Tony Blair claimed with almost evangelical fervour that it was ‘right’ to side with America in deciding to attack Iraq and went on: ‘I had to take this decision as Prime Minister. It was a huge responsibility.’
Tony Blair claimed with almost evangelical fervour that it was ‘right’ to side with America in deciding to attack Iraq and went on: ‘I had to take this decision as Prime Minister. It was a huge responsibility.’ Aristotle would have had some questions to ask about this.
Aristotle (384-322 bc) raises a major problem in asking how one should lead the good life, and argues that it could be lived only in the context of a community, and most importantly a community in which one played an active political part. He then goes on to discuss the various types of community available in terms of their political constitution, and comes to the conclusion that, in theory at least, absolute kingship would be the best answer, as against an oligarchy (the equivalent of the aristocracy) or democracy (rule by the many).
His argument for absolute kingship is based on the assumption that a man could emerge so superior to everyone else in moral, political and philosophical virtue that no one else’s virtue could be comparable. But he sees two insuperable problems. First, he would have to be of such superhuman excellence that he would have to be nothing less than a god — a person ‘not easy to find’, he says drily. Second, qua god, he would automatically be above the law. But since that would mean that citizens could not engage in political activity, i.e. law-making, they could not lead the good life. So absolute monarchy is not the answer; and a monarch ruled by the law is not really a monarch at all, but rather a sort of executive officer.
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