Citizenship and the Polity
Aristotle: Citizenship and the Polity
Citizenship defined
Obedience to the law of society for the sake of happiness.
Early education
A sense of citizenship is developed early through education that serves the purposes of the state.
Polity
A state ruled by the best and the wisest, who are in a sense representative of all the people. Aristotle’s focus was on the education of free Greek citizens only.
A citizen is more than a resident. For Aristotle, a citizen is a person who has learned, from the earliest years, to obey the laws of a particular community for the sake of their own happiness. The training that produces this kind of person is not optional and not private. It is the central work of the state.
What citizenship is
Aristotle defines citizenship in one short phrase: obedience to the law of society for the sake of happiness.
Obedience to the law: a citizen lives within the rules of the community rather than outside them. This is not the obedience of a slave to a master or a soldier to an officer. It is the considered obedience of a free person to laws they themselves, through the political process, have helped shape. The citizen submits because they have judged the submission worthwhile.
The law of society: citizenship is membership in a particular political community with its particular laws. A citizen of Athens is not the same as a citizen of Sparta. The laws differ, the customs differ, and the citizens shaped by each are different. There is no abstract citizenship floating above particular states.
For the sake of happiness: the obedience has a purpose. Life inside a well-ordered community is what allows a person to flourish. Outside it, the flourishing life is not available. Inside, with the laws and customs respected, the conditions exist. So the citizen obeys for the sake of their own deepest interest, which is their own happiness in the eudaimonia sense.
Obedience to the law of society for the sake of happiness
The obedience is the considered submission of a free person to laws they have helped shape, not the obedience of a slave or soldier. The law is the specific law of a particular community. The obedience is for the sake of the citizen’s own flourishing, which is only possible inside a well-ordered community.
Training begins early
The state must train its people for citizenship, and the training has to start early. A sense of citizenship, Aristotle says, is developed early through education that serves the purposes of the state.
The reasoning is the same one Aristotle applies to virtue. A disposition is built by repeated action. A child who from the earliest years acts as a citizen (sharing in common projects, respecting common rules, taking part in civic festivals, learning the laws of the city) is building the disposition slowly. By the time the child reaches the age of adult responsibility, the disposition is already in place.
A child who does not have this early training arrives at adulthood without the disposition. They may understand citizenship as an idea but have not lived it as a practice. Asking them to act as a citizen at twenty is like asking them to play a musical instrument they have never touched. The skill is not there because the practice was not.
This is why Aristotle insists on early civic education. It is not enough to teach civic ideas to adults. The work has to begin when the disposition is still being built. Wait too long, and the foundation is missing.
Because a disposition is built by repeated practice from a young age
A child who acts as a citizen from the earliest years (sharing in common projects, respecting common rules, taking part in civic life, learning the laws) builds the disposition slowly. By adulthood, the disposition is already in place. A child not given this early training arrives at adulthood without the disposition and cannot acquire it the same way.
The polity
Aristotle uses the word polity in a specific sense. A polity is a state ruled by the best and the wisest, who are in a sense representative of all the people.
The first half is straightforwardly aristocratic in its old sense: rule by the best (aristoi) and the wisest. Aristotle thinks rule by the foolish or the vicious will produce foolish or vicious decisions, and the state will suffer. Better to put the wisest in charge.
The second half complicates the first. The wisest are in a sense representative of all the people. They are not a separate class with separate interests. They are the people’s best examples of what citizens at large could become. Their rule is therefore not domination from above. It is the people governing themselves through the best of their own number.
Modern democratic readers will find this uneasy. Aristotle is not arguing for direct democracy or universal suffrage. He is arguing for something closer to a meritocracy in which the wisest govern on behalf of the rest.
Aristotle’s account also has a sharp limit. The focus was on the education of free Greek citizens only. Women, slaves, and non-Greeks were outside the political community in his framework. This was a feature of his world that he did not challenge. A modern reader has to recognise the limit and ask whether the underlying argument still applies to a community that does not draw the lines Aristotle drew.
A state ruled by the best and the wisest, who are in a sense representative of all the people
The wisest rule, but they are not a separate class with separate interests. They are the people’s best examples of what citizens at large could become. Their rule is the people governing themselves through the best of their own number. Aristotle’s account is limited to free Greek men; women, slaves, and non-Greeks were excluded.
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