GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

94 KTHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
functioning of the State, is essential to the functioning
of that which alone renders possible the pursuit of the
good life*
The Ordinary Citizen. The foregoing may be taken
to suggest that the members of Aristotle's State are divided
into cultivated gentlemen engaged in leading the intellectual
good life and slaves. This suggestion, if indeed
it has been conveyed, is misleading, for the ordinary
citizen, as Aristotle envisages him, is neither cultivated
gentleman nor slave. Aristotle thinks of him as a business
man devoting his life to his family, to the acquisition of
property, and to the satisfaction of his desires. In fact,
he is the ordinary sensual man all the world over. Unlike
Plato whose economic proposals are, it will be remembered,
communist in tendency, Aristotle does not disapprove
of private property. "The possession of private property",
he naively remarks, "is a source of harmless pleasure, and
therefore desirable." Communist proposals, he adds,
will always appeal to the many because of the glaring
inequalities of the existing system which, it is believed,
they will remove. But these inequalities are not, in fact,
due to the system of private property, but to the nature
of man. Aristotle's remarks on the subject are so characteristic
of the man, that it is worth while transcribing them
in a literal translation. "Such" (i,c. communist), "legislation",
he writes, "has a specious appearance of benevolence.
An audience accepts it with delight supposing,
especially when abuses under the existing system aredenounced,
that under Communism everyone will miracu-
else's friend. . . . But the real
lously become everyone
cause of these evils is not private property but the wicked-
ness of human nature."
Now the good life for the ordinary citizen so conceived
is
very different from the good life for the intellectual few.
On its political side it entails the performance of such con*
duct as is necessary to the maintenance and stability of
the institutions of the State. But because the ordinary