Aristotle asserts that the “state is a creation of nature” (1253a1, 1254a25). On its face this claim seems in antagonism with the contention of most modern accounts (e.g. Hobbes, Rousseau) which privileges the natural role of the individual vis-a-vis the conventional institution of a coercive political authority.1 Is Aristotle then taking a clear stand against a modern conception that envisages the free individual who, only after the fact, leaves his state of nature and contracts with his fellow men, or is alternatively coerced, into joining a political society?
Aristotle grounds his contention that the polity is a natural institution by claiming it is the necessary end of the village, and even more primarily, the family.2 To say that the family is naturally instituted, is to say that no human could exist as human unless supplemented by the family, that it fulfills a natural requirement of humanity. Thus, whatever requirements the family aims to fulfill must somehow be still left wanting if the family finds its end in the polity.
One should not conclude that Aristotle’s declaration of the naturalness of the polity makes him out to be some kind of ahistorical creationist who thinks that the polis springs from the earth or from God like mushrooms or lightening bolts. Aristotle knows very well that the state is created by humans at a specific time and place, hence his reference to the “growth and origin” of the state (1252a24) as as the the beneficent man who first “founded the state” (1253a29), and the even clearer conversation with respect to the barbarians: “And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity.” (1253a2). Thus, in so far as a human exists without polity or hearth, he is either a beast (and hence sub-human) or a god (and hence supra-human), but he cannot be human because the essence of what it means to be human requires the hearth and polity as supplement. Now, what is it about the family and polity that makes them conditions of humanity a priori?
The first and temptingly exclusive rationale for the family is becomes humans in isolation are not self-sufficient, that is, they material existence is only possible with aid from the lives of their fellow humans.3 This is made dramatically self-evident in the case of the family.4 Since humans are born has fragmented and inherently incomplete selves, they begin life in absolute dependence and only gradually, through childhood, begin to attain relative autonomy. Thus the family provides the condition of plurality required for human existence and reproduction. The polity would thus be the necessary continuation of that logic, as families are inherently vulnerable and insufficient on their own account, and will require unity with a larger whole of families in the village and later polity if they have any hope of flourishing.
However, here it is important to note exactly what the polity is not. Aristotle most decisively contends, contra Freud, that the polity is not simply one big family.5 But if the polity does not merely serve the material and developmental needs of its constituents, like the family, then what can be the purpose of the polity, or rather, what is the end that it serves which the family does not and hence makes the polity necessary? For this, it is necessary to turn to how Aristotle distinguishes humans as a distinct form of life and think beyond a notion of material sufficiency. Aristotle defines humans both as political animals and rational animals, that is, animals capable of speech. The first claim merely restates our problem, since to say that nature instates the polity is the same as to say that humans are by nature political. However, with the second claim we get a conception of the human that projects beyond the family unit, and moreover beyond the circular life cycle and metabolism with nature that Arendt calls Labor. While most animals are capable of some audible noise to express various pleasures and pains, we most assuredly do not call these squeaks and squeals speech. Speech then points beyond the mere appetitive or beastly aspects of man. The fact that man’s essential attribute is his ability to reason and make speech, means not only must the family be natural to man, so as to satisfy his requirement to Labor, but also he must have some natural domain to realize his human capacity of speech, namely, the polis. If this account is right, we can follow Kant in locating to distinct springs of human action, namely, that of desire and that of reason. We also see how humans are caught in a liminal position between their desiring or beast-like capacities and their noumenal or god-like capacities
The discussion of slavery and the natural inequality that constitutes the household becomes necessary in establishing the household’s inability to satisfy both springs of human action. While the desiring satisfaction of wants is complete in the family, the requirements of speech are incapable of finding their end in the family since the family lacks the prerequisite for actualizing the human capacity of speech, viz. a plurality of subjects with equal natures.
A historcist impulse may wish to problematize any strict homology between a modern and classical conception of nature/convention. Still, given the primacy of the conflict between the laws of nature and those of human origin in the writing of Sophocles (e.g. Antigone), it seems fair to assume that “our” concept is operative in classical Greece.
2“And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural [viz. The family and village], so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. (1252b30)
3“There must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other” (1252a26); and “…the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing” (1253a26).
4“The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants” (1252b13)
5 “governments [ruled by the householder and statesman] differ in kind” (1252a18)
