EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
Aristotle’s conception of Equality. Comment. (UPSC CSE Mains 2015- Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
- In his Politics, Aristotle considers political justice and its relation to equality. For Aristotle, justice involves equality “not for everyone, only for equals.” He agrees with Plato that political democracy is essentially unjust, because, by its very nature, it tries to treat unequals as if they were equals. Justice rather requires ‘inequality’ for people who are ‘unequal’. But, then, oligarchy is also intrinsically unjust in so far as it involves treating equals as unequal because of some contingent disparity of birth and wealth. Rather, those in a just political society who contribute the most to the common good will obtain a larger share, because they thus exhibit more political virtue, than those who are inferior in that respect; it would be simply wrong, from the perspective of political justice, for them to receive equal shares. Therefore, political justice must be viewed as a function of the common good of a community.
- Aristotle acknowledges that it is the attempt to specify the equality or inequality among people that constitutes a key ‘problem’ of ‘political philosophy.’ He considers, we can all readily agree, that political justice requires ‘proportional’ rather than numerical equality. But inferiors have a vested interest in thinking that those who are equal in some respect should be equal in all respects, while superiors are biased, in the opposite direction, to imagine that those who are unequal in some way should be unequal in all ways. Thus, for instance, those who are equally citizens are not necessarily equal in political virtue, and those who are financially richer are not necessarily morally or mentally superior. What is relevant here is “equality according to merit,” though Aristotle cannot precisely specify what, exactly, counts as merit, for how much it must count, who is to measure it, and by what standard. All he can suggest, for example in some of his comments on the desirable aristocratic government, is that it must involve moral and intellectual virtue.
- While Plato accepted slavery as a legitimate social institution but argued for equal opportunity for women, in his Politics, Aristotle accepts sexual inequality while actively defending slavery. Anyone who is inferior intellectually and morally is also socially and politically inferior in a well-ordered polis. A human being can be naturally autonomous or not, ‘a natural slave’ being flawed in rationality and morality, and thus naturally fit to belong to a superior; such a human can rightly be regarded as ‘a piece of property,’ or another person’s ‘tool for action.’ Given natural human inequality, it is supposedly unfitting that all should rule or share in ruling. Aristotle holds that some are marked as superior and fit to rule from birth, while others are inferior and marked from birth to be ruled by others. This hypothetically applies not only to ethnic groups, but also to the genders and he unequivocally asserts that males are “naturally superior” and females “naturally inferior,” the former being fit to rule and the latter to be ruled. The claim is that it is naturally better for women themselves that they be ruled by men, as it is better for “natural slaves” that they should be ruled by those who are “naturally free.”
- Aristotle does argue only for natural slavery. He opposes custom slavery wherein in ancient period conquered enemies were made prisoners of war and slaves. Aristotle (like Plato) believes that Greeks are born for free and rational self-rule, unlike non-Greeks (“barbarians”), who are naturally inferior and incapable of it. So the fact that a human being is defeated or captured is no assurance that he is fit for slavery, as an unjust war may have been imposed on a nobler society by a more primitive one. While granting that Greeks and non-Greeks, as well as men and women, are all truly human, Aristotle justifies the alleged inequality among them based on what he calls the ‘deliberative’ capacity of their rational souls. The natural slave’s rational soul supposedly lacks this, a woman has it but it lacks the authority for her to be autonomous, a (free male) child has it in some developmental stage, and a naturally superior free male has it developed and available for governance.
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