The intended audience for this collection of previously published papers are those Aristotle scholars who know H.'s work on ancient democracy, but who are not familiar with his scholarship on the Politics. The result is a triumph: the eight chapters are incredibly lucid, the interpretations advanced are controversial but well defended, and the analyses deal with core topics that will be of interest to anyone working in political philosophy.
The volume begins with H. arguing that we cannot understand Politics 4–6 as an application of Aristotle's famous six-fold model of political constitutions. Instead, readers must recognise that Aristotle adopts a new model that features only three constitution types: democracy, oligarchy and aristocracy/polity. Kingship is abandoned because it exists only as a theoretical possibility, not as an actual contemporary constitution; tyranny is now extreme oligarchy or democracy rather than rule by a single despot. Politeia and aristocracy no longer pick out different constitutions, but rather two variations of a single constitution. H. thinks Aristotle prefers this new three-fold model because it is more empirical and admits of gradual real-world differences instead of sharp theoretical divides. Moreover, the new model solves the conundrum of how to classify constitutions in which a few poor or many rich rule (both are variations of aristocracy/polity), and it fits nicely with the theory of the mean.
Aristotle clearly does wish 4–6 to be understood as a serious attempt to comprehend real-world constitutions, though I am not convinced that Aristotle must be read as dropping the six-fold model. After all, H. himself admits that Aristotle adheres to the six-fold model all the way into 4.2, and this interpretation forces H. to claim (rather awkwardly) that Aristotle's study of kingship and tyranny in Book 5 are not discussions of actual constitutions. In addition, I find myself profoundly uneasy when pushed to make a stark choice between Aristotle the (six-fold) abstract philosopher and Aristotle the (three-fold) hard-nosed empiricist. Aristotle's political theory is certainly limited to what is feasible (as are all his practical sciences of the human good) – but in both his ethical and political works Aristotle has no problem imagining feasible possibilities of which there are no historical examples in support of a theory.
In the next four chapters, H. offers constructive criticisms of how other scholars have interpreted Aristotle's conception of cities and constitutions. In Chapter 2, H. argues that historians cause a great deal of confusion by making generalisations based exclusively on Book 1 of the Politics (which emphasises the household, economics and historical development) or entirely on Book 3 (which is centred on the participatory aspect of citizenship). In Chapter 5, he criticises scholars who have downplayed the importance of federations in ancient Greece for no other reason than that Aristotle did not think them worthy of attention (which, given that Aristotle takes the polis to be a telos, is not surprising). Chapters 3 and 4 take to task translations and interpretations of Pol. 1276b1–2 and 1278b6–14 that construe ‘politeia’ as a system of government or structure of offices. First, H. examines the Greek text and argues that these interpretations arise from mistranslations of a double genitive construction. Second, H. argues that these interpretations saddle Aristotle with an incomprehensible position whereby he runs together an abstraction (politeia as ruling arrangement) with something concrete (politeuma as the ruling citizens). On H.'s alternative interpretation, politeia is the city in so far as it has agency; that is, this term primarily picks out the franchised citizen-block (the dêmos, the aristoi, the oligoi, etc.). It only secondarily indicates the ruling structure of offices which one of these citizen-blocks might produce.
The arguments of these chapters are convincing and particularly helpful in combatting what I take to be anachronistic readings that find a modern State lurking in every nook and cranny of the text. Indeed, if I have a criticism, it is only that H. restricts his analysis to so few passages. It would have been fascinating to see him interpret those passages in which Aristotle talks about constitutions as governing structures – passages which H. acknowledges but does not discuss.
The last three chapters make a point of assessing Aristotle's relevance to contemporary political thought. It is in this spirit, I take it, that Chapter 6 is entitled a ‘Pedestrian Synopsis of Aristotle's Best Polis’. This overview is pedestrian because it does not ask readers to entertain perplexing (and potentially antiquated) political concepts; rather, familiar contemporary metrics are deployed that describe this city as ‘a settlement, as an economic unit and as a social organization’.
In Chapter 7, H. discusses the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of freedom. The essay begins with an illuminating survey of nine different uses of eleutheria and eleutheros found in ancient sources. From among these options, H. points out that Aristotle uses freedom to refer to non-slaves of a household and as a way of describing those who enjoy leisure; Plato uses freedom to describe a soul ruled by reason. But the main point H. goes on to make is that the bulk of Plato's and Aristotle's analysis is devoted to criticising freedom as a negative feature of dêmokratia. Scholars should not merely recognise that the content of the Aristotelian and Platonic concept of freedom differs from modern versions; rather, and more profoundly, they must appreciate that neither philosopher believed that a positive conception of freedom deserved a thorough discussion. In short, the silence about freedom is just as crucial for us to comprehend as any description we can cobble together from a few isolated comments.
The final chapter deals with democracy. H.'s goal is to complicate the familiar claim that indirect democracy is unique to modernity. His first argument is that the idea of representation can be found in the ancient world: it seems presupposed by those Greek cities who participated in large, multi-polis federations, and Aristotle himself, in Pol. 6.3, proposed that mixed cities could be stabilised by having the rich and the poor elect officials to promote their respective interests. Second, H. points out that Aristotle describes two democracies – the so-called ‘older types’ found in Mantinea and Solonic Athens – that involve indirect rule. In both, non-elites are in charge of voting and reviewing officials; in both, only certain kinds of elites can serve in these offices. Third, and finally, H. offers a few (admittedly non-decisive) reasons for thinking that Aristotle's historical claims about these older democracies may be accurate.
These closing chapters on freedom and democracy are terrific additions to the body of work comparing ancient and modern political thought. They serve as a reminder that we cannot blithely assume that either ‘democratic rule’ or ‘free society’ has one fixed meaning (let alone an identical meaning). They show that ancient political thought still has the potential to inspire critical questions about how and why our own political systems developed as they did. Finally – and this could well be said of this book as a whole – these chapters show why philosophers should not rest content with their own intuitions about politics as the starting points for reflection in political philosophy. What we assume to be novel often turns out to be the latest example of something considered in an earlier age; what we take to be absolute and incontrovertible can end up contingent and contestable. If the goal of philosophy is truth, philosophers must be prepared to do the work necessary to appreciate the truth … even when that means reading work by historians of the classical world.
