Seminar notes: City-states

Aristotle’s Politics

the anti-nomadic bias of political theory

Human beings are by nature a zoon politikon, “political animals”

nature here did not refer to the wilderness which existed outside the city walls, but instead to the internal process of change, phusis, integral to the development of all beings
It is in the nature of something to reach its telos, and thereby eventually to fully become what its nature intends it to be.
cf, acorns becoming oak trees

A zoon politikon is consequently a being who only can realize its telos under the political arrangements that exist in a polis

The polis

life in the city
humans as animals, but also something else ― distinguish yourself from animals
develop your spirit ― full human potential
nature vs. convention ― “by nature” vs. “by convention”

through human interaction

only for men ― not women and slaves ― they were determined by economic concerns ― by the household, the realm of necessity
the importance of the city in developing humanity

The meaning of liberty

liberty as making yourself free from dependency ― constraints ― necessity
cf. corruption ― as dependency ― dependency on natural needs ― on instincts ― on economic necessity– corruption not just the taking of bribes

cf. the agora, or the city square

come together and discuss with others as the means of developing your human potential
politics also allows us to rule over others and others to rule over us
in the city we learn to make laws, but also how to follow them

bad luck for women and slaves

it is in the nature of certain humans to be slaves and of women to be confined to the home. It is the polis which allows them too to realize their not-fully-human nature.

fear of nature

fear of being captured by nature ― to lose one’s humanity ― one’s culture
the idea of “panic” ― Pan, with the pan flute, tempting you away
expulsion as the worst threat ― not to be a member of the community was to be less or more than a human being

sharp distinction with nomadic people

Arcadia, a rough and terrible place, populated by subhumans

Res-publica

as the “public thing”

the idea of “republicanism”

to distinguish from liberalism (and, of course, from “the Republican Party” in the US)
the community is more important than the individuals ― limits on rights

but also very limited state ― mainly a matter of warfare and internal security (justice)

no interference from the economy ― this is domestic stuff
very aristocratic
service to the community through war

the polis

self-governing city state ― the republic is small
democracy ― take turns ― rule oneself

later history — and we will devote a week to this …

in Greece, various colonies, in Rome, in Renaissance Europe, in England, in the United States (cf. Pocock)
“agora” becomes “piazza” becomes “green”

compare the pyramid

everyone is now on the same level
they are ruling themselves — this is the meaning of liberty

coherence, unity, fellow feeling

the polis as small and actually quite repressive, conformist
you’d better belong!
problem of the outsider

problems of democracy

no women, no slaves
but above all: easily corrupted, taken over by demagogues
democracy as easily corrupted
Sparta perhaps better!

“culture” vs. “civilization”

why people in the city have no culture
but a lot of civilization

Pericles funeral oration

do a favorite passage competition …

“I shall begin with our ancestors … They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valor. And if our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation. … But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang; these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men …

… Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighborliness states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. …

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own. …

We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.

Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.

In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favors. Yet, of course, the doer of the favor is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.

For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. … Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

And not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defense of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honor in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed.

Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate, and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honor that never grows old; and honor it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices heart of age and helplessness.

Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad

those who are here interred have received part of their honors already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at the public expense: … And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives, you may depart.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

“Cosmopolis”

Persia ― or rather Babylon ― as the constant counter-part
an enormous city ― lots of different peoples ― no self-government ― incredible diversity of languages, cultures, religions
people cannot even understand each other

has to be ruled by a tyrant

a powerful leader which keeps everyone in their place
this is the image of Asia
later: “Oriental despotism”
compare ziggurat and agora

long thought a truth of political science

democracy only works in very small city-states
cf. the idea of “representative democracy” as a sort of political innovation

Patricia Springborg

she denies this Greek/Persian distinction on historical grounds
there were plenty of city-states which later became Muslim ― throughout the Middle East ― even large cities were built up through associative groups

the importance of associations of various kinds ― they aggregate up to a polis

“The societies of Greece, Italy, and the Near East have been political from time immemorial, by which is meant they are urban, polis-based, and characterized by tribal, family, cultic, religious, and occupational institutions as networks of political power. The politeia, or republic, is thus a more or less successful aggregate of the little societies that constitute it which enjoy a life of their own and a fair degree of autonomy.”

autonomy for the city-state

election of officials ― rotation of officials

habitat of homo politicus ― political communities for five millennia

Cf. Northern Europe:

large agricultural monarchies ― sparsely populated, very large ― separate villages and manors
home of homo oeconomicus ― separation of functions
no or little political participation for a majority of the population
no place for competition for power

by means of a conclusion …

“The political community of antiquity was an urban phenomenon based on a coastal entrepreneurial economy generating considerable wealth, whose life-blood was an elaborate network of forms of association — familial, religious, regional, occupational, recreational, and class. The success of fifth-century democracy was in many respects a function of the habit of associating together in a multitude of little societies. Polis society is characterized by the fact that kinship and tribe have become modified constructs tailored to the religious calendar and rotation of offices of the city.”

Kostas Vlassopoulos, The world of the Eastern Mediterranean

the idea of a thalassocracy

thálassa — krátos
“sea” — “rule”

situate the city-state within the wider world-system

there was no political unity

the Greeks were scattered over an enormous area
no dominant cultural institution like a Church

the unity was maintained by people on the move

sailors, traders, poets, intellectuals, soldiers

but this world was not controlled by Greeks — and it did not only involve Greeks

Funerary monument of Nikeratos

mixing cultural references from the Black Sea, North Africa and all over the Middle East — and all kinds of non-Greek references too

Athens and Sinope are brought together by networks of people

this is an alternative subject of Greek history
Greek World Web
with nodes

“a map of birthplaces of important pre-Socratic philosophers an 5th century sophists would leave the entire mainland of Greece south of Trace entirely empty.”

Marseilles, France

The Crimea

Paestum

World system

concentric circles instead of a single center and periphery

a single polis cannot be a self-sufficient unit of analysis

“What I propose is that we can move from a polis-centere, Atheno-centric ad Hellenocentric perspective of Greek history into an account that puts at the center the networks moving goods, people and ideas and the various centers that organize and direct these networks.”

Movements of goods

The Aegean needs cattle and slaves from the Black Sea — the Black Sea needs wine and oil from the Aegean

distinction between luxuries and necessities

reciprocal interdependence

There was certainly economic development

emporia — need to be studied more

Movements of people

Slaves transported — and people moving in response to political threats

colonization was an official act, but a lot of informal movements too

this too is badly documented

too Hellenocentric

what about the Phoenicians?

2500 BC –64 BC

how they have been written out of the story

Movements of ideas/technologies

Orphism as example

better studied than the others

but rarely put together into one framework

World centers

like nodes in the network

Constantinople as obvious example

Hellespont
Straight of Messina

zones of influence

local, regional and international emporia

“We live in a globalized world; we live in multicultural societies. The ancient Greek world provides an excellent opportunity to study how one can write a non-ethnocentrim and Eurocentric history. We should grasp it.”

Plato’s thalassophobia in The Laws

The ideal state should be located at least 80 stadia, some 15 kilometers, away from the sea lest the citizens be seduced by its temptations—to travel, to enrich themselves, and to build empires.

The proximity of the sea “fills a city with wholesale traffic and retail huckstering, breeds shifty and distrustful habits of the soul, and thus makes a society distrustful and unfriendly both of itself as well as towards mankind at large”
To limit the impact of foreign ideas, travel should be restricted by the authorities and no person under the age of forty should be allowed to go abroad. The blueprint for the ideal city-state which Plato presented in The Republic is the very opposite of the thalassocracies of the past. It is sedentary, walledin, inegalitarian and repressive, with citizenship replacing commercial commitments and laws replacing time-honored customs (Diamond, 1974, pp. 176–202).