"WOAH, WOAH, WOAH!" you say. "You just said it was hard to critique Shakespeare, and now you dare to bash Aristotle?" Nyet, I say. Listen up, because it's much easier.
As I've mentioned, I'm reading through a list of essential Great Books of the Western World. (This list cuts out a lot of literature, such as South American and Asian and African, which is unfortunate, but one must startf somewhere.) I've read Plato, Aristophanes, and now two works by Aristotle: Book I of "Nicomachean Ethics" and Book I of "Politics". I read the first one a while back; I've just finished the second, so I'll have more to say on that. Also, the two were translated by different people (and both in the 1950's), and "Politics" had a slightly better translation than "Ethics" (which was impenetrable).
My reading of Aristotle goes something like this: if Aristotle's works were a flowchart or outline, it'd be riddled with bullets. Aristotle is thorough -- if he comes across something that must be explained, he'll take paragraphs, chapters, or even whole books to explain the details, the details of the details, the counterarguments, the rebuttals, and so on and so forth. It's very scientific, which is what the guy was known for. As Spock would say, "logical".
Oh, but do we run into problems fast. Book I of "Politics" deals very little with the workings of the state -- it's very much a prologue, in which Aristotle first examines the nature of human relationships, and why they necessitate the creation of a nation. He spends a little time on parent-children relationship (which I have little trouble with), some time on the male-female relationship (which is misogynistic, but fleetingly so), and a lot of time on the master-slave relationship.
Aristotle is very theoretical on this front. In his arguments, he tries to explain why the only viable use for some human beings is as slaves -- glorified property -- and why slaves have different virtues, uses, etc. But as logical as Aristotle's arguments are, they're very claustrophobic. He gives few theoretical examples, and no concrete ones, on why a world without slavery would fail. The reason is obvious: Aristotle's never encountered such a society. He even brings up one counterargument, in that the citizens of other nations taken over in war are made into slaves -- yet they were not born into slavery, so why should that be their new position? And I don't think that Aristotle came up with a good reason for this. He mentions that one answer is that strength, on the battlefield, is as good as virtue, and that's not an argument most people I know would accept.
Aristotle's ideas of society, in short, are close-minded, and about as helpful as the average teenager's angst. I appreciate that Aristotle is so deliberate and thorough, but it bothers me that people accepted his ideas for years -- YEARS! -- before someone in the Renaissance decided they could make their own science. This is the sort of thinking that gets people into trouble today, when toleration is given a miss. It's a little bit dangerous.
Now, briefly, for the good -- I was thinking while I was reading this, which is the point of philosophy anyway. I was considering, for example, the relationship between a film director and his actors and crewmembers. At other points, I considered the fallout of the women's revolution, because misogyny did come up a lot near the end of my reading. At still other points, I thought about the relationship between children and parents, or students and teachers, and how much trust each should give the other -- or if, as Aristotle posited, there really are different sets of virtues that must be applied to each. And in the end, I think I disagree with a lot of what Aristotle says. We are moving towards a very international, unified world, where everyone is given the chance to become exactly who s/he wants to be. We're not there yet, but we're coming closer -- and Aristotle's works are one of those examples where looking into history can equate to a step backwards.
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