Abstract:
Aristotle’s analyses of the various processes of generation and corruption are central to his philosophy. The generation and corruption of the state in particular is the topic of Aristotle’s Politics, and is perhaps the leitmotif of the history of Western political thought. My purpose here is to suggest one way that a programme for neo-Aristotelian political philosophy might get off the ground by utilizing the results neo-Aristotelian practical philosophy, initiated by G.E.M. Anscombe, which is in equal parts ‘analytical’ and ‘Aristotelian’. Anscombe believed it to be both felicitous and immensely fruitful to read Aristotle as, in his own way, part of the analytic tradition. At the very least, Aristotle’s philosophical investigations would appear far more salient, and be much more forthcoming, if we, Moderns, were to employ the insights and methods of analytic philosophy, especially those of the later Wittgenstein, when reading Aristotle. I provide an account of political justice that is conceptually connected to the generation and corruption of the state qua association (koinōnia) composed of human beings acting in accordance with the constitution (politeia). A just political society is simply one that functions for the sake of completely resolving the contradiction between need and ability latent in bearers of the human life-form in different degrees and respects at every stage in our characteristic lifecycle. This account of political justice serves as both the intrinsic standard of evaluation for our political practices and for the actions of the state. In order to describe and defend this neo-Aristotelian account of political justice, I engage with the substance of Aristotle’s Politics pertaining to the nature of the state and its historical agency, and most importantly, the human capacity to form and maintain a just political society. Apart from Aristotle and Anscombe’s writings, I make liberal use of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse’s work in explicating the conceptual structure of our evaluations of living things, and the results of Michael Thompson’s tripartite logical investigation into the ‘elementary structures of practice and practical thought’.