The Meta-Politics of Aristotle's Politics.

before I had a YouTube channel I did
have enough of a web presence that you could figure out a fair bit about me what kind of person I am but by poking around I I've always had a name that's easy to Google easy to put into Google and find accurate results unlike someone named John Smith actually you know before I met my first wife she googled me and everywhere she told some relatives about me and they googled me and they filmed articles that written they even found some some receipts from the political work I did at C Hall in Toronto there were traces of that for the internet so I say is it written articles written and and you could figure out what kind of person that was I remember I met face-to-face a young woman in Taiwan who had done some google searching about me and one of the things she said to me once in a while people ask me questions on this and she basically said to me look is everything about politics with you you know what most is laughing but okay you said in a positive way you said that you haven't said it to me in like a snarky or snide way but once in a while you kind of do ask question like that and the reason why this young woman was was asking she was Chinese but she was really passionate about English English literature I think she wants you a master's in English literature it's not that and you know in a in a real sense I'm not I'm interested in literature as a means to an end that's social or political or some kind of commentary or something but literature for the sake of literature I'm not into gin for the sake of gin I'm not into you know etc uh uh so you know she she asked me this question and she was getting at you know isn't there something to be said for reading just for the beauty of reading or writing you know just for the beauty of writing but what I find I mean especially within the field of literature or in academic fields that get I think kind of perverted by the attitudes of literary studies what I always finds that these people really fail to appreciate the significance of the works they're reading and they utterly fail to grasp the intentions of the author even when they're explicitly stated because they're not studying the social and political context they're writing in now one of the most extreme examples is the politics of Aristotle and and people read Aristotle like literature even though the word politics is written on the cover I have I'm haunted by a very precise memory I mean my life might be easier if I shuffle along without remember these things I'm reading this book now at age 39 I think the last time I read this book or tried to read it I think I was younger than 19 um and I'm reading it I can remember what my impressions were of it then what I got and didn't got to some extent obviously I don't have a perfect photographic memory and I can see how how differently I apprehend the text today but one of the crucial differences is now partly thanks to secondary sources that all I'll provide links to below this this video partly due to primary sources you know that I've read and when you put the pieces together I really have a sense of the pressure that Aristotle was under to say things in support of monarchy and not just any monarchy but the the Macedonian monarchy the incredibly brutal and violent empire that had sprung into existence during Aristotle's life an empire he had direct personal contact with and that his father had direct personal contact with with before him and an empire that he evidently vehemently opposed but he was in a position to state that that opposition sometimes obliquely and sometimes directly in a really really fraught you know political circumstances now I can't say I can't say nobody examines the text this way it looks like starting in the 1970s a small number of authors wanted to look at aerosol this way and I've got secondary sources contemporary scholarship I'm looking and they have been received very very negatively so those authors were kind of lampooned by other scholars saying oh you want to misrepresent Aristotle you want to misrepresent aerosol as if he's a super spy he's the James Bond working for Macedonian someone and you know they showed a real reluctance on the part of scholars to take seriously the extent to which the political context shaped explicitly political writing in in Athens but in this video very briefly I'm gonna try to break down for you why it is that the politics of Aristotle is still to this day a very difficult text to interpret and what you must interpret it in in light of the stated this the stated intentions of the author not some psychological theory I'm making up not not something beneath the surface some that's on the surface but what you do have to pick up the pieces and put it together you have to do the legwork yourself when I read this at age 19 this was my thought process whereby I dismissed the empirical evidence before me and I frankly just now in doing reading of contemporary scholars with PhDs formal academics I think some of them are making the same mistake as adults with PhDs that I made when I was 19 or younger and struggling with this text their first thought is Aristotle is a famous philosopher and then with that assumption they look at the biographical details of his life and dismiss them or sneer at them thinking that they're largely made up to to glorify or glamorize Aristotle so they they see the story that Aristotle was the tutor to Alexander the Great as if it's something made up after the fact because Aristotle was such a famous name and this could be because this could be tacked on after the fact there's absolutely no evidence to support that attitude you have to look at the situation the exact opposite way you have to look at the life of Aristotle and realize he wasn't a famous philosopher that happened later in the biography of his life at least the first half of it most of his life he's not famous for anything he's not a famous or important person he's not from Athens he's not an Athenian he's not welcome in Athens he's a hated outsider in an intensely xenophobic country or xenophobic city-state of you want to say it he can in no way participate in Athenian democracy he's looking at it from afar as a somewhat despised northern barbarian now not only is he a northern barbarian he's a northern barbarian who is intimately and directly linked to the house of philip ii now philip ii right up to the moment when he was assassinated was the most important political figure of his era he was as important to his era as napoleon bonaparte was in a different era he was the single most powerful and unexpectedly powerful political figure who was suddenly changing the political landscape of the world conquering countries subduing nations and negotiating peace treaties and so on he and his army were sweeping aside theydo collected assumptions of former centuries and totally unexpectedly so because he was from the perspective of the athenians a despised uncultured northern barbarian Aristotle's father was the medical doctor to philip ii and the upward social mobility of aristotle as a person was entirely linked to the fact that he had these connections to the court of philip ii now it is by no means remarkable I mean especially given all the documentary evidence we have including the last will and testament of Aristotle there's quite a lot of cooperating elements that there's nothing remarkable about the claim that Aristotle was one of the tutors who worked for philip ii in tutoring alexander the great and again remember when he got that job alexander the great wasn't alex the great yet it was by no means obvious to the people involved that philip ii would go on to become this incredibly important historical figure or that his son would go on to become an even larger historical figure that would cast the whole world in his shadow on the contrary if we delete all of this biographical evidence that it's anyway sorry it's it's much it's as real as any biographical evidence we have for any ancient figure in the ancient world there's no reason to regard this as mythology whatsoever if this were not true in terms of Occam's razor it would be incredibly difficult to explain how this bumpkin from the far north managed to come back to Athens at precisely the time when the Macedonians conquered Athens forced the Athenians into a humiliating submission set up a garrison basically occupying Athens after the destruction of Olympus I just know that's an I'm not mispronouncing Olympus this is a different city a city-state Olympus and indeed there's there's a later rebellion in which they absolutely which Alexander absolutely devastates Thebes these are not the only times that that Athens rises up in rebellion against the expanding power of of Macedonia so by the way one reason why I wanted to record this video today right now on the calendar I'm recording this on the night of June 17 2018 the political conflict between Greece and Macedonia ended today it's 18 they just signed the the peace treaty the mutual recognition oh you didn't know this the big news stories today Greece up until yesterday would not recognize the existence of Macedonia as a separate country there are particular modern reasons for that but that the tensions do indeed go back to the struggle between Greece and Macedonia in this case it was partly the suspicion that Macedonia would try to conquer some of the provinces of what's now modern Greece that historically in the past were part of ancient Macedonia they try to reunify the ancient borders in Macedonia they wanted reassurances for that but in case this political history I mean the influence of Aristotle goes on today in many many ways but specifically the the cut the political conflict between Athens in Macedonia amazingly has continued right down literally to today when a new agreement a political agreement was signed between Greece and Macedonia were for the first time Greece would recognize Macedonia and now for the first time Macedonia is going to be allowed to join international or where formerly they were vetoed from a tree they'll be allowed to join NATO and the European Union of various United Nations parties before every single time Greece would stand up and veto it say no we we don't we don't we can't acknowledge we can't admit this hast that foreign country so for many different reasons aristotle might be might be turning over in his grave so if if Aristotle were not a courtesan if he weren't a fixture at the court of Philip the second and then his son Alexander the Great how is it that just when Macedon humiliates conquerors occupies Athens and Athens that they do surrender I mean the details of exactly the war Kosar not really worth we're counting this video again you can you can click through and read the primary sources why is it that how is it or why is it exactly that time Aristotle shows up and builds a new school for philosophy he doesn't take over Plato's School which is inside the walls of Athens he sets up a rival school outside the walls where foreigners are allowed to live because he's a hated foreigner he's a hated foreigner on the side of the Macedonians the despised and resented conquering army that's trying to unite the Greeks for their own you know political purposes but it's an openly anti-democratic monarchical despotic regime that's the spread up how is it that he sets up his own his own small University would it recall it the Lyceum outside of the walls and why is it that he suddenly has to flee from Athens precisely when Alexander the Great dies when the news comes back to Athens that Alexander the Great is dead and the Athenians start rising in revolt against Macedonian power that's when he arrives that's when he leaves his patronage is clear even in his last will and testament his connection to the the Macedonian government the Macedonian region appointed to rule greased logs and arose away fighting wars is very clear and we even have the indictments against him from the Athenian perspective which include indictments against him after his death because he died thereafter but we have the evidence of him being denounced by the Athenians for working for the Macedonian side all right so the the I mean ultimately it's even the ancient sources say this he fled Athens because he didn't want to share the fate of Socrates the charge that was laid against him while he was there while he was in Athens and well it was alive was impiety or heresy was a religious judgment was very clear that it was it was political politically motivated as was the case with Socrates and then you know as I said we actually have further evidence after he already died of him further being denounced by the people of Athens showing the attitude of Athenian Democrats toward him okay so there is absolutely every reason when you understand this political context there is every reason why I should have fixed my color before filming us didn't even think - that's right politics in pajamas hashtag politics in pajamas there are the every reason for Aristotle to be writing in a staunchly Pro Macedonian way in a staunchly promot narky way in a staunchly anti-democratic way in this book and he's not he's being profoundly subversive he's biting the hand that feeds him he's being a very harsh critic of exactly the regime that he's relied on for his subsistence for a survival his whole life including right there in Athens where he's despised by the Athenians you must read the book in that context to have any clue about what's going on this is for the ancient world this is a remarkably long book it's a remarkably detailed book and he pulls in particular examples and he names particular rulers from across the map including remote and obscure small towns in what's now Turkey so when he wants to you know prove a point he'll say oh well you know when you have a democracy and then you it becomes corrupt because you have demagogues that are taking bribes this sort of problem can happen for example and he'll name these obscure rulers and these obscure cities from years of history before this happened he did a lot of research in the sense drawing together these kinds of examples and we have the names of different rulers and demagogues and Democratic leaders preserved in this book they come up in passing this way as examples to prove his point how many times does the name of Alexander the Great appear in this book from Aristotle zero Alexander the Great who when this book was written was the dominant figure in the politics of the known world his name is not mentioned even once despite the fact that Aristotle knew him personally was one of his teachers not his only teacher by any means search the imagination the Aristotle and his father before him had both been employees of king philip ii the father of Alexander the Great he was incredibly close to that regime and yet what he wrote for hundreds of pages a remarkably long book in many ways his life's work what he devoted his whole life to building up to it is a very strange indictment of empire monarchy war itself kingship the inevitable injustice of having one man rule over others and I say this I could now follow this up with a long essay or a long series of videos he says this straining against what I think is not just censorship but a very real fear for his life when Aristotle left the employ of philip ii when he ceased to be the tutor for Alexander the Great he nominated his replacement and his replacement was an historically real person I did check in it's the the legend about this or the story about this is not the only proof we have this was a real person this was a real historical incident if you read the account as stated by doji's Laertes who's as reliable as any durable sources were ever gonna get for this period of history Diogenes Lera tea has simply says that Aristotle nominated this other somewhat famous philosopher known known to history historically noted philosopher to replace him as a tutor and as the advisor at the court of King Philip the second but he spoke too freely he was put in a cage he was tortured and then he was fed to lions after a long slow painful death that was an event that had a lot of witnesses that was an event that was recorded for history by many sources so if you said one word that crossed King Philip or his son Alexander the Great if you weren't sufficiently flattering if you weren't careful about what you said you could end up dead this is the political context in which Aristotle wrote a deeply conflicted strangely self-censored in some ways strangely self-contradictory work and it's a work that today remains difficult for people to interpret but you can interpret it you can get the point you just have to overcome this strange culture of reading these things as literature you have to look at the work and the intention of the author in its historical and political context