] about government of, by,
and for the people. A government which would listen in all cases to the public opinion
polls would truly be government by the people, by the majority. Since the public opinion
polls are a part of present-day democracy as it has developed in the last generation, in this
respect the older view of the approximation to direct democracy is still very powerful.

Now to return to Aristotle. He surely did not know of modern democracy in either form, 9
[nor] of the intra-democratic modern controversies. He knew only of the democracy of
the Greeks. But modern democracy and Greek democracy have something in common,
which is not negligible. In the first place, no property qualifications. And that means that
modern democracy as well as ancient democracy is by itself rule of the poor in the sense
defined. In one respect classical democracy is more democratic than modern democracy,
but in another respect it is less democratic. That it is less democratic is shown by the
institution of slavery, and no one seriously considered political rights for women. But in
other respects it was more democratic, as no one made clearer than Aristotle. Aristotle
describes as a specific democratic institution election by lot, in contradistinction to
election by raising the hand, as it were. The latter means voting for candidates; whether
secret or open doesn’t make any difference. Election by lot—why is that more democratic
than by raising the hand? Yes?

Student: Because by lot it makes no difference who wins the election, every man in the
election is equal.

LS: In other words, the chance of becoming president of the United States, if there were
election by lot, is equally great for everyone. People who could not possibly get
themselves elected as dogcatchers have as great a chance. That is in one sense very
democratic. But if we state it as a principle, election by lot means actual equality, the
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 62

maximum of equality regarding the occupation of ruling offices. Needless to say, 10

classical democracy was not absolutely egalitarian in this respect. Two kinds of offices
especially, generals and treasurers, had to be voted personally because if a notorious
drifter and wastrel would have become treasurer by virtue of the lot, that would be
terrible; or if someone completely inept became a general, that would be the same. But
wherever feasible, election by lot; whereas in modern times, generally prevailing,
election of candidates.

Now the notion underlying election of candidates is simply this: You can look at your
man for whom you vote and, if you are public-spirited, you will vote for the man who is
most worthy of the position or is most able. You will consider merit, whereas election by
lot does not consider merit but merely the fact that you are a citizen, a freeman; and
therefore, Aristotle says, the election by raising the hands, what we call election, is based
on an aristocratic principle, on the principle that the best should rule. Modern democracy
is from an Aristotelian point of view a mixture of democracy and aristocracy because of
this fact. The elected representatives are supposed to be the elite, the cream of the
population. I think it becomes very clear from the Federalist papers that this was the
original intention. This has certain implications.

Now modern democracy is, as one says, representative or parliamentary. And the notion
developed with great force and gravity in the Federalist papers is that this is necessary in
large states.vii Direct democracy belongs to small states and governments, but a large
state, in having a representative assembly, requires a great improvement in
communication, naturally. Or to put it on a somewhat broader basis, enormous
technological advances, which did not exist in classical antiquity, and these technological
advances were due at least partly to the advance of modern science. So if one would
develop this theme fully, we can say that modern democracy belongs to a type of regime
wholly unknown to Aristotle because it is based indirectly, but importantly, on modern
science. But what is true of11 modern democracy is of course also true of modern
communism and fascism. So these regimes which we know from our lifetime are
fundamentally distinct from the regimes known to Aristotle by the fact that modern
science is directly or indirectly presupposed in these specifically modern regimes. So the
minimum change which we must make in the Aristotelian arrangement—you remember
the six which we had last time [LS writes on the blackboard]—is a new type. For liberal
democracy, communism and fascism are radically distinguished from all six by the power
of science and modern technology, a thing which had no direct equivalent in classical
antiquity. We will come back to that later. But all the more I emphasize the following:
these more complex regimes, which we know from our century, cannot be properly
understood except through contrast with the simple forms discussed by Aristotle.

Aristotle’s analysis of these simple regimes, these six, must still form the basis of the
scientific analysis of all regimes, and in particular of those which we know from the
present day. One historical point I would like to add. Closer inspection might show that
classical democracy, Athenian democracy, is not as unqualifiedly democratic as the
democracy defined by Aristotle. In other words, Aristotle presents democracy according
vii
See Federalist numbers 10 and 14.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 63

to what it claims to be or what it aspires to be, and not as it actually was in Athens. We
must therefore make a distinction between what we may call the philosophic concept of
democracy and the historical concept of democracy as it arises from the study of the
actual institutions and working of Athenian democracy. By the philosophic concept I do
not mean something like an ideal type in the sense of Max Weber, an ideal type being a
convenient construct and nothing else. For when Aristotle speaks of democracy, he spells
out what democracy explicitly intends to be, and whether it achieves it in practice is
another story. In other words, it is not a construct of Aristotle, but it is a thinking through
of what democracy itself claims to be or to achieve. The philosophic concept of
democracy which we find in Aristotle takes democracy as it were by its word: You claim
that, this is what you imply. It understands it in terms of what democracy intends or
wishes to be. This is not a peculiarity of Aristotle, but simply necessary if one wishes to
achieve clarity about political things. The historical concept of Athenian democracy is
ordinarily based, especially the more popular presentation, on the peak of classical
democracy, i.e., democracy under Pericles. And there is one and only one piece of
literature to which everyone will turn in order to find out what Periclean democracy is,
and as I see from the understanding smile of some of you, I don’t have to say what that
is . . . because Mr. Levy will say it.

Mr. Levy: Surely I’m no substitute for you, Mr. Strauss.

LS: Pardon?

Mr. Levy: Thucydides’s book on the Peloponnesian War.

LS: The funeral speech which occurs in Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War.
But this is not a good procedure because Thucydides, after all, who knew best what he
understood by the funeral speech, 12 having composed it [himself], did not think that
Periclean Athens was a democracy. He explicitly says it was a democracy only in name,
but in fact the rule of the first man. In other words, Thucydides did not pay too-great
attention to the fact that democratic institutions of course survived under Pericles,
because all substantive decisions were made in fact by the first man, Pericles. If one
wants to know what Thucydides understands by a democracy in fact, one has to study his
presentation of the post-Periclean democracy—Cleon, and so on—or still better, the
speech of a Syracusan leader of democracy, Athenagoras, in the sixth book, chapters 36
to 40. But this only in order to warn you against a very facile misunderstanding. viii

Let us now continue in our study of Aristotle with book 3, which, to repeat, is the central
book of the Politics, and if one has understood the first book, as we cannot even attempt
here, one has understood Aristotle’s political teaching. We have learned, to repeat, that

Cleon was one of the so-called “new politicians” who came to power in Athens after the death
viii

of Pericles in 429 B.C.E He was clearly held in contempt by our two main sources for his
character and activities, Thucydides (books 3-5) and the playwright Aristophanes (the Knights).
Athenagoras is otherwise unknown. Pericles’s funeral speech is at Thucydides 2.35-46;
Thucydides’s commentary on Periclean democracy (“rule of the first man”) is at 2.65. For
Pericles in Thucydides generally, see 1.139-2.65.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 64

the most important consideration concerns the regime, and how many good and bad
regimes there are. But there is also a popular opinion, an accepted opinion, according to
which the best regime would be mixed. Then the question arises: Mixed of what kind of
simple regimes, and in what proportion or manner should they be mixed? This means that
we still stand at the beginning of the whole inquiry. Let us turn to 1281a34.

Student:
Is it better than any of the other alternatives that the one best man should rule?
This is still more oligarchical than the rule of the wealthy few or the few of the
better sort,ix because the number of those debarred from honors is even greater. It
may perhaps be urged that there is still another alternative; that it is a poor sort of
policy to vest sovereignty in any person or body of persons, x subject as persons
are to the passions that beset men’s souls; and that it is better to vest it in law. But
this does not solve the difficulty. xi The law itself may incline towards oligarchy or
towards democracy; and what difference will the sovereignty of law then make in
the problems which have just been raised? The consequences already stated will
follow just the same. xii

LS: It doesn’t come out clearly enough in the translation, but the point Aristotle makes
might be stated as follows. Someone might say: Your whole discussion, Aristotle, is
wrong, because you speak of regimes, i.e., the rule of this or that kind of human being.
All rule of human beings is wrong: we ought to have rule of laws. A notion with which
we are all familiar. Now Aristotle’s answer is very simply this: What kind of laws? Laws
have to be made, framed, adopted, and which laws you adopt will depend on the regime.
A democracy will have different laws from an oligarchy, and so on, and so it is no use to
say “no rule of men but rule of laws.” This is a metaphorical expression which, properly
understood, is very sound, but it is a metaphorical expression. Literally, it cannot be true.
The fundamental political question cannot be a legal question. Laws are secondary. We
have heard in Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus, in the second book, that laws lack the
evidence or the rationality of the arts and sciences. We may suggest this connection
between the remark here and what we read in book 2: since most regimes are in fact
defective and hence based on untrue assumptions of one kind or another, most laws,
being dependent on the regime, lack evidence. If the basis is questionable, what is
derivative of it will also be questionable.

Now Aristotle begins the inquiry proper with these words, in 1280a5 or so (book 3,
chapter 9):

ix
The words “[than the rule of the wealthy few or the few of the better sort]” are bracketed in
Barker.
x
Barker indicates that “[or body of persons]” is an interpolation.
xi
This sentence is contained in brackets in Barker.
xii
Politics 3.1281a32-39.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 65

Student: “We must next ascertain what are the distinctive principles attributed by their
advocates to oligarchy and democracy, xiii and what are the oligarchical and democratic
conceptions of justice.”xiv

LS: Now Barker is again, for very respectable reasons—because he wants to help the
reader—avoiding Aristotle’s terseness. One can also become too talkative and miss the
clear lines: “Let us take first what limits they give, what characterizations they give, of
oligarchy and democracy [he doesn’t necessarily mean what the advocates of either say,
but only what people say—LS] and what the oligarchic and the democratic justice is.”
Again understood: just as oligarchic laws are not democratic laws, there is also a
democratic notion of justice, which is not the oligarchic notion. We cannot assume that
people always agree in political matters as to what justice is. But this most obvious
beginning is that he speaks only of oligarchy and democracy. Why does he do that?
Because oligarchy and democracy are the most common forms of regime; and Aristotle
does not regard this as any accident—he bows to that. Go on now.

Student: “For allxv have a hold on a sort of conception of justice; but they both fail to
carry it far enough, and neither of them expresses the true conception of justice in the
whole of its range.”xvi

LS: In other words, each of them has some understanding of justice. It is not simply
fiction what they say about justice. But they don’t go far enough: each concept of justice
is one-sided. And Aristotle claims that if one goes the whole way, then one gets a full
concept of justice, in which justice is done to both the democratic and oligarchic
concepts. Aristotle does not begin, as you see, with the institutional or social basis, but
with their claim. And the claim means what they understand by justice. For we are
concerned with the best regime, and even the defective regimes claim to be the best. This
claim must be met.

Student:
In democracies, for example, justice is considered to mean equality in the
distribution of office.xvii It does mean equality—but equality for those who are
equal, and not for all. In oligarchies, again, inequality in the distribution of office
is considered to be just; and indeed it is—but only for those who are unequal, and
not for all. The advocates of oligarchy and democracy both refuse to consider this
factor—who are the persons to whom their principles properly apply—and they
both make erroneous judgments. The reason is that they are judging in their own
case; and most men, as a rule, are bad judges where their own interests are
involved. Justice is relative to persons; and a just distribution is one in which the
relative values of the things given correspond to those of the persons receiving—a

xiii
The reader omits the interpolation “[now that we have discovered the social ground on which
they rest].”
xiv
Politics 3.1280a7-9.
xv
“For all”: Barker has “Both oligarchs and democrats.”
xvi
3.1280a9-11.
xvii
The words “[in the distribution of office]” are presented as an interpolation in Barker.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 66

point which has already been made in the Ethics.xviii But the advocates of
oligarchy and democracy, while they agree about what constitutes equality in the
thing, disagree about what constitutes it in persons. The main reason for this is the
reason just stated—they are judging, and judging erroneously, in their own case;
but there is also another reason—they are misled by the fact that they are
professing a sort of conception of justice, and professing it up to a point, into
thinking that they profess one which is absolute and complete. The oligarchs think
that superiority on one point—in their case wealth—means superiority on all: the
democrats believe that equality in one respect—for instance, that of free birth—
means equality all around. xix

LS: In other words, the insufficiency of both the democratic and the oligarchic view of
justice is obvious according to Aristotle, because equality in some respects does not mean
equality in all respects; inequality in some respects does not mean inequality in all
respects. The two respects here are free birth and wealth. Now how can you decide
between these two? And how can we discover that overriding consideration which is
neither wealth nor free birth as such? That is made clear in the immediate sequel. “The
most important thing these people do not say. For if men had come together for the sake
of property”—do you have that?

Student:
If property were the end for which men came together and formed an association,
men’s share in the offices and honors xx of the city would be proportional to their
share of property; and in that case the argument of the oligarchical side—that it is
not just for a man who has contributed one pound to share equally in a sum of a
hundred pounds (or, for that matter, in the interest accruing upon that sum) with
the man who has contributed all the rest—xxi

LS: In other words, if civil society were a trade or moneymaking arrangement of sorts,
then the oligarchs would be perfectly right. But that is not the purpose of the polis.
Similar considerations apply to the democratic argument. We do not have to read that.
Both democrats and oligarchs forget the purpose of political life, which is not acquisition,
nor mere life or self-defense, but the good life, the noble life, the life of human
excellence. A city is not a city, it is only a defective city, if it is not concerned with the
moral character of its associates. And from this, crucial consequences follow. Let us turn
[still in book 3] to 1280b35.

Student:
The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life
are means to that end. A polis is constituted by the association of families and

xviii
The reader omits the interpolation “[It follows that a just distribution of offices among a
number of different persons will involve a consideration of the personal values, or merits, of each
of those persons.]”
xix
3.1280a11-25.
xx
Barker indicates that “[in the offices and honors] is an interpolation.”
xxi
3.1280a25-31.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 67

villages in a perfect and self-sufficing existence; and such an existence, on our

definition, consists in a life of true felicity and goodness.

It is therefore for the sake of good actions, and not for the sake of social
life, that political associations must be considered to exist. xxii

LS: Yes. More precisely, “for the sake of noble actions.” There is a certain difference
between “good” and “noble” of which we may have occasion to speak.

Student: “Those who contribute most to an association of this character xxiii have a greater
share in the polis xxiv than those who are equal to them (or even greater) in free birth and
descent, but unequal in civic excellence, or than those who surpass them in wealth but are
surpassed by them in excellence.”xxv

LS: So in other words, the claim of the oligarchy and democracy is ruled out here very
simply but provisionally on this ground: the city’s highest purpose is the good life, i.e.,
the noble life. Hence the men of noble deeds and noble character have much more claim
to rule than the rich as rich and the freemen as freemen. But can these men of virtue have
the sole claim? Or is this not precisely the predicament of the city, that it must give way
to the claims of those who from the highest point of view do not deserve them? This may
be a very bad necessity, but it is a necessity. Let us read on from where we were.

Student:
From what has been said it is plain that both sides to the dispute about
constitutions i.e. both the democratic and the oligarchical side xxvi profess only a
partial conception of justice.
A difficulty arises when we turn to consider what body of men xxvii should
be sovereign in the polis:xxviii the people at large; the wealthy; the better sort of
men; the one man who is best of all; the tyrant. But all these alternatives appear to
involve unpleasant results: indeed, how can it be otherwise? xxix What if the poor,
on the ground of their being a majority, proceed to divide among themselves the
possessions of the wealthy—will not this be unjust? “No, by Zeus” xxx (a democrat
may reply)—xxxi

xxii
The reader drops the interpolation “[This conclusion enables us to attain a proper conception
of justice.]” Ibid., 3.1280b39-1281a4.
xxiii
Barker adds here the interpolation “[i.e. who contribute most to good action].”
xxiv
Barker interpolates “[and should therefore, in justice, receive a larger recognition from it].”
xxv
3.1281a4-8.
xxvi
“[I.e. both the democratic and the oligarchical side]” is Barker’s interpolation.
xxvii
In the place of “men” Barker has “persons.”
xxviii
The reader omits the interpolation “[We can imagine five alternatives].”
xxix
Barker interpolates here “[Take, for example, the first alternative.]”
xxx
Barker renders the oath “by heaven.”
xxxi
3.1281a8-16.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 68

LS: “Democrat” is of course not in Aristotle. “Of course, by Zeus, the sovereign, the
ruler, decided it justly”—“justly” meaning “in due form.”xxxii The people assembled
decided to confiscate the property of the rich. That is extremely—the quotation marks
which you find here are of course not in Aristotle, but the oath, which is in the text, is
quite striking. This is one of the two cases in which you find an oath in Aristotle, and the
other comes very soon. That is quite interesting.

In order to make this clear, in passing, in Plato’s dialogues there are many oaths, and
even various oaths: by Zeus, by Hera—Socrates likes to vow by a woman or by a
goddess—or by Apollo and others. In Aristotle, so to speak, never, except in the Politics.
How would you explain that? Well, let us take the simplest example: a demonstration of a
mathematical proposition. Do you use oaths there? I mean, the demonstration is in no
way affected by the addition of an oath. Either it is demonstrated or it is not
demonstrated. But if it is matter of fact, and especially of controversial fact, oaths are of
some importance. It shows at least at first glance that the man who says “by Zeus”
believes it very strongly. Not necessarily, because he may be a liar, but still there is some
presumption. So in other words, when things are controversial and human passions are
involved, they swear. And political debate is passionate debate. It is quite interesting,
then, that only in Aristotle’s Politics among all his works do we find oaths.

Student: “But if this is not the extreme of injustice, xxxiii what is?”xxxiv

LS: Now Aristotle develops this at great length. All these kinds of men—the multitude,
the wealthy, the gentlemen, the single man who surpasses all others in goodness, and the
tyrant—they all raise claims. And each is convinced that his claim is obviously
reasonable. The people confiscate the property of the rich. Of course it is right: the
dēmos, the sovereign, decided it in a legal manner. But Aristotle says: Look, that means
they take away property merely on the basis of the fact that they have the power. What
does the tyrant do?13 Can you leave it at that? Now what is the outcome of all this?
Democracy, tyranny, and oligarchy are all bad because they absolutize the right of a part,
whose interests are not identical with the interests of the whole. The dēmos, by destroying
the wealth, destroys itself and the polis, and therefore it cannot be good. The action of the
dēmos against the rich is as coercive as that of the tyrant. But what about the gentleman,
the good man?

Student:
Should the better sort of men have authority and be sovereign in all matters? In
that case, the rest of the citizens will necessarily be debarred from honors, since
they will not enjoy the honor of holding civic office. We speak of offices as
honors; and when a single set of persons hold office permanently, the rest of the
community must necessarily be debarred from all honors. xxxv

xxxii
Evidently Strauss’s own translation of the sequel to the longer quotation.
xxxiii
The reader omits “(we may reply in turn).”
xxxiv
Politics 3.1281a16-17.
xxxv
3.1281a28-32.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 69

LS: So in other words, the people of defective decency, those who are not gentlemen, are
debarred from honors if only the gentlemen rule. But do they deserve honor? At first
glance, of course not. But what is Aristotle’s point? Why must they be given some power
in spite of that? Let us go on.

Student: “Is it better than any of the other alternatives that the one best man should rule?
This is still more oligarchical, xxxvi because the number of those debarred from office xxxvii
is even greater.”xxxviii

LS: In other words, all others are dishonored. They have no access to honor by position.

Student:
It may perhaps be urged that there is still another alternative; that it is a poor sort
of policy to vest sovereignty in one person or body of persons, xxxix subject as
persons are to the passions that beset men’s souls; and that it is better to vest it in
law.xl The law itself may incline either towards oligarchy or towards democracy;
and what difference will the sovereignty of law then make in the problems which
have just been raised? The consequences already stated will follow just the same.
The other alternatives may be reserved for a later inquiry; but the first of
the alternatives suggested—that the people at large should be sovereign rather
than the few best—would appear to be defensible, and while it presents some
difficulty it perhaps also contains some truth. xli

LS: Now what Aristotle means by the rule of laws, we have discussed before. The laws
are in a way even more virtuous than the gentlemen, because there is no gentleman who
doesn’t make some mistake from time to time. But the laws have no passion; therefore
should they not rule? But we know why they cannot: because they have no power. This
applies retroactively also to the gentlemen, whose power is too small to rule the city. We
have to make this disgraceful concession, because we have to make concessions to sheer
power. That is the argument up to this point. Now Aristotle must change the argument
radically. And since, from the point of view of sheer brachial power, the many are much
more powerful than the few rich, we have to consider much more seriously the claims of
democracy. And therefore the ensuing discussion leads up to a qualified argument in
favor of democracy.

It is very interesting: we have here a case made for democracy, not for oligarchy,
although from a formal point of view they seem to be equally bad. Aristotle develops
here at length that the many may be superior to the few gentlemen in virtue and
understanding by virtue of a kind of summative process: they are assembled in meeting

xxxvi
The reader omits the interpolation “[than the rule of the wealthy few or the few of the better
sort].”
xxxvii
Barker has not “office” but “honors.”
xxxviii
3.1281a32-34.
xxxix
The words “[or body of persons]” are presented as an interpolation in Barker.
xl
Barker interpolates here “[But this does not solve the difficulty.]”
xli
1281a34-42.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 70

and each gives his might, each hears the arguments, and the net result may be a higher
collective wisdom than the wisdom of any individual by himself. Aristotle makes here a
qualification in the sequel: 1280b15.

Student: “It is not clear, however, that this combination of qualities, which we have
made the ground of distinction between the many and the few best, is true of all popular
bodies and all large masses of men. Perhaps it may be said, ‘By Zeus,xlii it is clear that
there are some bodies of which it cannot possibly be true; for if you included them’”—

LS: Yet again, another sermon where we do not know—surely not the democrat because
there is an antidemocratic bent. Either by the oligarch or by Aristotle; this is a nice
ambiguity here.

Student: “For if you included them, you would by necessity be bound to include a herd
of beasts.”xliii

LS: The argument in favor of the dēmos—its collective virtue and wisdom may be
superior to the virtue of any individual, however virtuous and wise—cannot be true of
every dēmos. It must be a specially educated one. Aristotle leads then up to a conclusion:
Yes, that is all right, that makes sense. But on one thing he must insist: the many, 14 if they
are of this good kind of dēmos,15 must fully participate in deliberating and judging—that
is democracy—but they cannot be admitted to the ruling magistrates, because here not the
dēmos assembled, with its collective wisdom, but only the individual with his very poor
judgment enters. Yet a new difficulty arises. The many are understood to be, as
individuals, ignoramuses, non-knowers. Can the non-knowers be judges of the knowers?
For example, a physician is to be appointed. Who can judge of his competence? Only
physicians. Engineers, fortification experts—same story. But this speaks against
democracy. Democracy must then delegate an enormous part of its power to a
nondemocratic body. Aristotle gives this way out: on certain things the non-knowers are
as good judges or even better judges than the experts, namely, insofar as the user is a
better judge than the maker. Whatever a carpenter16 or a collegium of carpenters may tell
you about the excellence of a bed, if when you lie on it you can’t find sleep because of
the unevenness, this layman’s judgment is better than what the experts say. So in other
words, there is a large region in which everyone with his ordinary common sense is as
good a judge as any expert.xliv

—under certain conditions, if you have a dēmos of a certain character, democracy is

perfectly all right, as all the arguments taken from wisdom and virtue, which at first
glance seem to speak against democracy, speak in favor of democracy. Reasonable lovers
of democracy must be perfectly satisfied—that is one crucial point in the Aristotelian
argument. Now he begins a new discussion of the same subject, in 3.1282b14.

Student:

xlii
Barker translates the oath “by heaven.”
xliii
In the place of “by necessity” Barker writes “by the same token.” Politics III.1281b15-19.
xliv
The tape was changed at this point.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 71

In all arts and sciences the end in view is some good. In the most
sovereign of all the arts and sciences—and this is the art and science of politics—
the end in view is the greatest good and the good which is most pursued. The
good in the sphere of politics is justice; and justice consists in what tends to
promote the common interest. General opinion makes it consist in some sort of
equality. Up to a point this general opinion agrees with the philosophical inquiries
which contain our conclusions on ethics. In other words, it holds that justice
involves two factors—things, and the persons to whom things are assigned—and
it considers that persons who are equal should have assigned to them equal things.
But here there arises a question which must not be overlooked. Equals and
unequals—yes; but equals and unequals in what? This is a question which raises
difficulties, and involves us in philosophical speculation on politics. xlv

LS: I will not discuss this translation except to say that these two references to
philosophy occur in the original, and that is very rare in such a book as the Politics. There
is one point to be corrected, when he says “of all arts and sciences, the end is some good,
and to the highest degree in the most authoritative of the sciences, but this is the political
faculty,” [this is] not as he translates it, [but] more literally, in Greek: politikē dynamis,
“political power.” That is a kind of joke Aristotle makes. “Dynamis” has this double
meaning: that of power; but it can also mean the faculty of doing things political. Then it
would be the political art or science. The joke consists in the fact that political power is
here treated somewhat for a moment as an art or science, which makes us forget the harsh
aspect of political power, you know, the more practical power. For the meaning of this,
and also of the twofold reference to philosophy, the question of wisdom comes now to
the fore.

Hitherto we have seen that what we ordinarily meet xlvi in the form of wisdom we can
have in a properly constituted and balanced democracy. But there is another problem of
wisdom which we have to face. Now what is that? How does this problem appear? The
question concerns the various forms of excellences, as he makes clear. Now excellence is
taken in this sense: that if some man excels, he excels over others, he is superior to
them—the inequality of excellence, which sometimes when we use the word we do not
remember. When we use the word “virtue,” we do not think of the inequality it
necessarily implies. Aristotle stresses this point here now. The implication is that the
greatest of all excellences by virtue of which men can surpass one another is that of
wisdom. But this is not yet developed. Aristotle makes first clear, starting from the
political fact that while excellences are at the bottom of every political claim, not every
excellence is of political relevance. Well, we all know that. Someone may be an excellent
tightrope dancer, or a ballerina, or a dogcatcher, or a chess player: this is not an
excellence in itself of any political relevance. But always there are excellences,
superiorities involved. Now here we have the claims of these various excellences: wealth,
wisdom, free birth, and so on. How do we settle the claim between these various
claimants? And Aristotle takes here an example: If the things to be distributed were
flutes, what would a sensible distributor do? Would he give the best flutes to the rich or

xlv
Politics 3.1282b14-23.
xlvi
It is possible that Strauss said “need” and that “meet” is a mistranscription.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 72

the most handsome, or to the best flute players? And Aristotle says if he had a free hand,
he would give them to the best flute players, i.e., the best knowers. The application is
clear: if political office is to be distributed, it is possible they should be given to the best
knowers, to the men who understand political things best. Now this leads to the
consequence that one must accept the rule of a single outstandingly virtuous man, even if
he is poor, because what has absence of money or wealth to do with ability to judge
wisely? One could go a step further, though Aristotle only implies it here: If this is so,
why not give the sovereign power to a man who is a conventional slave, if he is much
wiser than all the master’s class? If he is supremely wise, why should he not rule? This
whole argument leads to the conclusion that the best regime would be the absolute rule of
the absolutely superior man. Let us read that, 3.1284a4.

Student:
If there is one person (or several persons, but yet not enough to form the full
measure of a state) so pre-eminently superior in goodness that there can be no
comparison between the goodness and political capacity which he shows (or
several show, when there is more than one) and what is shown by the rest, such a
person, or such persons, can no longer be treated as part of a city. Being so greatly
superior to others in goodness and political capacity, they will suffer injustice if
they are treated as worthy only of an equal share; for a person of this order may
very well be like a god among men. This being the case, it is clear that law
generallyxlvii is necessarily limited to those who are equal in birth and capacity.
There can be no law which runs against men who are utterly superior to others.
They are a law in themselves. It would be a folly to attempt to legislate for
them—xlviii

LS: Let us leave it17 here. And that is the conclusion: if a man is of truly superior wisdom
and virtue, surpassing all others in virtue and wisdom, then he cannot possibly be treated
as an equal, because he is manifestly superior, i.e., unequal—and since wisdom and
virtue are those qualifications which are as important for government as the art of flute-
playing is for flute-playing, there is no way out but to give him this power. Now this
leads to a longer discussion which we cannot follow here, a discussion of the democratic
alternative to this treatment, and that is ostracism, which was as a legal institution in
Athens: that an innocent citizen could be banished from the city merely because his mere
existence or presence endangered the equality of others. He was a living challenge to the
equality before all because of his manifest superiority. Aristotle says that this institution
of ostracism has some political justice. “Political justice” means here justice with a view
to the requirements of the city.

This, incidentally, is a passage which one should consider when studying Aristotle’s
teaching regarding natural justice or natural right in the fifth book of the Ethics, where he
finds the paradoxical thesis that all right, natural or conventional, is changeable. This
passage is usually not taken seriously. Here we see what Aristotle means by that: a man
who has done no wrong, who is superior to all others, is apparently punished, deprived of

xlvii
Barker interpolates “[as well as any particular rule of equality in the distribution of office].”
xlviii
Politics 3.1284a3-15.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 73

his right, because he in fact constitutes a danger to the democracy as established. So the
strict rule—you must never punish or deprive of good things a just man—is here justly
transgressed because of the overwhelming interests of the established regimes. This only
in passing.

But Aristotle does not think this is defensible and understandable, that democracy strives
to protect itself from such a “quote danger unquote,” but the true solution would of
course be to hand over the whole power in the city to this superior man. The man of
outstanding virtue ought to be lifelong king, and that is the only solution. Now this is a
very strange argument. We have first the most powerful argument ever made by
Aristotle, to say nothing of Plato, in favor of democracy: a democracy, qualified in
certain matters, satisfies all reasonable political demands. And then we suddenly are
confronted with the most antidemocratic thing, namely, the rule of an absolute king, who
has all powers, and we must understand what Aristotle means by that. In the later books,
neither democracy as described in book 3 nor the kingship as 18 mentioned here is
discussed. In other words, for the fundamental political considerations, the understanding
of these two fundamental possibilities, that good democracy as sketched here and
absolute monarchy, is absolutely essential from Aristotle’s point of view.

Now after having gone so far, Aristotle goes over, without giving any reason, to a
discussion of one kind of regime, namely, kingship. You know we must never forget the
external schēma—kingship, aristocracy, democracy, and also polity, and so on—which is
the framework of the Aristotelian discussion. Therefore, why should he not speak of
kingship now? But it is clear; there is a direct connection with what preceded. The
fundamental consideration led up to the problem of the absolutely superior individual,
who as such would have to be king, and Aristotle then uses this opportunity to append to
that a discussion of the various kinds of kingship, most of which are on a much lower
level, of course. He distinguishes five different kinds of kingship, but only two require
discussion since the other three are only in between. And he discusses only the two
extreme cases. The one is the absolute king, of whom we have heard before; the other is a
king like the Spartan king, practically only a lifelong and hereditary general. And
Aristotle says this question is of no fundamental interest, because the institution of
lifelong generalship you can have under any regime, and for one reason or another, a
democracy, oligarchy, or kingship can have lifelong generals. Again, a beautiful
illustration of the principle that whatever is politically neutral, whatever can occur in
every regime is as such politically uninteresting. A simple example from another scheme:
if you live in a country which depends for mere survival on an irrigation system, and this
is generally known and admitted, the irrigation system is not a political issue. It is very
important, the whole country would be ruined if the irrigation system broke down, but it
is unpolitical: a simple example of the fact that something can be very important and
politically absolutely unimportant. And there is of course the opposite, which can never
be: that something is politically important and otherwise unimportant. Or can you think
of an example?

Student: In Gulliver’s Travels [. . .] it is obviously very important to the whole question

of regimes, but not in itself.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 74

LS: Yes, but from which point of view? Only if you transcend the political sphere. In
other words, for a philosopher it would be very unimportant, but for Lilliputians it would
be very important. Yes, to that extent you are right. But since we are ordinary human
beings, I believe we can say that whatever is politically important can never be simply
unimportant. One would have to raise very high in order to be able to say what you just
said.

Now in this section about kingship, which is the last part of book 3, Aristotle opens up
again the question of the universal or absolute king and defends this institution against
antiroyalists. The antiroyalists base their argument on rule of law rather than rule of men,
an argument of which Aristotle had already disposed earlier. The laws themselves depend
also on human beings who frame them and who enforce them. Now what is the meaning
of this long discussion? After Aristotle has solved the problem of the best political
regime, as far as it is possible to do so in a general discussion, in favor of a moderate
acceptance of democracy, which is perfectly satisfactory, at least to us—that he takes up
then such an extreme possibility, this absolute king, what is the reason for that? A stupid
answer, but in a way a learned answer—because something can be both stupid and
learned—is to say that Aristotle follows Plato, who had said in his Laws there are two
models of regimes: democracy and monarchy. xlix Aristotle tries to do justice to this
Platonic observation. But that only pushes the question back: why did Plato make this
remark, and what does it mean for Plato? In the third book of the Politics, we recall,
Aristotle started in the concrete discussion of an entirely different dualism, the dualism of
democracy and oligarchy, which politically was obvious everywhere: rule of the rich, rule
of the poor. And he decided, one can say, rather in favor of democracy than in favor of
oligarchy. But now we have an entirely different polarity: not democracy or oligarchy,
but democracy [or] absolute kingship. Now what is behind that? The question has to do
with the problem of laws. Democracy, while it makes the democratic laws, necessarily
acts through laws. In every regime where more than one man rules, there must be some
legal order. I mean, you must have arrangements for how to reach decisions, and who
should preside—a question which doesn’t arise as such in a monarchy, where the king is
the presiding officer as a matter of course, and all these formalities aren’t as necessary in
a kingship as they are in a democracy.

Now what is the point? I make this suggestion: that this absolute marvel of a king,
surpassing everyone in wisdom and virtue, is the political reflection of the philosopher-
king in Plato’s sense. Aristotle does not speak of the philosopher-king, but it is the
philosopher-king who is visible only in his kingly function. So the question of democracy
and absolute kingship would be a reflection of the whole question regarding the relation
of the city and philosophy. Democracies of course stand for the city, and the king stands
for philosophy. The fact that there is such an issue has its root in a fundamental
disproportion between philosophy and the city. For the time being I remind you of what
is implied by Aristotle’s criticism of Hippodamus in the second book, namely, the
fundamental difference between the arts, intellectual arts, and the laws. There is a
fundamental recalcitrance of the city to philosophy, which could be overcome,
xlix
Laws, book 3, 693d.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 75

theoretically, if there were philosopher-kings. The reason for this disharmony is that the
ends of the philosophers and of the non-philosophers are radically different. Philosophy
is concerned with understanding, with contemplation, we may call it; the non-
philosophers are not concerned with this, with whatever else they may be concerned.
Now here we touch on the fundamental difference between modern and premodern
philosophy and, in particular, political philosophy. We do not understand this side of
classical political philosophy in Plato and Aristotle because we are sons or daughters of
the modern age. In modern times, from the very beginning, the leading philosophers were
of the opinion that philosophy itself will bring about, and not accidentally, a harmony
between philosophy and the city. And how could this be, if the end of philosophy were
the same as the end of the non-philosophers? Let us assume that the end of the non-
philosophers is something like terrestrial, earthly happiness—housing, health, clothing,
and so on—and that philosophy or science (that means almost the same in earlier times)
is there for the sake of making possible the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Then the end of philosophy and the end of the non-philosophers would be identical, the
gulf between them would be bridged. To this we add another consideration, linked to the
first, and that is that owing to the view which emerged in the seventeenth century and
then prevailed, philosophy or science necessarily brings about enlightenment of the non-
philosophers or scientists and therefore revolutionizes the opinion of the citizen body,
public opinion, political opinion, and therewith revolutionizes political society. Therefore
there is no problem regarding its influence, the positive influence of philosophy on
society, regarding the harmony between philosophy and society.

This I link with what I said earlier: the new kind of regimes, which Aristotle did not
consider, like liberal democracy, communism, and fascism, these new kinds of regimes
must be traced to their theoretical principle, which is not necessarily visible at the first
glance; not very recondite, but still it needs some analysis. And then I think you will
come back—surely in the case of liberal democracy and communism; in the case of
Russia it is a bit more complicated—you will come back to the fact that in these modern
doctrines, the enlightenment of the citizen body—and “enlightenment” means here not
merely enlightenment about their rights and duties but a general kind of enlightenment:
enlightenment as the spreading of scientific information, of scientific understanding—is
the condition for the establishment of the best order of society.

I can illustrate it by one extreme example, but it has a great merit (extreme examples can
be very helpful when they show the simple lines very clearly), and that is Thomas
Hobbes, who plays a crucial role for modern political thought. Hobbes built his whole
doctrine on the view that there is one and only one natural right, fundamental right: self-
preservation, based on the inescapable character of the fear of death, in particular of
violent death. And this he built up. There are many difficulties, some very striking; for
example, that in Hobbes’s time there were many examples of people who were not afraid
of violent death at all and, especially in the religious wars, people who were prepared to
die for what they regarded as a true faith. Now Hobbes has to face this question, because
if these people are right, Hobbes is entirely wrong: you cannot build a political doctrine
on the fear of violent death. Hobbes called religion “fear of powers invisible,” and he
raises the question: Which is the greater fear, that of violent death or that of powers
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 13 n.d., 1965 76

invisible? And then he says: While the power of the powers invisible is greater than that
of the powers visible, speaking from the point of view of religion, the fear of death is
stronger than the fear of powers invisible. But this seems to be absurd. What is behind
Hobbes’s argument, which is in a sense self-contradictory, is this. By nature, according to
truth and nature, the fear of violent death is the greatest force, the rock-bottom of society.
This is endangered by the fear of powers invisible, therefore the rational and natural order
will not work if the fear of powers invisible is not taken away—in other words, if the
people are not enlightened.

Hobbes’s political schema is the first which exists which requires for its working, on any
level, popular enlightenment. Hobbes even speaks of popular enlightenment. He says
somewhere, “gradually the vulgar become educated”—Paulatim eruditur vulgus.l Now
what in Hobbes is only discernible if you follow strictly the theoretical argument became
quite visible in the eighteenth century, in the age of enlightenment par excellence. Here
we find more and more doctrines which demand for their political efficacy popular
enlightenment. There is nothing of this kind in Plato and Aristotle. That a certain degree
of theoretical understanding is necessary for the rulers in an aristocratic regime, that was
of course admitted, and there is a discussion of that in the first book of Cicero’s Republic.
But not this notion; the notion of enlightenment is a peculiarly modern notion and it gives
modern politics its peculiar character. The propaganda of which we hear so much—
Marx’s propaganda—is primarily meant to be, of course, enlightenment about the true
character of the social forces. That this has long been abandoned, especially since Stalin’s
time, is another matter.
1
Deleted “but.”
2
Deleted “the.”
3
Deleted “Now.”
4
Deleted “not.”
5
Deleted “and.”
6
Deleted “and.”
7
Deleted “Still in one respect.
8
Deleted “to bring.”
9
Deleted “and.”
10
Deleted “that.”
11
Deleted “democracy.”
12
Deleted “he.”
13
Deleted “Is this.”
14
Deleted “may.”
15
Deleted “they.”
16
Deleted “may tell you about the.”
17
Deleted “at.”
18
Deleted “we.”

l
Hobbes, De Homine, 14, 13.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 77

Session 14: March 18, 1965

Leo Strauss: I remind you again of the main topic of Aristotle’s Politics, the regime,
which means the variety of regimes. In order to study them properly, we are in need of a
comprehensive view of all possible regimes. Aristotle provides us with such a schema in
his enumeration of the six regimes which I outlined some time ago. i You remember these:
from the point of view of number, and from the point of view of goodness and badness.
There is a complete enumeration, nothing is left out. But there is this disjunction: these
are merely numerical or formal distinctions, which is good enough for guaranteeing
comprehensiveness but not good enough for understanding certain things. We must
replace “the few and the many,” if we want to understand the political things, by “the rich
and the poor,” and hence by the two regimes in which either the rich or the poor prevail,
oligarchy or democracy. This leads naturally to the consideration, since both oligarchy
and democracy are defective, of whether there is not a mean between them which has the
advantages of each, while avoiding the disadvantages. These are, on the lower level, the
polity, and on the higher level, aristocracy. Oligarchy, democracy, polity, and
aristocracy.ii In the comprehensive scheme we have six. Which are missing?

Student: Monarchy and tyranny.

LS: Yes, and what do they have in common?

Student: There’s only one person who chairs the government.

LS: Who rules. So in other words, these four regimes have this in common, that they are
all republican regimes. Tyranny can be simply disregarded, and as for kingship, it is no
longer possible according to Aristotle once cities have reached a certain size or maturity.

Now the beginning of the political, practical inquiry is from democracy and oligarchy,
just as we today would begin with democracy and communism, whatever phenomena we
might take in later—Franco’s Spain, or Salazar’s Portugal—but they are not in the
foreground, the way in which democracy and communism are in the foreground. Now the
difficulty which Aristotle confronts is this: both democracy and oligarchy are bad, for
different reasons. One can state a common reason: the principle of neither democracy
[n]or oligarchy is virtue. The good regimes are those in which the virtuous and the wise,
and only the virtuous and the wise, rule. The first reaction of such hardheaded people as
we are, is: Fairy tales. And this is, I’m sure, the reaction of the large majority of the
professions. Nevertheless, we hear political men even today speak of the pursuit of
excellence. And “excellence,” one can say, is a translation of “virtue.” Or of “high
culture.” People are concerned with culture on all levels but I believe, if confronted with

i
See session 12.
ii
The six-fold schema according to number of rulers and whether they rule for the common good
or their own advantage: monarchy (1), aristocracy (few), polity (many) for the common good;
democracy (many), oligarchy (few), tyranny (1) for the rulers’ advantage. Strauss includes all the
options in principle and underlines all later reclassifications.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 78

a choice between low and high culture, they would not dare to come out for low culture
in preference to the high. Far from being extraneous to the city, excellence is its highest
end. The greatest error which any student of political science can make is to forget or to
minimize this end, the need for which will assert itself in unexpected quarters. To
understand this fact properly, we must remember something which is easily forgotten:
that the highest is not necessarily the most urgent. I mean, the fantastic people—the
so-called idealists, or however they call them, the missionaries—they forget that the
highest is not necessarily the most urgent. Aristotle never forgets this. The simplest
example from everyday life: appendectomy may be the most urgent thing for a man, but
it can never be the highest for him. The pragmatic proof is when you meet a man who has
undergone an appendectomy, you never admire him for it. [Laughter] You may envy him
that he survived it, but you do not admire him. The highest end of the city is not its sole
end.

In other words, as Aristotle puts it, the city comes into being for the sake of life, but it
exists for the sake of the good life. And this primary end, the mere life, of course subsists
all the time. Every man is always concerned with his sheer self-preservation, apart from
any concern with reform, with improvement, or whatever else. Since the highest end of
the city is not its sole end, the claims of those men who are not virtuous or wise must
always be considered. After all, they too want to live, although they are unwilling and
unable to live virtuously. In other words, if we consider only the highest end of the city,
we arrive at the conclusion that the only legitimate claim to rule is that of the virtuous
and wise, ruling in their own right, not by virtue of delegation or election. That is an
absurdity from Aristotle’s point of view, that the virtuous and wise should rule by
delegation: How can the lower give the title to the higher?

Yet this view, that the only legitimate rule is aristocracy in this sense, suffers from an
obvious flaw because it abstracts from something of the utmost importance, and we all
know today what it is from which this view mistakenly abstracts. It is now called
power—a very loose word; we mean here of course political power. But this means
primarily brachial power, the power of muscle, from which such beautiful expressions as
“muscling in” are derived. This can never be forgotten. But not under all conditions is
mere brachial power sufficient. In the case of very simple armaments, it is so; but if the
armaments become more complex—think of armored knights versus very strong
blacksmiths—then the armored knights are likely to best the blacksmiths. There came a
well-known equalizer in the nineteenth century which made possible the equal status of
all fighters, as everyone could learn to handle rifles. Today, as we all know, the situation
has again radically changed. But it still comes down to this: the power to kill. 1 [Hence]
the emphasis in Hobbes on violent death. This is therefore an important consideration. I
would like to read to you a passage from Plato’s Laws, from the third book, which might
be helpful here.

[Athenian Stranger]: What and how many are the agreed claims in the matter of
ruling and being ruled, alike in cities, large and small, and in households? Is not
the right of father and mother one of them? And in general, would not the claim
of parents to rule over offspring be a claim universally correct?
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 79

[Clinias]: Certainly.
[Ath. Stranger]: And next to this, the right of the ignoble to rule over the noble?
And then, following on these as a third claim, the right of older people to rule and
of younger to be ruled?
[Clinias]: Sure.
[Ath. Stranger]: The fourth right is that slaves ought to be ruled and masters ought
to rule.
[Clinias]: Undoubtedly.
[Ath. Stranger]: And the fifth is, I imagine, that the stronger should rule and the
weaker be ruled.

In the four preceding ones, strength as strength did not enter.

[Clinias]: A truly compulsory form of rule.

[Ath. Stranger]: Yes, and one that is very prevalent in all kinds of arguments,
being according to nature, as Pindar of Thebes once said. The most important
claim, it would seem, is the sixth, which ordains that the man without
understanding should follow, and the wise man rule. Nevertheless, my most wise
Pindar, this is a thing that I for one would hardly assert to be against nature, but
rather according to nature, the natural rule of law without coercion over willing
subjects. The link being that law, as a product of human wisdom, is ruling
wisdom.
[Clinias]: You speak with perfect correctness.
[Ath. Stranger]: To be loved by the gods, and to have good luck, marks the
seventh form of rule, where we bring a man forward for casting of lots, and
declare that if he gains the lot, he will most justly be the ruler, but if he fails, he
shall take his place among the ruled. iii

This is a seemingly disorderly enumeration of seven claims to rule, which all have to be
considered and are considered by Plato in the Laws, but the one to which I particularly
wish to draw your attention is that sheer strength, brachial power, is a political
consideration. And since the virtuous and wise are not necessarily bodily stronger than
the vicious and unwise, there is a fundamental difficulty regarding aristocracy. It is then
necessary to pay careful attention to what we will call the submoral claims, the claims not
based on virtue but, say, on mere strength. Or on mere old age, because not in all cases
are the older the wiser. Strange as it may sound, sometimes the son may be wiser than his
father. But political science would be incomplete if it did not also consider the
supramoral, not only the submoral, namely, philosophy or the theoretical understanding:
the possibility, namely, that society receive a decisive direction from the intellectual,
spiritual claim beyond the merely moral claim. You all have heard of Plato’s
philosopher-king, and we have discussed in this class Comte’s proposal regarding the
spiritual government of men of science, and there are quite a few other proposals which
one may meet in between. iv Aristotle does not explicitly discuss this very interesting
problem, the suprapolitical. He leaves it at a discussion of the political and the

iii
Laws, book 3, 690a-d. Presumably Strauss’s translation.
iv
Session 1.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 80

subpolitical. The reason for this is that, in his view, the sphere of morality and of the polis
is closed: you can find your bearings there without particular attention to what transcends
the polis. Nevertheless, Aristotle refers to this problem because he is a comprehensive
thinker—implicitly or, rather, allusively.

Now let us first turn to the end of book 3, the very end.

Student: “After these things have been determined, v we must next attempt to treat of the
best form of constitution, asking ourselves, ‘Under what conditions does it tend to arise,
and how can it be established?’ In order to make a proper inquiry into this subject, it is
necessary—”vi

LS: And read the note of Barker: “It is necessary.” What does Barker say here?

Student: “The words at the close of this chapter are repeated at the beginning of book
7.”vii

LS: Yes. In other words, book 3 is obviously followed by book 4, but there is an
indication in the last sentence of book 3 that the continuation is in books 7 and 8. That is
one of the most obvious textual difficulties in Aristotle’s Politics. What he means, I
believe, is this. We can go on from this broad consideration of regimes, which moves
ultimately between the poles of absolute kingship and democracy; one can go on from
there to books 4 to 6, which do not deal with the best regime. Or one can go on to books
7 and 8, which contain a detailed discussion of the best regime. Both are possible, but the
reasoning is this: one cannot see the more or less imperfect regimes discussed in the
central books without awareness of the best. May I ask why one cannot do that, say, in
the ordinary democracy or oligarchy, why one cannot study that without awareness of the
best?

Student: One can only see the story, in his Metaphysics, after knowing the truth by
nature.

LS: That is very sophisticated. In the simple language which every commonsensical man
or woman can understand?

Student: We have to know the good form to know what is perverted or not good.

LS: Yes. And therefore it is important to see a bad or more or less imperfect regime as
what it is, if you do not know what the best is. Its imperfection is as much a part of its
being as its sensible qualities, red, blue, and so on. But on the other hand, one cannot
spell out the institutions, the detailed institutions, of the best regimes without learning

v
“These issues determined,” is the exact wording in Barker.
vi
Politics 3.1288b2-6.
vii
“The words at the close of this chapter, which ends in this abrupt manner, are repeated exactly
at the beginning of Book VII.” Barker, page 152 n.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 81

something from the actual institutions of the imperfect regimes. This I believe is the
simple solution to this textual difficulty.

Now let us then turn first to books 7 and 8, in which Aristotle discusses the best regime.
The best regime requires that we know which way of life is choiceworthy, the most
choiceworthy. In order to answer that, we must know what the principles of choice are,
what the things are we esteem and desire, the good things. There are three of them:
external goods; those in the body—health, strength, and beauty; and those in the soul.
Those in the body belong to us, obviously—they cannot be taken away from us as
property or even reputation can be taken away from us. Happiness requires that we have
all three kinds, therefore there is no question regarding the end of human life. In other
words, Aristotle does not believe there is a cause for what is now called relativism. Let us
now read 1323a27. That is, “All these things must belong to the happy or blessed. For no
one would call someone blessed”—

Student:
No one would call a man happy who had no particle of fortitude, temperance,
justice, or wisdom i.e., none of the goods of the soul: viii who feared the flies
buzzing about his head; who abstained from none of the extremest forms of
extravagance whenever he felt hungry or thirsty; who would ruin his dearest
friends for the sake of a farthing; whose mind was as senseless, and as much
astray, as that of a child or a madman. These are all propositions which would be
accepted by nearly everyone as soon as they were stated. But differences begin to
arise when we ask, “How much of each good should men have? And what is the
relative superiority of one good over another?” Any modicum of goodness ix is
regarded as adequate; but wealth and property, power, reputation, and all such
things, are coveted to an excess which knows no bounds or limits. There is an
answer which can be given to men who act in this way. “The facts themselves
make it easy for you to assure yourselves on these issues. You can see for
yourselves that the goods of the soul are not gained or maintained by the external
goods. It is the other way around. You can see for yourselves that felicity—no
matter whether men find it in pleasure, or goodness, or both of the two—belongs
more to those who have cultivated their character and mind to the uttermost, and
kept acquisition of external goods within moderate limits, than it does to those
who have managed to acquire more external goods than they can possibly use,
and are lacking in the goods of the soul.” x

LS: This is Aristotle’s simple argument: there can be no doubt about that, that the goods
of the soul are higher than those of the body, and those of the body higher than these
other things, the external goods. But all three are needed. And the question concerns only
that regarding which there may very well be controversy: How much of each in a given
situation? There is no general answer possible to this question.

Barker interpolates “[i.e. none of the goods of the soul].”

viii
ix
The reader omits the interpolation “[i.e. of the ‘goods of the soul’].”
x
Politics 7.1323a27-b6.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 82

Now what do we say about Aristotle’s argument? Let us assume that we could have the
privilege of having Mr. Giancana in our midst. I suppose you know who he is, he is
reputed to be a leader of the crime syndicate in this city. xi What would he say? Assuming
we could really bring him down to a theoretical discussion, which I would not take for
granted. He might possibly agree with everything, for very obvious reasons: in order to
present himself as a nice man, just as he would do some other things for that reason. But
what would he say? Would he not admit that a man who is afraid of every fly or every
insect is a miserable man? Because this man would of course be afraid of everything; he
would live in constant misery for reasons of fear. Now what about a man who is very
foolish, in the simple sense of the term, that he always makes the wrong choices? I
believe again that Giancana would say this is also not a happy man, because how can he
stay out of jail if he is so stupid? [Laughter] I cannot develop this point fully, but I will
draw your attention to it. In the extreme attacks on ordinary morality you find, say, in
Plato’s Gorgias, in Callicles’s famous attack—courage, manliness on the one hand, and
prudence, cleverness on the other,2 are admitted to be virtues. They are not controversial.
The difficulty would concern the two others in the Platonic scheme, moderation and
justice. That leads therefore to a long discussion. xii But Aristotle makes clear at the
beginning of this whole work—for the Politics is only the second part of the work, the
first part being the Nicomachean Ethics—that he is addressing only well-bred men, only
gentlemen. They of course will not raise gangster-like objections, but it becomes
necessary for us also, no doubt, to consider the phenomenon of the gangster—and then
we will have to turn to Plato, who has some arguments or people defending gangsterism,
and we must see how we can overcome that.

Now the next point that Aristotle makes, which is crucial, is that the happiness of the
individual and the happiness of the city are the same. So if someone believes that the
happiness of man consists in being rich, then he will also say that the happiness of the
city consists in being rich. From that it follows, of course, that the best regime would be
directed above all to the goods of the soul, to the virtues of the mind, although it also
leads to bodily goods and external goods. So this is a very strange assertion for us—I will
come back to that later—that the end of the city and the end of the individual are
identical. Now Aristotle turns first to another controversy. There are two kinds of virtues:
the moral virtues, the virtues of character which are practiced in action, in society; and on
the other hand, the virtues of the mind which can be practiced in solitude. Now it is
controversial which of these two kinds of virtues is the highest—in other words, whether
practical or political life is preferred or rather the contemplative life, that of the
philosopher. Now since the end of the city is the same as the end of the individual, this
controversy concerns of course the city as well. But how does this alternative look in the
case of the city? What is the difficulty for you, Mr. Levy?

Mr. Levy: The city doesn’t think, Mr. Strauss.

LS: Pardon?

xi
Sam Giancana was allegedly a crime boss in Chicago in the fifties and sixties.
xii
For Callicles’s views in the Gorgias, see esp. 483a-c, 490a with 491a-d, 491e-492c.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 83

Mr. Levy: The city doesn’t think.

LS: Well, that could be perhaps too harsh. The city thinks, of course, in and through its
government. But . . . it doesn’t philosophize.

Now how does the alternative look in the case of the city? We can say, following
Aristotle’s explanation, practical life means going outward. Extroverted. And this means
in the case of the city trying to rule over neighboring cities: expansionism, imperialism.
The theoretical argument, on the other hand, is not going outward: theoretical men are
introverted. And therefore the political counterpart, the political reflection of that, would
be the rejection of imperialism. Aristotle rejects imperialism altogether. The end is peace
and not war; in connection with that, not expansion. He admits that happiness consists in
action and, to that extent, the practical men seem to be wiser than the theoretical men.
But 1325bl6:

Student:
If we are right in our view, and felicity should be held to consist in
“well-doing,” it follows that the life of action is best, alike for every state as a
whole and for each individual in his own conduct. But the life of action need not
be, as is sometimes thought, a life which involves relations to others. Nor should
our thoughts be held to be active only when they are directed to objects which
have to be achieved by action. Thoughts with no object beyond themselves, and
speculations and trains of reflection followed purely for their own sake, are far
more deserving of the name of active.xiii Action of some sort or other is therefore
our end and aim; but, even in the sphere of outward acts, action can also be
predicated—and that in the fullest measure and the true sense of the word—of
those who, by their thoughts, are the prime authors of such acts. xiv States situated
by themselves, and resolved to live in isolation—

LS: Who cannot have any action on other states—say, on an island, without any
connection with another island or mainland—

Student:
need not be therefore inactive. They can achieve activity by sections: the different
sections of such a state will have many mutual connections. xv This is also, and
equally, true of the individual human being. If it were not so, there would be
something wrong with God himself, and the whole of the universe, who have no
activities other than those of their own internal life.
It is therefore clear that the same way of life which is best for the
individual must also be best for the state as a whole and for all its members. xvi

xiii
The reader omits the words “‘Well-doing’ is the end we seek.”
xiv
The reader omits the interpolation “[As thought in itself may be activity, so activity may exist
without relation to others.]”
xv
From here Barker interpolates “[and the whole will thus be active, in its own internal life.]”
xvi
Politics 7.1325b14-32.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 84

LS: It is perhaps not quite so clear for every reason. Now what Aristotle says is: action,
yes, because it is understood in contradistinction to laziness, to inactivity. But action may
remain entirely intrinsic, as in the case of thinking or contemplation, of such thinking as
does not concern itself with external goals. [The] thinking of the carpenter is not of
course simply intrinsic, because it issues in fabrication, and similarly the action of the
statesman. God is essentially active: this Aristotle simply takes over from accepted views.
And this activity is according to Aristotle thinking of thinking: thinking thinking itself.
No relation to externals. The Aristotelian god is not the biblical God. Here he asserts
again the supremacy of the theoretical life, even in regard to the city, but what does it
mean in the case of the city? This we have still to understand. Not more than the rejection
of expansionist or imperialist policy as such. We draw this conclusion: the city is not
capable of theoretical life proper, only an analogon of it. And this analogon is the city
which3 is entirely concerned with the motions within itself in its own improvement. The
end of life of the city is therefore not strictly speaking identical with that of the
individual, contrary to Aristotle’s explicit assertion. It may be true that a city within
which philosophers can live is better than a city within which philosophers cannot live.
That may be so, although this is not quite clear, and the proof that it is not quite clear is
this. Aristotle, like Plato, preferred the Spartan regime to the Athenian regime. But under
the Spartan regime, philosophers were impossible. In the Athenian regime they were
possible, although with the danger of ending as Socrates ended. But Socrates lived for
seventy years in Athens. The key point is this: however important philosophy may be for
Aristotle—and it is of course the most important thing—philosophy or the philosophers
are not an essential part of the city. This comes out very beautifully, I think, in the
medieval Aristotelian, Marsilius of Padua, xvii who states Aristotle’s doctrine as follows.
One of the parts of the city is the teachers, something which Aristotle never says, but the
teachers are the priests, i.e., not the philosophers. So while it deviates from the letter of
Aristotle, something is still in the spirit of Aristotle: philosophy transcends the city.

Now we will come back to this key question again. Aristotle turns then to starting from
scratch, trying to build up a good city with a good regime, and he starts like any other
craftsman would, from the material, the matter. Now one of the important considerations
regarding the material which the founder of a regime must have is numbers: how many
inhabitants, how many citizens. He looks for the optimum number, and the answer he
gives (we cannot read everything, so I will mention only the main points) is: not more
than mutual trust requires. And mutual trust requires mutual knowledge. In other words,
differently stated: a city must not be so large that there is not possible mutual supervision.
Perhaps by maiden aunts—it doesn’t matter who exercises it in particular. But these big
Babylons, where everyone can do as he lists, that is not soil for a good regime.
Incidentally, this question of size, which became a matter of ridicule in modern times—
for example, in Hobbes, who simply says the question of size is irrelevant—that depends
on the situation in foreign policy and other accidents, there is not any meaning in
questioning it. But with these big metropoleis and other phenomena in the mid-twentieth
century, it is again shown that the question of an optimal size is a necessary question,
naturally, not for the country as a whole so much as for the individual towns.

xvii
Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace) (1324).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 85

Now as for the internal structure of the best regime, the principle of it is this: not every
kind of human being that is indispensable for the city can be a part of the city. For those
who cannot participate in the end of the city but are only means for the city are not
properly parts. Needless to say, the parts proper, let us say the government, are also
indispensable, but there is a difference between ingredients of the city which are only
indispensable and those which are truly parts. What then are the indispensable works or
functions of the city, without which there could not be a city? 1328b4:

Student:
It remains for us now to enumerate all the necessary elements of the city. Our list
of these elements will include what we have called the “parts” of the city, as well
as what we have termed its “conditions.” xviii

LS: “Conditions” are what I have termed “indispensable.”

Student:
To make such a list, we must first determine how many services a city performs;
and then we shall easily see how many elements it must contain. The first thing to
be provided is food. The next is arts and crafts; for life is a business which needs
many tools. The third is arms: the members of a state must bear arms in person,
partly in order to maintain authority and repress disobedience, and partly in order
to meet any threat of external aggression. The fourth thing which has to be
provided is a certain supply of property, alike for domestic use and for military
purposes. The fifth (but, in order of merit, the first)—

LS: That is, “the fifth and the first”—

Student:
is an establishment for the service of the gods, or, as it is called, public worship.
The sixth thing, and the most vitally necessary, is a method of deciding what is
demanded by the public interest and what is just in men’s private dealings. xix
These are the services which every city may be said to need.

LS: “Services” is also not appropriate, but rather “the works, the functions, the deeds.” A
service—that has certain un-Aristotelian connotations.

Student:
The city is not a mere casual group. It is a group which, as we have said, must be
self-sufficient for the purposes of life; and if any of these services is missing it
cannot be totally self-sufficient. A city should accordingly be so constituted as to
be competent for all these services. It must therefore contain a body of farmers to
produce all the necessary food; craftsmen; a military force; a propertied class;

xviii
Barker’s translation contains minor differences: “It remains for us now to enumerate all the
elements necessary for the existence of the state. Our list of these elements will include what we
have called the ‘parts’ of the state as well as what we have termed its ‘conditions.’”
xix
The reader omits the interpolation “[i.e. some system of deliberation and jurisdiction].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 86

priests; and a body for deciding necessary issues and determining what is the
public interest.xx

LS: Literally, “judges of what is necessary and beneficial.” This latter implies both
deliberative-legislative and judicial. Now you see here in the enumeration Aristotle starts
from bottom to top. What they need most urgently of course is food, and he goes up from
that to the highest. This implies that government proper, the deliberative and judicial, is
higher than the priesthood or the concern with the divine things. Yet in one sense the
concern with the divine things is the highest, as is indicated by this strange expression,
“the fifth and the first.” From one point of view the fifth, from another the first. And the
reason for the ambiguity is this: that from Aristotle’s point of view the true concern with
the divine things is philosophy. The reflection of this true concern is religion, as we say.
There is no Greek word for religion, although it offers itself almost inevitably. The word
which the Greeks would use more naturally would be “piety,” eusebeia. It is very
interesting that eusebeia, piety, is not mentioned among the virtues in Aristotle’s Ethics.
Now let us go on from where we left off.

Student: “These points determined, a further point is still left for consideration. Should
all the members share in the performance of all these services? (That is a possibility: the
same persons may all be engaged simultaneously in farming, the practice of arts and
crafts, and the work of deliberation and jurisdiction.)”

LS: Is this not clear? That while the city needs these various functions, they do not all
have to be distributed in different classes. Peasants could be warriors, and could be the
majority in the assembly—why not?

Student:
Or should we assume a separate body of persons for each of the separate services?
Or, again, should some of the services be assigned to different sets of persons, and
others be shared by all? The same system need not be followed in every regime.
Different systems, as we have noted, are possible: all may share in all functions,
or different persons may undertake different functions. The existence of these
alternatives explains why constitutions differ: in democracies all men share in all
functions, while the opposite practice is followed in oligarchies.

LS: This must be reasonably understood. Aristotle does not say that in democracies
everyone is both a farmer and an artisan, but he means politically interesting functions,
the deliberative and judicial.

Student: “Here we are only concerned with the best or ideal regime.”xxi

LS: “Ideal” is also not a Greek word. It was coined in the seventeenth century; it didn’t
exist before that. If you wanted, you could say “the regime according to wish or prayer,”
meaning of course according to wish or prayer of sensible men. Now how this came to be

xx
Politics 7.1328b2-23.
xxi
Here again the reader has replaced Barker’s “constitution” with “regime.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 87

called ideal, with a word derivative from Plato’s “idea,” is a very long question. I will
only say one point to show you the difficulty: that Plato’s regime in the Republic is not a
Platonic idea, it is something made by men. The blueprint is made by men. The
man-made blueprint is not an idea proper. What an idea might mean I cannot now
discuss. Go on.

Student: “Now the best regime is that under which the city can attain the greatest
felicity; and that, as we have already stated, cannot exist without goodness. Upon these
principles it clearly follows that a state with an ideal regime—a state which has for its
members men who are absolutely just and not men who are merely just in relation to
some particular standard—cannot have its citizens living the life of mechanics or
shopkeepers, which is ignoble and inimical to goodness.”

LS: “Goodness” is here virtue.

Student: “Nor can it have them engaged in farming: leisure is a necessity, both for
growth in virtue and for the pursuit of political activities.”xxii

LS: What does he mean by this distinction between justice absolutely understood and
justice with a view to hypothesis (to an assumption)? Well, there is a democratic concept
of justice, there is an oligarchic concept of justice. These are concepts with regard to an
assumption, an assumption which grows up naturally but which on reflection proves to be
unsound. Justice simply is that notion of justice which stands the test of examination. So
Aristotle makes it quite clear: he excludes farmers and artisans and small traders from
citizenship because they lack the leisure and dignity required for life devoted to virtue. In
other words, Aristotle’s final decision is not democratic. But there are functions which
remain: fighting, wealth, priesthood, and government. They must belong to the same
men, but in a way different groups, with a view to the natural distinctions of youth,
maturity, and old age. That is to say, in their youth, they are fighters; in their maturity,
they are governors; in their old age, they are priests.

The question we must address to Aristotle after what we have learned from him is: How
can you make such a tremendous step, throw out the dēmos altogether, after what you
told us about the necessity of considering the claims of the dēmos? Is this not very
strange? How would Aristotle reply to us? Very simple: You only have to read, and while
reading, try to think. The best regime is a city without a dēmos. There may be slaves
around; there must be slaves around, resident aliens, at any rate, unnaturalized citizens.
Farming and the crafts are to be exercised by slaves and metics. There is a provision, as
Aristotle points out, for the emancipation of slaves, so that if they are not satisfied with
their miserable lot, a reward is held out to them and to all slaves, as Aristotle says.
Naturally he means it, that if they behave well for a sufficiently long time, they will be
emancipated. Clearly this is a great difficulty, because if they can be emancipated, they
can take care of themselves: their enslavement was not natural, it was unjust in the first
place. This is a major difficulty of Aristotle’s construction. Of course one could say:
When you take a general picture of the Republic of Venice as it developed, you find
xxii
Politics 7.1328b24-1329a2.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 88

traces of what Aristotle says here very clearly. But there we see, as in other Italian cities,
a gradual formation of a plebs. Naturally there are emancipated slaves, and these resident
aliens who don’t remember anymore whether they came from Sicily or Asia Minor but
are as true-born in this particular place as any full-blooded citizen, and what have you
then? They are not legally a plebs. They are not recognized to be citizens, but they are
human beings and they will be dissatisfied and take action, as human nature is apt to do.

Now what is the consequence? Aristotle knows that, of course. Under these conditions,
after some generations, even after some centuries, a dēmos has formed itself in that best
city. Well, the answer is I think obvious. Either the city makes the necessary adaptation,
it ceases to be an aristocracy and becomes a mixture of aristocracy and democracy or,
failing that, it will perish, necessarily. This is for Aristotle not such a threat as it would
seem to us, because he is permeated by the certainty that every thing which has come into
being will perish again—including Karl Marx’s “realm of freedom” with all its beauties,
which, as we know from the mouth of Engels if not from the mouth of Marx, will perish
again. As long as it lasts, the best regime is the best. And we would say: Well, in our own
lives as individuals, we also know that we must die, and it does make a difference
whether we have lived well or ill while we could. So Aristotle’s best regime embodies,
then, the simple rejection of democracy—just as of oligarchs, of course—these are not
rich people, of course, they are well-to-do, but that is not their main claim: their main
claim is virtue, that they are virtuous. That is to say, he rejects that simple schema,
democracy [versus] oligarchy, the practical schema based on the actualities of his age,
from which he started. Yet the consideration of the superior claim of virtue leads to
aristocracy, as we have seen, and eventually to absolute kingship, in the case of a man of
outstanding virtue. What happens to absolute kingship at the end of Aristotle’s discussion
of the best regime? Let us read that: 1332b15.

Student:
As all political associations are composed of governors and governed, we
have to consider whether the two should be distinguished for life, or merged
together in a single body. The system of education will necessarily vary according
to the answer we give. We may imagine one set of circumstances in which it
would be obviously better that a lasting distinction should once and for all be
established between governors and governed. This would be if there were one
class in the state surpassing all others as much as gods and heroes are supposed to
surpass mankind—a class of men so outstanding, physically as well as mentally,
that the superiority of the ruling stock was indisputably clear to their subjects. But
that is a difficult assumption to make; and we have nothing in actual life like the
gulf between kings and subjects which the writer Scylax describes as existing in
India. We may therefore draw the conclusion, which can be defended on many
grounds, that all should share alike in a system of government under which they
rule and are ruled by turns. In a society of peers equality means that all should
have the same rights: and a constitution can hardly survive if it is founded on
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 89

injustice.xxiii The subject citizens will then be joined by allxxiv of the country-side
in a common policy of revolution; and the civic body will be too small to cope
successfully with all its enemies. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there
should be a difference between governors and governed. How they can differ, and
yet share alike, is a dilemma which legislators have to solve. We have already
touched on a possible solution in a previous chapter
Nature, we have suggested, has provided us with the distinction we need.
She has divided a body of citizens who are all generically the same into two
different age-groups, a younger and an older, one of them meant to be governed
and the other to act as the government. Youth never resents being governed, or
thinks itself better than its governors; and it is all the less likely to do so if it
knows that it will take over the government on reaching a proper maturity. xxv

LS: Is this a solution to the great difficulty? Absolute kingship and regimes of this kind
are possible only if the rulers are manifestly, to everybody, superior to the ruled. No one
[among them] ever has glasses4 or needs any other artificial touches, and they lead a
perfectly clean and unimpeachable life, privately and publicly, and they are of superior
wisdom. When they decide on a war, one doesn’t question whether the war is necessary,
for example, but only whether it can be won. But Aristotle says that won’t happen. Such
a manifest superiority doesn’t exist. Even if a man is superior in wisdom and virtue, this
superiority is clear only to people who understand something of virtue. And so, for
example, no one would say that Winston Churchill, at least when he became older, was a
man of outstanding beauty, so that when he appeared all teenagers were thrilled in
addition to the members of the House of Lords. In other words, that doesn’t exist. And
therefore this is a final judgment of absolute kingship, which he had discussed
provisionally in book 3. The utmost we can dare to hope is the rule of equals. Now this
means, of course, a special type of men, as we have seen: the exclusion of the lower
classes. There is no dēmos in this particular society. 5

Here the question arises: We need a distinction between rulers and ruled, obviously,
because not all can rule, and how can it be done fairly? Aristotle says very simply: It is
that the ruled, generally speaking, are the young. No one can have access to a ruling
office before he is thirty. This is what Aristotle says is the best we can do, and he makes
clear later on in the sequel that the absolute kingship of which he spoke in such glowing
terms is possible only at the beginning of civil life. The founder[s]—6 men like Romulus
in Rome, Theseus in Athens, and in a way Lycurgus in Sparta—they were men of
outstanding, surpassing virtue and no one begrudged them their power. And we find a
repetition of that in new, emergent states, where there is a tendency also to find one man,
rather than more, as the father. I don’t believe we should bring in psychoanalysis, but
[“father”] in the old sense: father of the fathers, the founder.

xxiii
The reader omits the interpolation “[i.e. if it gives different rights to men who are of the same
quality].”
xxiv
Barker interpolates “[the serfs].”
xxv
Politics 7.1332b12-41.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 90

Now of the utmost importance to the legislator according to Aristotle is not the externals,
external conditions—although they are very important, and we must discuss that at great
length—but the core of his concern is education, the education of the young. The first
point which he makes, which is known in a way today in this country but was perhaps not
known in traditional political teaching: education must be relative to the regime. In other
words, if democratic, it must be suited to that; if in an oligarchy, oligarchic; and
aristocratic in an aristocracy. This 7 political character of education implies that education
must be public. He discusses at great length how babies should be brought up. He goes
very far in that, and even prenatal care is carefully considered by Aristotle—even more
the good age for spouses. One of the most amazing things in Aristotle, not unamusing, is
that he tries to figure out the optimum age of the husband and wife with a view to some
end of their generative power,xxvi so that if they should reach that end simultaneously,
they must marry when the husband is thirty-seven and the wife is eighteen. [Laughter]
Whether they like that—well, that is a political doctrine and they are not asked. The
arbitrary wills of individuals do not originate that. He really figures it out very neatly.

Now we come back to the most important question, that of education. It must be public.
In an aristocracy—and of course, Aristotle is here concerned with an aristocracy—
education will be liberal. Today, “liberal” is used almost synonymously with
“democratic,” not to say “extreme democratic.” This is understandable today, but it
cannot be viewed so with Aristotle. “Liberal” means free from all the slavishness to
which our flesh is heir. Education would be education in the liberal arts: Aristotle
mentions reading, writing, gymnastics, music, and drawing. Now he knows that some of
them, like reading and writing, are also good for utilitarian purposes—business and your
transactions with your neighbors—but this is not the key point. The key point is that we
begin to think in worthwhile and not in monetary terms. Education must train the young
for both business and leisure, but the end is leisure, not business. Now here is a point
which has frequently been forgotten in modern times. Aristotle makes a distinction
between leisure and relaxation. Relaxation is of course for the sake of business. We relax
in order to be at our job tomorrow morning, and hence relaxation is subordinate to
business whereas business itself is subordinate to leisure. And man, if his business is not
for the sake of his leisure, is a kind of slave.

A German philosopher of the present time, [. . .],xxvii has made this very sound remark for
understanding this thought of Aristotle’s. 8 How is leisure time, or some kind of leisure
time, still called in ordinary sensible language? Holidays. And what does holidays
originally mean?

Student: Holy days.

LS: Holy days. And what do you do on holy days? You devote them to the contemplation
of and devotion to the holy, and this is of course superior to business. And one of our
difficulties today is that we cannot find a substitute for holy days. It is in another way the

xxvi
Politics 7.1334a29-1335b1.
xxvii
The transcript has a blank space here. Strauss might be referring to Josef Pieper, Leisure, The
Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Faber & Faber, 1952).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 91

same problem we have regarding the question of a substitute for war. Now Aristotle says
the leisure of the gentlemen must be devoted to such things as conversation among them
and enjoyment of music, poetry, painting, and such matters. Now this is higher than what
they do in the marketplace. It consists in the common sharing, through speaking,
listening, and seeing, of the beautiful things, not in doing the beautiful things—that they
do in battle or in the marketplace—but in speaking, listening, and seeing. We can also say
here again that the leisure activity of the gentlemen is again a reflection of the theoretical
life. In their way—not too impressive a way, but in their way these gentlemen devote
their leisure to the contemplation of the beautiful.

Now Aristotle’s presentation of the best regime in books 7 and 8 can be dismissed in the
spirit of Machiavelli as the presentation of an imagined or imaginary commonwealth:
wholly impractical. Aristotle doesn’t give any indication that there ever was such a best
regime. Certain particular ingredients, yes; the whole, never. He himself never claims that
it was actual anywhere, anytime. Yet he claims that it is possible: there is no intrinsic
impossibility of a society of well-bred and public-spirited men. This is not fantastic
because it does not exclude the appearance here and there of some black sheep—every
family has its black sheep here and there—provided the black sheep are treated as black
sheep, and then nothing happens. I mean, if they are given the same respect as the white
sheep, then there would be problems. And such a society of well-bred and public-spirited
men is the good society. We can still defend it if we make one assumption: the
assumption of an economy of scarcity. This assumption was in fact made, and necessarily
so, by everyone until a very short time ago. In an economy of scarcity only a very small
part of the population has the possibility of becoming educated in a politically relevant
sense. I mean not merely learning the law which was transmitted from generation to
generation, but to enable them to act wisely, and no sensible man can wish the rule of the
uneducated who are more likely than not to become the prey of fanatical rabble-rousers
and the lot. Aristotle would deserve blame only if he had neglected to pay attention to the
actual regimes, however imperfect, and this he surely did not.

And now I turn to the subject of the central books of the Politics, books 4 to 6. But before
I go on, is there anything which you wish to clarify? Is the connection of the discussion in
books 7 and 8 to that in books 2 and 3 clear? Because that is in a way the nerve of the
whole book. Well, we go on.

Now at the end of book 3 we are directed in one way to books 7 and 8 by the fact that the
last sentence of book 3 is identical to the first sentence of book 7. By the mere order as
the manuscripts have it, we are otherwise directed from book 3 to books 4 and 6, and
these are the books which do not deal with the best regime. 9

May I sit down? Mr. Bruell. Thank you. The beginning of book 4, and omit Barker’s
insertions.

Mr. Bruell:
There is a rule which applies to all the practical arts and sciences, when
they have come to cover the whole of a subject, and are no longer engaged in
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 92

investigating it bit by bit. Each of them severally has to consider the different
methods appropriate to the different categories of its subject. For instance, the art
of physical training has to consider (1) which type of training is appropriate to
which type of physique; (2) which is the best xxviii type of training—i.e. the
training best for a physique of the best endowment and the best equipment (for the
bestxxix type of training must be suitable for such a physique); and (3) which is the
type of training that can be generally applied to the majority of physiques—for
that too is one of the problems to be solved by the art of physical training. Nor is
this all. (4) There may be men who want to have physical training, but do not
want to attain the standard of skill and condition which is needed for
competitions; and here the trainer and gymnastic master have still another duty—
to impart the degree of capacity which is all that such men want. What is true of
the art of physical training is obviously no less true of medicine, or of
shipbuilding, tailoring, and all the other arts
It follows that the study of politicsxxx must be equally comprehensive.
First, it has to consider which is the best constitution, and what qualities a
constitution must have to come closest to the ideal when there are no external
factors xxxi to hinder its doing so.

LS: In other words, the best might not always be possible, and for some people the best
regime might be bad. The best form of physical training might be bad for a sick man, so
you have to adapt the regime to the people concerned.

Mr. Bruell:
Secondly, politics has to consider which sort of constitution suits which sort of
civic body. The attainment of the best regime is likely to be impossible for the
general run of states; and the good law-giver and the true statesman must
therefore have their eyes open not only to what is the absolute best, but also to
what is the best in relation to actual conditions. Thirdly, politics has also to
consider the sort of regime which depends upon an assumption. In other words,
the student of politics must also be able to study a given constitution, just as it
stands and simply with a view to explaining how it may have arisen and how it
may be made to enjoy the longest possible life.

LS: The question is not: Is it the best regime for these people? but rather: What is the
established regime? This alone has a true equivalent in present-day political science.
Then the question arises: How can this be preserved?

Mr. Bruell:
The sort of case which we have in mind is one where a state has neither the
ideally best regime (or even the elementary conditions needed for it) nor the best
regime possible under the actual conditions, but has only a regime of an inferior

xxviii
In the place of “best” Barker has “ideal.”
xxix
Barker has “ideal.”
xxx
Barker interpolates “[which belongs to the practical arts and sciences].”
xxxi
Barker inserts the interpolation “[e.g. want of means, or unequal distribution of means].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 93

type. Fourthly, and in addition to all these functions, politics has also to provide a
knowledge of the type of regime which is best suited to cities xxxii in general. Most
of the writers who treat of politics—good as they may be in other respects—fail
when they come to deal with matters of practical utility. We have not only to
study thexxxiii best regime. We have also to study the type of regime which is
practicable—xxxiv

LS: “Feasible.”

Mr. Bruell:
and with it, and equally, the type which is easiest to work and most suitable to
states generally. As things are, writers fall into two different classes. Some
confine their investigations to the extreme of perfection, which requires a large
equipment.xxxv The rest, addressing themselves rather to an attainable form, still
banish from view the general range of existing regimes, and simply extol the
Spartan or some other one regime. The sort of politicalxxxvi system which ought to
be proposed is one which men can be easily induced, and will be readily able, to
graft onto the system they already have. It is as difficult a matter to reform an old
constitution as it is to construct a new one; as hard to unlearn a lesson as it was to
learn it initially.xxxvii

LS: Let us stop here. Aristotle raises here the claim, you see, that if political science is
the study of regimes, he is the founder of this discipline . . . because prior to him people
were concerned only with the best, say, Plato, or they were enamored of one particular
regime, say, Sparta, and praised the Spartans. But a true scientific, theoretical approach
comprehends all regimes at least in principle; and that was not attempted by anyone, at
least before him. Now in this respect Aristotle’s notion of political science agrees with
the notion of political science now prevailing. No kind of political or social organization
must be disregarded; some may not be terribly important, but in principle they all are
within the province of political science. But what is the difference 10 [between] Aristotle’s
broad concept of political science and the positivistic concept? Yes?

Student: Well, the study of regimes is still ordered by the possibility, at least in thought,
of a best regime, which would have certain features, and which other regimes would be
more or less similar to.

LS: Yes. In other words, there is an order of rank among regimes—that is absolutely
essential—and something else connected with that. Fundamentally, Aristotle’s political
science, as indicated by what he says, is guided by a practical intent: it addresses people

xxxii
In the place of “cities” Barker writes “states.”
xxxiii
The word “ideally” is here inserted in the Barker translation.
xxxiv
The translation includes the interpolation “[i.e. the best for a state under actual conditions].”
xxxv
Barker interpolates “[of initial advantages].”
xxxvi
In the place of “political” Barker writes “constitutional.”
xxxvii
Politics 4.1288b10-1289a5.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 94

who wish to establish a regime and teaches them how to go about it. It is not simply
theoretical. Perhaps we may go on from where we left off.

Mr. Bruell: “The true statesman, therefore, must not confine himself to the matters we
have just mentioned the study of the best regime, or that of some one particular form such
as the Spartan:xxxviii he must also be able, as we said previously, to help any existing
regime along the path of reform. xxxix He cannot do so unless he knows how many
differentxl regimes there are. As things are, we find people believing that there is only one
sort of democracy or oligarchy. This is an error.”xli

LS: So Aristotle, loyal to his scientific intent, wants to have a detailed discussion of all
regimes, and preferably of those which are his main interest, democracy and oligarchy.
But here we have to do one thing, which is the first step that Aristotle takes: never forget
that democracy means a variety of regimes, and so does oligarchy. In other words, in our
language of today: no abstractness, no schemas. We have to look at each kind of
democracy, we must in fact find out if it makes sense to bring these various kinds
together under one heading; otherwise, it would be a misleading term. Now [in] books 4
to 6, the central books, these are the regimes other than the best—the best being
aristocracy (books 7 and 8) and kingship, which is, however, almost a will-o’-the-wisp.
What is the reason for the variety of regimes? Aristotle raises this question again. He
doesn’t leave it at the fact of the variety, which no one can deny, but why is it so, why is
it necessary? The reason for the variety of regimes is the fact that the city necessarily
consists of a number of parts: farmers, artisans, etc. According to the preponderance of
one or the other part, there is a variety of regimes. There will always be a preponderance
of some part or a combination of parts, and this preponderant thing gives the regime its
character. He enumerates these parts again: farmers, artisans, traders, manual workers,
fighters, judges, deliberators. (Deliberators means always legislators, as we said before.)
Some of these parts may be combined, for example, the farmers may be fighters, without
any difficulty. But where does the difficulty arise? I don’t believe we have time to read—
yes, this is of some interest: 1291a33. There is one part which he had not enumerated as
such.xlii “The seventh part—”

Mr. Bruell: “The seventh part is the group composed of the rich, who serve the city with
their property. The eighth part is the magistrates, who serve the state in its offices. No
city can exist without a government—”

LS: Without magistrates, he means here.

Mr. Bruell:

xxxviii
Barker interpolates “[the study of the ideally best constitution, or that of some one particular
form such as the Spartan].”
xxxix
Barker presents “[along the path of reform]” as an interpolation.
xl
The reader omits “kinds of.”
xli
Politics 4.1289a5-11.
xlii
Aristotle fails to enumerate the sixth member of his list.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 95

and there must therefore be persons capable of discharging the duties of office
and rendering the state that service, permanently or in rotation. There only remain
the two parts which have just been mentioned in passing—the deliberative part,
and the part which decides on the rights of litigants. These are parts which ought
to exist in all cities, and to exist on a good and just basis; and this demands
persons of a good quality in matters political. xliii The different capacities
belonging to the other parts may, it is generally held, be shown by one and the
same group of persons.xliv

LS: In other words, the farmer may be a fighting man, a member of the deliberative
assembly, and he may even have a trade of sorts. But one thing is absolutely impossible,
one combination, namely, what he speaks about now.

Mr. Bruell: “The same persons cannot be both rich and poor.”

LS: This combination is evidently impossible. And the consequence is what?

Mr. Bruell: “This will explain why these two classes—the rich and the poor—are
regarded as parts of the state in a special and peculiar sense. Nor is this all. One of these
classes being small, and the other large, they also appear to be opposite parts. This is why
they both form regimes to suit their own interest. xlv It is also the reason why men think
there are only two regimes—democracy and oligarchy.”xlvi

LS: This popular prejudice that there are only two regimes has a respectable reason—not
sufficient, however—the argument being the incompatibility of being rich and poor on
the part of the same man, therefore two parts of the city. Now this is a crude view but not
groundless. As Aristotle states in the sequel, it is simply not good enough, and the chief
reason is that there are various kinds of democracies and oligarchies; and this he develops
at length afterwards. We will discuss it at length next time. In both democracy and
oligarchy there is a preferred type; in other words, a democracy which is relatively close
to oligarchy, and an oligarchy which is relatively close to democracy. The two diverge
otherwise, and each becomes worse and worse. And the preferred type of democracy is
the rural democracy. The majority of the citizens are farmers, who don’t like to come to
town every day and can’t afford it, and are perfectly satisfied if they have the right to
vote, as we would call it—not the right to judge or to legislate—and leave these matters
more or less to gentlemen of their trust. Nevertheless, it is a democracy because those to
whom everyone in the city, regardless of how high they are, remain responsible are the
citizen body without practically any property qualification.

We will take up other questions regarding democracy. I would like to draw your attention
now to one part of this central section, and that is book 5, devoted to changes of regime
or, as people frequently call it, revolution. This is one of the most “realistic” parts of

xliii
The interpolation “[Here we begin to confront a difficulty]” is omitted.
xliv
Politics 4.1291a33-b3.
xlv
Barker interpolates “[that of wealth in the one case, and that of numbers in the other].”
xlvi
4.1291b7-13.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 14 March 18, 1965 96

Aristotle’s Politics. But let us never forget that which is so minimized in part of the
popular literature: however realistic Aristotle may be, he clings to the notion of his
teacher Plato that there is and must be a best regime, in the light of which political
judgments alone can ultimately be justified. And it is not important whether this regime is
actual, or has been or will be actual, it must be possible in deed. On the other hand,
Aristotle never forgets the fact that most of the time we are concerned with imperfect
regimes, and we have to have had a[s] good and close an understanding of the imperfect
regimes as possible. But precisely if we want to have a good understanding of imperfect
regimes, we must know that they are imperfect, as part of the fact, just as to know that a
man who suffers from angina pectoris is sick is part of the fact of his being at that time.
Diseases, decay, corruption—these are all factual things and don’t have to be mentioned
in quotation marks but as we do it in everyday life, without quotation marks. There are
dubious cases, where one hesitates to say whether there was corruption or decay, but in
which field of studies are there not borderline cases? That is no objection per se.

Now is there any point any one of you would like to take up? Failing that, I will remind
you of the fact that if everything goes well, we will have our last class next Monday, and
the following Wednesday . . . you will be compelled to reveal your mental nakedness.xlvii
[Laughter]
1
Deleted “As therefore.”
2
Deleted “they.”
3
Deleted “has.”
4
Moved “among them.”
5
Deleted “Now Aristotle.”
6
Deleted “well.”
7
Deleted “implies, this.”
8
Deleted “Now.”
9
Deleted “The spirit of these books.”
10
Deleted “of.”

xlvii
Note the allusion to Charmides154d.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 97

Session 15: March 10, 1965

Leo Strauss: To continue Aristotle’s argument regarding the best regime, we turn to the
statement at the beginning of book 4, where Aristotle gives a broad outline of the scope
of political science as a whole. He makes it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that
political science must be greatly concerned with imperfect regimes, which means in
simple language with actual regimes, and with special emphasis on democracy and
oligarchy. There he takes issue with the crude view that there is only the alternative of
democracy or oligarchy, but he adds that this popular view is not entirely groundless, that
there is a kind of tendency of the city to be either democratic or oligarchic. But still, this
is not enough, one reason being that there are various kinds of democracies and
oligarchies. And at this point we may begin, 1291b14.

Student:
The fact that there are a number of constitutions, and the causes of that fact, have
already been established. We may now go on to say that there are also a number
of varieties of two of these constitutions—democracy and oligarchy. This is
already clear from what has been said. i These two regimes vary because the
people (dēmos) and the class called the notables vary. So far as the people are
concerned, one sort is engaged in farming; the ii second sort is engaged in the arts
and crafts; and theiii third is the marketing sort, which is engaged in buying and
selling; a fourth is the maritime sort, which in turn is partly naval, partly
mercantile, partly employed on ferries, partly engaged in fisheries. iv A fifth sort is
composed of unskilled laborers and persons whose means are so small that they
cannot enjoy any leisure. v

LS: No, this is another kind in addition to those mentioned.

Student: “A sixth consists of those who are not of free birth by two citizen parents; and
there may be others of a similar character. vi The notables fall into different sorts
according to wealth, birth, merit, culture, and other qualities of the same order.”vii

LS: In other words, if there should be any other kinds of the dēmos, of common people,
or of the notables, for that matter, that could easily be inserted into the Aristotelian
scheme without creating any theoretical problem. Now Aristotle, as will appear later,

i
Barker has “from what has been previously said [at the beginning of the previous chapter].”
ii
The indefinite “a” is used in Barker.
iii
Barker counts this subdivision of the people indefinitely as “a” third; “and” is not in Barker.
iv
The reader omits this passage: “(We may note that there are many places where one of these
subdivisions forms a considerable body; as the fishermen do at Tarentum and Byzantium, the
naval crews at Athens, the merchant seamen in Aegina and Chios, and the ferrymen at Tenedos.)”
v
A comparison with Barker shows minor differences. “A fifth sort is composed of unskilled
laborers and persons whose means are too small to enable them to enjoy any leisure.”
vi
The exact wording in Barker is “and there may also be other sorts of a similar character.”
vii
Politics 4.1291b14-30.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 98

preferred the rule of dēmos, on a variety of grounds. One very important one is that they
[the common people], live upstate, so to speak, and they cannot come so conveniently to
the assembly1; and they don’t have too frequent assemblies, and they are in the main
satisfied if they can elect and audit the magistrates and similar things. They simply have
no time for that. Also, a consideration is that they are regarded as the better soldiers,
which is for every political society important. This view, that the peasantry is the best
soldiery, prevailed I think up to the First World War, and there it proved for the first time
that the industrial workers could be at least as good if not better soldiers than the rural
workers. That of course has to do with technology, which I have referred to frequently,
which introduced a radical change into politics. But there is here a complication, which
we also must consider in 1292b11. I give you these examples in order to show how broad
the Aristotelian scheme of inquiry is.

Student:
These are the several varieties of oligarchy and democracy. It should be
noted, however, that in actual life, it is often the case that constitutions which are
not legally democratic are made to work democratically by the habits and training
of the people. Conversely, there are other cases where the legal regime is inclined
toward democracy, but is made by training and habits to work in a way which
inclines more toward oligarchy. This happens particularly after a revolution. The
citizens do not change their temper immediately; and in the first stages the
triumphant party is content to leave things largely alone, without taking viii any
great advantage of its opponents. So the old laws remain in force, even though the
party of the revolution is actually in power.ix

LS: In other words, in order to see and understand a regime properly, we cannot limit
ourselves to observing the laws, say, the written constitution. We also must consider the
habits of the people. There may be a habitual deference to the notables, [those] of great
political importance, which doesn’t find any legal expression. So what is meant very
frequently by the contribution of a political sociology which looks at the actual society as
distinguished from the legal-political arrangement is for Aristotle a matter of course.
There is another point of this nature to consider, at 1293b14. He speaks there of a polity
which looks at wealth, virtue, and the dēmos, as in Carthage. This is aristocratic. Note
“aristocracy” is here used in this whole discussion of the fourth book in a popular sense,
not a strict sense. In other words, the kinds of regimes which are called by the people
aristocratic.

Student:
Accordingly a constitution which takes account ofx all three factors—wealth,
virtue, and numbers—as the Carthaginian does, may be called an aristocratic
regime; and the same may also be said of constitutions, such as the Spartan, which
pay regard only to the two factors of goodness and numbers—

Barker has “without seeking to take.”

viii
ix
Barker: “The result is that the old laws remain in force, even though the party of revolution is
actually in power.” Politics 4.1292b11-21.
x
In the place of “takes account of” Barker has “pays regard to.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 99

LS: Well, let us say, “virtue and the dēmos”—

Student: “and where there is thus a mixture of the democratic and the aristocratic
principle.xi We may—”

LS: That is all we need. In order to understand this more fully, let us turn to 1294b7: “As
it seems to be democratic that the magistracies are elected by lot.” xii

Student:
In the appointment of magistrates, for example, the use of the lot is regarded as
democratic, and the use of the vote as oligarchical. Again, it is considered to be
democratic that a property qualification should not be required, and oligarchical
that it should be. Here, accordingly, the mode appropriate to an aristocracy xiii or a
“polity” is to take one form from one regime xiv and another from another—xv to
take from oligarchy the rule that magistrates should be appointed by vote, and
from democracy the rule that no property qualification should be required. xvi

LS: Democracy strictly understood, insisting on equality, would like to make all offices
available by lot, because only if they are made available by lot is there a serious chance
for every citizen, however humble, to become a magistrate because if they are elected as
individuals, we look at merit. 2 We may be mistaken as to what constitutes merit, but the
principle is this: not everyone who has the right to vote as a citizen is therefore fit to be a
magistrate—an undemocratic, unegalitarian thought. And I think it is also clear that
property qualification is incompatible with democracy and is a necessity in an oligarchy.
Then an aristocracy in the vulgar sense needs to take institutions from both sides: from
oligarchy, the appointment of magistrates by election; and from democracy, no property
qualification. From this I think you see immediately that modern democracy is a mixture
of democracy and oligarchy or, more precisely, is an aristocracy in the common or vulgar
sense of the term. We must keep this in mind in order not to think that Aristotle’s
criticism of democracy is unfair. Modern democracy has taken care of many of
Aristotle’s objections. And now there is another consideration, indicated at the beginning
of page 180.

Student: “We have now to consider what is the best regime and the best way of life for
the majority of cities and men. In doing so we shall not employxvii a standard of
excellence above the reach of ordinary men—”

xi
Politics 4.1293b14-18.
xii
A more literal translation than Barker’s, which follows.
xiii
Barker interpolates “[of the mixed sort].”
xiv
In the place of “one form from one regime” Barker has “one element from one form of
constitution.”
xv
The reader omits “that is to say.”
xvi
Politics 4.1294b7-13.
xvii
The reader omits the interpolation “[for the purpose of measuring ‘the best’].”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 100

LS: In other words, not that standard which Aristotle employed in describing the best
regime in books 6, 7, and 8.

Student: “or a standard of education requiring exceptional endowments and

equipment.xviii We shall only be concerned with the standard of life which most men are
able to share and the sort of regime which is possible for most people.”xix

LS: This is one important consideration for political science to find out: which regime not
absolutely is best, but is the best which one can expect under ordinary circumstances.

Student: “The ‘aristocracies,’ so called, of which we have just been treating—”xx

LS: The so-called [aristocracies are those which]3 are generally regarded as aristocracies,
even though they are not so in the strict, Aristotelian, sense.

Student:
either lie, at one extreme, beyond the reach of most states, or they approach, at the
other, so closely to the regime called “polity,” that they need not be considered
separately.xxi The issues we have just raised can all be decided in the light of one
body of fundamental principles. If we adopt as true the statements made in the
Ethics—(1) that a truly happy life is a life of goodness free from impediments,
and (2) that goodness consists in a mean—it follows that the best way of life is
one which attains the mean. xxii Further, the same criteria which determine whether
the citizen-bodyxxiii have a good or bad way of life must also apply to the regime;
for a regime is the way of life of a citizen-body. In all cities there may be
distinguished three partsxxiv of the citizen body—the very rich; the very poor; and
the middle class which forms the mean. Now it is admitted, as a general principle,
that moderation and the mean are the xxv best. We may therefore conclude that in
the ownership of all gifts of fortune a middle condition will be the best. Men who
are in this condition are the most ready to listen to reason. Therefore men xxvi who
belong to either extreme—the over-handsome, the over-strong, the over-noble, the
over-wealthy; or the opposite, xxvii the over-poor, the over-weak, the utterly
ignoble—find it hard to follow the lead of reason. Men in the first class tend to

xviii
Barker’s translation contains the insertion “or the standard of a constitution which attains an
ideal height.”
xix
Here is the exact wording in Barker. “We shall only be concerned with the sort of life which
most men are able to share and the sort of constitution which it is possible for most states to
enjoy.”
xx
Barker interpolates “[will not serve us for this purpose: they].”
xxi
The reader omits “and must be treated as identical with it.”
xxii
Barker has “it follows that the best way of life [for the majority of men] is one which consists
in a mean, and a mean of the kind attainable by every individual.”
xxiii
Inserted here in Barker is the interpolation “[i.e. all its members, considered as individuals].”
xxiv
Barker adds “or classes.”
xxv
In the place of “the” Barker has “always.”
xxvi
In the place of “therefore men” Barker has “those.”
xxvii
Barker translates “or at the opposite end.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 101

violence:xxviii and men in the second tend too much to roguery and petty offenses;
and most wrongdoing arises either from violence or roguery. xxix

LS: “Violence” is perhaps not the best word: “from insolence,” insolence bred by great
power, wealth, and so on. There can be crime arising from insolence, from a feeling of
being superior to others, and there can be crime or defects which stem from feeling that
you are an underdog, and this has more to do with petty crime. This one sentence was not
translated literally enough: “the regime is some kind of way of life of the city.” Or as
Isocrates, orator of Plato’s time, put it: the regime is the soul of the city, that which gives
it its life and its character. And the reason is that the regime indicates what the end is for
which the society is dedicated, and at the same time it indicates the men most akin to that
goal, so that in an oligarchy, based on wealth, the men who rule are most akin to that
goal: the wealthy. And if it is virtue, the same would follow. The answer to Aristotle’s
question, what is the best regime on the average? is then one which is the rule of the
middle class. Now in the sequel he makes clear that it is not necessary that the middle
class be the majority, which is sometimes possible perhaps, but the main point is that it
can tip the balance, so that by either joining with the lower class against the higher class,
or vice versa, it is in fact in control. And the proof of the superiority of the middle class, a
popular proof: he notes the fact that the most celebrated legislators, men like Solon and
Lycurgus, were middle-class men. “Middle-class” does not mean bourgeois; “bourgeois”
is a name for a certain kind of middle class which arose in modern times.

To mention this in passing, the notion of the bourgeois arose in contradistinction to that
of the citizen in Rousseau, who makes it clear they are two different things. “The
bourgeois” simply meant at that time the average denizens of the city, the burghers,
especially under the French monarchy. 4 Of course these men were entirely powerless and
led an absolutely private life, whereas the citizen, as Rousseau, restating the ancient use,
said5, is a man who leads a political life. Now this was taken up by Hegel, who accepted
the Rousseauan distinction and defines the bourgeois by fear of violent death. The
Hobbean origin of the term is obvious, meaning they are not soldiers, they do not fight
for their country. The fighting was done either by the hereditary nobility or by the scum
of the country forced into the army. The citizen is a man who fights for his country and
who is an active participant in political power. And the Marxian use of “bourgeois” is
simply a modification necessitated by Marx’s so-called economic interpretation.

This middle-class regime which Aristotle favors is rare, because in most cities the middle
class is not in this beautiful position that it can determine the way; either the rich or the
poor preponderate. Now in the sequel Aristotle makes clear that not every regime is
possible everywhere. What is the chief condition of the possibility of a given regime?
Answer: those who wish the preservation of the regime must be stronger than those who
wish to destroy it. “Stronger” does not necessarily mean “more numerous,” because we
know it depends partly on the state of armaments and also on other things, what is
strength in any actual contest. Finally, as far as this part of the argument is concerned,

xxviii
Barker: “Men in the first class tend more to violence and serious crime.”
xxix
Politics 4.1295a25-b11.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 102

Aristotle points out that in the study of regimes, we must look of course at the meaning of
institutions, not merely at their appearance.

Student: “The devices adopted in regimes for fobbing the masses off with sham rights
are five in number. They relate to the assembly; the magistracies; the law courts; the
possession of arms; and the practice of athletics. As regards the assembly, all alike are
allowed to attend; but fines for non-attendance are either imposed on the rich alone, or
imposed on the rich at a far higher rate. As regards the magistracies, those who possess a
property qualification are not allowed to decline office on oath, but the poor are allowed
to do so.”xxx

LS: You see, this looks very friendly to the common people: they are not compelled to
take up the burden of magistracy, but they may decline it. But the rich are forbidden to
decline it. And reflection shows that this is, of course, an antidemocratic measure. So in
order to understand political institutions properly, we must not merely listen to the
wording of law, we must look at its exact meaning. Again, where sociological
considerations are regarded as higher than political considerations in modern times, the
latter means “merely legal considerations,” and the merely legal considerations can be
quite deceptive. I remember reading an article by an anti-communist who praised the
Soviet Constitution of 1936 (“What a wonderful thing that is”) without ever raising the
question of whether it had any probability of becoming in any way practical. One can
leave it at that. Let us turn now to more detailed things.

Student:
We have now to treat of the next subject, xxxi and we have to do so both in
general terms and separately for each regime. We must first find a proper basis for
the treatment of the subject. We may lay it down that there are three elements, or
“powers,” in each regime, and that a good legislator xxxii must consider what is
expedient for it under each of these three heads. If all of them are constructed
properly, the whole regime too will be constructed properly; and where they are
constructed differently, regimes will also differ. The first of the three is the
deliberative element concerned with common affairs, and its proper constitution:
the second is the element of the magistracies (and here it has to be settled what
these magistracies are to be, what matters they are to control, and how their
occupants are to be appointed): the third is the judicial element, and the proper
constitution of that element. xxxiii

LS: Is this distinction known to you: the deliberative, the magistrative, and the judiciary?
Obviously it is known, but in its Aristotelian meaning? What Aristotle has in mind is not
a separation of powers; he makes a distinction of powers. Well, we cannot speak of
powers; he says “parts,” and of course, the same as in the modern view, the first is the
deliberative, which includes legislative. Then what is now called “executive” is not called

xxx
Politics 4.1297a14-21.
xxxi
The reader omits the interpolation [i.e. the proper method of establishing constitutions].”
xxxii
Barker interpolates “[in establishing a constitution].”
xxxiii
Politics 4.1297b35-1298a3.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 103

this by Aristotle, but “magistracies.” What is wrong, [or misleading], with the term
“executive”? 6 . . . Because the execution of the laws, simply, is a narrow view; not all
magistrates execute laws. Locke, as you know very well, spoke of another power, the
federative power. That has to do with foreign affairs and also with warfare in particular.
And that the power of a general is, during war, not properly to be called executive unless
you say he is given a command to invade the continent of Europe, as Eisenhower in this
respect executed orders. But still, one cannot call it the execution of a law, and therefore
“magistrates” is a broader term, generals being an outstanding form of magistrates in the
Aristotelian sense. But this is not sufficient. What is the reason behind the fact that in
Aristotle we find a distinction of powers, whereas in Montesquieu we find the doctrine of
the separation of powers?

Student: Is it because the deliberative power is in essence the final power?

LS: Yes, but not quite, because7 after all, if you are condemned by a judge, the law
supplies only the major of the syllogism. But that you are the one who did these things,
the minor of the syllogism, is not given by the law. That is to be found by the judge. The
judicial power, as well as the power of the magistrate, cannot be reduced. The only point
is that the deliberative power or function is the highest power. In that respect there is
perfect agreement between Aristotle and the American Constitution, and of course also
Montesquieu. But what is the difference between the Aristotelian doctrine of distinction
of powers and Montesquieu in the doctrine of separation of powers?

Student: Whether or not the powers can be separated depends on the kind of regime with
which you are dealing. In rule by philosophy, you wouldn’t want a separation—

LS: Well, one could say this is an extreme case 8 which we as hardheaded political
scientists might disregard.

Same student: In any case, it still would require a different sort of—you might not want
to separate all three.

LS: Yes, but what is Montesquieu’s solution to that?

Student: Whether or not you want a limited government?

LS: I believe it has something to do with that.

Student: The Aristotelian purpose is to distinguish between who should properly be

carrying out the functions, for whom it is more appropriate . . .

LS: That is not the purpose. The purpose is that in fact there are three different functions
and that these different functions are differently employed in different regimes.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 104

Same student: I was going to say that you might go to Aristotle’s conception of an
organic society. You might analogize the parts of the body, each of which has separate
functions, but they are not really separate.

LS: No, I don’t believe this would be helpful. It is very dangerous to speak of “organic”
in these matters because of the vagueness, and I would think one should try to avoid it if
possible unless compelled by the text.

Student: I thought the separation of powers depended on the distinction between state
and society—

LS: Yes, you can say that, but what does that distinction mean? . . . Well, to say it very
simply . . . Yes?

Student: The purpose of separation of powers is to have a group of governing bodies that
will check each other—

Different student: It protects the society from the state.

LS: That was already said before. . . . You see, we do not know what society is, we take
that for granted. We explain an unknown by an unknown. Although colloquially that is
always good, but from time to time we should not speak colloquially. Yes?

Student: In separation of powers, the assumption is that man is not really a social animal
but he’s out for his own good. It is a device to keep things going in that case. But with a
distinction, it is the function that is important. You might find it in the same person or in
different people.

LS: You started very well, but by your additional remarks you covered up the good
beginning. Montesquieu’s overriding9 interest in this famous discussion in the eleventh
book is the security for the individual, and this means society in contradistinction to the
state is only a consequence of that. xxxiv 10—Mr. Bruell, will you allow me?

Now to make that a bit clearer, because it is, I think, of some importance: Montesquieu’s
presentation is given in a quasi-historical form—I mean, not in general theoretical terms.
He speaks of the British constitution. Now this description of the British constitution is
modeled on a description of the Roman constitution given by the historian Polybius, a
Greek familiar with Rome, in the second century. Polybius also speaks, sometimes very
much reminding of Montesquieu, of something like checks and balances between the
consuls, the Senate, and the popular assemblies. That is the crucial difference . . . and this
political thought falls easily within the Aristotelian framework although it is not
explicitly stated in Aristotle. But what is the key point? Very crudely stated: power may
be misused and therefore it must be checked. The sum total of political power must be
split up. This is common to Polybius and Montesquieu, but for Polybius there is no other
principle involved. Polybius’s checks and balances has nothing to do with the
xxxiv
The “eleventh book” sc. of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 105

Aristotelian division of powers. As it were, the sum total of political power is divided
into three big chunks, and how we draw the line does not make any difference: the main
point is that every part, whether the consul or the Senate or the common people, have an
important function but a limited part of the power. Now Montesquieu has 11 a principle
not merely for the distribution of power—this follows from the difference of function.
You cannot well have two generals the head of an army and so on, whereas the part of the
polis which is concerned with legislation or deliberation may very well [consist], and
should even consist, of a body of men. In certain other functions there must be a
monarchic head: the simplest case is of course that of the army, but there are also other
cases where someone must be—say, in an office—the one who has the last say.

So the division of powers has a principle of its own. The separation of powers has also a
principle of its own, and the principle here is the greatest possible protection for the
individual. If the same group, the same assembly of men who make the laws, have also
the power of executing them, mere hatred of a particular individual, [the] accused, will
make his case hopeless. But if there is independence of the judiciary, even if the law is
very nasty and unfair, there is some protection. The judges may find reasons why this
case may not be subsumed under the law in question.

Now this concern for the security of the individual, which of course exists also in
Aristotle, is not the key consideration. And that is the meaning of Aristotle’s statement
that man is a political animal: the polis is prior to the individual, whereas according to the
doctrine starting with Hobbes, the individual is prior to society. And the practical
conclusions from that are immense. Now no one would assert any more that the
individual is prior to society. That very notion of the state of nature has completely
disappeared from modern social science, as you surely know, and therefore the question
of the individual and individualism has also become somewhat obscured. Individualism
had a very clear meaning when it meant [that] man is not by nature a social animal but
society is the work of individuals. An untenable view, but at least a clear view. Now we
take12 for granted [today] that man is a social animal, molded by society, and the question
is that the rights of the individual have to be protected somehow against this state. But
what about society? Is there not a possible totalitarianism of society which is not tyranny
of government? Tyranny of government is an easily recognizable thing. Is there not a
phenomenon which we call conformism? Not based on any law—you don’t go to jail—
but there is a kind of social ostracism which can be as hard for the individual as legal
consequences. Now this is the price we have to pay for abandoning, with very good and
powerful reasons, the notion that literally the individuals precede society and organize
society as they as individuals see fit, 13 [in favor of the view] that man, wherever we find
him, is already a “quote socialized” being and he can never step outside of society and
make demands on it. That is, the distinction between state and society is some help for
preserving the libertarian notion in our age.

Book 5, to which we turn now in our very cursory study, is a high point in Aristotle’s
so-called realism. It contains a discussion of “revolutions,” as we say; Aristotle says
“changes of regime.” “Revolution,” as you know, means originally a revolving, coming
back to the same point where we were before: the revolutions of the celestial bodies. Now
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 106

people observed that there are also such comings-back, such returnings, in societies:
beginnings, maturities, decays, and so on. The changes have one thing in common,
change of direction: now you go this way, and afterward this way. But the use of
“revolution” for a change of state is a very modern one. I do not know exactly how it
came about, but probably [during the] seventeenth-eighteenth century.

Now in this discussion Aristotle considers not only the destruction of regimes but also
their preservation. Among others, he discusses also the preservation of tyranny. You see,
Aristotle can be very open-minded: that is the nearest approximation to
“Machiavellianism” which we find in Aristotle. But there is an obvious difference
between Aristotle’s treatment of the preservation of tyranny and Machiavelli’s treatment.
In the first place, this discussion of tyranny is only a small part of the Politics, whereas
one can say the whole Prince is devoted to the subject; and secondly, the monstrous
character of tyranny is not for one moment concealed or denied by Aristotle, whereas
Machiavelli does conceal it. When speaking about the causes of such revolutions,
Aristotle does not mention ideology or anything like it. It is very illuminating to contrast
this with Hobbes’s doctrine, Leviathan, chapter 29: “Of those things that weaken or tend
to the dissolution of the commonwealth,” or the parallel of that in Hobbes’s De Cive,
where Hobbes emphasizes the crucial importance, for the avoiding of violent change, of
what he calls seditious doctrines.xxxv Well, in the seventeenth century, as we know,
doctrines played a very great role in bringing about political change. That was not so in
classical antiquity.

There is one point which I thought is particularly characteristic of Aristotle and which I
thought we should read. In 1309a32, the beginning of a chapter: three things Aristotle
discusses here which are the things preserving regimes. One of them is of course the
character of the magistrates, the leading men.

Student:
Three qualifications are necessary in those who have to fill the sovereign
offices. The first is loyalty to the established regime. The second is a high degree
of capacity for the duties of the office. The third is the quality of goodness and
justice, in the particular form which suits the nature of each regime. (If the
principle of justice varies from regime to regime, the quality of justice must also
have its corresponding varieties.) Where these three qualifications are not united
in a single person, a problem obviously arises: how is the choice to be made? A
may possess, for instance, the second qualification, and have military capacity;
but he may lack the other two, and be neither good in character nor loyal to the
regime. B may be just in character and loyal to the regime. xxxvi How are we to
choose? It would seem that we ought to consider two points—which, on the
whole, is the commoner qualification, and which of them is the rarer. xxxvii Thus,
for a military office, we must have regard to military experience rather than

xxxv
De Cive, 12.
xxxvi
Barker interpolates “[but deficient in capacity].”
xxxvii
Barker interpolates “[and on that basis we ought to choose the man with the rarer
qualification.]”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 107

character: military capacity is rare, and goodness is more common. For the post of
custodian of property, or that of treasurer, we must follow the opposite rule: such
posts require a standard of character above the average, but the knowledge which
they demand is such as we all possess.xxxviii

LS: Is this clear? A treasurer in the literal sense is a man who takes care of all the coins.
The competence which he requires is not very great. He must know how thieves operate
and he probably has some guards in addition, but the main point is that he is honest. And
this kind of virtue is very common. But the competence required of a general is very
different, and here one may have to close one’s eyes. A general may not be very good as
a democrat, and he may lead a very dissolute life. What did Lincoln say in the case of
Grant, when he was accused of drinking too much? He inquired what kind of whiskey he
drank, because he wanted to send it to the other generals. This is a very practical and
sober discussion.

Student: “A further problem may also be raised in regard to these three qualifications. If
a man possesses the two qualifications of capacity and loyalty to the constitution, is there
any need for him to have the third qualification of virtue, and will not the first two, by
themselves, secure the public interest?”

LS: That’s very interesting, because it is a very tough and low and solid view. If he is
very loyal, absolutely loyal, to the regime—say, to democracy—and in addition he is
very competent, why does he need virtue? Who cares? It’s his private matter.

Student: “We may answer this question by asking another. May not men who possess
these first two qualifications be unable to command their passions? and is it not true that
men who have no command of their passions will fail to serve their own interest—even
though they possess self-knowledge and self-loyalty—and will equally fail to serve the
public interest?”xxxix

LS: In other words, Aristotle concludes that virtue is truly needed, even if he is very
dependable. For if he lacks a certain self-control regarding anger, regarding desires, and
so on, he can fail decisively. He makes in the immediate sequel another important point.

Student:
Generally, we may add, a regime will tend to be preserved by the
observance of all the legal rules already suggested, in the course of our argument,
as making for constitutional stability. Here we may note, as of paramount
importance, the elementary principle which has been again and again suggested—
the principle of ensuring that the number of those who wish a regime to continue
shall be greater than the number of those who do not
In addition to all these things, there is another which ought to be
remembered, but which, in fact, is forgotten in perverted forms of government.

xxxviii
Politics 5.1309a33-b8.
Barker adds the interpolation “[even though they possess a knowledge of public affairs and
xxxix

public loyalty].” Politics 5.1309b8-14.

Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 108

This is the value of the mean. Many of the measures which are reckoned
democratic really undermine democracies: many which are reckoned oligarchical
actually undermine oligarchies. The partisans of either of these forms of
government, each thinking their own the only right form, push matters to an
extreme. They fail to see that proportion is as necessary to a regime as it is (let us
say) to a nose. A nose may deviate in some degree from the ideal of straightness,
and incline towards the hooked or the snub, without ceasing to be well shaped and
agreeable to the eye. But push the deviation still further towards either of these
extremes, and the nose will begin to be out of proportion with the rest of the
face—xl

LS: In other words, it will be an ugly nose, whereas a snub nose can still be, as Aristotle
says, beautiful and gracious, charming. But if it goes further, the face will be disfigured.
And then the last stage?

Student: “Carry it further still, and it will cease to look like a nose at all, because it will
go too far toward one, and too far away from the other, of these two opposite
extremes.”xli

LS: It will not only cease to look like a nose; it will cease to be a nose, if it goes still a
step further.

Student: “What is true of the nose, and of other parts of the body, is true also of regimes.
Both oligarchy and democracy may be tolerable forms of government, even though they
deviate from the ideal. But if you push either of them further still in the direction to
which it tends, you will begin by making it a worse regime, and you may end by turning
it into something which is not a regime at all.”xlii

LS: Now that is of course a very important point with which we all are familiar in one
way or another. Something may be in itself much more democratic a measure than the
alternative, and yet what is more democratic may be ruinous to democracy. An example
(which is controversial, I know, but there is some truth in it) was proportional
representation, said to be much more democratic than otherwise because every vote will
be counted, especially if there is a kind of total addition of the votes of a whole
community. This may require the abandonment of some proposals which in themselves,
strictly taken, are more democratic.

Yet the most important thing for the preservation of regimes is of course education, and it
must be specific education, different in a democracy from that in an oligarchy, etc. And
here he says [that] in the case of democracy, a development of the habits by which
democracy is maintained . . . and not habits which happen to be popular at the moment.
There is a certain difficulty here because it seems to be democratic to choose the
populace, but democracy which understands itself, while admitting the principle of the

xl
5.1309b14-27.
xli
5.1309b27-29.
xlii
5.1309b29-35.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 109

popular, must use a certain qualification in its application. In other words, democracy is
not simply rule of the popular will but rule of the will favorable to the people, and
something may be favorable to the people without being popular. The simplest example I
know is the demobilization of the United States in Europe after the Second World War. It
would have been absolutely impossible to keep up a strong army in Europe because of
the disinclination of the large majority of the people to “keep the boys over there.” And
no one then, neither President Truman nor anyone else who spoke up at least, raised the
question whether keeping the boys there might not be the best guarantee for not sending
them there within a very short time. Let us turn to 1310a-b.

Student: “We have still, however, to treat of the causes of destruction, and the means of
preservation, when the government is a monarchy. Generally, what has already been said
of constitutions proper is almost equally true of kingships and tyrannies.”xliii

LS: Here I want to draw attention to the usage. “Regimes,” politeiai, here means,
obviously, non-monarchical regimes, i.e., republics. And this shows that the distinction,
the former distinction, between monarchy and republic was known to Aristotle. Plato’s
Republic is in Greek titled Politeia, a word which I translate by “regime,” and it of course
has this double meaning already, not necessarily monarchical.

Book 6 is devoted to a still more detailed study of the practically most important regimes,
that is, democracy and oligarchy. We should read the general statement about democracy,
because that is very important for understanding our own democratic convictions.

Student:
The assumption underlying the democratic regime is liberty. (This, it is
commonly said, can only be enjoyed in democracy; and this, it is also said, is the
aim of every democracy.) Liberty has more than one form. One of its forms xliv
consists in the interchange of ruling and being ruled. The democratic conception
of justice is the enjoyment of arithmetical equality, and not the enjoyment of
proportionate equality on the basis of desert.

LS: In other words, everyone gets the same regardless of his deserts, and not what he
deserves.

Student: “On thexlv arithmetical conception of justice the masses must necessarily be
sovereign—”

LS: “The masses” of course doesn’t exist. “The multitude.” “Masses” is a term stemming
from modern mechanics (the seventeenth century), and then taken over, especially
through the French Revolution, and popularized. La vie en masse. There are no masses
there.

xliii
Politics 5.1310a39-b2.
xliv
Barker inserts here the interpolation “[is the political, which].”
xlv
Barker has “this.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 110

Student:
The multitudexlvi must necessarily be sovereign; the will of the majority must be
ultimate and must be the expression of justice. The argument is that each citizen
should be on an equality with the rest; and the result which follows in
democracies is that the poor—they being in a majority, and the will of the
majority being sovereign—are more sovereign than the rich. Such is the first form
of liberty, which all democracies agree in making the aim of their sort of regime.
The other formxlvii consists in “living as you like.” Such a life, the democrats
argue, is the function of the free man, just as the function of slaves is not to live as
they like. This is the second aim of democracy. Its issue is, ideally, freedom from
any interference of government, and, failing that, such freedom as comes from the
interchange of ruling and being ruled. It contributes, in this way, to a general
system of liberty based on equality. xlviii

LS: That is the most fundamental statement about the principle of democracy which we
find in Aristotle, therefore we should look at it for one moment. There are two
characteristics. The first is freedom, and that has two decisive parts: ruling and being
ruled in turn for every citizen. No citizen is simply a subject, he shall also be a ruler—if
not now, after the next election. The next is to live as one likes, or permissive
egalitarianism. That is strange. Could there not be an austere, Puritan democracy, very
egalitarian and yet not permissive? That is excluded by Aristotle and, I believe, also
excluded by modern theory, but is it not in itself possible? —You think not?

Mr. Levy: [. . .] the reason, I take it, is that virtue can’t be maintained in a regime when
the many have become rulers, because the many are unvirtuous.

LS: You go very far [laughter]—you may very well be accused of sedition! But more
precisely, the things which are sometimes called Puritan democracy or close to it, for
example, in New England, or in Islam, and perhaps certain things in the Old Testament,
for that matter—14 [these are] purely theocratic: under God and under the divine law
things are democratically and equally distributed, but there is a law which is not made by
the citizen body, however defective or however good. In other words, we should not call
these kinds of regimes simple democracies, we should say these are theocracies. They
can of course also be monarchistic. The end of democracy is freedom, and a free man is
one who is not bossed around by anyone. An unfree man must obey his boss—whether
the boss is a master in the old sense or whether he is one’s officer in an office, a boss can
boss around and no free man likes to be bossed around. That is quite clear. But
unfortunately it is altogether impossible. Everyone living in society, unless he is an
absolute monarch, is being bossed around by somebody, and even the president of the
United States will soon be bossed around by certain committees or legislators. So how
can we get the closest approximation to that freedom which we like? Answer: if we are
never ruled by anybody who is not in his turn also ruled by us. Political equality.
Someone has the right to boss [me] around, but a year from now I have a chance to boss

xlvi
On Strauss’s suggestion the reader substitutes “the multitude” for Barker’s “the masses.”
xlvii
Barker interpolates “[is the civil, which].”
xlviii
Politics 6.1317a40-b17.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 111

him around. So bossing is necessary, but if it is properly distributed it is no longer

resented because, while I have the burden of being bossed, I also have the pleasure of
bossing. And that makes up for it.

Some things in Aristotle remind one of Rousseau, but there is a very great difference
between Aristotle and Rousseau which is immediately relevant. Aristotle does not
suggest for one moment here that in a democracy there must be a total submission of
everyone in every respect to the general will. This would not be fair. If so, then we would
not have this permissiveness; it is as important for freedom in the democratic sense as
egalitarianism. This we want: to live as we like, again within the limits of the possible—
an easygoing egalitarianism. Now if you read Pericles’s funeral speech you find
something like this stated there: easygoingness is contrasted to the tough discipline of the
Spartan regime. (Pericles does not speak of democracy, mind you, he speaks of the
Athenian regime, and how you call it, that he leaves to you.) What characterizes their
regime is the degree of public-spiritedness and of dedication to the city which you find,
according to Pericles, nowhere else. xlix This of course is not a part of what Aristotle says
in attempting to describe democracy as such and not Athenian democracy. We may say
[that] for the sake of freedom, there can be only a limited equality, political equality,
because a complete equality, say, social equality, would then interfere much too much
with permissiveness. It is of course understood, although not said here, that only a part of
the inhabitants of the city will be citizens. There will be slaves, and it will be very
difficult for foreigners to become citizens. In other words, there are no rights of men—
not according to Aristotle’s view only, but according to ancient democracy itself.
Freedom is not a right, but a privilege, that is the tacit premise.

Now this much about the theory of democracy, if you can call that a theory. That is the
whole “quote ideology” of democracy. Can you call this an ideology? I would say no,
because there is no reference to any other principle taken from nature, or metaphysics, or
theology, or any science. It is simply based on the feeling of the majority of the people—
“I don’t want to be bossed”—and the two implications I stated. If this were given
sophisticated justification of one kind or another—but this is not even attempted. These
[are]15 like sturdy people who have done their fighting when they were in their younger
years and know they are the sons of the soil, stemming by their descent from many
generations. You know, they were the ones who defeated the Persians in the Persian
Wars; that is enough. It would be a gross injustice to these men to say that is an ideology.
That they have opinions, that is undeniable, but to call this an ideology, there is
something fundamentally wrong with that.

Now in order to see Aristotle’s procedure, let us read the immediate sequel.

Student:
Such being the hypothesis l of democracy, and the root from which it
develops, we can now proceed to study its attributes or institutions. There is the
election of officers by all, and from all; there is the system of all ruling over each,

xlix
Thucydides 2.37-39.
l
The reader substitutes “hypothesis” for Barker’s “ideal.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 112

and each, in his turn, over all; there is the method of appointing by lot to all
offices—or, at any rate, to all which do not require some practical experience and
professional skill; there is the rule that there should be no property-qualification
for office—or, at any rate, the lowest possible; there is the rule that, apart from the
military offices, there should be no office held twice by the same person—li

LS: That is because generals of high caliber are very rare; thus Pericles was a general for
ten years.

Student:
or only on few occasions, and those relating to a few offices; lii and there is,
finally, the rule that the tenure of every office—or, at any rate, of as many as
possible—should be brief.liii There is the system of popular courts, composed of
all the citizens or of persons selected from all, and competent to decide all
cases—or, at any rate, most of them, and those the greatest and most important,
such as the audit of official accounts, constitutional issues, and matters of
contract.liv There is the rule that the popular assembly should be sovereign in all
matters—or, at any rate, in the most important; and conversely that the executive
magistracies should be sovereign in none—or, at any rate, in as few as possible. lv

LS: I hope you seized the spirit of this enumeration. We know first the end of democracy,
and in light of the end, we understand why these institutions prevail, for example, why
certain offices are only for a short time: it gives them much greater 16 [time] for citizens to
fill up these offices in their turn. I think it is a model of clarity as to how such analyses
should be made . . . There are many things in these six books which deserve our attention,
but we cannot take them up for now. Especially I would mention (you might read at
home) in 1319b33 following what one can call the social policy in a democracy, what
should be done by it in order to alleviate the fate of the poor, a subject now of great and
immediate importance in this country. I would like to turn in conclusion to a broader
subject which we will not be able to exhaust in any way today, but at least we can begin.

Now what is the most obvious limitation of Aristotle’s political science, from a
method[olog]ical point of view? I will not go into the question of whether he was right or
wrong on every point. The most obvious thing we can say is [that] he did not know
anything of the regimes which are of particular interest to us, contemporary modern
regimes, and he did not provide for them. For his schema of the six, as you will
remember, does not make provision for inserting17 such things as liberal democracy or
communism. But I would contend that Aristotle provides for the modern regimes
indirectly—indirectly because he enables us to understand the principle, the peculiar

li
The Barker translation differs slightly: “no office should ever be held twice by the same
person.”
lii
Restoring words from Barker: “or, at any rate, only on few occasions, and those relating only to
a few offices.”
liii
Barker inserts the interpolation “[Under the head of the judicature].”
liv
Barker interpolates “[Under the head of the deliberative].”
lv
Politics 6.1317b17-30.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 113

principle, of the modern regime. Now he does this by pointing to the question which
answered in one way leads to the regimes known to him, and answered in another way
leads to the modern view. What is that question?

In the third book he started from the polarity, the well-known polarity between
democracy and oligarchy, but next passed to the polarity of democracy and kingship. In a
radical sense, the city is as such democratic—in a radical sense. I have explained that. I
remind you only of the fact that we have observed that the first definition of a citizen
given in book 3 was democratic. Now what is this radical sense in which the city is as
such democratic? If the dēmos, the common people, from which “democracy” is derived,
is understood to comprise all non-philosophers, from this point of view kings, noblemen,
the rich and what have you are as much common people as the poorest working man. Or
differently stated, the true gentleman is the philosopher. Now if this is true, then
gentlemen in the ordinary sense of the term are so only by courtesy or by pretense. The
absolute king, of whom he speaks toward the end of the third book, the Zeus-like ruler, is
the political reflection of the philosopher, and only as such does he make sense in the
context of the teaching of Aristotle as a whole. But of course, [as] we have seen in the
seventh book, the rule of such a man is altogether impossible. The city is recalcitrant to
philosophy. Socrates’s condemnation was not accidental: there is a disharmony between
philosophy and the city, a tension between philosophy and the city. The city needs
popularly intelligible principles whatever the regime may be; and the true principles are
not necessarily popularly intelligible. The city and the philosopher have different ends.
This is, we can say, the premise of men like Aristotle and Plato.

But one can very well raise the question: Is this true? We have heard from modern
philosophers such as Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, to mention only men from that heroic
age of modern philosophy, that science is for the sake of power, for the relief of man’s
estate, for making man master and owner of nature. Now if this is the sound view, it
follows that the ends of the philosopher and [of] the non-philosophers are identical. If the
end of the philosopher is to relieve man’s estate, this end is not peculiar to the
philosopher, only the philosophers can make a contribution which the non-philosophers
cannot. Now this is one side of the question.

The other side is18 [the belief] in modern times19 that philosophy will not cease to be
philosophy if it is diffused, if it is taken notice of, if it is taken in a fundamentally passive
manner by listening, by mere reading, etc. In other words, philosophy calls for and is
compatible with enlightenment. Enlightenment in its original form was of course a very
limited affair. I think the first man who can be said to have started it, a Frenchman called
Fontenelle, presented the new cosmology to French nobility, who according to all
ordinary social standards do not belong to the demos,lvi but they belong to the dēmos from
the point of view of Descartes. Now as we know, since the eighteenth century and even
more in our age, [this is] a matter 20 which is no longer seriously considered, so much so
that John Dewey could identify the method of democracy with the method of, in most
cases, discussion, debate—a thought which would be wholly unintelligible if stated in

lvi
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), author and popularizer, incorporated elements of
Cartesian physics in his book Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 114

this way to Plato and Aristotle. Because the very simple thing is that in political debates,
all kinds of assumptions will be made which are good enough for practical purposes [but]
which in a theoretical discussion would never be permissible. Modern democracy rests on
an anti-classic view of the relation of the city, the political society, and philosophy, and a
part of this element is of course that modern science and philosophy are the same thing.
[This] makes possible the economy of plenty, therefore the mass of the population can
become educated, and therefore there is no longer any necessity that democracy should
be the rule of the uneducated, as Aristotle says. In other words, the modern answer to
Aristotle is that no one wants the rule of the uneducated, but who says that the majority of
the population in a democracy must be or remain uneducated?

Here we are. Now as for communism and fascism, they do not affect this picture at all,
because they are reactions to modern democracy in many ways and can only be
understood on the basis of an understanding of modern democracy. If one does not
consider this aspect of the question, that modern democracies are based massively on
technology21 [and], if we go deeper into their history, on the new notion of science
developed in the seventeenth century22 —if one does not take this into consideration one
does not understand democracy. You cannot leave it at the mere phenomena as they
strike you today at first glance, although one must surely know them, take cognizance of
them; one must go into their depths, one must analyze them, and then I believe one
arrives at an adequate understanding of the problem.

Now this much about the true limitations of Aristotle’s political science, 23 at least if we
remain within the limits of political science as now understood. But Aristotle’s political
science differed from present-day political science most obviously by the following fact:
that his political science is the second part of a bipartite enterprise. The first part is called,
in its literary presentation, the Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and today in political
science the notion that ethics should be the first part, the basic part, of political science
would be received not with incredulity but with ridicule. Whether this is the superiority
of modern political science to the Aristotelian one is a long question into which we
cannot go here. I have made some remarks about this subject from time to time.

The whole discussion in the Politics, we have seen, rests ultimately on the premise that
there is such a thing as human virtue or excellence, and of course a variety of such
virtues. But this is not elaborated there; the elaboration we find in the Ethics. The great
question regarding the Ethics, which we will try to develop next time, concerns the
character of the knowledge of these moral principles. Today of course this is also the
issue, only this issue is regarded as foreclosed. There is no knowledge of moral
principles, they are somehow imposed upon us by our society or whatnot, but there is not
strictly speaking a knowledge of them as the true moral principles. Now this is certainly
the obscurest point in Aristotle’s Ethics: the cognitive status of the moral principles, and I
will devote at least some part of the last meeting to this subject, and if we have still time,
to make some remarks on the difference between Aristotle and Plato, the other great
representative of classical political philosophy. Is there any point you wish to question?
Yes, Mr. Levy?
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 115

Mr. Levy: What makes this book “philosophy”? How does it differ, for instance, from a
highly competent statement like Ernest Barker’s Reflections on Government, which is
also a survey of regimes in a certain way? Or is it?

LS: Well, I have no objection to that. Barker, as he has shown to some extent at least by
devoting so much labor to bringing out this honest and useful translation—Barker has no
opposition to political philosophy. Why not? I have no objection. My criticism of Barker
is simply this, and this means a questioning of him as a political philosopher, [is] that
Barker was fundamentally a Victorian. The great shocks which were applied to us in our
century, especially after the First World War—which was already a big shock, as you
know, but not comparable to what happened in the thirties—I believe did not give him
occasion to reflect, to go deeper into political problems than he had done. In other words,
there is a kind of dignified classicism in Barker which is in one way very attractive, at
least to me, but in another way also not sufficient, because when the waves rise as high as
they do in our age, then some toughness is needed in countering them which I do not find
in Barker. Barker, in other words, continues in a certain British tradition represented by
people like24 T. H. Green; and that is now no longer alive,lvii and one could say that is
merely a deplorable fact, but it has some reason. There are needs, demands, intellectual
demands which are not satisfied by that.

Mr. Levy: So it is completeness which defines philosophy and distinguishes it from all
other kinds of studies.

LS: Yes. Comprehensiveness, I would say, but equally important is the depth, how
deeply you go in analyzing things. There is a kind of comprehensiveness which some
very clever globetrotters have, like those who have seen the minds and laws of many
lands and are under the spell of the prejudices which they sucked in with their mother’s
milk. So there is very great variety and there can be something good about that—a
high-class journalism I highly respect. That is not philosophy. What you need in addition
is analysis and the bringing out of the reasons why these things are, and that is not
possible today, at any rate, without a certain kind of historical studies. I don’t say
historical studies simply, because historical studies can be unenlightening and merely
antiquarian and irrelevant. And even if people speak of history of ideas, that can be very
unenlightening, a kind of exciting panorama of the variety of opinions which men held in
different times without at any moment being concerned with the question: Which are the
true ideas? You would have to say: A philosophically-inspired history. And then we
come back again to: What is philosophy? And I must return to the very simple definition
of philosophy which was suggested by both modern and ancient philosophers, and which
is so simple that it might very well appear ridiculous: philosophy is the attempt to know
the truth about all things. I think that is a fitting conclusion for this class. [Laughter]

[end of session]

lvii
Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882), British Hegelian philosopher and political liberal. His major
works were lectures on political obligation delivered in Oxford in 1979 (published as Lectures on
the Principles of Political Obligation, and Prolegomena to Ethics (1883).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 116

1
Moved “the common people.”
2
Deleted “And this excludes.”
3
Changed from “the so-called aristocracy are those who”
4
Deleted “And the citizen is.”
5
Deleted “a citizen.”
6
Deleted “or misleading? Because.” Moved “or misleading.”
7
Deleted “if.”
8
Deleted “with.”
9
Deleted “it.”
10
Deleted “Mr, Bruell, will you allow me?”
11
Deleted “as.”
12
Moved “today.”
13
Deleted “but.”
14
Deleted “this.”
15
Deleted “people, like.”
16
Deleted “charm.”
17
Deleted “as you will remember.”
20
Deleted “of.”
21
Deleted “but.”
22
Deleted “that.”
23
Deleted “are.”
24
Deleted “Green, you know.”
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 117

Session 16: no date

Leo Strauss: 1Today I would like to finish the discussion of Aristotle and, if some time is left, to
say a few words about Plato’s political philosophy in contradistinction to Aristotle’s. Now we
have spoken about Aristotle’s political science [and] 2 [its] chief theme, the variety of regimes.
We haven’t yet considered its basis. The basis, we can say and must say, is the end of man. The
end of man consists according to Aristotle in the unimpeded practice of virtue, “unimpeded”
meaning you must have certain equipment in order to do that. You must be healthy and not
completely unsupplied with funds, because this would make it impossible for you to practice
virtue in every respect. Now virtue means here primarily of course moral virtue. What moral
virtue is, what kinds of moral virtue there are, is discussed in the first part of Aristotle’s work
concerning political philosophy, and that first part is known by the name of Ethics. There you
find a detailed discussion of virtue in general, and of the various kinds of virtues—especially, as
they are mentioned, i moral virtues. This term, [“moral virtues”], has been coined by Aristotle. 3
Now virtue belongs somehow with morality, therefore, and also with the moral law, as it later
was called, which was also more or less identical with the natural law. “Natural law” is a term of
Greek extraction; “moral law,” as far as I know, is of Christian theological origin and was
originally used for designating a part of the old law, of the Old Testament law. This only in
passing. There is no natural law in Aristotle. Aristotle does mention the term in his Rhetoric, but
his Rhetoric does not present Aristotle’s own views but the view which an orator has to use, and
in particular which a forensic orator has to use.

I propose that we have a look at Aristotle’s statement on this subject, which is truly Aristotle,
i.e., which he does not report from popular opinion, but which he speaks in his own name. That
is in the fifth book of the Ethics, page 294 in the Loeb edition. ii

Political Justice is of two kinds, one natural, the other conventional. A rule of
justice is natural that has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our
accepting it or not. A rule is conventional that in the first instance may be settled in one
way or the other indifferently, though having once been settled it is not indifferent: for
example, that the ransom for a prisoner shall be a mina, that a sacrifice shall consist of a
goat and not of two sheep; and any regulations for particular cases, for instance the
sacrifice enacted in honor of Brasidas, and ordinances in the nature of special decrees.
Some people think that all rules of justice are merely conventional, because whereas what
is by nature is immutable and has the same validity everywhere, as fire burns both here
and in Persia, rules of justice are seen to vary. That rules of justice vary is not absolutely
true, but only with qualifications. Among the gods indeed it is perhaps not true at all; but
in our world, although there is such a thing as natural justice [“the just by nature”’—LS]
all rules of justice are variable. But nevertheless there is such a thing as natural justice as
well as justice not by nature;iii and it is easy to see which rules of justice, though not

i
It is possible that Strauss said or meant “as we have mentioned” or “as they are called.”
ii
The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).
iii
These words were taken from Rackham and added to the transcript: “all rules of justice are variable. But
nevertheless there is such a thing as natural justice as well as justice not by nature.” Rackham in fact ends
this selection with the words “justice not ordained by nature.” NE V.1034b18-1135a5.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 118

absolute, are natural, and which are not natural but legal and conventional, both sorts
alike being variable. The same distinction will hold good in all other matters; for
instance, the right hand is naturally stronger than the left, yet it should be possible for any
man to make himself ambidextrous
The rules of justice based on convention and expediency are alike standard
measures. Corn and wine measures are not equal in all places, but are larger in wholesale
and smaller in retail markets. Similarly the rules of justice ordained not by nature but by
man are not the same in all places, since forms of government are not the same, though in
all places there is only one form of government that is natural, namely, the best form.

LS: Well, “which is by nature the best.” Now this is the single page which Aristotle devotes to
that great subject of the ages, natural right. Now what does he mean by that? You see, there is no
clear example given of natural right, we only have to figure it out. For example, when he says to
sacrifice a goat but not two sheep, this is conventional. But what about sacrificing in general?
Perhaps he means this is by nature right, worship of the gods. And similarly, to ransom prisoners
for this and this amount is conventional, but that you should ransom prisoners or, more generally
stated, that you should help fellow-citizens who in the course of civic duty have come into
trouble, this is by nature valid. Helping citizens out of misfortune into which they have fallen as
a consequence of performing a civic duty, and worshipping the gods, this is by nature right. We
would then have to say as a general definition: the natural right is that right by which every city
stands or falls. You see here, at the beginning of the passage read, natural right is declared to be a
part of political right. That does not necessarily mean that there are no natural-right relations
between individuals as distinguished from citizens, say, between complete foreigners who meet
somewhere in a forest. Aristotle would think that there are relations of right not established by
human convention between any human beings. But what he has in mind is that only among
fellow-citizens, and only grown-up fellow-citizens, for that matter, 4 do relations of right acquire
their full density. For example, within the family, relations of right do not acquire their full
density because children ordinarily have property rights among themselves or against their
parents, and so on. But if the people are fellow-citizens independent of each other, there you
have the fullest density.

Now to come back to the examples to which Aristotle seems to allude: if it is correct that natural
right is that right by which every city stands or falls, then we would have to say natural right is
the flooring, the minimum condition. This seems to be confirmed by the example of the
right-handed and [the] ambidextrous man. All men are by nature right-handed, but we can
acquire ambidexterity by training. Now if we assume that Aristotle thinks that ambidexterity is
preferable to right-handedness, is a greater perfection of the man, then it would mean this: that
natural right plus conventional right is higher than mere natural right, or that intelligent
conventional right is higher than mere natural right. Now if this is so, then natural right is
indifferent to the difference of regimes. Whether it is a democracy [or] an oligarchy, in all cases
these conditions would have to be fulfilled. Positive right of course is relative to the regime: it is
either democratic or oligarchic, etc. Yet, and that is a conclusion, one regime alone is by nature
best everywhere: this is by nature, not by any human establishment. This regime (the most divine
regime, as Aristotle says elsewhere) iv is full kingship, as we have seen. But this full kingship is
the only regime which does not require any laws, where the superior man rules by looking at
iv
Politics 4.1289a40.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 119

each case and its requirements. So we would have to say [that] the minimum condition and the
maximum, the flooring and the ceiling, are natural and do not in any way depend on nomos, on
law.

Yet—we have not yet considered the key passage—all just things, whether they are conventional
or natural, are changeable. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation is: This is not literally true; it applies
only to the conclusion from the principles. The principles themselves are unchangeable. Aristotle
himself does not make this distinction. Now how can this be understood? What Aristotle literally
says is that there is no single rule of justice, natural or positive, which is not open to
qualification, just qualification. Now we have seen in the Politics, for instance, the case of
ostracism: that a man is banished, not for any crime he has committed, but for his very virtues
and excellence. Why? Because his excellences threaten the normal course of events, especially in
the case of a democracy. We have also seen the case of slavery, where Aristotle lays down the
clear rule: no one shall be a slave who is not by nature a slave, and then later on, when he
discusses slavery in the context of his best regime, he suggests that slaves be given the prospect
of emancipation, which would be wholly impossible in the case of natural slaves—i.e., he takes
it for granted that this best regime would have [un]natural slaves. The answer would be that
some infraction of justice in one way or another may be required, even of natural justice.

I referred to the difference between Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle regarding natural right in this
particular passage here. Some of you may be interested in a recent discussion of which I became
aware. There was a symposium at Wellesley at which Mr. Pegis of the Pontifical Institute of
Toronto read a very interesting paper about the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, asserting that
this doctrine is not a philosophic teaching but a theological teaching—I believe an interpretation
which is not in accordance with the traditional view—and I was told there was a certain
excitement about it, though I couldn’t be present at the lecture. v Still, it is worthy of serious
consideration. Professor Pegis did not answer the question: What is Thomas Aquinas’s
philosophic view of natural right? which I would have liked to hear. That is, the mere fact that
the teaching that is found in the Summa is not philosophic but theologic does not answer that
question.

This much about the question of natural right in Aristotle. Let us now broaden the question. The
principles of human action, according to Aristotle, or the noble things, as Aristotle puts it—what
is their cognitive status? Let us now turn to the Ethics,5 1139b14-18 (Loeb edition, page 331).

Let us now discuss these matters afresh, vi going more deeply into the matter. [He
means now the intellectual virtues—LS]

Let it be assumed that there are five qualities through which the mind achieves
truth in affirmation or denial, namely, art or technical skill, scientific knowledge,
prudence, wisdom, and intelligence. Conception and opinion are capable of error. vii

v
This paper was apparently never published, and no reference to it has been found.
vi
“Let us then discuss these virtues afresh,” in Rackham.
vii
NE 6.1139b14-18.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 120

Let us stop here. Now none of these, with the exception of the central one, prudence, can have
any relevance for ethics. Let us turn to page 337, where he speaks about practical wisdom or
prudence particularly.

We may arrive at a definition of prudence by considering who are the persons

whom we call prudent. Now it is held to be the mark of a prudent man to be able to
deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for himself, not in some one
department, for instance what is good for his health or strength, but what is advantageous
as a means to the good life in general. viii

The implication is this: regarding all parts of your welfare or well-being (or most of the parts),
you have experts, but regarding your well-being and happiness as a whole, there are no experts.
That everyone must do for himself. Now there are people who cannot take care of their
well-being as a whole. Must they be sent to experts? Well, we always have such people around—
I have forgotten the delicate and euphemistic term used, which is quite common. But think
simply of children. Children cannot take care of their well-being as a whole: they have parents.
Therefore a mature human being, if he is not truly (what is the term they use?) moronic, more or
less must be able to take care of himself. That cannot be left to any experts. There is no expertise
regarding ethics.

This is proved by the fact that we speak of people as prudent or wise in some particular
thing, when they calculate well with a view to attaining some particular end of value
(other than those ends which are the object of an art); so that the prudent man in general
will be the man who is good at deliberating in general.
But no one deliberates about things that cannot vary, nor about things not within
his power to do. Hence inasmuch as scientific knowledge involves demonstration,
whereas things whose fundamental principles are variable are not capable of
demonstration, because everything about them is variable, and inasmuch as one cannot
deliberate about things that are of necessity, it follows that prudence is not the same as
science. Nor can it be the same as art.

Art in the sense here is not fine art, of course, but a skill, such as carpentry or any other
production.

It is not science, because matters of conduct admit of variation; and not art, because
doing and making are generically different, since making aims at an end distinct from the
act of making, whereas in doing the end cannot be other than the act itself: doing well is
in itself the end.ix

This is the formal definition of prudence or practical wisdom given by Aristotle. But this is
obviously not sufficient. Let us turn to page 367.

But we must go a little deeper into the objection that prudence does not render
men more capable of performing noble and just actions. Let us start with the following

viii
NE 6.1140a24-28.
ix
NE 6.1140a28-1140b7.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 121

consideration. As some people, we maintain, perform just acts and yet are not just men
(for instance, those who do what the law enjoins but do it unwillingly, or in ignorance, or
for some ulterior object—

LS: Does this make sense, this simple thing, that someone may do the right thing for the wrong
reason? I think you all know that a man may act nobly6 on the basis of very low calculation; then
of course he does not act nobly, he is good only externally. So it all depends on the choice, on
the intention, as one would say—

and not for the sake of the actions themselves, although they are as a matter of fact doing
what they ought to do and all that a good man should), on the other hand, it appears, there
is a state of mind in which a man may do these various acts with the result that he really
is a good man: I mean when he does them from choice, and for the sake of the acts
themselves. Now rightness in our choice of an end is secured by virtue; but to do the acts
that must in the nature of things be done in order to attain the end we have chosen, is not
a matter for virtue but for a different faculty
We must dwell on this point to make it clearer. There is a certain faculty called
cleverness, which is the capacity for doing the things aforesaid that conduce to the aim
we propose, and so attaining that aim. If the aim is noble this is a praiseworthy faculty; if
base, it is mere knavery; this is how we come to speak of both prudent men and mere
knaves as clever. Now this faculty is not identical with prudence, but prudence implies it.
But that eye of the soul of which we spoke cannot acquire the quality of prudence without
possessing virtue. This we have said before, and it is manifestly true. For deductive
inferences about matters of conduct always have a major premise of the form “Since the
end of supreme good is so and so” (whatever it may be, since we may take it as anything
we like for the sake of the argument); but the supreme good only appears good to the
good man: vice perverts the mind and causes it to hold false views about the first
principles of conduct. Hence it is clear that we cannot be prudent without being good. x

Now what Aristotle has in mind can be illustrated by the result of Socrates’s argument in the first
book of the Republic, where he reaches the conclusion that the guardian or keeper is the same as
the thief, namely, what they have to know is exactly the same. xi How can you be a good thief if
you do not know how to open these doors and where are the things you want to get out? And to
be a good keeper you have to know this. So the intellectual element is the same. And the first
reaction, I think, of every reader of the Republic to this particular argument would be that
Socrates abstracts in a strange way from the moral intention, which of course is entirely different
on the part of the thief on the one hand, and of the honest keeper on the other. But then the
question arises: What is that honest intention?

Now Aristotle drives the argument somewhat deeper and says, partly agreeing with Socrates,
[that] the intellectual element is more than this kind of knowledge which the thief and the
guardian possess. In the case of the honest man, the intellectual virtue which he needs is
necessarily tinged by virtue, whereas in the dishonest man it is not tinged by virtue. And this he
draws out but obviously it is a distinction between a merely clever man and a prudent man. The

x
NE 6.1144a11-b1.
xi
Republic 333e-334b.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 122

prudent man, the practically wise man, is one whose intellectual faculty regarding practical
matters is tinged by virtue, whereas that of the merely clever man is not. But this leads to a
further question: How does he get his virtue? The practical wisdom, the prudence itself, only
enables him to define or to find out what he should do in the circumstances. But how come he
will only make decent choices in the circumstances? This is not yet guaranteed by prudence.

Now let us take a simple example: someone needs money. There are n ways of getting money,
some decent and honest, some dishonest. Now the prudent man excludes the dishonest ones as a
matter of course, whereas a crook considers them also and makes his pick. He might in a given
situation choose the honest way because it is the most convenient for him, but nevertheless that
is not because it is honest. How 7 does the prudent or decent man know that for the sake of which
he chooses this particular honest action in preference to another honest way of action? How does
he know the end? Now Aristotle has said here that the choice, the intention, becomes correct
through virtue, meaning moral virtue, whereas prudence deals only with the ends, meaning what
action now, in order to get money. But on the premise that it must be an honest one, how does he
get the end? The general answer from Aristotle can be said to be this: How do we become good,
if we are not good? Answer: By upbringing, by breeding, by being told from childhood: “Do
that” and “Don’t do that” and acting on it. Perhaps because we are spanked or given candies, as
the case may be, but gradually it becomes a habit so that we cannot well act otherwise. Very
well, this is good: by breeding. But how can we distinguish between sound and perverse
breeding? After all, it is thinkable that a child is brought up very severely with many “dos” and
“don’ts,” and yet they are, not necessarily immoral, but somewhat perverse. How does practical
reason get its highest or ultimate principles? That is one of the most difficult questions in
Aristotle.

Now in order to understand that, I would like to give you an example. Almost any will do, but I
somehow feel that the one which I suggest is the most practical. In Aristotle’s Ethics, in his
discussion of the individual virtues, there are two peaks, two virtues which comprise in different
ways all other virtues, and they are magnanimity and justice. Justice comprises all virtues from
the point of view of our relation to other human beings. Magnanimity comprises all virtues from
the point of view of our self-perfection. Now let us have a look at the section on magnanimity.
That is in the Loeb on page 213.

Greatness of soul [that is a more Anglo-Saxon translation of “magnanimity” 8—

LS] as the word itself implies, seems to be related to great objects; let us first ascertain
what sort of objects these are. It will make no difference whether we examine the quality
itself or the person that displays the quality. [In other words, whether we look at
magnanimity or the magnanimous man, the practical result is the same—LS]

Now a person is thought to be great-souled if he claims much and deserves much;

he who claims much without deserving it is foolish, but no one of moral excellence is
foolish or senseless. The great-souled man is then as we have described. He who deserves
little and claims little is modest or temperate, but not great-souled, since to be
great-souled involves greatness just as handsomeness involves size: small people may be
neat and well-made, but not handsome. He that claims much but does not deserve much
is vain; though not everybody who claims more than he deserves is vain. He that claims
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 123

less than he deserves is small-souled, whether his deserts be great or only moderate, or
even though he deserves little, if he claims still less. The most small-souled of all would
seem to be the man who claims less than he deserves when his deserts are great; for what
would he have done had he not deserved so much?

Though therefore in regard to the greatness of his claim the great-souled man is an
extreme, by reason of its rightness he stands at the mean point, for he claims what he
deserves [this remark about the extreme is known to every one of you from the Cow
Palace in San Francisco—LS]xii while the vain and the small-souled err by excess and
defect respectively.

If then the great-souled man claims and is worthy of great things and most of all
the greatest things, greatness of soul must be concerned with some one object especially.
“Worthy” is a term of relation: it denotes having a claim to goods external to oneself.
Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a
tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize
awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest
of external goods. Therefore the great-souled man is he who has the right disposition in
relation to honors and disgraces. And even without argument it is evident that honor is
the object with which the great-souled are concerned.xiii

We cannot read the whole thing. Let us now turn to 1125a1.

He will be incapable of living at the will of another, unless a friend, since to do so is

slavish, and hence flatterers are always servile, and humble people flatterers. He is not
prone to admiration, since nothing is great to him. He does not bear a grudge, for it is not
a mark of greatness to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done
you, but rather to overlook them. He is no gossip; for he will not talk either about himself
or about another, as he neither wants to receive compliments, nor to hear other people run
down (nor is he lavish of praise either); and so he is not given to speaking evil himself,
even of his enemies, except when he intends to give offence deliberately.

Literally, “except if by insolence.”

In troubles that cannot be avoided, or trifling mishaps, he will never cry out nor ask for
help, since to do so would imply that he took them to heart. He likes owning beautiful
and useless things, rather than useful things, that bring in return, since the former show
his independence more. Other traits generally attributed to the great-souled man, are a
slow gait, a deep voice, and a deliberate utterance; to speak in shrill tones and walk fast
denotes an excitable and nervous temperament, which does not belong to one who cares
for few things and thinks nothing good. xiv

xii
“Cow Palace”: another reference to Senator Goldwater’s speech at the 1964 Republican National
Convention.
xiii
NE 4.1123a34-b23.
xv
Republic 427d-444e.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 124

Yes. How does Aristotle know what he tells us about the great-souled man?9 I think we would
recognize it, but this is not quite sufficient. There is a story of Napoleon, that he never acquired
that gait which the noble men of ancient times had; he always walked too fast, as if he were at
the head of a platoon. Now why Aristotle says here his motions are thought to be slow, and his
voice deep—who makes these suppositions? . . . They are made—by people, by people who
know. I mean, there are people who don’t see a difference between the great-souled man and
others, but they are incompetent, just as people talking about colors who do not know colors are
incompetent regarding colors. But some of these things are verging on the silly, others not; they
all are known by opinion, by doxa. This is empirically so—no demonstration, no deduction.

Now10 compare that with the procedure of Plato, in the Republic especially.xv Plato singles out
four virtues there: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Then Plato tries to prove to you
that there are these four and only these four virtues. The proof is that the soul is such that it has a
desiring part, the virtue of which is called temperance; another part is called spiritedness, the
virtue of which is courage, controlled spiritedness; and then there is wisdom, controlled reason,
educated reason; and justice is needed in order to keep them together in one way or another. So
Plato gives us a rational account of virtue. Aristotle does not refer to that. You remember the
deduction of the six regimes which he gave us in book 3, and he showed us there can be these
three and only these three regimes, although there may be mixtures. He does nothing of the kind
in the Ethics. Now11 how can we understand that? Because we have the natural and legitimate
desire to see how these virtues are connected, what their bases are, or simply how they are
deduced from higher principles. If you read the discussion of the virtues in Thomas’s Summa
Theologica, you will see that there is such a deduction there, but Thomas uses also the material
supplied by the Stoic writers and other ancient writers, that is to say, by a school that is much
closer in certain respects to Plato than to Aristotle.xvi Aristotle does not do that. But we must
nevertheless address this question to Aristotle, whether he satisfies it or not, that is: How do you
know this? Or if you can know this, you must tell us why. Now as we learn from other writings
of Aristotle, practical reason receives its most general principles from theoretical reason,
ultimately from the end of man. xvii Therefore, we have to know the principle from which we
would start in any deductive procedure: the moral virtues are required for the end of man. Very
good, but there is one great difficulty. If they are required for the end of man, are they not also
choiceworthy for their own sake? And perhaps Aristotle does not want to deduce them, because a
deduction would always mean a subordination. Aristotle never says that they are needed for the
end of man.

In order to understand that, we have to consider that for Aristotle the end of man is the
theoretical life, the life of contemplation, the life of the philosopher. Does this highest end of
man require the moral virtues? Aristotle doesn’t ever answer the question explicitly, but Thomas
Aquinas does for him. He says prudence is the only intellectual virtue which is not possible
without moral virtue, of course because it has to do with action, and our intellectual action must
be tinged by morality, otherwise we will be knaves, or crooks. But wisdom, theoretical wisdom
proper, does not require moral virtue, Thomas suggests.xviii But is this not wholly unintelligible?

xv
Republic 427d-444e.
xvi
Possibly a reference to ST 1-2ae, q94 a1-3.
xvii
From City and Man 26n, it appears that Strauss here has in mind De anima 434a16-21 and 432b27-30.
xviii
See ST 1-2ae, q58 a5.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 125

Does not the pursuit of knowledge require, for example, courage, as we speak of intellectual
courage? Sobriety? I mean, a drunk is not likely to make great progress in finding the truth.
Furthermore, does not the theoretical man have to live in society, and therefore the social virtues
like justice are necessary? Obviously! But the question is, how do these virtues appear from the
point of view of theoretical wisdom, which is the end? They appear only as means.

This view has been stated in a very powerful way in modern times by Nietzsche, in the third part
of his Genealogy of Morals. There he says: Of course the philosophers are moral people, but the
morality doesn’t mean what it means ordinarily. A man is moral just like a jockey is very ascetic:
in order to win the next race. In other words, it is merely for the end. So the theoretical life as the
highest end makes intelligible that there are the moral virtues, but it does not make intelligible
why they should be choiceworthy for their own sake. Now fortunately, theōria, contemplation, is
not the only end of man. The other great end of man by nature is social life; and social life also
needs the moral virtues. Take Hobbes: the virtues are conditions of peacefully living together.
Again you can take almost any example, say, that of the habitual drunk, whose unpeaceable and
noisy conduct toward his fellows makes it perfectly clear that some self-restraint is necessary.
And the same is true of the other moral virtues.

If we view the virtues in the light of society as the end, we arrive at a very well-known doctrine,
much-quoted and well-known, the utilitarian understanding of morality: virtue is required for
living together. But here we see also in the utilitarian doctrine that the moral virtues are
understood as means for something, not as choiceworthy for their own sake. Now we have this
great difficulty: if morality or virtue is required only as a means for the common good, and [(if
we do not want to argue circularly)] the common good is here 12 defined in [non-]moral terms—
the common good then means something like peace, wealth, freedom—it is then at least possible
that under certain circumstances, the moral vices may be conducive to that common good.
Machiavelli’s point. Now if so, it appears that the moral virtues cannot be understood as being
for the sake of the common good, nor for the sake of the city.

These positions have a point, but they are not sufficient. The only way to proceed, 13 in order
especially to avoid Machiavellianism, is to understand the city as being for the sake of the
practice of moral virtue, and this is surely what Aristotle does. So in other words, the city is for
the sake of moral virtue, but moral virtue is itself also for the sake of something higher: theōria,
philosophy. But if we disregard the philosophers entirely, then we see that moral virtue is
irreducible to any other end than itself, and that is what decent men ordinarily say, that decency
is choiceworthy for its own sake. 14 To use colloquial terms now in use, moral virtue appears to
us as empirically absolute. And that is represented, reproduced in Aristotle’s presentation of the
Ethics. We can say, using a non-Aristotelian theōria, moral virtue or its implications have the
character of an unwritten nomos, which is understood by gentlemen or tolerably decent men
everywhere, in Greece or in China or wherever you look, and yet which is irreducible—not
because it is strictly speaking absolute, as it is according to Kant in modern times, but because
moral virtue is as it were situated at the point where the requirements of the two fundamental
ends of man, theoretical life and society, meet. Not the ends themselves, but their requirements.

And this is, one can say, the mystery of Aristotle’s point of view. In fact, moral virtue derives its
dignity from the fact that it points beyond the vulgar goals, toward man’s highest end. Moral
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 126

virtue is ultimately, from the philosopher’s point of view, a reflection of philosophy. The
gentleman, the kalos k’agathos in Greek, points toward the philosopher, but he is not a
philosopher and he is lower than a philosopher, from Aristotle’s point of view. And his pointing
toward the philosopher is not therefore without ambiguity. To mention only one: the craftsman
or artisan, who by definition is not a philosopher, is in one sense closer to the philosopher than
the gentleman, [for] a very simple reason. A gentleman cannot be petty, he cannot count every
penny; it is impossible. The craftsman, [however], has to be exact. Look at a carpenter or a
shoemaker: this kind of quality which the craftsman has and the gentleman despises shows a
certain affinity,15 a certain kinship between the craftsman and the philosopher. The picture is not
of course as simple as it appears from a strictly political presentation of the issue. Now the
clearest statement which we find of this whole state of affairs occurs at the end of the other
Ethics of Aristotle, the so-called Eudemian Ethics, from a man called Eudemus, probably
Aristotle’s son. There, towards the end, we find a discussion of two kinds of goodness, a
gentleman’s goodness and a non-gentleman’s goodness. I can only encourage you to read that
with some care. I think the solution is as I have suggested. In the Loeb it is on pages 469
following.

Now with this I conclude my remarks about Aristotle on the basis of Aristotle’s Politics. This
political philosophy is ultimately unintelligible without an understanding of what the
contemplative ideal, as it is called, means. One can say the highest theme of Aristotle’s political
science is philosophy as a way of life, and this was always so in classical times, in Plato as well
as in Cicero, and one of the most striking differences between modern political philosophy and
classical political philosophy is that philosophy as a way of life has disappeared from modern
political philosophy. Of course, a political scientist or a social scientist today still speaks of
philosophy, or has other names for it, as parts of culture which are of great interest to the social
scientist, but that is not quite the same thing.

Is there any point you would like to bring up in connection with this question of the foundations?
Or perhaps I will continue my exposition, and then we will have a free-for-all at the end of the
meeting. The clever ones among you may wish to get some inkling of what will happen next
time. Yes?

Student: A while ago you pointed to the danger of circularity in saying that on the one hand,
virtue is the means to the city, and on the other, the end of the city is moral virtue. Now, did we
really get around that by saying that while moral virtue is conducive to the ends of the city, the
end of the city is the same thing? Don’t we have to ask the original question: How does Aristotle
know what moral virtue is, is for itself?

LS: Well, could one not assume, to take care of the circularity, the city is for the sake of moral
virtue, and moral virtue finds its ultimate justification in the theoretical life?

Student: One would hope the justification would be in the theoretical life; but what about the
other justification, that it is for itself?

LS: Well, but let us assume someone has no understanding, has no taste for the philosophic life.
What would be the highest for him?
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 127

Student: The highest would be moral virtue, to be really good himself.

LS: Yes, that is the point which Kant makes, that moral virtue is the highest. We all can
understand that, although it is not equally well understood by all people at all times. That is a
peculiar heritage from the age of Enlightenment, that it seemed to be so clear that the only thing
which we can rightfully expect from a man, and for which we can rightfully respect a man, is his
honesty. And I think a liberal society at its best is based on this principle: not simply on freedom,
but also on the fact that only probity and decency are to be respected.

Well, then, I will turn to the other great teacher of political philosophy—xix

—but as for questions regarding Aristotle’s Politics, I remind you of what I said about the end of
the third book, and other difficulties of that kind. But they are not comparable in magnitude to
those you find in Plato.

In the nineteenth century an approach towards Plato emerged, and not only towards Plato, which
still predominates, which we can call the historical approach. “Historical” means here “genetic,”
and in a twofold way. First, we have to see Plato (and the same would of course be true of
Aristotle) as in one way or another an outgrowth of Greek life, of Greek life and society and
understanding, or of Greekness, you can say. And the second is we have to study Plato’s thought
in its own genesis, Plato’s development. And there are certain views which we might find, I
believe, in every book on Plato as far as I remember: there is an early period, there is a middle
period, and there is a late period; and we know exactly what Plato thought, if not in every year,
in each of these periods and how they developed from each other. I must say, in honor of a
former professor of the University of Chicago, Paul Shorey, that he was the only one who
opposed this view at the time when it was strongest. He wrote among other things a book called
The Unity of Plato’s Thought, in which he tried to show that Plato never changed his mind. xx I
think I would agree with Shorey’s thesis, only sometimes he makes things a bit easy for himself.
In other words, he doesn’t see that there are certain great difficulties that he cannot resolve. I do
not believe that they can be solved by the way that the men who opposed Shorey thought to solve
them, by thinking Plato only changed his mind, but the difficulties are there.

Now a special point of course is that among the dialogues that have come down to us as Platonic,
quite a few are declared to be spurious, not written by Plato. As far as I can judge, this kind of
declaration in all cases is based on a kind of presumed knowledge of what Plato could have
written—“this he could not have written”—or that they believe they have exhausted Plato’s
possibilities. There is one little dialogue called Menexenus, which is regarded as genuine and is
only protected by a quotation in Aristotle. Without that, these people would have declared the
Menexenus to be spurious because it is of a certain levity which is wholly unbecoming to [these
severe men, Plato or else Socrates]16.

Now the reason why this approach is so powerful is ultimately an insufficient reflection on the
form of Plato’s work, on the simple fact that Plato did not write treatises as Aristotle did, but

xix
The tape was changed at this point.
xx
Paul Shorey, The Unity of Plato’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1904).
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 128

dialogues. He also wrote letters, but apart from the fact that some people say the thirteen letters
are spurious (at least most of them), letters are also not treatises, of course. There is one letter
which is particularly famous, the Seventh Letter, the longest one, which contains a kind of
autobiography of Plato, and is frequently used in interpretations of Plato’s political philosophy.
But let us forget about the letters, and let us speak only about the dialogues. Now what is the
consequence of the fact that Plato wrote dialogues? Very simple: that we never hear Plato
speaking. Plato could have made himself a character in the dialogues, it is true; but that he did
not do.

Since Plato never speaks, we cannot find Plato’s views in any utterances occurring in the
dialogues. The dialogues are in this way like dramas. Now when, for example, in Goethe’s
Faust, Faust replaces the words at the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was
the word” by “In the beginning was the deed,” we cannot say that was Goethe’s view.xxi What
we see is Faust’s view. And so strictly speaking we never know what Plato thinks. But the
solution to this difficulty is very simple: every child knows that Plato has one spokesman, his
revered master Socrates, and hence what Socrates says has Plato’s imprimatur, as it were. I
would raise the question: How do you know? That is a long question. But even granting 17 that
Socrates is the spokesman of Plato, we are confronted by the fact that one of Socrates’s
characteristics is his irony. Now to have a spokesman who is ironical, that is almost as bad as to
have no spokesman at all. Of course we have to raise the question, what is irony? And we cannot
take any modern, especially romantic, view of irony. Literally translated, it means dissimulation.
But a dissimulation gradually comes to mean a dissimulation of a certain kind: noble
dissimulation. If someone dissembles his defects, then he is not an ironical man; but if he
dissembles his excellences, then he is an ironical man. And it is clear why someone could
dissemble his excellences simply in order to spare the sensitivities of other men: that is a noble
effort. More generally, irony is such dissimulation as is practiced in the interests of other men, of
interlocutors, at least as much as in the interests of the speaker. One can say irony18 in the
Socratic sense means a kind of serpentine wisdom with the innocence of doves. If it were only
serpentine, it wouldn’t be noble, but this [is a] peculiar combination of simplicity and
complexity.

The comparison of Socrates with Jesus which this remark implies is of course very old and very
plausible at first glance. Very famous is the 19 [statement] of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Sancte
Socrate Ora Pro Nobis, treating Socrates as a saint. xxii But the difference between Socrates and
Jesus is more or less important. And I will read you now a true Christian saint, namely Sir
Thomas More, the author of Utopia, which shows that he was a very good knower of Plato’s
Republic. But this work, called Of Comfort against Tribulation, he wrote in prison shortly before
his execution. You know his fate. Here he says somewhere: “To prove that this life is no
laughing time, but rather a time of weeping, we find that our Savior himself wept twice or thrice;
but never find we that he laughed so much as once.” And now the great laugher Thomas More
adds: “I will not swear that he never did; but in the leastwise he left us no example of it. But on

xxi
Faust, lines 1224-1237.
xxii
“Sancte Socrate Ora Pro Nobis” was a marginal addition to the Convivium Religiosum (first printed in
the July-August 1522 edition), Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997),
v. 39-40, 233.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 129

the other side, he left us example of weeping.” xxiii Exactly the opposite is true of Socrates. When
you go over the writings of Plato or Xenophon, you will never find Socrates weeping. You find
him, however, laughing twice or thrice, and this is an indication of a fundamental difference. We
can say there is a slightly greater kinship of the Platonic dialogue with comedy than with
tragedy. We cannot call it comedy, surely not, but there is a slightly greater kinship with comedy
than with tragedy.

Irony means, to state it somewhat differently, to speak with a view to someone, speaking
differently to different kinds of people. And all Socratic utterances are in this sense ironical. If
we want to understand these utterances properly, we have to consider the people to whom he
speaks, the time, the place, the moral and intellectual qualities of the people with Socrates. We
always have to be able to translate, as it were, the statements made, say, toward Crito in the
Crito, with what Socrates might say to Plato. We can say the understanding of a Platonic
dialogue consists in transforming something in two dimensions—that is, a plane—into
something which is three-dimensional, which requires an effort on our part to discover. We must
consider not only what Socrates says but how he says it: not his voice or intonation, but when he
spoke, to whom he spoke, and under what circumstances. I mention another point only in
passing, a very important difference: that some Platonic dialogues look like dramas. At the
beginning you find the characters enumerated and then it begins. And there are also narrated
dialogues, which have the form, “and then I asked him” and so forth. But here the great question
arises: Why is the Republic, for example, a narrated dialogue, and the Gorgias a performed
dialogue? These questions are as important for the understanding of a Platonic dialogue as the
understanding of an actual discussion. I think all errors of interpretation are based on this crucial
fact. You see, it is much more difficult to understand a Platonic dialogue, however simple and
early it is, than Aristotle’s Politics.

Now we find at the entrance of Plato’s work—not literally, but with qualifications—the Apology
of Socrates and the Crito. I will discuss this as an example. Some people say that in the Apology
you see Socrates as a rebel who stands up for freedom of speech, or whatever it may be, whereas
in the Crito we see Socrates the lawabiding citizen. And therefore we find, on the lower level of
interpretation, two schools of thought: the revolutionaries, who like the Apology, and the
conservatives, who prefer the Crito. Needless to say, this is an arbitrary selection: both things are
Socrates. This tension, between Socrates the lawabiding citizen and Socrates the rebel, is
Socrates. By understanding that tension, one has made considerable progress toward [the]
understanding of Socrates. Socrates is neither simply the rebel nor simply lawabiding. It is
perfectly clear from the Apology itself that he would not obey a law that is manifestly unjust.
What about the law which condemns him to die? He obeys it. Is it a just law? Is he justly
condemned? One of his younger friends, the most enthusiastic but not the most intelligent among
them, is a young man called Apollodorus, and he told Socrates after he was condemned to death:
“How terrible that you have been condemned to death, unjustly!” Whereupon Socrates said:
“Would you like it better if I had been justly condemned?” This is one of the very rare occasions
where it is explicitly said that Socrates laughed. xxiv

xxiii
More, Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, chap. 13.
xxiv
This occurs not in Plato but in Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates, 28.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 130

Now to speak more particularly about the Crito: Of this famous statement demanding absolute
lawabidingness without any qualification, that is, with this qualification: that if you have the
right to emigrate with your property and you have not availed yourself of that right, then you are
obliged to obey the laws. By your staying there, you have made a kind of tacit contract to obey
them. Now this leads to all kinds of interesting questions. Let us assume the only property you
have is landed, which you cannot well take with you, or you may not be able to sell it, what are
you to do then? In this dialogue, Crito is afraid of what people will say about him if his friend
Socrates is executed. And this is particularly grave because he is a very wealthy man, and it was
apparently a matter of course that by prudent application of bribes you could get a man out of jail
in Athens. Now what Socrates actually does in the dialogue is to supply Crito with a defense of
Crito . . . what Crito can say to the people who accuse him of not trying to help his old friend
Socrates, who has been so helpful to him. In other words, what Socrates presents here fits Crito
and his accusers, whether it would fit man on a higher level needs investigation. As for the
Apology of Socrates, we have some direct clue in Plato’s dialogue called Gorgias, where
Socrates discusses his situation if he would be accused of a crime in Athens. xxv He makes it clear
that if he were accused he would be in the position of a physician accused by a pastry cook
before a tribunal of children. These children would say: You have taken away our pastries, our
pleasures, or our toys, for that matter. And how could he possibly explain to these children that
the bitter pills which he gave them, the bitter truths, are better than these sweets? The Athenians
would be wholly unable to understand him, and therefore he must adapt what he tells them to
their capacity. And that is the way in which one would have to study the Apology.

Now a few words about the most famous political work of Plato, the Republic. I heard that in this
country it is sold much more than any other work of Plato. Now the Republic is distinguished
from the Apology and the Crito and even from the Gorgias by one very obvious fact, appearing
to the simple reader: a radical, extreme critique of democracy as such. In the Gorgias he
criticizes certain democratic statesmen—Themistocles, Pericles, and so on—but here democracy
as such is radically criticized. The context of course is the presentation of the best regime, of the
truly just regime, and democracy is viewed in the light of that. Now this truly just regime is
characterized by three institutions: absolute communism, communism regarding property,
women, and children; equality of the two sexes; and rule of philosophers. And the reasoning
justifying these institutions takes up a relatively short space, chiefly in the fifth book. But there is
a kind of hidden reasoning which starts at the very beginning. The question is raised: What is
justice? And the first answer given is: Justice consists in restoring property to its rightful owners.
But there is an obvious difficulty here. Let us assume the property is a knife, and the owner is
insane. Obviously justice does not consist in restoring his property to him; then only if such
restoration is good for the owner. We must of course enlarge it, because there are actions of
justice which have nothing to do with restoring of property. And then we would say, as the
Western tradition does, justice consists in giving or leaving to everybody what belongs to him.
But here we have the same difficulty. In giving or leaving to a man what belongs to him, if the
individual concerned is a vicious playboy, it would be much better for him to be deprived of
what he owns than for him to keep it. In other words, there is a conflict between justice
understood as giving or leaving to everyone what belongs to him, and the other equally
reasonable proposition that justice is good.

xxv
Gorgias 521e-522c.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 131

This difficulty has been stated very well by Plato’s fellow student of Socrates, not to say friend,
in his Education of Cyrus . . . a story which I have retold, I believe, in almost every class I have
given.xxvi There was a big boy who had a small coat, and a small boy who had a big coat. And
young Cyrus, future founder of the Persian Empire, was in a school of justice—because in Persia
they have schools of justice, not of reading, writing, and arithmetic—and there he was asked: If
the big boy took away the coat of the small boy and gave him the small coat, how would he
judge the case? And he said: That is fine; now each one has what fits him. And then he was
spanked: he was not requested to decide what is fitting, but what is right in the sense of legal.
But if we are concerned with justice pure and simple, not with secondary considerations, we
have to find an order in which everyone gets what is good for him, and that means of course the
abolition of private property: the very simple fact that men who now are well served by having a
big estate under their control may tomorrow be wholly unfit for it means that there cannot be
private property. And who is to do the assigning? Only competent men who are able to say what
is good for whom, a kind of physicians of the soul. And that is the reason why there must be
absolute rule of philosophers and why they must have common property.

Now regarding the rule of the philosopher, we find this very extreme statement in the center of
the Republic more or less: that all evils will cease from the cities if the philosophers are
kings.xxvii In the immediate context this means the philosophers’ becoming kings is a necessary
and sufficient condition. Incidentally, in the Seventh Letter this is also repeated, and in the
Seventh Letter there is not even an allusion made to communism and the equality of the sexes.
But even in the Republic I think that is clearly indicated. If the philosophers’ becoming kings is
the necessary and sufficient condition for the cessation of all evils, then there is no need for
absolute communism or equality of the sexes. What is the basis of the demand for equality of the
sexes in the Republic? The reasoning supporting that equality is that the difference between the
two sexes is not more relevant than the difference between bald-headed and not-bald-headed
men. I believe this is a very insufficient statement about the difference between the two sexes.
The only difference is said to be a difference of strength. Granting that for one moment, would
this not be very important for the military profession? And women are supposed to be soldiers in
the same way as men, to say nothing of the importance of the difference between the two sexes
for war altogether: that the loss of many men is much less dangerous for the future of the city
than the loss of many women, because a small number of men can generate a large number of
children and the same is obviously not true of women.

But to go back to this general statement, that all evils will cease if the philosophers are kings.
This wonderful order will come about if, when the philosophers become kings, everyone older
than ten will be expelled from the city. So the rule of the philosophers is only a primary
condition. Then they will expel everyone older than ten and start almost from scratch. The
question of course arises: Who will do the expelling? These one or two philosophers—well,
there are the soldiers around, but the soldiers have not yet been educated. In other words, the best
regime as presented in the Republic is impossible. Why then does Plato create the appearance of
presenting to us the best regime? Cicero has said somewhere that what Plato does in the Republic
is not to present the best regime but, in Latin, the ratio rerum civilium, the nature of political

xxvi
Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.3.17.
xxvii
Republic 473d-e, Seventh Letter 326a-b.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 132

things.xxviii By making this extreme experiment, this impossibility, Plato lets us see why it is
impossible and therewith what are the limits, the character, the nature of political things. One
illustration: that is the famous noble lie, which Socrates demands be accepted by the city. The
first half of it is that they all must believe that they have been brought up within the earth; in
other words, that they all are simply children of the earth. And when speaking of them Socrates
makes a slight change: he replaces the word “earth” with the word “land”—territory, this
particular part of the earth. The noble lie suggests that each political society is natural, whereas
what is natural is only the unity of the human race, 20[as is] proven by the simple fact that
generally speaking, a male human [being] from one society and a female human being from
another can generate a human being. There is other evidence for this Platonic view (if it deserves
[to] be called Platonic, because it is elementary) in other Platonic dialogues. This is the natural;
this natural unity is not politically possible, however. And the political community must be
ascribed a naturalness, a sacredness, which it cannot truly claim but which is necessary for its
being a unity. The soldiers are to be like dogs, according to this. Dogs are, as we all know, nice
to acquaintances and nasty to strangers. The famous fact [indicates] that here the polis, individual
political society, is cut off from the other political societies, which are potential enemies, even if
allies for the time being. And the joke here is quite obvious.21 Socrates says here: Is this not the
sign that the dog is a philosophic animal, because it distinguishes between good and bad people
only on the basis of whether it knows them or not? Knowledge is its sole criterion: what a
philosophic beast!

In a word, the polis as polis rests on opinion of questionable truth, and yet it is absolutely
necessary. The polis is the cave. Leaving the cave is possible only for philosophers, i.e., a tiny
minority of the human race. This is the ratio rerum civilium, the nature of political things, of
which Cicero had spoken. And this of course is only an extremely brief summation of the subject
matter of the Republic. I leave it at these remarks, and in a few minutes we can have discussion,
if you like. Yes?

Mr. Levy: How can the naturally right regime be both the best regime and the floor? Either the
floor can be improved on, one would think, or it is the best and every other regime is defective in
some way. There is no floor, there is no minimum base, or everything must become a poor
reflection of the best. That raises another question: How do we distinguish the absolutely
barbarous from the moderately civilized?

LS: I beg your pardon? The last question.

Mr. Levy: How do we distinguish the absolutely barbarous, such as we see in modern times,
from the moderately civilized?

LS: I believe one would say this is a question of the flooring: the barbarous or simply tyrannical
regimes are those that do not respect the very flooring of civil life. But the fact that a society
respects the flooring, i.e., has a minimum of decency, does not make a perfect society of it. It can
be very imperfect. 22 One can say that the various regimes which Aristotle discusses, with the
exception of tyranny, are as regimes above the flooring; [they] accept the flooring. They do not
practice cannibalism, they do not habitually23 exterminate human beings, and so on.
xxviii
Cicero, Republic 2, para. 52.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 133

Mr. Levy: In other words, the mark above which is civilization and below which is barbarism.
The best civilizations are the highest.

LS: Yes, the highest would be one, although this is not feasible, in which philosophy is the
highest and is recognized by the city. That is not possible according to Plato, nor according to
Aristotle. Therefore, the maximum you can have is a regime in which educated men, with a
certain deference to philosophy, rule. An example was for them Pericles, educated in a way by
Anaxagoras.xxix There would be others. Yes?

Student: I’m still unclear about the relationship of philosophy to the polis. On the one hand there
seems to be a tension between them, and on the other the end of the best regime, and the best
life, would be the life of philosophy. On the one hand public worship is the necessarily highest
form of philosophy of which the city is capable, and on the other, since philosophy transcends
the city, it is not essential to the city. Then when would philosophy and the city be in harmony
with each other? Only in the best regime?

LS: That philosophy would be openly in control—well, theoretically, yes, only in the best
regime as Plato described it. The question is whether that is feasible.

Same Student: I was referring to Aristotle.

LS: And then?

Same student: Well . . . when in the . . . when would philosophy be in harmony with the city? In
Aristotle’s scheme? And when would there be the tension between philosophy and the city? And
what would be the cause of that tension?

LS: Well, you gave one very important example: there are the gods of the city. That is exactly
the point. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle could not accept these gods and the stories regarding them.
And the city according to their view necessarily makes such demands. And Plato has discussed it
most clearly in the tenth book of the Laws. In the Laws there is officially no rule of philosophers,
just a kind of very much improved Sparta. But then the question arises: Must the city not have
gods? Of course. And here Plato experiments with a theology which is acceptable to philosophy,
and to the extent to which there were such a theology acceptable to philosophers, there could be
harmony.xxx In a way, what the Enlightenment tried to do24—a rational religion, a natural
theology, as the sole demand which human society makes on everyone, including the
philosophers—would be such a solution. Do you know something about these men of the
Enlightenment? . . . No. In other words, my brief reply tells you something?

Same student: Yes. Well, I was referring specifically to Aristotle. And you had mentioned that
in listing the various requirements of the polis, one of them was public worship, and you had said

xxix
Pericles is said to have learned something of the study of nature from the philosopher Anaxagoras in
Plato’s Phaedrus 270a.
xxx
Strauss later pointed out the ambiguities in the law the Athenian Stranger proposes in The Argument
and the Action of Plato’s “Laws” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 155-56.
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 134

that philosophy could be considered the highest form of public worship because it deals with
things divine. Now this would seem to contradict the statement that because philosophy
transcends the city, it is therefore not essential to the city.

LS: This I do not see. The contradiction is this—which Aristotle expresses very clearly in the
passages which I quoted: public worship is the fifth or first of the functions of the city. Now it
would be the first, according to its intrinsic claim in the eyes of the city, but this claim is not as
such recognized by Aristotle. There is a contradiction, but the contradiction is not one for which
Aristotle or any other philosopher is responsible. The difficulty is this, that what Aristotle
regards as the highest form of worship of the gods is not recognized as such by the city. Aristotle
may call the ruling intelligence “Zeus,” condescending to what the people say, but this is of
course not what they mean. And in the moment this becomes clear, then he will be in for trouble.
Something like this happened to Socrates.25 The clearest discussion of how to avoid the tension
of which I am aware is the tenth book of the Laws, which is an amazingly liberal statement,
contrary to the now-prevailing view that Plato was very nasty and tried to introduce a kind of
Inquisition into Athens. What he did was infinitely more liberal than the practice of Athens.
Plato wanted to rewrite, as it were, the Athenian law regarding impiety in such a way that
Socrates could be tolerated by the city of Athens, which he could not be according to the purport
of the law of impiety as understood by the majority of the citizens. Did I answer your question?

Same student: Yes.

Student: Why does Aristotle end the Politics with a discussion of education, and in particular of
musical education?

LS: Well, as you know, in the eighth book of the Politics there are quite a few references to
things which “we will discuss,” and which we do not find discussed. Therefore, it seems likely
that we do not have the end of the Politics, that it is lacking. God knows how many books it
originally had. But that he discusses music as such does not surprise you, I suppose. Or does it?

Same student: No, it doesn’t surprise me that he discusses it, but what surprised me was the
indefiniteness with which—

LS: Yes, that is I believe due to mere accident, that the mice nibbled away a considerable part of
the Politics. Something like this must have happened. For a number of years, many years,
Aristotle’s writings were buried somewhere in a cellar in Asia Minor, for—I do not know how
many—for quite a few decades, and then they were recovered. Aristotle had to run away from
Athens, and whether this had anything to do with an accusation of impiety, or with this fact that
he was connected with the Macedonian royal family, or with both, that we don’t know. Aristotle
is said to have said that he was fleeing from Athens lest Athens sin again against philosophy, i.e.,
as it had done before.

So. Well then, I wish you good luck.

[end of session]
Introduction to Political Philosophy Session 15 March 10, 1965 135

1
Deleted “I remind you again of the fact that you will have to be here for being tortured on Wednesday, at the same
time. I will try to do that as gently as possible. Now the other point is, it is too late to announce it in the normal way:
I made a change in my arrangements for next quarter. I will not give the seminar on Kant, but I will give a lecture
course on Plato’s political philosophy, namely, an interpretation of one dialogue, the Protagoras.”
2
Deleted “his.”
3
Moved “‘moral virtues.’”
4
Deleted “does a right.”
5
Deleted “Now.”
6
Deleted “in order.”
7
Deleted “does he know, how.”
8
Deleted “good.”
9
Deleted “although.”
10
Deleted “if you.”
11
Deleted “what.”
12
Deleted “of course, if we do not want to argue circularly, not.” Moved “if we do not want to argue circularly.”
13
Deleted “is to understand.”
14
Deleted “Moral virtue is.”
15
Deleted “of the craftsman.”
16
Changed from “this severe man Plato or either Socrates.”
17
Deleted “it.”
18
Deleted “means.”
19
Deleted “work.”
20
Deleted “and”
21
Moved “that.”
22
Deleted “There are.”
23
Deleted “well.”
24
Deleted “in a way.”
25
Deleted “So the tension would be possible—I mean.”