Politics 1 - Aristotle

Aristotle starts off with a discussion of how people are grouped, comparing villages, cities and families. He talks about leaders and I found this interesting:

It is also from natural causes that some beings command and others obey, that each may obtain their mutual safety; for a being who is endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought is by nature the superior and governor...

'A mind capable of reflection and forethought'. This isn't what we normally think of when we think of leadership but it probably should be. We tend to elevate the charismatic over the quiet thinkers. Here is the rest of the sentence:

whereas he whose excellence is merely corporeal is formed to be a slave; whence it follows that the different state of master and slave is equally advantageous to both.

Well, that's more than a bit problematic. In fact it was hard for my modern eyes to read the long sections of this pieces that defended slavery. I'm going to do some side reading and try to get a handle on just what slavery meant in ancient Greece and there may be a follow up post.
If you take the above to mean that by nature, some people will command and others will be commanded, then I think this is true. I think that's what Aristotle is saying. He is defending the status quo by saying that the current societal arrangement has occurred because, as everyday life unfolded, the current arrangement was simply the most natural. It wasn't designed or pre-thought of like in the Platonic exercises, it exists because that's how things happen.
Of course it is tough for us to look at this some two millenia later because we see how that status quo was unfair. We see the evils of slavery. We see the subjugation of women (another place where this piece raised some modern eyebrows!). We see things much later in the process of figuring out human rights and that makes it hard to understand why they didn't get it back then.
On the other hand, virtually every pre-Enlightenment civilization around the globe that grew past the village stage, practiced slavery and treated women as second class citizens. As things unfolded in everyday ways, everywhere around the world they seemed to fit this same pattern. It would be easy to look at this as the natural turn of events.

Aristotle also talks about the the proper roles of families and kingdoms, particularly when it comes to acquiring property. He was against it. He considers the proper role of family to be that of improving the virtue and character of wife and children. This seems unconvincing to me, as the two actions aren't exclusive to each other. He also attacks usury, arguing that the idea of money making money is akin to incest. Fascinating but also not convincing. I think I'll try to put together something on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle on wealth.

Altogether, very interesting.