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

92 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
of what necessarily must occur, or of what Aristotle thinks
ought to occur } is not clear* The point is immaterial in
the present context for, -whichever assumption we make,
the question arises whether Aristotle's injunction does not
entail treating the bulk of the citizens as political sheep,
to be led without consultation into whatever pen seems
good to the shepherd. And, we miist further ask, since
they are to be educated to like and even to revere the
structure of their pen, is not the effect of Aristotle's doctrine
to deprive them of freedom of mind no less than of action?
The question has a certain topical interest in its bearing
upon the educational systems of the contemporary Totalitarian
States. Aristotle's answer, if he were pressed for
one, would, I think, amount to an admission of the charge,
if charge it be. He does, indeed, concede that some men
may rise superior to an education which has sought to
induce in them loyalty to a bad State, so that, whereas
in a good State the good man and the good citizen are
one and the same, in a bad 'State the good man may
be a bad citizen. But this concession is extended only
to the unrepresentative few who belong to Aristotle's
equivalent of Plato's Guardian class. As regards the
mass, it must be admitted that his estimate of the
civic virtue and political initiative of the ordinary man
is little higher than that of Plato. He is, in fact, content
to treat the ordinary citizen, even of a bad State,
political sheep.
as a
Philosophers and Slaves. In the last resort Aristotle,
no less than Plato, divides men into two classes, for
each of which there is prescribed a different kind of good
life appropriate to the different capacities of the members
of each class. The higher form of good life is that of the
student. The pursuit of knowledge whether in scientific
research or philosophical enquiry, the production and
criticism of works of art, the discipline and contemplative
good citizen in Bolshevik Russia? What, according to the British
Socialist, the duty of the good citizen in Nazi Germany?