COMMON DELIBERATION AND THE RULE OF REASON

Aristotle presents the argument on behalf of the multitude in Book III, Chapter 11, in the service of the claim that “the many . . . can when joined together be better—not as individuals but all together—than those who are best” (1281a42–b1).Footnote ¹ In the next section, we examine the grounds of this comparative judgment. But we must first try to understand the standard of comparison: What makes rulers better or worse?

The end “above all” of politics, Aristotle tells us, is living well or finely (1278b20–25, 1280a31–33).Footnote ² Good rule must enable or promote the good, virtuous living of citizens (1332a33–35, 1324a23–35; NE 1099b29–32, NE 1103b3–4). One might read this as the simple instrumental view that regimes are better to the extent that their decisions result in the best living by citizens generally, however the regime reaches those decisions. But this view, by ignoring the character of political decision making itself, fails to account for the fact that the “fineness” of citizens’ lives depends partly on the quality of their political activity.Footnote ³ Aristotle declares that “the regime is the way of life of a city,” to which the basic principles of virtue ethics apply (1295a38–b1; see also 1323b40–24a2). Moreover, “a city is excellent . . . by its citizens'—those sharing in the regime—being excellent” (1332a33–35). A citizen sharing in the regime achieves excellence in part through excellent participation in the regime (see 1284a2–4)—that is, through excellent political activity. Thus, the goodness of regimes depends in part on how well those regimes conduct their political activity, and the goodness of individual lives depends in part on the quality of the regime in which they share.

How, then, do we determine what constitutes excellent political activity? For Aristotle, just acts are “the kind of acts which a just or self-controlled man would perform,” and that are performed “in the way just and self-controlled men do” (NE 1105b5–8). In parallel, we might say that an excellent political act is an act that a politically excellent man would perform, performed in the way he would perform it.Footnote ⁴ This understanding allows the quality of political action to be determined in part by the good consequences produced by the action—that is, the extent to which it promotes good living.Footnote ⁵ But the quality of an action is not exhausted by the good ends it produces. Excellence requires a manner of action—the manner of a politically excellent man. What is this manner?

Taking the politically excellent individual as our standard for good rule might lead us to believe that the ideal ruler is an individual—that is, a monarch. Aristotle does, after all, indicate support for monarchy, precisely when it is justified by individual excellence. He suggests that genuine kingship would “rest on the great superiority of the person ruling as king” and would thus be “the first and most divine regime” (1289a39–b1; see also 1284b25–34, 1288a17–29). He points out that if some group's claim to rule rests on the group's virtue, then the members must concede that a single individual might be “so outstanding by his excess of virtue . . . that the virtue of all the others and their political capacity is not commensurable with . . . his alone” (1284a3–7).Footnote ⁶ It is at least conceivable that a monarchy would be the best regime, as it is at least conceivable that such an outstanding individual could exist.

These concessions to monarchism, however, are importantly limited, and these limits show that the “excessively virtuous” king cannot stand in for the politically excellent man who serves as the general standard for virtuous political activity.Footnote ⁷ Aristotle tells us that absolute kingship “resembles household management . . . for a city” (1285b31–33). But one of the very first lessons of the Politics is that “those who suppose that the same person is expert in political rule, kingly rule, [and] household management . . . do not argue rightly” (1252a7–9). The disenfranchisement of all other citizens by the absolute king effectively subjects them to mastery (like that of a household manager over slaves), a kind of nonpolitical rule that even for the master is inferior to “the way of life of the free person” (1325a23–27, 1333b27–29; see Nichols Reference Nichols1992, 74–84, 144–45). Aristotle underscores this nonpolitical character of the king with his repeated references to the divinity or godlike quality of the man meriting absolute kingship (1284a10–11, 1284b29–31, 1289a39–40). One of the basic contrasts in the opening pages of the Politics is between human individuals and an individual who “is in need of nothing through being self-sufficient” and, therefore, “is no part of the city, and so is either a beast or a god” (1253a28–29). Like a god, the absolute king “can no longer be regarded as part of the city” given his excessive superiority (1284a7–8). He is apolitical in the basic sense of not being part of the polis, and his disproportionate regime is “contrary to nature” (1284b7–17). Humans, in contrast, are “political animals” because of our unique capacity for speech, our “partnership” in which “serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and hence also the just and the unjust” (1253a2–18).Footnote ⁸ That capacity could conceivably be used only for coordinating with, instructing, or commanding one's “partners.” But although such univocal speech may be appropriate for a god-ruled household, it is not for the polis, which ought to involve “political” rule—defined as rule among equals rather than a relationship of mastery and servitude (1277b7–10; Newell Reference Newell1987, 170–71; Nichols Reference Nichols1992, 74–76).Footnote ⁹ To the extent that we are political animals, we are animals who discourse among, roughly speaking, equals (Bickford Reference Bickford1996, 4; Waldron Reference Waldron1995, 576). Thus, to say the king is godlike is to venerate him and his regime, but also to alert readers that the topic has been changed away from human political philosophy. The divinity of kingship makes the regime's superiority more secure, but if its primacy depends on its sui generis character, then its significance for more profane human politics diminishes. True kingship involves a state of exception from the principles of human virtue, and so those principles cannot take their cues from that regime or its ruler.

Acting the way a politically excellent man would therefore does not amount to acting monarchically (or divinely), if that implies solitary reflection and command. On the contrary, Aristotle tells us that excellent political men do not act as if they were monarchs. [Aristotle's example of a man of practical wisdom capable of “managing . . . states” is Pericles—not a monarch but a leader of democratic Athens (NE 1140b4–11; see Mara Reference Mara1998, 314).] In general, “when great issues are at stake, we distrust our own abilities as insufficient to decide the matter and call in others to join us in our deliberations” (NE 1112b9–11). In the inexact and unpredictable matters of ethics and politics (NE 1112a34–b1, NE 1112b7–8), even virtuous individuals benefit from expanding their deliberation to include others (see Yack Reference Yack2006, 419–21). The most supremely happy and virtuous men also benefit from friends with whom they can engage in common action, and from whom they may get “training in virtue or excellence” (NE 1170a4–12), in large part by “sharing each other's words and thoughts” (NE 1170b12–13). Even monarchs at their best engage in deliberation and action in common with others: Individual monarchs “create many eyes for themselves, and ears, feet, and hands as well; for those who are friendly to their rule and themselves they make corulers” (1287b29–32). Because, according to Aristotle, reliance on others for advice and for execution of one's decisions requires seeing them as friends, and because friendship involves an acknowledgment that the friend is “someone similar and equal,” the monarch's entry into partnerships of speech and action with his counselors commits him to recognizing their equal entitlements to share in rule (1287b32–34). (A monarch who had no corulers would either have no friends and thus be incapable of acting well, or would do injustice to his friends by denying their claims to share in rule. Again, there may be an exception for the divine monarch.) Politics as an enterprise of living and acting well together requires even excellent individuals to develop deliberative partnerships in pursuit of the good and the just.

The way in which politically excellent men act, then, is through common deliberation aimed at producing good and just action. Individuals engage in excellent political action when they participate with other citizens in such deliberation, which then issues in the decision on and execution of excellent political acts. Regimes display excellence—they better instantiate and promote the political end of living well—when they reliably produce excellent actions issuing from processes of citizen deliberation aimed at good and just decisions. This action according to conscious common choice structured by regular processes and habits of deliberation parallels the virtuous individual agent's conscious choice “spring[ing] from a firm and unchangeable character” (NE 1105a30–34). Borrowing a phrase from the Nichomachean Ethics, I call this model of excellent rule—this standard of regime virtue—“the rule of reason” (NE 1134a35–36). This phrase is not meant to suggest that excellent rule requires radical alienation from the nonrational, appetitive part of the soul. Rather, ideal political deliberations regulate desires, as well as the satisfaction of desires, according to common reasoning about the requirements of justice and virtue.Footnote ¹⁰ Reason rules in excellent cities in the sense that the conclusions of serious common deliberation about what are the best or most just actions actually determine regime behavior.

In saying that “reason rules” in an excellent regime, I do not mean to evoke any extravagant vision of an anthropomorphized “reason”: Of course, in any regime, people rule. But I do mean to capture an important aspect of the way in which people ideally rule, and to leave open exactly how many or which people might rule in that way. The rule of reason is a general standard of excellence for all regimes, in the same way as is ruling “with a view to the common advantage” (1279a28–29). It remains to be seen what regimes might meet the standard. If the need for joint deliberations over “great issues” moves us away from solitary monarchical (we might say “monological” as opposed to “dialogical”) political reasoning, it does not necessarily move us all the way to democratic inclusion. Perhaps we should only consult the few best; perhaps we only should be in “political” relationships with the excellent. (Maybe “we,” you and I, would not qualify!) We still need to know who should take part in the deliberations that help constitute excellent politics, and how to sustain the habits and institutions necessary to preserve a regime's “firm character” of deliberative practice—that is, how to establish and sustain a deliberatively well-integrated regime. In the rest of this article, I suggest that Aristotle's discussion of the wisdom of the multitude goes to the heart of these questions. The many make a powerful claim not only to produce good political acts, but also to do so in the way a good regime would. This is why the many may rule better than the best but few.

THE MULTITUDE'S MANY-FACED WISDOM

Aristotle does not believe that many individuals lead fully virtuous lives (1301b40–02a2, 1276b37–38, 1279a39–b1, 1304b4–5). Nevertheless, he apparently endorses the view that the multitude of citizens may rule better than the few best individuals. Here is his primary explanation in full:

Aristotle does consider some inequalities to be sufficient grounds for exclusion from rule, as in the cases of women or natural slaves.Footnote ¹¹ Moreover, Aristotle's brief on behalf of the multitude of free males only extends to “a certain kind of multitude,” one sufficiently superior to “beasts” (1281b18–21). Nevertheless, he takes the position that inequality of virtue does not itself justify exclusionary political practices, even if one accepts the broadly aristocratic premise that political rule should promote and instantiate virtue in the way I outline at the beginning of the article.

Aristotle's reasons for endorsing what Jeremy Waldron (Reference Waldron1995, 564) calls “the Doctrine of the Wisdom of the Multitude,” or DWM, are hardly transparent.Footnote ¹² In this section, I try to clarify why ordinary citizens have a claim to rule well. I argue that DWM shows how wide participation in rule can reliably and sustainably produce good political acts, in the way a good city would—through civic-minded common deliberation. I do not depart much from Waldron's excellent analysis of the passage, but I aim to extend that analysis by filling in some important interpretive detail. I thereby hope to dispel doubts as to whether Aristotle sincerely means to defend DWM in his own voice (e.g., Lindsay Reference Lindsay1992a; Mulgan Reference Mulgan1977, 106; Winthrop Reference Winthrop1978). Understanding the grounds for the doctrine in a more fine-grained fashion will also help us understand Aristotle's ambivalent treatment of the cities ruled by the many elsewhere in the Politics because DWM is not a proof that the many always or usually rule best, but an explanation of how and why they could achieve excellent deliberative integration.

Aristotle does not provide a straightforward argument for DWM as much as a series of illustrative metaphors and similes.Footnote ¹³ Thus, my interpretation of Aristotle's position largely consists of an interpretation of these metaphors. A brief word may be in order about the method and purpose behind this lengthy exercise.

According to Aristotle's own view, metaphors enlighten readers by revealing subtle likenesses or relationships between different objects (Poet. 1457b7–8, 1459a5–7; Rhet. 1412a9–12) (e.g., by describing some object A with reference to another object B). But the metaphor will not help readers understand object A if they do not know much about object B or cannot perceive the relationship between the objects (Rhet. 1405a33–36, Rhet. 1406b6–8, Rhet. 1410b32–33). As readers lose knowledge of the author's social and linguistic context, a metaphor that among an author's contemporaries would have constituted “impressive diction” could devolve into an obscure “riddle” (Poet. 1458a21–27), or, perhaps worse, the reader may perceive a relationship between objects that was never understood by the author. Understanding Aristotle's metaphor-laden defense of DWM, therefore, requires some effort to recover what he thinks about the relevant objects of comparison, and what he might have expected his audience to think. Without pretending to undertake the Herculean hermeneutic task of completely recovering the Aristotelian context, I think his texts provide enough clues to give us confidence about the proper interpretation of his defense of the wisdom of the multitude.

I organize my interpretation around the three central metaphors in Aristotle's primary presentation of DWM in the long passage quoted previously: the dinner provided by the many; the many-handed, many-footed human; and the many as judges of music. I then conclude this section with an explanation of how the institutional consequences Aristotle draws from DWM support the claim implied by the metaphors—that the rule of the many encourages relatively conscientious deliberation characterized by good judgment and effective execution.

THE GOOD MANY: THE IDEAL REGIME AND THE PLACE OF POLITY

If we see the argument for the wisdom of the multitude as a conclusive defense of the superiority of rule by the many, then Aristotle's more detailed evaluation of regime types, including his belief that democracies are deviant regimes and his stated preference for monarchies and aristocracies (1289a38–b4), would seem to contradict that argument, perhaps even casting its sincerity into doubt. If, however, we view DWM as a guideline for good deliberative integration, or an identification of components, accessible to the many, which reveal the potential for such integration, we see Aristotle's evaluation and comparison of regimes in a different, and, I believe, clearer light. His ambivalent treatment of both democracies and polities (regimes implementing “correct” rule of the many) reflects not the abandonment of DWM, but its extension and application. Polities and democracies, regime types that include significant internal variation among instances of the type, both vary substantially in their success in deliberatively integrating (i.e., in actualizing the potential wisdom of the multitude). Appreciating this point will help us understand as a consistent whole Aristotle's evaluation of the rule of the many, and will give us some insight into the complex relationship between democracy and aristocracy (Frank Reference Frank2005, 169–78; Ober Reference Ober1998, 321, 326). Aristocracy, in the form of Aristotle's ideal regime in Book VII, exemplifies the rule of reason (in a way divine monarchy does not); therefore, I begin in this section with a brief discussion of that regime, before moving on to discuss the polity's place in Aristotle's evaluative scheme.

Aristotle's ideal regime represents his most ambitious description of a city which subjects social life to the rule of reason. The city is inclusive in that “all the citizens share in the regime” (1332a35). Every one of these citizens virtuously lives and acts “in the best manner” (1323a17–19). [Disenfranchised natural slaves underwrite this excellence by engaging in necessary labor and freeing up citizens for lives of leisure and politics (1328b37–29a2, 1330a25–29).] Because “all being excellent follows from all individually being excellent,” Aristotle favorably compares this city to the city whose claim to deliberative excellence depends on the idea that “it is possible for all to be excellent but not each of the citizens individually” (1332a33–39). With enough individual virtue, details of the integration process (of which Aristotle provides few) are not very important: The wide and deep distribution of virtue guarantees excellent deliberative integration. This universal virtue and participation among the citizen class gives the ideal regime a democratic flavor (or, more strictly, the flavor of a polity; Kraut Reference Kraut2002, 359 fn. 5; Ober Reference Ober1998, 310). Citizens all deliberate in common, their individual excellence guaranteeing an orientation to the good and the just, as well as minimizing any risk that narrow partisan conflict will result from their heterogeneity.Footnote ²⁷ Meanwhile, their sufficient numbers guarantee effective capacity for action (1326b8–9).

How does the polity compare to this ideal vision? Aristotle declares that aristocracy and kingship are the “best regimes,” in part because “each of them wishes to be established on the basis of virtue that is furnished with equipment” (1289a29–33). The mention of “equipment” or “external things” consistently characterizes Aristotle's distinction between these best regimes and the polity (1288b22–27, 1295a25–31, 1325b37–39). He describes these things as “dependent on chance,” and repeatedly refers to them as the object of “prayer” (1288b23–24, 1295a28–29, 1325b38). None are meant to be impossible (1325b39), but the clear message is that these things—the right demographic profile, the right natural geography, and so forth—are not ones that many (or any?) cities possess. Aristotle views the polity as the best regime when one's prayers are not answered by special fortune—the best, that is, “that circumstances allow” (1288b26–27), or the “best for most cities and human beings” (1295a25–26). Ideal aristocracy and divine kingship are superior then partly because their blessedness allows for a kind of virtuous rule otherwise virtually unattainable, but this does not deny the real and substantial goodness of the polity, the best unblessed city.Footnote ²⁸

The ideal regime's favorable equipment elevates it above the polity in large part because it allows the city to be “made up of those who are best simply on the basis of virtue . . . for only here is it simply the case that the same person is a good man and a good citizen” (1293b2–7). In the polity, in contrast, all or many might have “the virtue of an excellent citizen,” but many or most do not have the full virtue of an excellent man (1276b37–77a3). (In light of DWM, we might read “the virtue of an excellent citizen” of a polity as a sufficient share of what I called the “integrative virtues.”) This distribution of virtue is certainly a good one, to the extent that, through deliberative integration, it allows the city to act virtuously, and thus allows citizens to act excellently, insofar as they participate in excellent common activity. But the universal, full excellence of the ideal regime constitutes an even better distribution of virtue. Notice, however, that this difference between the regimes leaves open the possibility that a given city could move from polity to aristocracy without any changes in its rules for inclusion: The shift would occur if and when the citizens of the polity all came to develop full human virtue to accompany their citizen virtue. True aristocracy, despite officially representing the good “rule of the few” in Aristotle's regime typology (1279a33–37), is not defined by any particular exclusion, but by universal excellence among those who are citizens. Although Aristotle's discussion of the ideal regime suggests that as a matter of metaphysical possibility, he believes that such universal excellence depends on suitable equipment, including a large natural slave class, as a conceptual matter he shows that the very best polities—the very best cities of the many—could shade into aristocracy.Footnote ²⁹

Understanding Aristotle's grounds for favoring aristocracy thus shows, perhaps surprisingly, that polities can be aristocratic. But this is not to say that Aristotle's view of the polity is uniformly rosy. On the contrary, he treats polities with some ambivalence. This is because, like other regime types, “polity” is a type that comprises many subtypes, and these subtypes differ in their quality of deliberative integration. Aristotle gives most detailed attention to the different subtypes of democracy and oligarchy (1289a8–9, 1291b15–16), but the principles of differentiation within regime types are more general (1297b30–31). Regime subtypes may differ according to the “parts” (people) that make up the city (1290a12–13) and according to differences in institutional arrangements (1297b37–98a4, 1294a35–b13, 1317a28–32). Aristotle indicates that polities and regimes “called aristocracies” (but which are not Aristotle's ideal aristocracy) come in different varieties (1293b9–19, 1294a25–29): These correct regimes do not have a single archetypal form. Variations at this fine-grained level mean that the broad regime types actually overlap and bleed into one another (1316b39–17a9). The best polities “border on” so-called aristocracy to the extent that “we may speak of both as one” (1295a31–33). By the same token, however, there are polity subtypes that are less excellent, including some that border on (deviant) democracy. Thus, we should expect ambivalence in Aristotle's account of the broader category of polities, and, in fact, this is what we find.

The polity is, as Bernard Yack (Reference Yack1993, 235) points out, “tremendously flexible” in its institutional structure. Aristotle goes into great detail in outlining the ways in which the regime's political institutions—its mode of deliberation, its structure of offices, and the makeup of its court system—can vary (see 1297b41 and following). Virtually all variation comes from differences in inclusiveness of various institutions, in incentives for participation aimed at different groups, and in the methods of selecting which qualified citizens will serve in various capacities. These are, in effect, different institutional schemes for deliberative integration. Among the very fine-grained institutional differentiation Aristotle discusses, a few notable general principles for integration in the polity emerge. First, the integration, however constructed, encompasses all the citizenry (all have at least some say) and, in particular, gives effective voice to both rich and poor. Thus, institutional devices should ensure “a just mixture” according to which “all would participate” (1297a14–40); as Aristotle remarks, “all will deliberate better when they do so in common—the people with the notables and these with the multitude” (1298b19–21). Second, this universality should not be achieved by having “all meet to deliberate on all matters” (1298a29–30); this kind of “committee of the whole” approach to deliberative integration, says Aristotle, characterizes the worst, most tyrannical democracies, for reasons I discuss in the next section. Third, the universality of deliberation among citizens coincides with a policy of disenfranchisement. To keep the polity “made up only of those possessing heavy arms,” a marker of some wealth (see 1321a12–13), Aristotle recommends keeping the “assessments” (effectively property qualifications) as high as possible, as long as those with political power outnumber those without (1297b2–5). Thus, many subtypes of polity limit the extent to which they can gain the benefits of wide participation. Perhaps worse, Aristotle's qualification that the regime set the level of exclusion so as to keep the heavy-armed participants stronger than the excluded poor has ominous overtones of corrupting mastery.Footnote ³⁰ Like the ideal regime (see Nichols Reference Nichols1992, 145), the polity exhibits both a deliberative universality and a worrisome domination over its excluded class.

Aristotle's description of the regime type as a whole continues this sense of ambivalence about the internal quality of polities’ activity. He describes polity as a “mixture of oligarchy and democracy” (1293b34), both deviant regimes primarily defined by the dominance of one economic class or another. This emphasis on the polity's moderate, evenly balanced class structure also appears in Aristotle's explanation that, of the three things “disputing over equality in the regime, freedom, wealth, and virtue,” the polity represents a mixture of “the well off and the poor,” that is, the claims of wealth and freedom, with virtue conspicuous by its absence (1294a19–23). Notably, so-called aristocracies also mix virtue: Polities and aristocracies, as we know, “are not far from one another” (1294a29), so the best, aristocratic polities may indeed regulate their economic relationships and class politics with reference to virtue. But in less rarefied polities, the regime's character, if ultimately producing the common advantage, derives primarily from its class mixing rather than virtuous common reasoning.

Aristotle's characterization of the polity suggests a kind of spectrum of possibilities, running between two ideal-typical cases. At the more excellent end, the polity's economic life and its demographic makeup support the development of virtue, while in turn individual prudence and good collective institutions regulate economic life according to virtue. At the less excellent (if not quite deviant) end, the polity's good acts result less from (individual or collective) regulation of social life according to virtue, but rather from fortuitous demographic and economic circumstances and the relatively unreflective pursuit of self-interest. How excellent a given polity is within the range available to the regime type depends on the extent to which virtue (individual and collective) takes precedence in the explanation of its stability and prosperity.

The polity's population further underwrites this ambivalent range of possibilities. Aristotle declares that the best realizable regimes are predominantly comprised by people of “middling possession” (1295b5, 1295b35–37). Members of the middling element occupy a socioeconomic position that causes their own interests to be relatively moderate and benign: “for neither do they desire the things of others, as the poor do, nor others their property . . . and as a result of not being plotted against or plotting against others they pass their time free from danger” (1295b29–33). If the middle class is sufficiently “numerous,” then it can keep the political balance of power between rich and poor, “for when added to one it will tip the scale and prevent the opposing excesses from arising” (1295b37–39). The middle class must be “superior” to the other classes (1295b37). Political “superiority” admits of both a “qualitative,” aristocratic dimension and a “quantitative,” realpolitik dimension of political power (1296b16–18, 1309b16–17, 1321a6–23). The “lasting polity” arises from two overlapping sources, in varying degrees: the quantitative dominance of a centrist bloc that, exerting its political power, curbs the extremist and centrifugal tendencies of the struggle between rich and poor; and the qualitative preeminence of a large, “trustworthy,” fair-minded group of citizens untainted by pleonexia, the overreaching desire for power and wealth (1296b35–97a7, 1296a24–31; Frank Reference Frank2005, 167–69).

Praising the middle class for their economic position does not preclude Aristotle from praising citizens or city for exhibiting deliberative virtues and practices. Citing his own ethical theory, he writes that if “virtue is a mean, then the middling sort of life is best,” with “the middling sort of life” now understood to include middling possessions (1295a35–b5). In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle declares that “virtue aims at the median” between “excess and deficiency” with respect to a particular characteristic (NE 1106b15–27). Finding the proper median or mean in any given case requires careful deliberation and “right reason” (NE 1138b23–28), just as does making context-sensitive equitable judgments in political or legal cases. We see echoes here of DWM in the suggestion that ordinary, middling citizens may be well suited for citizenly virtues. But Aristotle's shift in emphasis from virtuous mean to demographic mean underscores the potential shift, in the lesser polities, from deliberative reasoning to economic-power politics. In those cases, the celebrated middle becomes a matter of fortuitous socioeconomic structure rather than the arduous, life-long development of prudence. Class position takes an explanatory priority over deliberation oriented to virtuous action.

Aristotle does say that middle-class people are “readiest to obey reason” (1295b5–6), but the compliment is importantly back handed. On its surface, it suggests the widespread possession of virtue, citizenly and integrative, or, at the aristocratic limit, full. But the language of obeying reason evokes Aristotle's description of that part of the soul that does not possess reason “contained within itself,” but “complies with reason and accepts its leadership,” much like one might “reasonably” accept the advice of one's father or friends even if one lacks one's own full rational comprehension of a matter (NE 1102b28–03a3, NE 1102b25–28, NE 1098a3–4; Pol. 1333a16–18). This distinction between the active and passive aspects of rationality in the soul has its parallel in Aristotle's discussion of types of people in the city. In the extreme, slaves are “wholly lacking in the deliberative element” (1260a10–12), although they can “perceive” reason and can develop the minimal virtue of responding to the needs of the master and the work (1254b21–23, 1260a34–36). The free citizens of the polity are certainly not natural slaves, but they may lack the full development of part of their rational soul. They may have “true opinion” (achieved through “reasonable” epistemic deference), which Aristotle describes as the virtue of the ruled, while lacking prudence, the virtue of rulers (1277b26–29). Readiness to obey reason is certainly superior to irrational intransigence and may suggest willingness to be lead by the prudence of others. But at the limit it is a passive, deferential quality, suggesting little active, deliberative wisdom.

The middle-class citizens of the polity therefore do not entirely lack virtue. Such virtue as they have is limited, however, as Aristotle explicitly says (1279a39–b2). He associates the polity with the “military virtue” of the heavy-armed warrior element (1279b2–4, 1265b27–29, 1297b2). This military virtue does apparently imply the capability to rule and be ruled according to law (1288a14–17). But Aristotle also worries that the regime may mistake this “part” of virtue for the whole, as he says the example of Sparta illustrates (1271a42–b11, 1324b6–9, 1333b13–15). The organization of a regime around military virtue causes the city to seek imperial domination and perpetual acquisition, rather than simply securing self-sufficiency and the goods needed for a virtuous life (1333a42–b3, 1333b37–34a2, 1334a36–b4). The heavy-armed middle class is thus somewhat schizophrenic in having an economic position that moderates its desires for wealth and rule, and a military orientation that encourages mastery and acquisitiveness. Aristotle's more direct discussions of the polity tend to emphasize the former characteristics over the latter (Nichols Reference Nichols1992, 98), but the military roots of citizens’ virtue threaten to erode the ethics of moderation and mutual recognition that make the polity a good regime.Footnote ³¹

With citizens of limited, relatively passive reason and partial, warrior virtue, the lesser polities do promote the common advantage. But the process by which these ordinary citizens combine to produce a beneficent whole differs importantly from the processes that would constitute the rule of reason and that characterize the better polities. To borrow terms from Jürgen Habermas’ sociology, the better polities produce communicatively achieved “social integration” (through the rule of reason), whereas the lesser polities rely on “systemic integration” through “mechanisms that stabilize nonintended interconnections or actions by way of functionally intermeshing action consequences” (Habermas Reference Habermas and McCarthy1987, 117). This systemic integration occurs through the “functional intermeshing” of citizens’ economic pursuits and political balancing in the context of middle-class “quantitative superiority” (see Kraut Reference Kraut2002, 443; Lindsay Reference Lindsay1992a, 115). Any polity, like any society, coheres through both “social” and “systemic” integration. But priority matters: it matters the extent to which social integration through (individual and collective) deliberation directs and conditions the operation of functional systems, or the extent to which, conversely, the functional maintenance of the economic structure “represses and replaces” citizens’ self-conscious communicative integration of society (Habermas Reference Habermas and McCarthy1987, 186).

Virtuous political (and economic) action requires not only an act that coincides with that of a virtuous regime, but also the conscious choice of the act because of its accord with virtue. In that way, “the city's being excellent is no longer the work of fortune, but of knowledge and intentional choice” (1331b32–34; see also 1280a31–34, 1284a3–4).Footnote ³² Such is life in the better polities, where citizens prudentially (i.e., with phronesis) regulate the pursuit of moderate political and economic desires. But the integration of the lesser polities rests more on the systemic imperatives of interest group “power politics” than on the conclusions of reasoned discourse. Thus, Aristotle's discussion of the polity regime type reflects the ambivalence appropriate to its range of subtypes. These subtypes vary in the extent to which reason rules—in the extent to which the “scattered and separated” are brought “into one” (1281b11–12) through speech regarding the just and the unjust rather than through the fortuitous balancing of pleasures and pains.

DEVIANT DELIBERATIVE INTEGRATION: THE BEST AND WORST OF DEMOCRACY

Like the polity, the regime-type democracy has, according to Aristotle, many subtypes of varying quality. Two are of particular interest in sharpening our understanding of how the rule of the many can succeed or fail in deliberative integration: the best democracy and the worst.

Aristotle argues that the best democracy is one predominantly populated by farmers (1292b24–31, 1318b6–11). The farmers’ democracy has several attractions for Aristotle, but, as in the case the polity, the nature of his praise also suggests important concerns. The best democracies respect a kind of class equality, according to which the rich and poor as groups have equal power and receive equal treatment (1291b29–33, 1318a5–8). So, for instance, Aristotle endorses a kind of protobicameralism in which “whatever is resolved by both [rich and poor] or by a majority of both should stand as authoritative” (1318a30–18b1)—something similar to the deliberation in common that characterizes polities, which the very best democracies presumably border. The farmers’ democracy exhibits these desirable features, however, not—as in the polity—through the political engagement of its ordinary citizens but precisely through their disengagement. Farmers “have enough to live on as long as they work, but are unable to be at leisure, so they put the law in charge and assemble only for the necessary assemblies” (1292b27–29, 1318b13–16). Thus, when Aristotle discusses “the only way it is possible for democracy and aristocracy to exist together” (1308b38–40), he describes not DWM's aristocratic argument for democracy (Coby Reference Coby1988, 909), but a scheme in which formal openness of offices combines with profit-motivated apathy among citizens to produce elite control—a picture similar to the practice of politics in the farmers’ democracy (compare 1309a1–9 with 1318b13–38). The best democracy achieves class equality and fair treatment of the rich through self-disenfranchisement of the laboring poor—their many hands kept on the plow rather than applied to the work of politics.

Having the best few rule is not trivial, and it reflects some success in deliberative integration to the extent that the many recognize expertise and approve (or at least refrain from rejecting) the leadership of the best citizens (see Frank Reference Frank2005, 170–72). One lesson of DWM, after all, was that proper recognition (of expertise, of the law) is itself an important integrative virtue, requiring some judgment. To the extent that the farmers’ democracy depends on the disengagement of the many, however, its integrative virtues are thereby foreshortened: fewer engage in the common work of politics, limiting the development of civic friendship; fewer eyes gather information, fewer ears judge, and fewer hands execute decisions; and dissimilarity grows between expert rulers and the untrained ruled. The profit-motivated work of the poor may help develop a middle class, and thus transition the regime to polity (Frank Reference Frank2005, 174), but in the meantime the wisdom of the multitude in the best democracy is more latent than actual.

The very lawfulness that stands as a central virtue of this city further calls into question the regime's internal quality. The farmers’ lack of leisure causes them to politically disengage and “leave the law in charge.” But according to Aristotle's general views on the relationship between deliberation and lawfulness, the proper rule of law sits uneasily with mass abstention. He regularly insists that law be complemented by “equity,” the prudential, particular judgments that serve as “rectification of law where law falls short by reason of its universality” (NE 1137b26–27; see also Pol. 1282a42–b6). When Aristotle compares the arguments of proponents and critics of kingship in Book III, the positions converge on the proposition that the rule of law must be supplemented by the rule of men (1286a23–37, 1287a25–28, 1287b19–23); the dispute only centers around how many and which men should deliberate and judge what is equitable (1287b23–24). In the course of presenting these competing arguments, Aristotle refers twice to DWM, the first time presenting an almost complete reprise of the metaphorical elaboration presented in chapter 11 (1286a27–35, 1287b12–15). Thus, two important lessons from the staged colloquy on kingship are that good politics involves rule of law complemented by equitable judgment, and that DWM stands as an ever-present challenge to those who hope to restrict the number of citizens (at the limit, to one) involved in equitable deliberation.

These lessons about law and equity are set aside in the farmers’ democracy, where common meetings in the assembly are kept to a minimum and the law, with all its inflexible universality, is left in charge.Footnote ³³ Therefore, the virtues of recognition in this city come at the price of a stilted view of justice that prizes strict legality over equity even though the latter “is the better of the two” (NE 1137b11). In so abstaining from the task of rendering equitable judgments, Aristotle's best democracy abandons one of the central tasks of collective political deliberation.Footnote ³⁴

Aristotle presumably considers this sacrifice of equity to law the best democracy can do given his fears that other, inferior democratic arrangements do away with both. In the worst democracies, “the people . . . seek to rule monarchically on account of their not being ruled by law” (1292a10–17). Radical democrats have the same lawless tendencies as the radical partisans of absolute kingship in the Book III colloquy: The democrats become like “the king who acts in all things according to his own will” (1287a1–2), and who fails to recognize even the modest concession that the ruler “must necessarily be a legislator, and that laws must exist” (1286a22). This monarchic democracy, according to Aristotle, rules by the decree and fiat of the majority, abandoning the complementarity of universal law and particular equity for willful self-assertion (1292a32–37). Interestingly, for our purposes, this worst version of democracy, which, far from exhibiting group wisdom, “bears comparison with dynastic oligarchy and tyrannical monarchy,” is precisely that democracy in which “all deliberate on all matters” (1298a29–33; see also 1292a25–26, 1293a3–4). In such a city, Aristotle suggests, mass discussion does not constitute good deliberative integration. The immoderation of the “living as one wants” combines with democrats’ demand for “equality on the basis of number” to produce unrestrained majoritarianism (1317b3–15). Democrats abandon any commitment to moderation, common work, and ruling and being ruled in turn, using the force of numbers to engage in self-aggrandizing acts that Aristotle associates with beastliness and tyranny (1281a15–23, 1318a24–26).

This account depicts the most apparently “deliberative” democrats, in what by now we should see as the crude sense of ruling by the (majoritarian) results of mass discussion, as the democrats who most flagrantly depart from the ethic and practices that underpin the wisdom of the multitude. This simple institutional arrangement of “committee of the whole” deliberation with majority voting fails to cultivate integrative virtues, or to express them institutionally, as successfully as polities’ (or superior democracies’) more complex, differentiated institutional arrangements.Footnote ³⁵ This is not simply a matter of elitism: As we saw previously in this article, one important principle guiding deliberative integration in all polities is universal citizen participation at some point in the political process. [Conversely, even radical democracies are not free of disenfranchisement; democrats may loosen citizenship requirements in order to “make the people stronger,” but they do not go so far as universal manumission (1319b5–11).] Aristotle's analysis of the rule of the many thus anticipates David Estlund's (2008, 185) argument that we should not take deliberative democratic theory to require the institutional mirroring, in large, complex societies, of “model deliberation” as it proceeds among imagined individuals in ideal settings. In some social settings, institutionally mirroring some ideal assembly of everyone may more likely give expression to self-aggrandizement and discord than deliberatively corral it. Aristotle's doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude, as extended by his evaluations of the regimes ruled by the many, suggests that more sophisticated strategies are likely required in order to integrate deliberation excellently and implement the rule of reason.