ABSTRACT
I will be discussing a significant difference in the political orientations of Plato and Aristotle, but I want to begin by saying that in one important respect Aristotle is a faithful adherent to a line of thought initiated in Plato's dialogues.1 The figure of Socrates who speaks to us in the Gorgias and the Republic takes the proper task of politics - a task that has seldom been recognized or achieved - to be the moulding of the souls of citizens. 'Statecraft as Soulcraft' is the way the journalist George F. Will expresses (and endorses) the Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian idea.2 It is an idea that the liberal political tradition views with great suspicion, but today I will refrain from taking sides in this dispute. I merely want to set the stage for what is to come by emphasizing one of the ways in which Aristotle's political thought is continuous with that of Plato. I will briefly return to this point, later, for not every student of Aristotle's Politics would wholeheartedly agree with it. But in any case, one of the central ideas I want to get across today is that despite Aristotle's adherence to the tradition initiated by Socrates and Plato, there is one respect in which his political orientation is strikingly different from theirs. To put my point quite simply: I believe that Plato advises his readers to withdraw from politics in all but the most unusual circumstances: by contrast, Aristotle, as I read him, holds that justice requires a significant degree of engagement in political activity. If I am correct, we have here a striking contrast in their portraits of what a just person is like, and what justice requires us to do. There is nothing surprising or original in my idea that we find this sort of difference among the ancient philosophers. It is a familiar fact that in the Hellenistic world the Epicureans and Stoics differed in precisely this respect, the Epicureans advocating withdrawal from politics and the Stoics favouring engagement. But it is not so widely noted that a similar difference exists between the political orientations of Plato and Aristotle.
