Missreading Aristotle: the case of the best constitution

ENThere is a lively debate among Aristotle’s scholars as to which political constitution is the best. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that it is monarchy (VIII.10.1160a35-36). The same claim is repeated, although less emphatically, in the Politics (III.18.1288a15-18). Yet in the Politics book VII, Aristotle argues that the best polis looks very much politeia like, that is to say, where citizens rule and are ruled in turns. Given Aristotle’s philosophical definition of the polis (it “is an association of equals (τῶν ὁμοίων) for the sake of best life possible” while “the best (τὸ ἄριστον) is happiness (εὐδαιμονία) and that consists in (moral) excellence (ἀρετῆς) and its perfect (τέλειος) actualisation (ἐνέργεια) and its employment (χρῆσις)” (Pol.VII.1328a35-3)) and his argument on the relationship between the good man and the good citizen, I will argue that the best constitution is and ought to be politeia. Yet to argue so is not enough if we want to rescue Aristotle from his xenophobic, aristocratic, and sexist bias. We need further to misread Aristotle to argue that the sharp separation between oikos and polis as well as the verticality of the former are both philosophically arbitrary and contradict his philosophical-methodological conception of teleology. [MRU CRIS]