Abstract
Aristotle on tyranny in the Politics. Very strong definitions of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy, the three forms of government. Observations on tyrannical regimes. Pisistratus was called a tyrant, but was not.
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- 1.
It is very important to recall, at the beginning of each chapter, that this project on the acts of tyranny is prepared for the general reader and is not intended as a contribution to scholarship. Much recent research has strengthened the view that it was ancient Roman moral and political thought that attracted humanist writers about politics in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, particularly the thought of Cicero and Seneca. Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics (Cambridge, UK, 2002), II, 41–42, as cited by P. Stacey, Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 96. Was this true for the idea of tyranny? There is, of course, the issue of borrowing direct Aristotelian thought from multiple versions found in ancient Roman political thought. Do the Greek historical examples that support observations decline in favor of Roman ones? S. Salkever’s chapter “Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as a Single Course of Lectures. Rhetoric, Politics and Philosophy,” in Ancient Greek Thought, ed. S. Salkever (Cambridge, UK, 2009), 209–242, provides an excellent overview of the more general themes of the work. In the footnotes for the present chapter, the quotations and references are to Sir Ernest Barker’s translation of the Politics (Oxford, 1946), and K. von Fritz and E. Kapp, Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (New York, 1964). Barker’s system shows the book, the chapter, and the paragraph where the statement can be found. That information is followed by a semicolon and parentheses that contain the appropriate “Bekker number,” a system worked out by A. I. Bekker in the late nineteenth century.
- 2.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 3; (1314a).
- 3.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 33; (1314a).
- 4.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 34; (1315b).
- 5.
Plato recounts his experience with the Sicilians in his Seventh Epistle, published in Aristotle, Constitution, 220–224.
- 6.
Aristotle, Politics, V, x, § 27; (1312a).
- 7.
Aristotle, Politics, V, x, § 27; (1312a).
- 8.
Aristotle, Politics, V, x, § 32; (1312b).
- 9.
Aristotle, Politics, V, x, § 33; (1312b).
- 10.
Aristotle, Politics, V, x, § 38; (1313a).
- 11.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 5; (1313b).
- 12.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 5; (1313b).
- 13.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 5; (1313b).
- 14.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 6; (1313b).
- 15.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 7; (1313b).
- 16.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 8; (1313b).
- 17.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 8; (1313b).
- 18.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 10; (1313b).
- 19.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 25; (1314a).
- 20.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, §§ 10–12; (1313b).
- 21.
Aristotle, Constitution of Athens. Barker, The Politics, sums up the material on tyranny in the Ethics and the Politics, 373. A brilliantly learned overview of the Constitution is by J. Frank and S. Sara Monoson, “Lived Excellence in Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens: Why the Encomium of Theramenes Matters,” in Salkever, 243–270. The remarks about how this text is interpreted by scholars from different disciplines may be extended to almost all “canonical” texts. Theramenes is exemplary in his non-perfection; he is a golden-mean individual (mediocre in the technical sense), not a philosopher-king. Has there been a lack of interest in the study of tyranny since World War II? G. H. Sabine, for example, has five sentences on tyranny in his History of Political Theory (New York, 2nd ed., 1950). The exception is Leo Strauss, Xenophon, on Tyranny., ed. V. Gourvitch and M. Roth (New York, 2013). It is evident that foreigners, barbarians, and otherness—to use contemporary terms—are never very far away in Aristotle’s mind when he writes about the social and the political, M. Richter, “Aristotle and the Classical Greek Concept of Despotism,” History of European Ideas, 12 (1990), 175–187.
- 22.
Aristotle, Constitution, 81.
- 23.
Aristotle, Constitution, 82.
- 24.
Aristotle, Constitution, 85.
- 25.
Aristotle, Politics, V, xi, § 20; (1314b).
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Ranum, O. (2020). Aristotle on Tyranny in the Politics. In: Tyranny from Ancient Greece to Renaissance France. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43185-3_3
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