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Who can claim Aristotle?

The endless battle over his legacy testifies to his great authority – and the power of his thought to make the world better

While Harrington complains several times that Aristotle is not Republican enough, his own thought derives from the polity aiming at the Good Life in the Politics, especially the principle of rotation of magistracies, an agrarian law to guard against inequality in wealth and the ideal of a citizenry based on small landowners. This had been foreseen centuries earlier in Aristotle’s Politics:‘if every tool could spontaneously fulfil its proper function, as Daedalus’ masterworks moved themselves or Hephaestus’ tripods applied themselves automatically to their sacred tasks; if, for example, weavers’ shuttles wove by themselves, the factory foreman would no longer need assistances, nor would the master of slaves.’ Part of the explanation lies in the complexity of his thought, which means that human qualities valued in his ethics implicitly undermine some of his political views; his interrogatory, dialectical manner of his argumentation, which gives due weight to counterarguments, also encourages challenges to received opinion and revels in unpicking nuances and contradictions.

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