Pleonexia, Justice and the Polis
Pleonexia, Justice and the Polis: on the Non-Simplicity of Aristotle’s Mistake
In Book V of his Nicomachean Ethics (NE) Aristotle distinguishes between “general” and “special” justice.[1] “General” is “complete virtue in relation to another”[2] and is further identified, somewhat problematically, with lawfulness.[3] I will here, however, be concerned only with “special” justice and injustice. Aristotle associates special injustice with pleonexia, translated by Irwin as “over-reaching”. Other translators use “greed”[4] and indeed pleonexia signals “variously greed, the desire to have more, and the desire to have more than others.”[5] In NE.V.2 we are told: “when someone acts from [pleonexia], in many cases his action accords with none of these vices…but it still accords with some type of wickedness, since we blame him, and [in particular] it accords with injustice.”[6] Yet Aristotle’s strict identification of special injustice with pleonexia appears to be a mistake. A forceful account is offered by Williams, from which the following is derived.[7]
Aristotle’s subsequent division of special justice into “distributive” and “rectificatory” (NE.V.3-4) rests upon the identification of special injustice and pleonexia. For Aristotle an action exhibits, and is constitutive of, vice or virtue only when issuing from an agent’s decision (prohairesis) and from settled disposition of character. This allows the question of whether an act itself is just or unjust to come apart from whether the performing agent is an unjust person. Aristotle gives the example of someone who commits adultery after being overwhelmed by their feelings, doing an act of injustice but not being themselves unjust.[8] Specifically: “For when someone inflicts these harms and commits these errors, he does injustice and these are acts of injustice; but he is not thereby unjust or wicked, since it is not vice that causes him to inflict the harm. But whenever his decision is the cause, he is unjust and vicious.”[9]
Williams generalises the distinction between unjust character and action, allowing the following classification of actions:
A) Those which are V acts but which are not the acts of a V person
and
B) Those which are both V acts and the acts of a V person
(where V stands for either virtue or vice).[10] Yet Aristotle invites difficulty when attempting to connect his theory of action in the case of special injustice with his insistence upon the centrality of pleonexia. Consider two further classifications of actions (departing slightly from Williams’ terminology for ease of exposition):
(X) those motivated by pleonexia
(Y) those motivated otherwise.
If pleonexia characterises injustice then one may confine actions of type (B) to actions of type (X). The important thing to note, however, is that whilst all (B) actions must be also of type (X), the reverse is not true. Not all actions of type (X) must in turn be actions of type (B) – they could be of type (A). This is a simple consequence of the fact there may be acts of injustice where pleonexia was merely the passing motive.
This creates a problem for Aristotle. He cannot agree to the proposal to interpret the difference between (A) and (B) as essentially a difference in motivation, as suggested by (X) and (Y). He is committed to saying that the difference between (A) and (B) resides not in motive, but in settled dispositions of character. That is, (B) actions must consist in a settled disposition of character towards pleonexia (for that is what it means to be a V person on the Aristotelian schema), but this is not true of (A) actions. This generates difficulty because Aristotle has also committed himself to claiming that all acts of injustice are motivated by pleonexia, even when performed by somebody who is not themselves unjust (because they lack a settled disposition to pleonexia).
Yet it is false that all acts of injustice are motivated by pleonexia. Consider the magistrate who distributes unfairly between two disputants, giving one twice as many gold coins as the other although both are entitled to equal shares. An act of injustice has occurred. What of the magistrate’s motivation? Assume he was motivated simply by the amusement of distributing unequally. He has committed an act of injustice, but he was not motivated by pleonexia. If Aristotle replies that this was a form of pleonexia – say, over-reaching for an unfair share of amusement – as he is apt to do at NE.1137a1, we can reply that this is to stretch pleonexia beyond breaking-point and to unjustifiably redefine another motive as a species of pleonexia for the sake of theoretic consistency.[11] Regardless, the manoeuvre is anyway futile because no reference to the magistrate’s disposition need be made at all. All we need know is that the disputants received unequal shares when they were entitled to equal ones.
Conversely it is likewise false to stipulate that all acts motivated by pleonexia are therefore unjust. Imagine a corrupt politician who exhibits a settled disposition towards pleonexia. In his attempts to over-reach for power he devises a law that will advance his aims. However the law itself happens to be incredibly fair to all. When implemented, it is obviously wrong to say that the law is unjust: by virtue of its complete fairness, it isn’t. It surely cannot become unjust merely by the fact that the politician who devised it was motivated by pleonexia.
Williams extends his criticism of Aristotle to argue that special injustice differs conceptually from other Aristotelian vices of character because what characterises the unjust man is not a settled disposition towards any specific emotion (analogous to cowardice, licentiousness and the like), but simply a settled indifference to caring about justice at all.[12]
An over-reliance upon pleonexia also causes internal difficulties of theory for Aristotle regarding his so-called Doctrine of the Mean. Here I briefly re-state the problem as presented by Urmson.[13] Aristotle holds that character virtues not only issue from settled dispositions in the performing agent, but also relate to a triadic structure of corresponding character emotions tending to deficiency, excess or mean. To act bravely requires not only that I act from a settled disposition of character, at the right time and towards the right things, but that I also possess the right corresponding emotion. The emotion of the vice of excess is rashness or foolhardiness, that of deficiency cowardliness, whilst the virtuous mean is bravery.[14]
In the case of justice what are the excesses and deficiencies? Pleonexia must be the vice of excess (of greedy over-reaching), but what is the corresponding deficiency? Unfortunately, the opposite of greedy over-reaching looks rather like generosity. If one attempts to rescue Aristotle by claiming that the vice of deficiency is to underestimate one’s worth or one’s rightful claims – a logical antonym to pleonexia – the reply is that this cannot reasonably be described as injustice.[15] Thus a lurking problem emerges: the relationship between justice and injustice appears dyadic, not triadic – yet the latter is required if justice is to qualify as an Aristotelian character virtue.[16]
Urmson believes “it is not difficult to see what has gone wrong.” Special justice in either distribution or rectification “simply are not excellences of character at all, nor are they manifestations of a single excellence of character.”[17] Urmson thus broadly concludes with Williams: to apply principles of justice correctly what is required “[is] to be a [person] of generally good character, and not to display some special trait of character…Administering justice is a special occupation, not a special character trait.”[18]
Aristotle’s attempt to conform special justice to the doctrine of the mean is “unsuccessful” according to Urmson.[19] Williams concurs that “insofar as Aristotle connects injustice essentially with pleonexia, he is mistaken.”[20] Subsequent commentators, such as Bostock, have likewise tended to the view that Aristotle’s reliance on pleonexia was “simply a mistake.”[21] And perhaps for the philosopher there is no more to be said – certainly these three commentators show little interest in pursuing the matter further. Yet the intellectual historian surely finds more doors opened than closed. After all, Aristotle is rightly regarded as one of history’s greatest thinkers: how could he have committed such apparently basic errors? This is the puzzle we must consider.
We begin with The Politics (P) and the main discussion of distributive justice in P.III.9-13, where Aristotle appears to leave the issue of pleonexia unaddressed.[22] Instead he is content to merely refer (twice) to the discussion in NE and claim that “there is general agreement about what constitutes equality in the thing, but disagreement about what constitutes it in the people;”[23] justice in distribution means “equality – but equality for those who are equal, not for all.”[24] According to Aristotle, all agree that equals in worth deserve equal shares in distribution but people are frequently mistaken about what constitutes equal worth. To take his example, those with oligarchic attitudes will tend to think that wealth is the mark of equal worth, and will distribute equally only to the equally wealthy. Democrats by contrast believe that “free birth” entails equality “all around” and so distribute equally to all citizens.[25] The unfortunate result is that neither group achieves true equality of distribution. The oligarchs draw the circle of equal worth too narrow, the democrats too wide.[26]
Democratic and oligarchic constitutions are corruptions of the healthy forms politeia and aristocracy because they are ruled in the interests of the rulers and not for the common advantage (though Aristotle in P.III is clear that neither corruption is wholly bad; both democracy and oligarchy have their redeeming features despite falling short of the ideal).[27] In this light, however, it is worthwhile postulating whether a dynamic relationship in fact exists between pleonexia and assessing the worth of others. After all if I possess a settled disposition towards pleonexia then I am likely to undervalue the worth of others – and likewise if I undervalue the worth of others I may develop a settled disposition towards pleonexia. Thus pleonexia may be rather more intimately related to the discussion of P.III, and Aristotle’s conception of the corruption of constitutions, than initially appears. Accordingly although the connection is not stipulated by Aristotle, the possibility that it animated him is nonetheless worth exploring.
We do this by turning to the political situation in which Aristotle developed his ideas. Although founding the Lyceum after Macedonian control was asserted over Greece, Aristotle had previously spent 20 years in independent democratic Athens and the democracy is generally considered to have continued until 322, the year of Aristotle’s death.[28] Whilst it is a commonplace that ancient Athens employed direct democracy, the scale of popular involvement is remarkable. Of first importance was the Athenian Council, composed of 500 Athenian citizens selected each year by lot.[29] The figures for membership of the Council are striking: a third of all citizens over 18 and two-thirds over 40 became councillors at least once.[30] Hansen notes that whilst the Council saw its decision-making power steadily reduced during Aristotle’s time, its “probouleutic and administrative functions…gave it its central place in the democracy.”[31] Indeed, Aristotle himself identified the Council as the most important magistrate body in any city state.[32] If we turn to the Athenian Assembly, we again find an astonishing level of popular participation. On a normal day 6,000 citizens could be found at the Assembly (open to all citizens), with 2,000 selected by lot to sit in the courts. In addition to the 500 councillors, there were another 700 magistrates. The Assembly met 30-40 times a year, the courts – with power to control the Assembly, Council and individual leaders – were summoned on around 200 days, and the Council met at least 250 times.[33]
As Hansen notes, a particular worry about Athenian democracy was that it would lead to the poor “soaking the rich”; imposing taxes only the rich had to pay whilst the courts confiscated the property of the wealthy.[34] We perhaps find this fear reflected in Aristotle’s concern that those with democratic conceptions of justice over-estimate the worth of citizens, and are likely to distribute equally to those who are in fact not equal. But the fact of extensive Athenian political participation casts pleonexia in new lights. The extensive nature of Athenian popular participation makes the issue of those who are disposed to pleonexia – to greedy over-reaching – particularly acute. With so many ordinary citizens involved in legislative preparation, as magistrates, and in the courts, the scope for many individuals to indulge in pleonexia and abuse their office must have been considerable. This would surely be especially disconcerting for a thinker like Aristotle, avowedly concerned about the propensity of those holding democratic conceptions of justice to under-value the worth of the more excellent.
We should thus consider two interconnected postulations. Firstly, the extent to which the mass-participation of direct Athenian democracy made pleonexia a particularly pressing concern for Aristotle. Secondly, the extent to which Aristotle was motivated to put pleonexia at the heart of his account of special injustice because a heavy emphasis on pleonexia was a sensible and (politically) prudent response to his political and social context. That is, if pleonexia was an especially pressing problem given the fact of Athenian democracy, constructing an account of distributive and rectificatory justice around a rejection of dispositions towards pleonexia looks, if not correct (given the above) then at least understandable. The contextual background of Aristotle’s thought may therefore serve as the beginning of an explanation as to why he made his “mistake” over pleonexia.
Despite high levels of popular participation, however, Hansen has shown that “there was an unmistakable tendency for the rich families to monopolise politics”; that “it was a very small group of Athenians who were the political professionals.”[35] Although the exact nature of both NE and P are disputed[36] there is a broad consensus that both works reflect what Aristotle taught at the Lyceum.[37] It is reasonable to assume, moreover, that the students Aristotle taught would have been the youth of Athens’ wealthy elites, those most likely to dominate politics. In this context Aristotle’s preoccupation with pleonexia takes on further potential significance. Whilst pleonexia is an undesirable character disposition in any person, it will be especially problematic with regards to those wielding political power over others. Given that Aristotle was engaged in teaching likely future political leaders, we must consider the possibility that pleonexia struck him as an especially important disposition to discourage in his students. Support for something like this reading is given by Pellegrin, who notes that “For Aristotle…education is essentially a political matter.”[38] That
[f]or Aristotle, the philosopher should no longer govern. He should not even make laws. However, he can help train legislators, who will have to establish an excellent constitution or rectify a bad one and make it excellent. It is principally to this end that Aristotle wrote his ethical and political treatises.[39]
Yet there is more to be said. As Finley notes Aristotle was clearly preoccupied by the “cycle of constitutions”.[40] This is unsurprising given that 4th Century Athens was characterised by a near-permanent state of militarisation, located within a world of endless conquest and reconstitution.[41] Founding the Lyceum four years after the Macedonian subjugation of Athens, Aristotle would have been well aware that the democracy had also been previously interrupted by the oligarchy of the 400 in 411, and the tyranny of the 30 that followed the victory of Sparta over Athens in 404.[42] Indeed Aristotle himself was forced to leave Assos in 341/40 (a territory to which he had fled when anti-Macedonian feeling made it impossible for him to stay in Athens) after Hermias, the pro-Macedonian leader and philosophical patron of Aristotle, was killed by the Persians.[43]
Aristotle’s political works, which must include the NE,[44] are in large measure a reaction to – and attempt to cope with – the permanent threat of constitutional cycle. But given the fact of such cycles in the ancient world, the value of extra-constitutional safeguards comes to prominence. Discouraging a disposition to pleonexia is surely a prudent political measure if one is educating potential future leaders who may rise to power by removing existing constitutional structures. Not only is a firmly-grounded disposition against pleonexia desirable in those who wield power as a matter of course, there are clear advantages in having one’s political leaders identify justice and injustice with their own personal character dispositions. After all, those who conceive of justice as intimately related to their own personal character are (at least, one hopes) most likely to act justly – a point becoming especially pertinent if one adopts the Aristotelian view of the relation between character and virtue. Aristotle perhaps had this in mind when he, intriguingly, twice remarked at NEV.6 that in matters of “political justice” – the relations of justice between equal citizens ruled by law[45] – desire for unfair profits has a tendency to turn human beings into tyrants.[46] So whilst Williams and Urmson are probably correct that injustice is characterised by a general disposition to indifference rather than simple pleonexia, the latter is manifestly a more straightforward thing to discourage in ones educational charges. And furthermore, the excellent man – the goal of the Aristotelian ethical and political education – would surely be the least likely to possess the settled indifference towards justice Williams and Urmson so emphasise.
Nonetheless it remains the case that Aristotle was philosophically mistaken in his overly-close construal of the relationship between special injustice and pleonexia. What this essay has attempted to take seriously is Skinner’s observation that “even in the case of beliefs that nowadays strike us as manifestly false, they may have been good grounds in earlier historical periods for holding them to be true.”[47] My aim has not been to rescue Aristotle’s philosophical account of special justice (for that seems a futile task). Instead I have attempted to show that by taking seriously the question of how a thinker of Aristotle’s standing could go wrong, a plethora of explorative avenues are opened. This brief attempt to contextualise – and thereby understand – Aristotle’s preoccupation with pleonexia remains only the tentative and speculative beginning of a satisfactory account. Yet I hope to have shown that even when Aristotle is convicted of having a committed a mistake in his treatment of special justice, it is unfruitful and misleading to construe that mistake as in any way “simple”.
[1] Aristotle 1999.
[2] Ibid., 1129b25-30
[3] See for example Bostock 2000, pp.55-8
[4] See for example Bostock 2000, and Young 2007.
[5] Williams 1981, p.83.
[6] Aristotle 1999, 1130a15-20.
[7] Williams 1981.
[8] Aristotle 1999, 1134a21.
[9] Ibid., 1135b20-25.
[10] Williams 1981, p.84.
[11] cf. Urmson 1988, p.77.
[12] Williams 1981, pp.92-3.
[13] Urmson 1988, pp.70-78.
[14] See Aristotle 1999, 1115a7 onwards.
[15] Urmson 1988, pp.77-78.
[16] Although Aristotle says at frequent points (e.g. NE1107b1-1108a20) that many vices lack names, the point is that justice appears opposed solely to injustice and not simultaneously to a third category of vice which happens to be nameless.
[17] Ibid., p.76.
[18] Ibid., p.77.
[19] Ibid., p.77.
[20] Williams 1981, p.91.
[21] Bostock 2000, p.55.
[22] Aristotle 1995.
[23] Aristotle 1995, 1280a7.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid., 1280a20.
[26] For Aristotle, equal worth correctly understood relates to the “excellence” of those competing for goods. Thus, the best flute goes to the most excellent flautist. See Aristotle 1995, 1282b14-1283a3.
[27] See for example Aristotle 1995, 1283a23.
[28] Stalley 1995, p.xlvi.
[29] Hansen 1987, p.247.
[30] Ibid., p.249.
[31] Ibid., p.247.
[32] Aristotle 1995, 1322b12-17.
[33] Hansen 1987, p.178, p.313.
[34] Ibid., p.315.
[35] Hansen 1987, p.268, p.274.
[36] See Stalley 1995, p.xxxii, but also Pellegrin 2000, p.558.
[37] See Irwin’s 1999, p.xiv.
[38] Pellegrin 2000, p.573.
[39] Ibid., p.574.
[40] Finley 1983, p.101.
[41] Ibid., pp.60-61.
[42] Raaflaub et al 2007, p.x.
[43] Irwin 1999, p.xiii.
[44] As Schofield has correctly remarked “for Aristotle ethics and politics are not two distinct even if connected disciplines, but one and the same subject”; see Schofield 2000, p.310.
[45] Bostock 2000, p.71.
[46] Aristotle 1999, 1134a35-1134b10. For a detailed, though somewhat problematic, development of this thought see Rosen 1975.
[47] Skinner 2002, p.31. In the case of Aristotle, however, there is some evidence (at 1133b30-1134a15) that he recognised his own account to be mistaken (cf. Urmson 1988, p.76). Nonetheless the general methodological point remains sound.
Bibliography
Aristotle (1999). Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Terrence Irwin, 2nd edition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
(1995). Politics, translated by Ernest Barker, ed. R.F.Stalley, Oxford.
Bostock, David (2000). Aristotle’s Ethics, Oxford.
Cartledge, Paul (2000). ‘Greek Political Thought: The Historical Context’ in Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge, pp.11-23.
Finley, Moses (1983). Politics in the Ancient World, Cambridge.
Hansen, Mogens Herman (1987). The Athenian Democracy in the Time of Demosthenes, Oxford.
Irwin, Terrence (1999). ‘Introduction’ in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, translated by Terrence Irwin, 2nd edn, Indianapolis, Indiana, pp. xiii-xxviii.
Keyt, David (1991). ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Distributive Justice’ in A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. David Keyt and Fred Dycus Miller, Oxford, pp.238-278.
Pellegrin, Pierre (2000). ‘Aristotle’ in Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, ed. J. Brunschwig and Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, London, pp.554-575.
Raaflaub, Kurt A. et al (2007). Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober and Robert W. Wallace, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.
Roberts, Jean (2000). ‘Justice and the Polis’ in Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge, pp.344-366.
Rosen, F. (1975). ‘The Political Context of Aristotle’s Categories of Justice’, Phronesis 20, pp.228-240.
Schofield, Malcolm (2000). ‘Aristotle: An Introduction’ in Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge, pp.310-320.
Skinner, Quentin (2002). Visions of Politics, Volume I – Regarding Method, Cambridge.
Stalley, R.F. (1995). ‘Introduction’ in Politics, Aristotle, translated by Ernest Barker, ed. R.F.Stalley, Oxford, pp.vii-xlvii.
Urmson, J.O. (1988). Aristotle’s Ethics, Oxford.
Williams, Bernard (1981). ‘Justice as a Virtue’ in Moral Luck, Cambridge.
Young, Charles M. (2007). ‘Aristotle’s Justice’ in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Richard Kraut, Oxford.
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