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

96 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
prospects* Weimar, in the days when Thackeray knew it
as a lady would apparently reproduce the ideal better than
any
other modern state one can think of."
Summary. If we demand justification for what, to
the modern view, seems an arbitrary exclusion of the
many from the rights and privileges of full citizenship,
we must find it in Aristotle's division of mankind into
what arc, in effect, two species* Some men are for him
natural tools, some the natural users of these tools. The
natural tools have the bodies of men, but lack rational
souls; hence they may be appropriately employed as slaves.
It is necessary, however, to remember that not all the
inhabitants of Aristotle's State are either slaves or cultured
gentlemen. There are also ordinary men, whom he
envisages primarily as business men, who are excluded
from the government but not from citizenship, although
Aristotle reserves the full rights of citizenship for "the
best".
What meaning are we to assign to the words "good",
"bad", "nobler", "the best", of which in our survey of
Aristotle's political philosophy we have so frequently made
use? To answer this question we must turn to Aristotle's
ethical theory.
Aristotle's Ethics: Happiness and Pleasure. Aristotle's
answer to the question, " What is the good for man? "
is that happiness is the good. Thin does not mean that happiness
is the sole object of human endeavour, still less that
it can be achieved by direct pursuit. Whether happiness
is the sole object of human endeavour, is to be considered
in connection with the examination of the hedonist
philosophy to which we are already committed by the
argument of a 1
preceding Chapter. That it can be achieved
by direct pursuit is explicitly denied by Aristotle in the
tenth book of the Ethics, which contains what is perhaps
the most celebrated treatment of pleasure in the writings
1 See Chapter II, p. 48.