The more I read Aristotle the less I like him. He seems to me very arrogant, smug, and self justifying. I disagreed with most of what I read in book I of Politics. I found myself getting pretty upset about some of the things he said. His teachings helped men of Athens, and no doubt men since his time, justify their ill treatment of women, children, and those with the unlucky lot to be labeled slaves. This was because he made the case that man is the only truly complete being. Everything else was, in essence, created to help man to live virtuously, fulfill, their creation.
I disagreed right off the bat with his claim that every society is created for some good. The band of Gadianton Robbers was not formed for good, neither are most “secret” societies. I believe that these are actually founded to promote evil and are founded by the Devil himself. Societies founded for God are created for some good, but without Him there is no good.
He believed that by nature there are two types of people, those who govern and those that are governed. This goes against my belief in moral agency. By putting people into categories of govern or governed based on such things as gender, place of birth, ancestry takes away the opportunity for people to choose anything for themselves, let alone salvation, which is the purpose of our life here anyway. I believe there are times to govern and times to be governed for all of us. This is why God fives us many different callings and missions throughout our lives. Both governing and being governed are skill necessary for us to become like God.
Another idea he taught was that was that the state comes before the family. God's law tells me that the family is second only to my relationship with God, in fact, in it is where I learn the most about my relationship with Him. The state or any other organization on Earth are only in a supporting role to the family, not the other way around. Along with this is the idea that man is the best of all beings because he created civilized society. Again, this is not true. God created man and civilized society and is the Supreme Being. Man is good only in so far as he becomes like and reflects God.
One thing I did agree with is that the better the governed are the better the government will be. If he had stopped there it would have been fine, but this led him to argue the justification of slavery and oppression of women. This is where he completely lost me. I could follow his arguments, but the fundamental premise was so against God's design for his creation and my core beliefs that his knowledge did not lead to understanding or wisdom, only wickedness.
The rest of Book I was about money making and how it relates to the family. I agreed with him that making money for the sake of getting money is wrong and that usury is the worst form of this. We are to seek the will of God before we seek for riches because then, if we seek them, we do it with the intent to do good. This is God's economy. Aristotle thought that getting money to buy things was the highest use of money.
The other idea I agreed with was that families should focus more on the family members and their virtue than on money making. Again, if he had stopped there he would have been right, but he took another opportunity to elevate men over women and slaves. Women and slaves have virtue (albeit some lesser form than men), but theirs is to be used to serve man in fulfilling his.
He definitely cured in me any romantic notions of life in Ancient Greece. I would emphatically not have wanted to be alive then. He may have had other good ideas, but I don't want to wade through the mire of bad ideas to find them. I have no desire to further pursue the study of Aristotle's philosophies of men. This, also, makes me rethink my high opinion of book I of Ethics.
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