This is not a book of exegesis of Aristotle s political development, nor a contribution to and attempt at

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1 1 Garver, Eugene, Aristotle s Politics: Living Well and Living Together, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. xi + 300, US$40.00 (hardback). This is not a book of exegesis of Aristotle s political development, nor a contribution to and attempt at developing something like an Aristotelian political philosophy, but rather it is professedly a book on politics, simply, which however uses reflections, or meditations, on Aristotle s Politics as its vehicle. But then why not simply think directly about politics, today and now, if that is what we are interested in? Because we can do better in in thinking about politics through the Politics than we could without the help of a great mind (14). Fair enough; however, Garver does not explain why we should choose Aristotle as the great mind to guide us assuming we are to pick only one instead of, say, Locke or Rawls (who surely have at least good minds), who would presumably help us in our thoughts in rather different ways. Moreover, how are we to know if we have succeeded in thinking not merely better but actually well about politics, simply, after we have meditated thoroughly on Aristotle s Politics? The difficulty is complicated by the often alien, sometimes cranky or at least tortuous exposition of that treatise, which Garver concedes makes one s use of that work rather like, in his analogy, how one had to use an early computer, by constantly monitoring the organs, functions, and various systems which were at work and making a difference under the hood (15). Garver does not explain what would count as success, how we could tell that we had become astute thinkers about politics. However, he does make it plain at the start that what commonly seems an obstacle to others is not, in his view, a genuine hindrance to his project: he holds that the Politics is less bound by and limited to a specific context than Aristotle s Ethics, and he thinks that the Politics is the more philosophical and philosophically interesting work (13-15). He proposes his book as a kind of demonstration of these claims.

2 2 Although the book is not offering an exegesis, it does follow the order of the books of the Politics, devoting in general a chapter for each of that treatise s books, and posing in each chapter a big question, meant to be of general interest for politics, simply, which serves to focus or organize Garver s lucubrations-- not necessarily systematic and certainly not comprehensive-- about the corresponding book. For instance, the big question which Garver focuses on in the first chapter, as regards book I, is how to form a community that aims at a common good out of people with the capacity and so the permanent possibility of aiming at despotism instead (2, author s italics). One may see in this question both the interest and the difficulty in Garver s approach. From the point of view of exegesis and interpretation, Aristotle s account of slavery looks to be a relatively minor and incidental aspect of Politics I, a putting into its proper place of simply one relationship that Aristotle thinks plays a role in a typical household. On the other hand, we can admit that a concern to distinguish authority from power is central to classical political philosophy (as for instance in Republic I); and how one may limit the threat of despotism, that is, the completely arbitrary exercise of power, is a central concern of modern political philosophy (as in Locke s Second Treatise). It would indeed be fascinating, then, and it would certainly help to establish the philosophical importance of the treatise, if we could relate the Politics I discussion of slavery to these concerns; however, the difficulty is that, if we did succeed in doing so while largely bypassing, as Garver does, the usual task and constraints of exegesis then for all we know we might be distorting or inappropriately extending or misapplying the text, and this seems a problem on the supposition that we are reading the Politics in the first place in order to be somehow led or guided by a great mind : one senses that there should be a distinction between reading a text as merely the occasion for a thought, and doing so as the source or inspiration of a thought. The questions Garver chooses to unify his reflections on particular books in some cases seem to lead him away from a consideration of the insights or interesting ideas that Aristotle seems intent on exploring. For example, one might have thought that a central concern of Politics II was the relationship

3 3 of the family to the city-state: Plato thinks that the abolition of the family will help insure civic unity, but Aristotle argues that such an expedient will undermine it. In his chapter 2, Garver does not discuss this issue but instead proposes the question, What do people need to have in common in order to live together in political community? (3, author s italics), and he takes Aristotle to be maintaining in book II that education not property must be common. So the richness and brilliance of Aristotle s critique of Plato s communism gets almost entirely ignored and instead book II s contribution to our thought about politics, on Garver s approach, is apparently the idea that a common education of citizens is to be promoted. In other cases Garver s question seems to give rise to a false problem, which gets an unsupported solution. For example, in chapter 3 Garver looks at Politics III through the lens of the question, Why doesn t knowledge of the best life lead directly to a single best form of politics? (3). I take it that by politics Garver means constitution or government. The problem seems a false one, in relation to Aristotle, as the reason why there are in principle several forms of good government is the trivial consideration that governments of one, a few, or many can each of them be devoted to the good of the ruled rather than the good of the ruler. But Garver s problem gives rise to a solution that seems wild and unsupported by anything one can find in Politics III: The partisans of justice assert partial truths, a claim no modern advocate of the priority of the right to the good could make. The right is prior to the good without any fact of pluralism. Aristotle does not claim that there is a variety of constitutions all of which can equally be home to human flourishing. Instead, the Politics articulates a variety of possible connections to living well. Because of this flexibility and indeterminacy, Aristotle is not subject to the accusations of false neutrality that have plagued recent articulations of liberalisms (105). It seems odd to say that Aristotle s classification of constitutions can help us in thinking about controversies today over pluralism, neutrality, and varieties of liberalism, and nothing that Garver writes in support of his conclusion serves to dispel this sense of oddness.

4 4 Garver s chapters 4 and 5 are exceptions to the general plan of the book, because Garver comes closest there to traditional exegesis, and he does not, as in the other chapters, set down questions which are, as it were, extrinsic to Aristotle s concerns, but rather he simply finds ideas which Aristotle wishes to support through his discussions. Garver takes book IV to be showing that a constitution can be constructed (namely, the politeia, or republic ) which is better as a whole than any of the citizens which constitute it, and he takes book V to show that a statesman must never aim at changing the constitution of the city-state which he guides but always at preserving it. It seems right that Aristotle is maintaining these things in those books. But how important are these ideas for the person who wants to think about politics, simply (which is what motivates Garver s project in the first place)? I take it that the first claim is especially interesting only in a context in which one is already presuming that kingship is probably the best form of government, which in fact no one is strongly committed to today. As for the second claim, Garver seems to presuppose that his readers will reject it out of hand, as most of his energy is expended in explaining why Aristotle s view is not as unreasonable or unjustifiable as it may sound. But to argue that Aristotle s view is not ridiculous or foolish is very far from arguing that it is something we should take to be important or relevant today. Garver s final chapter 6 is directed at Politics VI and VII. Ostensibly Garver is concerned there with the question of leisure, that is, how should we live when we are not under any constraints of necessity? But Garver rather elegantly uses the question of leisure as a means of returning to themes of despotism and slavery that arose in his first chapter. He argues and takes Aristotle to be arguing that the fact that a male citizen in his own household exercises the capacity of mastery over his slave implies that each person possesses a general capacity to treat other citizens as slaves. The disposition to do so, and not merely the capacity, is already implicit in the impulse to acquisition shown in money-making activity discussed in book I. If political activity is taken to be the highest good, then, Garver takes Aristotle to be suggesting, even it becomes inevitably a game of conquest and domination. Only the assertion of a

5 5 philosophical life as the best use of leisure, and as a form of life higher than the political life, puts politics in its proper place and insures that it has the character of reciprocity and mutuality that keep it free from libido dominandi. The reason is that the existence of philosophy leads to the reinterpretation of political life: if virtue sustains the conditions for its development and success, I give nothing up in alternating ruling and being ruled. Ruling over equals is a better, a more fulfilling, activity than ruling over unequals... the best human life is a common life, and therefore a political life, but not a political life as usually conceived. The common life is a practical life that is its own end (189). Garver remarks early on in his book that One of the strangest things about the contemporary practice of philosophy is that we generally try to grasp truths about the world through thinking about texts, about what other philosophers have had to say (14). Garver s book is strange in this way. If there is a less strange approach, it would, perhaps, be something closer to traditional exegesis, namely, the attempt to figure out what true things philosophers have already grasped and said. Michael Pakaluk Ave Maria University

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