Aristotle's Politics

Hobbes rejects the teleology of Aristotelian science. His view of man is shaped by Galileo's new insights about motion. His translation of the revolutionary doctrines of physics into claims about man and politics is a most remarkable piece of creative thinking. Life is not aimed at the attainment of the mature state of the species as Aristotle claimed. Man, like other physical objects, keeps moving until something (death, in the case of man) stops him. Yet the reaction to Aristotle and scholasticism was not a matter of simply rejecting the philosophy of Aristotle wholesale. The relation whom philosophers had to Aristotelian ideas is much more complex. Philosophers quite typically would reject one piece of Aristotelianism but keep another. Part of the reason for this is that it is not easy to reject one's education, even when, as in the case of these three philosophers, one is consciously attempting to do so. Hobbes, for example, while objecting to Aristotelians and Scholasticism in quite significant ways, yet discuses problems of identity using Aristotelian terms.

Hobbes embraces the Aristotelian definition of man. He says in Chapter IV "Of Speech" in the Leviathan that: "As for example, the name body is of larger signification than the words “man” and “rational” are of equal extent, comprehending mutually one another." Hobbes' solution to the problem of identity is that the alternatives he posed at the beginning should not be viewed as exclusive competitors, one or the other of which is right. Rather, each is a partial answer, correct if confined to its own proper domain, but inadequate when generalized. One might take this as a version of the Aristotelian insight that what something is will determine its identity.

Aristotle and Marx

Both Marx and Aristotle can be considered philosophers and economists in their own right. Both developed theories in the realm of moral ethics as well as in economics. However, both were similar in that they removed moral consideration from the consideration of production. Murphy notes that Aristotle, for example, explicitly restricts technical reason to the realm of production. Yet, both Aristotle and Marx would evaluate other economic institutions, such as wealth acquisition and social division of labor, more politically. An understanding of why both Aristotle and Marx removed production itself from moral consideration but evaluated other economic institutions in moral consideration can be found by examining their economic and political thoughts.

Marx’s labor theory was rooted in the Aristotelian conception of eudemonism. Gilbert suggests that, like Aristotle, Marx may have desired for humans to engage in activities for their own sakes in order to further eudemonia. As he analyzed that capitalism disallowed the achievement of human flourishing, Marx intended communism to allow eudemonistic activities to happen. Indeed, Gilbert implies that Marx‘s goal was to set society in accordance with what was humanly natural.

Such a eudaemonist view underlies Marx’s thoughts on labor. Although Marx’s particular views about issues of justice, property, slavery and the treatment of women differ greatly from Aristotle’s, the two had many fundamental similarities in their ethical frameworks which characterize them as eudaemonists and moral realists, who believe in the existence of absolute morality. Both agree that eudemonia stems from activities that realize intrinsic human goods such as knowledge, friendship, and political community. Both Marx and Aristotle had moral theories supporting activities characterized by choice. For Aristotle, the highest human activities were conducted not under the pressure of necessity but by choice; for Marx, work for subsistence is characterized in the least by choice, but primarily as a necessary function.

Marx’s concept of essence, central to his earlier thoughts on freedom, is comparable to Aristotle’s. Aristotle finds the essence of a thing in its definition as the form of the thing. The essence of a thing is revealed in the process of development by which the essence can be attained. Each thing has and realizes its essence through its proper process, activity or function; for human beings, Aristotle believes that their proper activity or essence is to conduct activity in accordance with reason. Realization of reason through activity leads to happiness. Indeed, Marx’s realization of reason as essential to freedom is similar to Aristotle’s thoughts on realization of reason as essential to happiness. Yet, Marx disagrees with Aristotle’s notion that the form or end of a thing is fixed and unchanging. Essences, for Marx, develop and can change through history. In addition, the link between freedom and essence is not as strong for Aristotle, while it is central to Marx’s earlier thoughts.

 Marx’s theory of alienation also borrows from the Aristotelian conception of the natural. Marx invokes an Aristotelian sense of natural justice by characterizing capitalist wage labor as “unnatural.” For Aristotle, a thing’s nature indicates its function and the final cause or end to which it tends; Aristotle also refers to the natural in relation to ethics as that which appeals to human nature. Marx interprets productive activity in capitalism as serving as only the bare necessities of the laborer, rather than as conducive to realization of the laborer’s species being, similar to the Aristotelian conception of the “final cause or end to which it tends”.

Hobbes and Marx

Thomas Hobbes explains from the beginning of the "Leviathan" that human nature is "matter in motion" and can be explained entirely scientifically. Human nature is best understood by Hobbes strictly in terms of desire and inversion, and it is about voluntary and involuntary motion. A constant description of human nature is set into several conflicting terms such as likes and dislikes which draws the point that we do not desire and fear the same things.

 Change is an inevitable force over all human kind. How change affects humans, for the good or the bad, is a controversial issue discussed by many western philosophers including Marx and Hobbes and aids in analyzing the nature of human activity. Marx, in the ‘Communist Manifesto’ argues that history describes human nature, and that change has repeatedly occurred in historical overthrow of the dominant class. Thomas Hobbes also looks at change, but he expresses that change is merely an evolutionary force to keep human kind on their toes. People are essentially bored when at ease, ergo not nearly as productive in times of peace.

 goes into detail discussing the human nature of the bourgeoisie, however, he presents a one sided view of human achievement and gain. Hobbes speaks about property rights in terms of bourgeois equality - that human beings with the upper hand in society have equal opportunity to acquire goods which pertain to individual desire, thus neglecting human kind as a whole. Property is to be distributed among human beings according to the level and perseverance exerted towards individual human gain, so then property rights are to be held against others, not against the sovereign according to Hobbes.  stresses, on the other hand, that the abolition of property rights, especially for the bourgeoisie is the necessary thing to do to in order to attain freedom and equality. Property rights are seen as a reward in Hobbes' mind, for the effort put in to acquiring their gain.

Hobbes offers three rules of gain and believes all humans have equal hope of opportunity to acquire personal gain and desire. In Marx's reality private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. This operating method and zero-sum game is holistically inhumane and unequal according to Marx, and human beings, in their human nature should revolt against the oppression induced from these ideas.

 is the founding father of Liberalism and holds the mentality that men are free to do as they wish so long as they do not hurt anyone else's right to freedom in the process. Hobbes believes that human nature is such that humans must bind together to agree to act according to a set of rules that they all agreed upon, save the sovereign. Marx again, will go on to say that a good majority of humans are oppressed by this false pretense of freedom and equality.

 asserts that as long as class division exists, human beings are never equal and free. The inherent reason in human practice is the base of all history, if it is left to itself it does not at all necessarily naturally lead to progress in the consciousness of freedom, but rather, just because it works in natural unconsciousness, creates many forms of alienation, produces both forms of repression and exploitation of people by people and destruction of nature.

Hobbes believes that people naturally compete for success and desires and it can be argued that people living under capitalism are motivated by capitalist motives and think those natural and fixed, however, if people's values have changed radically in the past, Marx implies, they are certain to change again radically in the future. In a socialist society it would be nonsense to say that people will always naturally tend to become owners of factories because such owners would be as impossible, and such desires would be as irrational as the desire to own the Moon.

 In essence, it can be agreed upon by both  and by Marx that change is an underlying study in the concept of human nature and that it can explain human nature through human action in general. Marx and Hobbes' methodologies differ in approach and in outcome and Hobbes narrow-mindedly takes his sample size from a contained group of bourgeoisie, zero-ing in on their voluntary and involuntary motions explained through science.

Marx widens the scope of  through examination of historical human action in accord with all human classes. Although Hobbes vouches for equal human hope of opportunity in achieving desires, Marx devours this idea with the notion that such competition is only valid within the bourgeoisie who in turn, oppress the proletariat, thus human nature is reverted.

Conclusion

In this short paper we tried to compare the theories and ideas that were produced by Aristotle, Hobbes and Marx. It is clear that there are a lot of differences between them nevertheless it is of much more importance the fact that they present several similarities and a kind of continuity in their work.

Political philosophers, as social scientists they are, study previous works of others that have contributed in their field. Then, after evaluating and criticizing what they have studied, they express their own ideas that many times become theories. As we have seen, both Marx and Hobbes were based on the Aristotelian school of thought, no matter if they agreed or disagreed with it. Early modern political philosophers such as Hobbes and Marx, as well as modern Enlightenment theorists and even postmodern authors have either explicitly or implicitly defined themselves against or in favor of the Aristotelian model.

The excellent work of the three philosophers has affected the road of history. As we know, after all these centuries the Aristotelian tradition is still being studied. Hobbes and Marx produced theories that affected the historical tradition of philosophy and the way of thinking. Even more Marx’s have affected the history of the world (Communism in the U.S.S.R. and in the Eastern Europe). Their contribution in science was great and is still used as a base for research in the field of political philosophy.  

References

1. Thomas Hobbes, De Coropore, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Ed. Molesworth, Vol. 1. 1839

2. Murphy, James Bernard. The Moral Economy of Labor: Aristotelian Themes in

Economic Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993

3. Gilbert, Alan ‘Marx’s Moral Realism: Eudaimonism and Moral Progress.’ In George

E. McCarthy (ed.), Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth Century German Social Theory

and Classical Antiquity, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992

4. Kain, Philip J. ‘Aristotle, Kant and the Ethics of the Young Marx.’ In George E.

McCarthy (ed.), Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth Century German Social Theory and

Classical Antiquity, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992

5. On Aristotle and Marx: a critique of Aristotelian themes in Marx’s labor theory,            by Annie Chau, Stanford University, 2003, available at < http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:q0h2xTznZxcJ:www-econ-stanford.edu/academics/Honors_Theses/Theses_2003/Chau.pdf+On+Aristotle+and+Marx:+a+critique&hl=en

Course: IREL 560 – Political Philosophy and Epistemology of International Relations

Course Coordinators: Dr. Keith Webb and Dr. Mirbagheri Farid

Title: Comparing the Political Philosophy of Aristotle, Hobbes and Marx  

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