Aristotle’s ‘Unmixed’ Middle Politeia and Athenian Democracy

Resumé

Aristotle’s ‘middle politeia’ is proposed in Politics 4.11 as the answer to the question ‘what is the best politeia and what is the best mode of life for most cities and most people, if we do not judge by a standard of excellence that is above the level of ordinary people’. But it is not often treated by scholars as so important for tackling issues of practical politics as his conception of a ‘mixed’ constitution, particularly as encapsulated in the notion he calls politeia (Pol. 4.9), in the more specific form of ‘polity’, the word employed in many translations as a term of art designating its distinctive compromise between oligarchy and democracy. There has been a tendency to suppose that the ‘middle politeia’ and ‘polity’ are versions of the same idea. The first section of this essay argues that they are conceptualised in quite different ways, and play quite different roles in Aristotle’s argument in Book 4 of the treatise. ‘Middle politeia’ is an ideal of a community visualised in socioeconomic terms carrying ethical associations, and with a membership accordingly predominantly characterised by ethical attributes key for the best conduct of its political life. It is not the structure of organs and offices of state represented in the ‘well-mixed’ constitutional settlement of a ‘polity’, requiring discussion of rules for eligibility and mode of appointment. The second section of the essay considers the ideology of ‘middle’ politeia, and Aristotle’s interest in finding the best approximation to this ideal in the contemporary Greek city. Despite his hostility to the form of democracy he sees as prevalent in his own time, he appears to accept that large democracies with substantial numbers of citizens equipped with ‘middling and sufficient’ resources present the best realistic chance of achieving something close to that ideal. Athens is the most obvious candidate, given recent work by historians on evidence for its socioeconomic composition, whereas on the scale of closeness to a ‘well-mixed’ constitution Aristotle deems it to score lowest.