With distrust of the masses and with a paternalistic government, Plato coupled a belief that the individual must participate in the life of society. Social justice does not consist in doing good to one’s friends and ill to one’s enemies, or in catering to the interests of the most powerful. The theory that might is right is repudiated.[V-79] A just society is one in which every person has found his place of greatest usefulness to the state and fulfils his entire obligations in that place. On the whole Plato exhibited an impassioned faith in the moral and social order.
Plato believed that Ideas are real and that they are the tools with which the world is made over. He perceived perfect Forms, even a perfect social Form. Through intellectual control, Plato planned a new social order.
Chapter VI
Aristotle and Grecian Social Thought
Aristotle (384–322 B. C.), the distinguished pupil of Plato, did not make, like his master, a unified contribution to social thought. He sacrificed unity for the examination of parts. Aristotle was an opportunist, a pragmatist, and a practical student of conditions and constitutions. Unlike Plato, Aristotle did not look for Ideas separate from but in things.
Aristotle studied 158 constitutions inductively and comparatively. His primary attention was given to what is, rather than to what ought to be. His eyes were directed first of all to the parts, and then to the whole. In this examination he found that the parts are related, and further, that they hold a developmental relation. Instead of Plato’s perfection, we shall now consider Aristotle’s process of becoming. Although unsystematic, the social ideas of Aristotle reveal the concepts of process and progress.
In Aristotle’s Ethics the discussion of virtue is socially valuable. Virtue is a mean. Virtue is an impulse which is expressed neither in excess or in deficiency. It is an impulse expressed temperately until it becomes a habit. Excess and deficiency are equally fatal. The coward is he who avoids and fears anything; the foolhardy is he who rushes into danger anywhere.[VI-1] Liberality is the mean between prodigality and avarice; civility is the mean between obsequiousness and insolence. Virtue itself is the mean between self-indulgence and asceticism. In virtue, lies happiness, man’s summum bonum.
Aristotle’s Politics affords a searching analysis of many phases of societary life. The family and the state are by nature prior to the individual, since the whole must exist before any individual part.[VI-2] When isolated, the individual is not self-sufficient. Thus, the state is founded on the social needs of the individual. By virtue of these social needs, man possesses the gregarious, or social, instinct. By nature, man is a political animal,[VI-3] that is, he is a being who by nature or necessity lives in association with his kind. Man can attain his highest good only as a member of society.
Property is accorded by Aristotle a fundamental social position. Physical necessities can best be provided through the efforts of individuals. Communal ownership of property on a large scale will fail. In referring to Plato’s communism, Aristotle declared: “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.”[VI-4] Further, when one feels a thing to be his own, how much greater is his pleasure in it.[VI-5] Then, if one has private property, he may have the great pleasure which comes from making gifts to others. Moreover, communism will lead to an unusual amount of quarrelling; those who work faithfully will feel aggrieved when they see that those who work dilettantishly receive and consume a full portion.[VI-6]
Aristotle deprecated land equalization. Equalization of the desire for land is urged. Instead of dividing land equally or of establishing communism in land, Aristotle advocated that the higher classes be trained not to desire more land. He also stated that speculators and land schemers should be prevented from getting more land.[VI-7]
The communism in wives and children that Plato suggested, Aristotle denounced as impracticable and foolish. Such a procedure will weaken friendship and destroy love. Moreover, it will break up the unity of the state.[VI-8]