V7064 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX BA PHILOSOPHY FIRST YEAR EXAMINATION 2019/20 August 2020 (A4) SOCIETY, STATE AND HUMANITY Essay (1000 words) What is the connection, if any, between Aristotle's claim that 'the human being is by nature a political animal' (Politics 1.2) and his view that 'the function of the human being is activity of the soul in conformity with reason' (Ethics 1.7)? Aristotle's claim that 'the human being is by nature a political animal' is undoubtedly connected to his view that 'the function of the human being is activity of the soul in conforming with reason'. To show this I shall first explicate the concepts of being 'by nature' a 'political animal' and the 'human function', and after that establish the connection between the two claims. Aristotle's politics is naturalistic. Nature, according to Aristotle, is the innate tendency to engage in certain activities, or for a final cause, i.e. an ultimate good. So being something by nature means to be so in a way that we engage in a particular activity innate in us: birds fly by nature, bees and ants are gregarious by nature, etc.. Therefore when Aristotle says the human being is 'by nature a political animal' (Aristotle, 1912, pp. 29), he means that being political is our characteristic and innate essence. The concept of the political animal, however, can be ambiguous and inconsistent in Aristotle's account, and is indeed much disputed among scholars: in a narrower sense, it can mean merely that a politikon z ō ion ('political animal') is a polis-dwelling animal or one that is capable of doing so (Miller, 1995, pp. 30) , which would include only humans; but more broadly, political animals 'are those of which the function becomes some one common thing, which not all the gregarious animals do.' (Aristotle, 2004, pp. 12) On this view, then, it makes more sense for Aristotle to claim that the human being is a political animal 'in a greater extent' than other gregarious animals, pointing out that other animals can also be political, only that we are better at it. A political animal therefore shall be taken to mean an animal that cooperates with others of the same kind to achieve certain goals. Now it becomes clearer how humans are more political than these other animals: humans can be said to satisfy the condition of a group's members' rationally-coordinating (with one common thing as a common end goal, or function) the most, more so than bees or ants, because, as Aristotle defines it, it is the essence, or function (this will be discussed later), for humans to act rationally. Additionally, it is not only a matter of degree that makes us more political, but also in that we co- operate in pursuits higher than mere pain and pleasure, as animals do, but in pursuit of virtues. And so what is this common thing we share to such an extent that it makes us more political than other animals? This is where Aristotle's function argument comes into play. The function of a thing, according to Aristotle, is a thing's characteristic activity. To perform a function well is to be good at this characteristic activity. He then defines the human function to be acting-with-reason, i.e. what he earlier establishes to be the ultimate good for humans. It is important to note, though, as Korsgaard (2008, pp.140) emphasises, that there is a distinction between function and purpose: when Aristotle says that 'the function of the human being is activity of the soul in conformity with reason', he means neither that reasoning is the purpose of the human being, nor that reasoning is a characteristic activity that picks us out as a unique species. Rather, acting-with-reason is 'how we do what human beings do... how we lead our specific form of life' (Korsgaard, 2008, pp. 141). This is related to Aristotle's account of three forms of life — the unconscious (i.e. bodily functioning), the impulsive (instinctive acts), and the rational, whereby each form is of a higher order than the previous; so humans live a life that non-humans do not, because we live a specific form of life where we act for reasons and make deliberative choices, it is how we live. This then explains why Aristotle thinks of rational activity as the human function. The connection between the two claims in question will be evident when we take into account the formation of cities — where we are a community in which we remind each other of the fact that our ultimate good consists in acting in accordance with our ethical and intellectual virtues, i.e. by performing our function well, and helping one another acquire them. In other words, since we are political animals, cities are formed with our common goal of performing the human function well. Therefore Aristotle also says that 'the city exists by nature' (Aristotle, 1912, pp. 29): here 'by nature' means something slightly different from the aforementioned definition; the most plausible interpretation is, to say that something 'exists by nature' means that it has been produced by something that acts by and on its nature, i.e. in this case, by humans performing their function. Cities exist as a means for human beings to pursue their common and ultimate good, which is just humans acting by nature; they have as their function the promotion of our natural ends. So the two aspects of the 'natural' existence of cities — firstly the fact that cities arise from our natural impulse to live in communities (to be 'political animals') and secondly that cities help realise our function and fulfil our political nature— seamlessly connect the two ideas together. This view may be challenged by saying that our political impulse is something non-rational (Kraut, 2007, pp. 3) — an impulse that is not merely self-interested rational calculation, but something of a (sometimes even altruistic) trust and friendliness towards others (Kraut, 2007, pp. 4), as the benefits one may receive from cooperation alone would not suffice for individuals to form cities. The non-rational political impulse of humans therefore acts as a social glue that forms cities. This seems to contradict the connection established earlier about humans being political animals and the human function of being rational. But in fact there is no real contradiction here: we do have a non-rational political impulse to form cities, but we do so with the aim of fulfilling our human function, that is, to act-with-reason well. To have acting rationally as our function it would not be required that we have to be rational by nature. Indeed, Aristotle himself claims that 'the virtues are engendered in us neither by nature nor in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them' (Aristotle, 2004, pp. 23). So in a sense, our being political animals is a means to the end of performing our function well, with the gap filled by the formation of cities. Bibliography Aristotle. (2004) Nicomachean Ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle. (1912) Politics . London: J M Dent & Sons Ltd. Korsgaard, C. (2008) 'Aristotle's Function Argument' in C. Korsgaard. The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology . Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 130-150. Kraut, R. (2007) Nature in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. Social Philosophy and Policy , 24(2). Miller, F. D. (1995) Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics . Oxford: Clarendon Press , pp. 27-66.