Kurt von Fritz

The Relevance of
Ancient Social and Political Philosophy
for our Times
A short Introduction to the Problem

Walter de Gruyter . Berlin· New York

1974
UNIVERSIDAD DE NAVARRA
BIBIJOT!;CA DE HWMANIDADES

ISBN 3 11 004859 0
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74 -78098
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1974 by Walter de Geuyter & Co., vonnals G.], Gosmen'sche Verlagshandlung . J. Guttentag,
Verlagsbuchhandlung . Georg Reimer. Karl J. Trubner . Veit & Comp., Berlin 30, Genrhiner StraBe 13.
Printed in Germany.
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l
A few years ago a book was published by Hannah Arendt with
the title 'between Past and Future". Many critics, especially in the
U.S.A., hailed this book-not quite without justification-as the
most profound analysis of the specific ills and evils of our times
that had been undertaken in recent years.
Right at the beginning of the introduction to this book' Hannah
Arendt quotes two Frenchmen, one of the first half of the 19. cent-
ury: Alexis de Tocqueville, the other of the first half of the current
century: Rene Char. The former she quotes as saying that we are
in great danger of losing our greatest treasure, liberty, the other
as stating that we have already lost it. But both authors agree in
stating that we are groping in the dark because, as Tocqueville has
formulated it, "the past has ceased to throw its light on the present
and the future", or, in the formulation of Rene Char "Our in-
heritance was left us by no testament".
With this Hannah Arendt agrees. But later on she says' that she
does "not intend to retie the broken thread of tradition or to invent
some newfangled surrogates with which to fill the gap between
the past and the future". "Throughout her book", she says' "the
problem of truth is kept in abeyance"; "the concern is only with
how to move in this gap-the only region in which truth perhaps
eventualiy will appear". "Her assumption", she says4, "is that
thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience and mnst
remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to take its
1 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, Exercises in Political Thought,
New York. 1961,1969,
2 Loc. Coll. p. 3 (Rene Char) and p. 7 (Tocqeville).
3 Ibidem p. 14.
" Ibidem.
~--~~,~~,~~""~"~~~-~~"----
bearings". In another place she also speaks' of the senselessness of
"rehashing old verities which have lost all concrete relevance".
On the basis of these utterances it might appear that Hannah
Arendt belonged to that large and vocal group of ultramoderns
who not only, like Tocqueville and Char, regret that the tie of
tradition is broken and that in consequence the past does no longer
provide us with that safe and illuminating guidance that enlight-
ened the progress of earlier generations from a familiar past into
a yet untried, but not altogether dark future, but who are convinc-
ed that in our present situation the past has not to teach us any-
thing anymore so that we have to make an entirely new start
exclusively on the basis of our own experiences. Yet in the follow-
ing chapters of her book Hannah Arendt continuously refers to the
ancient Greeks (and to some extent the Romans) and in the second
to last chapter of her book, in which she discusses the difference
between what she calls rational and factual truth and the relation
of these different kinds of truth to politics she comes to ,the
conclusion' that Greek philosophers and scientists have formulated
"rational truths" that are, as she says, "not truth between men but
truth above men", i.e. truths that are of everlasting validity and
independent of historical situations, hence obviously not "verities
which have lost all concrete relevance".
It would not make very much sense, pedantically to ventilate the
question of whether Hannah Arendt in her second to last chapter
contradicts what she has most emphatically stated in her first
chapter or whether she is consistent, if not in words, at least in fact
when simply trying to find her bearings by going back to an earlier
tradition after having found that the ties of direct and continuous
tradition had been unretrievably broken. Answering the question
in the second sense one would at once find another apparent con-
tradiction in the somewhat strange statement1 "Before the Romans
such a thing as tradition was unknown; with them it became and
5 Ibidem p. 6.
6 Ibidem p. 247.
1 Ibidem p. 25.
2 3
after that it remained the guiding thread through the past and the
chain to which each generation knowingly or unknowingly was
bound in its understanding of the world and its own experience".
That so eminent an author, who is so highly praised for her deep
insight into the problems of the present by some of the most modern-
minded critics, finds herself against her announced intentions almost
irresistibly impelled to turn to Greek philosophers for enlight-
enment is certainly a strong indication of the relevance of ancient
social and political philosophy for our times. Yet her own efforts
of finding some guidance in the works of ancient Greek philosophy,
quite understandably, have themselves something of the quality
of groping in the dark which she in her quotations from Tocque-
ville and Char so vividly describes. This is also revealed by the
fact, that sometimes, in drawing on ancient philosophers she arrives
at very profound conclusions while at other times her interpreta-
tions both of actual political conditions in ancient Greece and of
ancient political theories is rather superficial and not free from
accepted cliches, and, above all, by the fact that some of the most
essential ancient theories about man as a social animal are hardly
mentioned, certainly not analysed.
In these Circumstances it appears imperative to make an attempt
to clarify the issue and to seek above all an answer to the following
questions: 1. what is it that makes the ancient Greeks so important
for an author passionately engaged in the search for a solution of
the apparently new and unique problems of our times? and more
specifically 2. what have the ancient Greeks in common with us so
as to enable them to give us some guidance? and 3. in what respect
did they differ from us, which is just as essential a condition for
their usefulness? For if they were equal in every respect we would
not have very much to learn from them.
In trying to find an answer to these questions it is perhaps ex-
pedient to start from Hannah Arendt's somewhat paradoxical
statement that "before the Romans such a thing as tradition was
unknown", which appears to imply that the Greeks had no tradi-
tion. What can such a curious statement mean in view of the fact that
the Greek historian Herodotos as well as the most eminent Greek
philosophers Plato and Aristoteles at various occasions speak of
the great importance of traditions? What is true in the statement
is that the Greeks, when they began to philosophize, started with
at least as profound a break with tradition as the break of tradition
deplored by Tocqueville and Rene Char. This then the ancient
Greeks have in common with US; and it is something very im-
portant.
But this shows at the same time the profound difference. Greek
thinking in the early sixth century B.C. starts with an enormous
elan, with a real burst of hopefulness to be able to find solutions
not only for the riddles of the universe but also for the problems
of human life. Though the solutions offered differ greatly from
one another there is absolutely nothing of that cry of despair so
characteristic of our times. It is also characteristic of the inherent
paradoxes of our present situation that this cry of despair was
compressed into the words "the only common bond between the
human beings of our period is the absence of any knowledge con-
cerning human nature'" precisely by an author who through pre-
historic investigations in South Africa completely inaccessible to
the ancient Greeks has rediscovered part of a truth concerning
human nature formulated in a wider context by Aristotle' more
than two thousand years ago but long since forgotten.
What then are the causes of this difference and what does this
mean in regard to the relevance of ancient social and political
philosophy for our times? There are two main causes, one obvious
and generally realised by everybody, the other perhaps no less
obviolls, but much less understood in its historical orjgin and in its
present consequences. The first lies in the fact that the new start
of the Greeks was a revolution in thinking resulting from the
confusing variety of traditional explanations of the world as well
8 Robert Ardrey, African Genesis, New York" 1961; German translation
with the title 'Adam kam aus Afrika" Mlinchen, 1969, 1971, p.161.
II See infra p. 39 ff.
4 5
as of morals and habits eXlStmg at their time lO , while we have
changed the world materially within the preceding century and a
half in such a way that we have not only to find a new and better
orientation in an existing and remaining, even if extremely varied,
environment but have to cope with the much more difficult task
of finding our way in a changed and continually changing world.
What is more: while the task of changing the world was first
undertaken by those who took a leading part in this enterprise
with no less enthusiasm than was the task of reorientation by the
early Greeks, so that the word 'progress' became and to some ex-
tent still is the shibolet of modern times, we are discovering more
and more that we are in danger of destroying by this kind of 'pro-
gress' the very basis of our existence on this planet, possibly of the
existence of all higher forms of life. This problem did not or only
to a very small extent exist for the ancident Greeks and Romans.
For the sake of ship-building, it is true, the inhabitants of Asia
Minor and later the Greeks themselves through deforestation
caused a soil erosion that affected considerable parts of the ancient
world: in Asia Minor to the extent that the island of Lade at which
a famous sea battle was fought in the arly fifth century B.C. is
now a little hill far inland; and the Iberian Peninsula likewise has
never recovered down to the present day from the damage done
to it for similar reasons in the time of Roman domination. Yet with
all this the deterioration of the environment caused by the ancients
is infinitesimal when compared with what we have accomplished
within the last 150 years, and this not only because they were
technically less 'advanced', but because the ancients had a greater
respect for nature than we have, and because their scientific efforts
were mainly directed towards the acquisition of greater insight for
its own sake and only secondarily towards gaining power over
nature and the means of changing and manipulating the world.
11} For a more detailed analysis of this revolution of thinking and its conse-
quences see K. v. Fritz, Grundproblem~ der Geschichte der antiken Wissen-
schaft (Berlin, 1971), p. 10 ff.
 It is obvious that all this affects the relevance of ancient social
and political philosophy for our time. On the one hand nothing
can be more important for us than to regain a deeper insight into
the essence of human nature aud into the fundamental condition
of human existence at a time wheu this knowledge admittedly has
been so widely lost. On the other hand it is obvious that the
aucients cannot give us any direct help in regard to those present
conditions of which they had no experience of their own, quite
apart from the fact that it is never possible simply to return to a
nearer or farther past. Specifically, it is most likely that some of
the evils that we have created by making ruthless use of the power
over nature that we have acquired in recent times cannot be over-
come except by making use of the same technical devices by which
we have 'changed the world'.
This then is one of the great differences between the situation
of the ancients and that of the moderns. The second great difference
ist not altogether unrelated to the first one. The great new enter-
prise of the moderns to dominate nature and to change the world
ended after a comparatively short time with anxiety for the
future, with disillusionment and despair. Though ancient civili-
zation also after some time decayed and yielded to the rise of new
forces, the great new enterprise of the early Greeks did not take a
similar turn. The reason is not too difficult to find. The moderns
started from the blind belief, first formulated by Francis Bacon
with his slogan "usui et cornmodis hominum consulimus"l1, that
nothing would contribute more to human happiness than an in-
crease in material comfort and a release from the necessity to
work: a belief which is still at the bottom of the enormous majority
of modern ideologies. This belief was accepted so blindly that it
found its expression in the slogan of one of the most influential
prophets of our times "Wir wollen die Welt nicht erkennen, sondern
verandern", a "not ... but" , which to any ancient Greek or Roman
would have appeared the height of absurdity, since it seemed evi-
11 For quotations cf. ibidem p. 118 ff. and XIII ff.
6 7
dent to them that one first has to try to gain insight into what
is better or worse before one can try to change anything in a sensible
way.
But this is not the only aspect of the difference and perhaps not
even the most essential one. When the ancient Greeks started on
their quest for a new orientation in the world they did, of course,
not right away find the correct answer to their questions. They
too were groping in the dark, because the past had to a large
extent ceased to throw its light on the present and on the future.
They therefore right in the beginning found very different and
seemingly or really mutually contradictory answers to their
problems. But there is one very essential difference bet.ween t~em
and the moderns: they listened to one another. There IS one fwld
of intellectual pursuits in which something superficially analogous,
but not really alike, can be observed in modern times: the field of
the so-called natural sciences. In this field the theories by which
the physical universe was explained changed a great deal ~nd
sometimes radically within the course of the last several centunes,
but the mathematical formulations of natural laws which were
originally elaborated on the basis of such hypotheses ~nd theo~ies
change by no means in the same measure as the underlymg theones.
They may be enlarged or refined and made more precise. But they
are never radically altered, so that even the less precisely formulat-
ed ones still use to remain for many practical purposes tolerable
or even sufficient approximations.
This is totally different in those fields of knowledge-much
more important for human life-that deal with human affairs. In
these fields the modern. adherents of different convictions will not
even listen to one another. They are often carefully trained to
defend their tenets by arguments, but with the exclusive aim of
defeating their opponents in a discussion, never with the intention
of finding out wether the counterarguments of their ?ppone~ts
may not contain an element of truth, .and very often wIth the m-
clination to break off the discussion as soon as the argument
threatens to go against them and then to proceed from argument
to violence.
What is the nature of the difference? What is the historical
origin of the modern attitude? What are its causes? And what does
it mean in terms of finding a solution to our present day problems?
The suppression of unwelcome truths or methods of arguing and
finding the truth was, of course, not unknown to antiquity. The
death of Socrates is only the most outstanding and well known
example. In the works of ancient philosophers themselves we find
occasionally the statement that those in power do not like the truth
when it goes against what they consider their interests. Thus in
antiquity no less than in our times the stubborn 'truth-teller' was
always in danger".
But again there is a great difference. In our time it is not only
those in power, the rulers of more or less totalitarian states that
suppress free opinion by all means at their disposal. But it is the
'intellectuals', the equivalent of ancient poets, thinkers, and philo-
sophers themselves, who refuse to listen to one another and use
violence whenever the argument threatens to go against them. This
is the difference. The ancient philosophers and other thinkers
naturally also differed in their opinions. They even sometimes
violently attacked one another. But they never refused to argue it
out. This is true even of the Stoics, who theoretically considered
the stoic wise man as the only man fully in possession of his senses
and all others as mere fools in comparison with him. There is never
a refusal of communication by argument. The consequence is that-
in contrast to the habit of so many moderns with whom the
ideology once adopted determines to the last detail the attitude to
be taken in regard to any question of practical living, whether
private or social-one finds among ancient philosophers often an
amazing consensus concerning principles of practical life together
12 Concerning the relations between the ruler or demagog on the one hand and
the stubborn <truth-teller' on the other see H. Arendt, op. colI. p. 241 ff. and
p.250.
8 9
with the most total disagreement concerning what in antiquity may
be called the metaphysical background of life. This made it possible
that in later antiquity, when the initial anatagonism between the
schools of philosophers had somewhat subsided, Seneca in his
epistulae morales could without any distortion deliberately inter-
sperse his stoic moral precepts with maxims taken from Epicurus.
And this is not only true of hellenistic philosophy. Right in the
beginning of Greek speculation on the foundations of a 'good life'
Democritus, for instance, and Eudoxos of Knidos, with apparently
mutually contradictory formulations, arrive at essentially very
similar conclusions.
But not only the ancient themselves differed in this respect from
a very large section of the moderns. Wherever in later times there
was a reawakening of an interest in classical antiquity it had a
moderating influence, working for a return to serious and honest
discussion with the aim of learning from the opposite party and of
arriving at a sensible consensus. It seems to me that it is one of the
most essential, if not the most essential precondition for a non-
destructive solution of our most dangerous problems to restore this
willingness to an honest and unprejudiced discussion. But in order
to make this possible it is necessary to find the origin and causes
of the modern aberration and, what is more, a common ground of
fundamental insight, on which such a discussion can ultimately be
based.
The historical origin of the modern aberration is not too difficult
to find. It began-for the Western world at least-with Christi-
anity: not certainly with Christ, who was always willing to com-
municate with anyone who seriously strove for enlightenment,
with sinners and publicans, the most hated 'traitors to their people',
but with St. Paul, who had been a zealot before his conversion and
remained so after it. In his first letter to the Corinthians" he tells
the members of the Christian community that he had founded
there, not to have track with members who after having been
13 Ad Corinth. I 5, 9-13.
 baptised and reborn in Christ, have sinned again, for instance by
Philosophen wUrden, ist nichtzu erwarten und vielleicht nicht ein-
illicit sexual intercourse: "erase them out of your midst. Do not
mal zu wUnschen, weilder Besitz del' Gewalt den freien Gebrauch
even sit down to a meal with them". It would require too much
del' Vernunft unvermeidlich verdirbt. DaB abel' die Konige und
space even to sketch the rather erratic and often contradictory
konigliche, d. h. sich nach Gesetzen del' Gleichheit selbst regierende
history of excommunication-not in the sense of exclusion from
Volker die Philosophen frei reden lassen, ist ihnen zur Belenchtung
the sacraments but of refusal to speak and to argue with the
ihres Geschaftes unentbehrlich und wegen del' Nachrede del' Pro-
recalcitrant individual-in the christian churches. As everybody
paganda ... unverdachtig." Those in power will inevitably fall into
knows the later practice was, not only to exclude the unrepentant
ever greater errors if they deprive themselves deliberately of this
heretic from all communication, but to hand him over to the
secular arm for physical annihilation. means of at least indirect enlightenment. The indispensable pre-
condition of this being possible, however, is the existence of philo-
Yet to the last the churches acknowleged that the authorities of
sophers of the kind envisaged by Kant: philosophers who cannot
the church were not infallible in these matters and that the condemned
even be suspected of propaganda. But this race has nearly died out
heretic might not only have been right, but might even have been a
in our times. For the modern 'positivists', who in our times attempt
saint, the most well-known, but not the only, case beeing that of
to occupy their place, are not philosophers in Kant's sense. A
Joan of Arc. It was reserved for the secularised atheistic ideological
revival, a resurrection of this race therefore appears as a necessary
churches of to-day to take the last step: to deprive the heretic so-
precondition for an approach to the solution of our most burning
to-speak of his mental and spiritual existance by putting him into
problems.
an insane asylum, a practice, which appears to be more and more
The survey given so far has shown part of the origin of the
frequently followed in present day Sowjet Russia". And again it
modern calamity. But it has not shown its causes; and it is the
is characteristic of OUf times that this 'tendency is not restricted to
causes that we must know in order to see what can be done to
those in power, who in this way try to get rid of stubborn truth-
overcome it. What distinguishes the ancients with their readiness
tellers whose pronouncements come in conflict with their supposed
to argue it out from their Christian and modern successors with
'interest', but that it is also shared by all sorts of simple 'intellectual'
their tendency to break off all communication with those of dif-
adherents of ideological groups. In Germany recently a group of
ferent attitudes or convictions is that the ancients never considered
young leftist students at the so-called Free University of Berlin
a formulated doctrine as an absolute truth but only as an approx-
declared that if a man out of opportunism said that he was anti-
imation to it. Thisis most clearly visible in Plato, who-disregard-
Marxist this was regrettable but understandable, but if he said so
ing the lecture on the good of which only obscure and doubtful
out of conviction he ought to be placed in an insane asylum.
reports have come down to us-published only dialogs and con-
This situation is also of great importance for those in power
sidered even these as an imperfect substitute for actual living dis-
and for the functioning of the state. For Kant was right with his
cussion because in his opinion no essential truth or insight could
famous dictum: "daB die Philosophen Konige odeI' die Konige
be formulated in such a way as to leave no room for misunderstand-
ing!'. But even the Stoics who believed in the absolute insight of
U Cf. UdSSR. Opposition eine neue Geisteskrankheit in der Sowje~union? Eine
Dokumentation von Wladimir Bukowskij, ed. Jean-Jacques Marie, MUnchen,
1971j French edition: Voe nouvelle maladie mentale en URSS: I'opposition 15 For a more detailed discussion see K. v. Fritz, 'The Philosophical Passage
(editions du Seuil, 1971). in the Seventh Platonic L~tter and the Problem of Plato's 'Esoteric Philo-
sophy' in PhronesisIX(1966), p.1l8 (409) If.
10
11
 the stoic wise man, never after Zeno, the founder of the school,
claimed that anyone but possibly he had ever actually incorporated
this ideal. It is only with Christianity and to some extent with pre-
Christian Judaism that a revelation formulated in words claims
absolute authority. But again it is characteristic that Christ him-
self inveighs against the Pharisees who placed the formulated com-
mand of God to observe the sabbath above the much higher natural
obligation of man to help his fellow-man in distress, and who cal-
led this attitude 'hypocrisy' in spite of the fact that, according to
what we know from other sources, the pharisees in their majority
appear to have been genuinely 'pious' men who tried hard to live
according to the will of God. Yet the history of the Christian
churches is full of demands for the literal acceptance of formulated
doctrines as absolute truth and for the excommunication of those
who did not comply with this demand, though at the same time
most of the churches allowed exceptions from some of the most
absolutely formulated commandmends of God, above all the com-
mandmend: thou shalt not kill.
With the pharisees par excellence among the Christian sects, the
puritans, even the rules of absolute observance of the sabbath came
back. The analogy to this among the modern secularized ideological
religions-characteristically going in destructiveness and cruelty
again beyond what can be found in the most fanatical Christian
sects-is the attitude of modern ideological terrorists who consider
the life and bodily integrity of anyone who does not belong to
their particular sect, however innocent otherwise, as freely ex-
pendable and of no importance in itself, if only the ideological
purpose of the sect or group can be-in most of the cases only
seemingly, not really-served by violating it. This is what Christ
in the case of the ancient pharisees called hypocrisy; and it is hypo-
crisy though it, is largely unconscious and unconscious hypocrisy
seems to be a contradiction in itself. For the violent, unyielding,
stubborn, and fanatical adherence to the ideological 'convictions'
of the sect has also to serve the purpose of hiding from the terrorists
12
the not totally unconscious awareness that there is something
morally wrong with them 16.
One of the major reasons for the habit of excommunication in
the form of the refusal to listen to the arguments of others whid,
started with the Christian churches and reached a climax in the
secularised ideological 'churches' of our time, then, appears to have
been the litteral acceptence of formulated doctrines and maxims
as absolutely binding while all of the pre-Christian Greeks-but
also, it would seem, in very essential matters Christ himself-be-
lieved in the necessity of continuous further qualification in order
to grasp the real truth behind its inevitably imperfect formulation.
It will be shown that there were also reasons of a different nature.
But in order to see what was their origin and nature, it is neces-
sary first to study the transition from the attitude of the Christian
churches to their secularised atheistic successors somewhat more
closely. This will also lead to an insight into the possibility of find-
ing ultimate criteria of human action in spite of the difficulty of
formulating these ultimate criteria in such a way that they can be
set down as absolutely hard and fast rules that can be applied
mechanically and require no qualifications.
In actual fact we have in our times a widely admowledged intel-
lectual endeavour that-though, as will be seen, unsuccessfully-
tries to perform exactly this function: namely what is called 'value
free science'. This value-free science is ultimately an offspring of
the philosophy of value that was initiated by the German philo-
sopher Heinrich Lotze and his pupil Heinrich Rickert, who in his
turn became the teacher of the most outstanding and most well-
known representative of the doctrine of value-free science: Max
Weber.
16 This deep-seated hypocrisy shows itself most glaringly, when the young
rebels are put on trial before a law court. They make the fullest possible
use of the protection afforded them by the rules of legal procedure with
complete confidence that not much can happen to them, while at the same
time they revile the judges, threatening, that if they, as they hope, and
their friends will attain the supreme power they will have them (their
present judges) tried summarily by a 'people's court' (Volksgerichtshof)
13
 Lotze's philosophy of value came into being at a time when the
belief in the existence of God had rapidly lost ground in the
Western world. As long asthe Christian faith had been generally
accepted by everybody in Europe and in America, what was good
and evil was determined by the commandments of God, though,
as has been shown, the interpretation of these commandments and
the question of how far they were to be taken absolutely litterally
had created considerable difficulty. But when the existence of God
had become doubtful to many, certain philosophers looked around
for an independent foundation of common morality and some of
them found it in the philosophy of value. They rested their philo-
sophy on the distinction between physical laws and moral laws.
The physical laws exist in the sense that what happens in the ex-
ternal world actually happens in agreement with these laws: the
laws of gravity, of magnetism, the laws governing the expansion
of gasses under conditions of temperature and pressure etc. The
moral laws, on the other hand, obviously do not exist in that
sense, for they are obviously not always obeyed. We cannot derive
them simply from the observation of what actu;tlly happens.
Nevertheless they appear to have a ,ertain validity. We are entitled
to say, that they are valid: sie gelten. The difficulty, however, lies
in the question whence to derive, on what to base this supposed
validity. For the common consent of all mankind did not appear a
sufficient criterion, some men for instance considering it the highest
obligation of an individual to work for the greatness of his nation,
while others, like Grillparzer, called nationalism the road to
bestiality.
This is where Max Weber's notion of value-free science comes
in. Its origin was twofold: on the one hand it tried to meet as far
as possible the dilemma which the philosophy of value was unable
to solve by itself. On the other hand it was promoted by Weber's
anger over the attitude of many of his colleagues occupying chairs
of sociology, who tried to show that their particular prejudices,
socialist, liberal, conservative, nationalist, or what not, could be
derived from and were supported by scientifically demonstrable
14
ultimate values. Against this he tried to show that there actually
was a kind of science that to a certain extent could lead to a con-
sensus: a science, namely, which on the basis of historical observa-
tion and analysis would show what the inevitable or probable con-
sequences of certain actions would be: on the basis of such truely
scientific knowledge a man might be induced to refrain from
taking a (foolish) course of action which without such knowledge
he might have taken, and a greater consensus might be reached. But
he emphasised no less strongly that if a man chooses to accept the
scientifically demonstrated consequences of his actions for the sake
of the aim pursued, science has no further guidance to offer but
must leave the decision to the individual concerned .. In one of his
most impressive later treatises" he expressed this by saying that
everybody ultimately must freely choose the 'demon' whom he
wishes to follow. It is clear that with this conclusion Weber's value-
free science, though extremely useful in a more restricted field,
offers no antidote to one of the greatest evils of our times, the
internecine struggle between ideologies whose adherents will not
listen to one another and not communicate with one another. In
these circumstances it matters little that Weber himself was in-
clined to follow, if one may say so, rather sensible demons, and
that, while in one of his speeches he said that for the sake of
Germany he would be ready to enter into an alliance with the
devil, it is pretty certain that, given the opportunity, he would not
have allied himself with the Nazi devil, but resisted him strenuously,
All this in fact is only an indication that his doctrine offered no
real solution, not even for himself.
Have the Greek philosophers to offer a better solution? Max
17 His famous lecture and pamphlet <Wissensmaft als Beruf', ,But he had ex-
pressed the same conviction in rather similiar words several years earlier in
a passage in a letter adressed to Gertrud Baumer in 1916, wh~ch has b:cn
published in 'Max Weber's Politische Schriften' p. 144 ff., WIth the utle
'Zwischen zwei Gesetzen': "Wer in der <Welt' ... steht, hat zu wahlen
(italics by Weber), welchem dieser Gotter oder wann er dem einen oder
dem andern dienen will und solI".
15
Weber took his starting point from the modern 'philosophy of
value'. Aristotle in the fourth book of his Nicomachean Ethics"
discusses the meaning of the Greek word "sla,
which is the equi-
valent of the modern words value, Wert, valeur, valore, and so
on. In regard to this concept Aristotle points out that the value of
a thing is determined by the circumstances, ultimately by the law
of supply and demand. This is particularly clear in the cases of
monetary values. But not all values are measured in terms of
money. For instance, when a country is in imminent danger of
invasion by a foreign enemy the value of military virtues rises at
once, while in times of peace or of an impopular war waged in a
far off country the value, i.e. the esteem, of military prowess goes
down in the eyes of many, an observation the correctness of which
is amply illustrated by occurrences in our time.. . of time, became in a way the protector of justice". But the realm
Apart from this it is also possible to a certa111 extent to f,x
values by government decree: in Aristotle's tim~, for instance, b,r
a decree ordering to accept debased currency at Its face value. It IS
hardly necessary to mention the modern example of wage ~nd
price stops, the artificial fixing of the exchange value of currenCIes,
and the like. Most of the time these devices do not work over a
longer period of time. But for a shorter period it can be effectively
done.
It is clear that values in this sense are relative, and Aristotle
points this out expressly". The earliest modern value philosophers,
on the contrary, occasionally spoke also of 'absolute values', as for
instance the absolute value of the moral law or of the human soul.
It appears, however obvious that in this application the word
'value'-retains its initial meaning of (esteem', and that the abso-
lute value of the objects mentioned is established exactly by the
fact that they are so highly esteemed by God. But how then can
these values replace the commandments of God? Clearly the bot-
IS Aristotle EN, 1119b, 26 ff. For the concept of &.i;ta as 'value' cf. also
ibidem 1119 a, 19 f.; 1123 b, 17.
19 Aristotle EN, 1131 a, 24 H.; 1164 a, 22 ff.
16
tom drops out of the whole philosophy of value if and when the
belief in the commandments of God is given up. What remains
then is inevitably only the value-free science proclaimed by Max
Weber, which informs man about the certain or probable con-
sequences of his actions, but has ultimately nothing to say concern-
ing the question of whether he should be willing to accept these
consequences or not.
The ancient philosophers were in a totally different situation in
this respect. They had no revealed religion with definite com-
mandments that had to be obeyed because coming from God. Their
gods were disagreeing and even fighting with one another so that
a man had to be careful not to offend one god while revering
another. The highest god, Zeus, it is true, at a rather early period
of justice concerned was rather restricted and its bounderies uncer-
tain. The Greeks, therefore, had to look for a different founda-
tion of ethics: to find elsewhere a sure guidance for their lives in
all its aspects.
All Greek thinkers from the early poets to late philosophers,
however, were convinced that the world in which we live is a
world in which there exists a certain order, and that man, if he
does not wish to hurt himself, has to comply with it. This is the
fundamental conviction on which all Greek ethical and moral
theory, however different in its result, is ultimately based. It is
exactly this notion with which those who pride themselves on their
modernity profess violently to disagree. Nothing is more common
among the most 'progressive', the most tavantgardistic', in modern
thought and art than the representation of the world as totally
disorderly and absurd. Anyone who does not follow this fashion,
who insists that the world in general including the modern world
contains also elements of order, even of a moral order, and that
20 For the development of the notion of the justice of Zeus sec the excellent
book by Hugh Lloyd-Jones <The Justice of Zeus', vol. 41 of the Sather
Classical Lectures, Berkeley. Los Angeles and London, 1971.
17
 the last .moment through the m'ents 0 f one man Noah h h
true art should make visible both aspects of life, the orderly as well . d'
t he actlOn of a divine 0
r seml- evme bel. ' rk p, or t roug
as the disorderly ones, is apt to be jumped upon by the adherents who took pity on them and d h n~, 1 e rometheus,
of the modern creed as superficial, unrealistic, lacking in depth, highest god. save t em agamst the will of the
as outright dishonest". Yet it appears obvious that the very notion
But as long as human bein "
of disorder is but the negation of the concept of order and the question to ask. what is goodgsfeXlhst, It wobuld still appear a sensible
notion of absurdity but the negation of the concept of sense and • or uman eings in h h
are part and parcel of th .. as mue as t ey
that therefore they could not even exist without their positive question that the ancienteGexlstkmg nkatdural or~er. It is exactly this
counterparts. What is more: it is true that the order of the world 'ff ree s as e ObvIOusl th" .
d1 erent
. question from the questIOn. 0 f values
. In Y IS IS . qmteba
is an order that to some extent can be violated and disturbed. It conSIdered subordinate to th . f . a way It may e
shows its practical, not only theoretical, continued existence by human bein s has an e. q~estIOn a whether the existence of
the fact that it avenges itself on those who disturb it: which is in human b . g. y value m Itself. It is restricted to the life of
emgs In as much as they exist B t . k f
fact one of the overwhelming experiences of our times. question of those 'values' within the iif u t/"a.n s ar above. the
If this is so-and it is quite obviously so-it would appear to that depend on circumstances and . eo. Ivmg human bemgs
be of the utmost importance for man-instead of revelling in dis- contrast to monetary and "1 a~e m thIS respect relative. In
order and absurdity for their own sake-to try to find out what can be fixed b d . . SI~1 ar va ues that to a certain extent
this order is and to determine the place of man within this order: est period of {;m: :: d IS eVldhent~y impossible even for the short-
c e 1t
or in other words, to find out what is good for man within this ecree w at IS good for b' d
on the nature of h' .' ... man, ut It epends
order. This question is of an entirely different nature from the that it is good fo; :;~;/~st I:~ It 1~ I~Pkossible to fix by decree
question what ultimate values are. There is no blad,board hung acid. ea to rm concentrated sulphuric
up between the stars saying that the existence of human beings has
In order to find out what is ood f . .
any value in terms of the world as a whole. On the basis of the necessary to find out what i h' gl . or man It IS, therefore,
fact that man has discovered the means of destroying not only answer to this question must ~e 1: p a~e m the ~atural order. The
himself but all higher life on this planet one might come to the to all living beings, the other to !a:,n m I~ect~ns, ?n~ applying
;":'0
opposite conclusion: that man has been a failure and is going to be to all living beings both I dspe~1 lca y. ow It IS common
done away with or rather to do away with himself because he has the course of their lives fr~~:~ an am~als, th~t the~ develop in
become too powerful for his insight, just as the dinosaurs dis- ture to an ever more d' T d apparent y relatIvely SImple struc-
appeared from the surface of the earth because they had become
too big for their brainpower. The myths of many tribes and
then begin to decay a~~e~;ti:a::re :vhich
w~ call. maturity, and
can reach the state of m t . . y dIe. Wlthm thIS process they
nations are after all full of stories of how God or the gods decided a urlty m a more perfect d' I
fect way. When th f . h an m a ess per-
to do away with the human race and how mankind was saved as e ormer IS t e case we say' h b 'f
specimen of a rose or a p' . w at a eautI ul
me tree or a cat or a sh d d Th
more the latter is the case th I . epar og. e
21 The classical case is that of Emil Staiger, who, when he insisted that good individual as well developed arebe:~ti7:1. conSIder the specimen or
literature should give a full representation of life, not only of its evil as- j
pects, was violently attacked frbm all sides, including by writers, whom he 1 " Generally
b' speaki ng one mIg
. h t t h en say that it is good fa
had not meant to include in this strictures, but who obviously nevertheless i I~q~tog row up under such conditions . r~a'
that it becomes
had to some extent a bad conscience. I
I 19
18
I
4
I
 beings who are born with less pronounced individual talents and
most perfect specimen of its kind. But it has at once to be added
i~clinations and who therefore will be more easily adaptable to
that, according to general experience, a superabundant supply of
d,fferent tasks ~nd functions. It is the enormous advantage that
all means of living, available without effort or tension is by no
the human spec,es has over all other species of animals that in
means the best condition of such growth. Even plants, as every-
consequence of this it can not only develop more various abilities
body knows, can die of overnourishment.
than any individual specimen possibly could, but is also more
In a way what has been said applies to all living beings. But in
adapta?le to. varying circumstances than any other kind of living
regard to certain animals living in differentiated groups and
bemgs ,s. It 15 also the reason why the human species was able to
especially in regard to human beings a certain differentiation has
spread out all over the earth.
to be made. A cat can, so to speak, be a perfect cat all by itself, as
Bu~ everything in this .world has to be paid for. The price that
far as perfection is possible in this world. But not a bee. It would
m~nkmd has to pay for ,ts greatest gift is exactly that no human
be nonsensical to say that a queen bee is a more perfect bee than
bemg can be an overall perfect human being. Aristotle contends"
a worker bee or a drone. All the three of them are equally neces-
that the offspring of human beings cannot even become a human
sary for the continuation of the species. We can apply the criterion
being wi;hout I~~ing ~n the society of other human beings and
of perfection only within each of the groups that make up a bee
shann~ h15 act,v,t,es w,th them. But this is an aspect of the problem
society. . that wtll have to be discussed in a different context".
As Aristotle has pointed out" this is the case to a much h'gher
~irst ~t is necessary to analyse some other consequences of
degree with human beings. It is for this reason that in his opinion
Anstotle s fundamental observation. The constitution of the United
man is by nature much more a social being (~00v ,(0),,,,,,6v) than
States begins with the statement that all men are born equa\. This
any bee or any ant. Plato in his Republic had pointed out" that
makes good sense not as a statement of fact, but-as it was ob-
no human individual is self-sufficient (ui'nuQ"'1£), but can lead a
viously mea~t-as the postulate that, as far as possible, all men
satisfactory life only by colloborating with others in different
should be g,ven an equal opportunity to develop their abilities
functions each individual doing 'his thing' «0 Eumoii "Qunwv).
and ta.lents, since this is most desirable both from the point of view
Aristotle goes much further: no man can be a perfect human being
of the,r happiness as individuals and from that of their usefulness
in the sense in which a cat can be a perfect cat but he can at best
to the c?mmunity. It also-as has been emphasized by Hannah
realise some of the various possibilities of his species. In other
Arendt m one of the best parts of her discussion"-makes good
words: it is of the very essence of human existence that men a~e
sense a.s the post~late that all men should equally be given the right
born with different talents and inclinations and can develop the,r
to be hstened to m the sense of the right not to be excommunicated
abilities only by collaborating with other human beings. It is a
from gen~r~1 inte~course and discussion because of their opinions
further observable fact that some people are born with very de-
and conVIctIOns, SInce this, as has been shown, is one of the most
cided perticular inclinations and talents and that these individuals
fundamental conditions of the existence of a well functioning
are both most happy and most useful to the community if they
can develop their talents to the full. But there are also human
24 Ibidem 1253 a, 3-5.
25 See infra p. 39 ff.
22 Aristotle. Politics, I, 1253 a, 7-9 and 25-28. 26 H. Arendt, op. call. p. 247.
ll3 Plato, Republic II, 368 b, 5 ff.

21
20
society-, though as will be seen later27, the principle in certain
specific cases suffers a slight restriction.
Thus what in the American constitution appears in the form of
a statement makes very good sense as a postulate in two different
respects. But as a real statement of fact it is utterly wrong, the
very foundation of human society being the natural inequality of
men. In actual practice this has always been acknowledged every-
where, most of all in the Sowiet Union, where young people are
most carefully picked out and trained in agreement with their inborn
talents-as far as this does not come into conflict with the prin-
ciple that the children of laborers must be given an advantage over
the children of the formerly 'higher' classes. Bnt this latter prin-
ciple has soon proved so impractical that it is by now almost
completely abolished.
Yet in the earlier period of the development of Marxist theory
there existed-and among many vocal groups of young people in
the Western world, who consider themselves as idealists striving
for a better world, there still exists-a strong tendency towards
the establishing of real equality even where this leads to the most
absurd consequences. This tendency constitutes a real danger to
any well functioning society. For this Procrustean equality is
irreconcilable with any kind of liberty. It can be bought only-
and even then only most imperfectly-at the price of universal
slavery. This truth has been most forcefully expressed by what
Alexis de Tocqueville said about the egalitarians of his time": "ils
21 See infra p. 23.
28 Alexis de Tocqueville, Vanden regime et la revolution, Livre III. Ghapitre
III: comment les Fran~ais ont voulu des rHarmes avant de vouloir des
libertes. In the same chaptef he makes the very pertinent observation con-
cerning the attitude of the economists and the merchant class "Ils sont, it
est vrai, td!s favorahles au libre echange des denrees, au laisser faire ou au
laisser passer dans Ie commerce et dans l'industrie; mais quand aux libertes
politiques proprement dites iis n'y songent point, et m~me quand cUes se
presentent par hasard a leur imagination ils les repoussent d'abord", This
is exactly what happened in Germany before and when Hitler came to
power. It was the merchant class in which he had his most consistent sup-
porters.
22
n'ont pas seulement la haine de certains privileges. La diversite
m@me leur est odieuse. lis adoreraient l'egalite jusque dans la ser-
vitude" .
Aristotle has also clearly drawn the consequences of this funda-
mental truth". The development of talents presupposes the availa-
bility of the necessary means for their development. These are of
a twofold nature: 1. material goods; 2. power. This is very easy
to see: every craftsman needs the tools and the materials for
practicing his art; a shoemaker, for instance, an awl, a knife, and
a hammer to make the shoes, and the leather out of which to make
them. This is also true on a higher level where the degree of per-
fection of the tools may make a very great difference; the most
perfect violinist needs the most perfect violin, because only he can
make the best use of it. He has, therefore, in the interest of the
community, a certain right to get it. A scholar needs and therefore
has a right to a library, a need that can be partly satisfied by
giving him access to a public library, but only partly, because he
has also to have books of his own in which he can put down his
observations in the margin. It is not difficult to extend this to
other activities and pursuits.
There ·are other cases in which what is needed is power. An
architect, for instance, has to have the power to tell the carpenters
and masons what to do. He may accept the advice of a bricklayer
in regard to some detail of the execution of his work. But if every
worker has the right to make suggestions concerning the plan as a
whole and to be listened to, it will be impossible to errect a sensible
building, i.e. a building that has a unified structure. This is the
necessary restriction to the general maxim that everybody has a
right to be listened· to and not to be excluded from discourse30 •
That there is such an evidently necessary restriction may occasion-
ally create difficulties in practice whenever the question arises
where the line between the two opposite principles is to be drawn.
29 Aristotle,-EN, I.1094a, 1 H.; III, 1113 a, 15 H.; Politics I 1256b 26-38.
30 See supra, p. 22. ' ,
23
It will be seen later" what solution to this problem Aristotle has
to offer. In this respect, at any rate, the statement made by Schlos-
ser, by Jacob Burckhardt, and by Lord Acton, that power is always
an evil and always has a corrupting influence is not correct.
Power-inequality of power-can not only be beneficial, but ab-
solutely necessary.
But there is another side to the picture that has been emphasised
no less strongly by Aristotle. Even before him Socrates and Plato
had pointed out that material goods are real 'goods' only as far as
they are sufficient to satisfy the real needs of their owner. This is
quite obvious where the goods consist either in the simple neces-
sities of life in their natural state or in the tools necessary for a
useful activity. It makes sense to store victuals that can be pro-
duced only during a certain time of the year until the next harvest.
It may even make sense to store grain during seven fat years in
order to have it in the following seven lean years. But since it is
perishable there is a limit to this beyond which further accumula-
tion becomes senseless; and from the Greek epic we can see that in
a pre-money economy, wherever food was plenty the owners used
to practice very free hospitality because there was no sense in
hoarding such goods and it was pleasant to have a guest who could
tell something of the outside world. With ordinary tools it is even
more obvious that it makes sense to keep a few awls in reserve in
case one should be broken or lost, but that it would be perfectly
senseless to accumulate hnndreds of awls".
This was, however changed to a considerable extent through
the invention of money. This invention greatly facilitated the
exchange of goods because it is easily divisible, can be exchanged
against everything, and in the form of precious metals, is nearly
31 See infra, p. 44 H.
32 For the general principle see Aristotle, Politics I, 1256 b 26-32 and above
all 1257b, 25-28: EXU(J"Cyt 'tEX:Vyt 'tou -ceA.ouS' eLS' lbt8tQO'V -COOV bE. tcQo£, 'to
'tEA-or; oux-e:tr; ciJ'teLQov. JteQur; YUQ ",0 ';EAO£, naamS' f. also 1257,b, 32: tho
'ttl f.1€V <pCdVE:r:aL &VU'Y%ULO'V dvctL ;cu'V,;or; tcAOU'&"OtJ .1tE~l(lS'.
24
imperishable". But it is precisely because of these its most valuable
properties that money can lead to the belief that there is no limit
to the usefulness of its accumulation34 , This, however, is a great
illusion. If and when material 'goods' and power are coveted
and acquired not because and to the extent to which they are
needed for an individual's sustenance and for enabling him to make
use of his abilities, but for their own sake, this gives rise to one of
the greatest evils that have plagued mankind since rather early
times: to what Aristotle has termed "A'OVE~lu: the desire to have
more not only than is needed for a useful existence-with the con-
sequence that others are deprived of their due share-but also more
than is good for the individual himself that acquires and possesses
this superfluous wealth and power. What can a person who has
more money than he can employ in useful activities do with his
money? He can either become a miser concentrating all his thoughts
and efforts on the preservation and further increase of his wealth,
thereby depriving himself of the satisfaction of making use of
more positive and really productive talents. Or he can become
what in antiquity was called an aow,o<; and is now called a play-
boy or playwoman, dissipating his wealth in a life of idleness, with
the same result". That this does not lead to a satisfactory life is
amply proved by the fact that the rate of suicide is much greater
among people who have too much than among those who have too
little. As to a particularly striking example one may perhaps also
point to Barbara Hutton, who clearly was one of the most un-
happy and frustrated human beings of her time, not in spite, but
because of her vast inherited wealth.
In order to see the cause of these observable facts one has to
follow Aristotle one step further in his analysis. All human activi-
ties have a ,tAo,;, a word which can be translated both by 'end' and
by 'purpose' (0'0 8V'XU). But there is a natural hierarchy of ends and
33 Ibidem 1257 a, 31 H.
,. Ibidem 1257b, 31 H.
aG Ibidem 1258 a, 2 ff. On the ~tor; UJtOAUUO''tLX6S see also EN, VII, 1148 a, 5 ff.
25
f
purposes. Most human activities find their end and purpose in a
material product or work (~QYov): the activity of the toolmaker,
for instance, in the finished tool. This tool in its turn serves .. as a
means to the activity, for instance, of a shoemaker, whose actlvlty
has its end and his purpose in the finished shoe. But the shoe d~es
not serve as a tool for another activity that ends in another matenal
object, but it serves as a means for an activity that has no suc~
end for instance, walking: in what Aristotle calls an EVEQyeLa. ThiS
acti~ity or energeia has, in a way, its end and purpose in itself. .
The material products of man's activity can be of a very high
rank and quality. But at the end of the ladder in Aristotle's opinion
is always an activity": the uppermost activity being life itsel: ..At
this point a further distinction has to be mad~. Just as any ~IVlllg
being if it does not die prematurely, reaches III a way a POl:,t of
maturity in a more or less perfect way, according to whether It has
been held back and crippled in the process or has been able to
realise the potentalities of its species to the full, just so ~he life .of
a human individual can consist in the simple preservation of hfe
itself (~y\v), a poor and empty kind of existence, or it can realise
what Aristotle calls" the 'good life' (d; ~y\v). But since, as has been
shown previously", man as the social animal par excellence cannot
as an individual realise all the potentialities of his species to the full,
his greatest fulfilment is the full development and use of his par-
ticular gifts and talents, what Aristotle calls fj lW.t' U.QBt~V EVEQYELa.
This is at the same time the greatest possible happiness (EMm[tovlct)
of the individual as well as his best integration in the society to
which he belongs: to do what ever he does well". . dium vitae and often suicide has already been shown. But the
This part of Aristotle's philosophy like other parts as well. IS
subject to certain qualifications, some of which can be dealt With
3a See Aristotle EN, I, 1097a, 15 £f.
37 Ibidem 1095 a, 19 H.; see also Politics I 1257b, 40 H.
38 See supra, p. 20 f. , ~ ''E'i::
39 Aristotle EN, II, 1106a, 22-24: 'Ii 'tou a:v8QwrwlJ uQ£'t'll £L'll 11 ."v;... cp
fi; s{l 'to so.\J'tou lQ'Yo'V ClJt06WO'£L.
26
.
i·'·····.·.·
•.•
'j only later". But one of these qualifications and a very importent
one, is discussed by Aristotle himself", at some length within the
1 very chapters in which he lays the foundations of his doctrine.
Because of man's imperfection it is not possible for him always
I and continously to engage in his highest activities. He is in need of
intermittent rest and recreation (&Vanet"aL,). This can assume the
II form of complete rest or sleep. But man is also in need of another
kind of recreation that consists in unpurposeful activity or what
is called play (nmbLa). This fact can become the cause of another
I kind of aberration. Since the necessities of life and the iniquities of
the distribution of the rewards of labor caused by the nAEovst;la of
part of the members of a society very often compel men to work
far beyond the limit within which work can be enjoyable it has
become a widespread belief that a life of complete idleness and
constant amusement was the most happy and satisfactory life. This
dream has found its most naive expression in the myth of the
'Schlaraffenland', the occupants of which material paradise have
only to open their mouths in order to have the most delicious
morsels of food fly into them so that they have not even to make
the effort of streching out their hands. But Herbert Marcuse's
dream" of a world in which mechanical devises make most of what
until recently had to be done by men superfluous and where what
still remains to be done is reduced to its lowest limit is not essential-
ly different from that primitive myth. This dream however is
again a dangerous illusion. That a life of idleness and constant
amusement is not a satisfactory life but much rather leads to tae-
underlying problem can also be illustrated by an analysis of what
40 See infra p. 32 f.
41 Aristotle, EN, X, 1176b, 9ff.; cf. also IV, 1127b, 33ff., especially 1128b,
3/4.; VII, 1150 h, 16-18.
42 Herbert Marcuse: The One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of
Advanced Industrial Society, Boston (Mass.), 1964. For a further discussion
Ii ' see K. v. Fritz, Grundprobleme der antiken Wissenschaft, Berlin, 1971,
p. XIXff.
27
many in our days consider the most hopeful approximation to a
solution of our problems: the socialism without suppression of free
thought as it has largely become a reality in Sweden. Yet he,"e
too we have the strange phenomenon, that the rate of mental dIs-
turbances above all, but to some extent also of suicide, is higher in
this blessed country than in most other countries.
This is indeed surprising since the Swedish system realises to a
considerable extent what, according to Aristotle's own observa-
tions, would be a nearly ideal state of things: a society in. which
the state or the society provides everybody freely both with the
necessities of life and with the tools and means for the development
of his specific gifts and talents. Nor can it be denied that the~e is
such a positive side to the Swedish experiment. But why then IS It
that in this social paradise one finds still so much taedium vitae
that reveals itself not only in the rate of mental disturbances and
of suicide but in recent times more and more often also finds vocal
expression. Obviously some ingredient, some spice,. that make: ~ife
really worth living is still missing. Has ancient social and political
philosophy something to say about this problem? In Plato's Re-
public, after Socrates has described what he calls the simple and
healthy society, in which everybody has some work assigned to
him and everybody is provided with everything he needs, Glaukon,
one of Plato's younger brothers, who is one of the interlocutors,
remarks dryly: it seems to me that you have left your society with-
out spice (aVEU 51jJOU)43. Thus Plato obviously was at least aware
of the problem. But what follows in the dialog is not quite easy to
understand, and this difficult problem may therefore for the
moment be kept in abeyance".
To return then for the time being to Aristotle: he concludes" the
section of his work last mentioned with the very concise observa-
tion that it appears to make more sense to rest and to play for the
43 Plato, Republic II, 372 c, 2.
44 See infra p. 52 f.
015 Aristotle EN, X, 1176 b, 32-35.
28
sake of recovering the capacity of doing something worth while
rather than to work in order to be able to do nothing. If then there
is some element of truth in what has been quoted from Aristotle
so far-and any observation of life as it really is tends to show
that there is much truth in it, even if a good deal of what has been
said requires further qualification-then one glance at the changes
that human life has undergone in the so-called civilised countries
since the time of the industrial revolution and the rise of modern
capitalism reveals the enormity of our aberrations and the dis-
tortion of the most fundamental conditions of a natural human
life.
It would of course require much too much space to describe and
analyse the rise and development of modern capitalism in detail.
It must suffice to point out some of its most glaring absurdities
against the background of ancient social philosophy. The introduc-
tion of mechanical labour saving devices in agreement with Francis
Bacon's, slogan -fusui et commodis hominum consulimus'46, as every-
body knows, because of the fierce competition between the first
organisers of this new kind of production, resulted in overwork,
child labor, and an exploitation of workers the like of which had
never existed to a similar extent under any system of slavery. At
a time when through the organised resistence of workers against
this excessive exploitation conditions had somewhat improved but
the wages of workers were still very low and hardly sufficient to
procure them anything like a satisfactory mode of living, Henry
Ford introduced the assembly line system in order to be able to
pay his workers higher wages without being ruined through the
competition of his fellow industrialists. But by introducing this
kind of system he deprived the laborers exactly of that element of
work that can make work a source of happiness and satisfaction:
48 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, praefatio; see also Partis secundae tiber
primus CXXIX and de Augmentis Scientiarum liber primus (p. 470 ff.) of
vol. I of the edition by Spedding, Ellis and Heath; concerning the effect of
the slogan in the following centuries cf. K. von Fritz, op. colI. (supra
note 42), p. XIII ff.
29
the satisfaction and pride of doing something well, since in the
assembly line the individual worker is just a link in an impersonal
chain and totally unable to do anything that bears the imprint of
his personality: a satisfaction that even a charwoman to a certain
extent can have if she does her work well.
In its further development this system has had the most absurd
consequences. Since it saved, beyond the effect of the introduction
of mechanical labor saving devices as such, so much labor it deprived
the working class doubly of the possibility of a satisfactory life:
because more and more of them were incorporated in the assembly
line system, and because others, so much work being 'saved', could
no longer find employment. Thus the third phase of the devel-
opment of the capitalist system in nearly all capitalist countries is
characterised by the evil of large scale unemployment. While the
necessity of building a large industry so to speak from scratch
prevented this evil from developing at the same time in the so-cal-
led socialist or communist countries, the fundamental conditions
there were by no means better. While the Sowjet Union prides it-
self on having freed the workers from capitalist exploitation, it
has not only taken over the assembly line system from the capi-
talist countries but has made it worse. One of the worst accusa-
tions raised by Karl Marx against the capitalist system was what
he called the speed-up. It is exactly this speed-up that the Sowjets
have introduced into the assembly line system. A few workers who
for a comparatively short time worked faster than any of their
fellow workers. Stachanoff in Russia and Hennecke in the so-
called German Democratic Republic, were celebrated as 'heroes of
labor' and awarded huge prices after which they were permitted
to withdraw from factory work and to take over less exacting jobs
in the higher administration. But the standard set by them was
used to impose higher standards of speed on the unfortunate
workers remaining in the factories. It is an example of hypocrisy
in cheating the very class of people in whose favor and for whose
benefit the whole system pretends t() have been created that was
unsurpassed even by Hitler. It is at the same time the proof that
30
the Sowjet system is in fact neither socialism nor communism, but
state capitalism, which, while doing away to some extent with
some of the evils of private capitalism, has increased others. As a
consequence it has led to workers' rebellions first in East Germany,
then in Hungary, lately again in Poland, and to an attempt to
change these conditions from within and from above in Czecho-
slovakia. All these rebellions and the attempt at reforms from above
have been suppressed by force, though in the end some concessions
reluctantly had to be made in most of these countries and even
in Russia.
In the capitalist countries of the West naturally some way had
to be found to cope with the evil of unemployment. There are mainly
two ways of accomplishing this within the framework of dominat-
ing conceptions. One of them again reveals the absurdity of the
whole system to the full. In all regions of the world throughout
the ages it had been the natural tendency to make the products of
man's work both beautiful and as lasting as possible. It remained
for our age to make things deliberately in such a way that they
would not last long but would soon have to be replaced, so that
the work of producing them would continuously go on. Clearly
this is another method beyond that of the assembly line to deprive
the worker of the satisfaction of doing something well. Other
methods of a similar kind are: to create by all sorts of psychological
tricks artificially desires for things that are in no way necessary
for a satisfactory life, or simply to force the customers to buy
things that they neither need nor want: a device that it used on a
grand scale by the package industry, which forces people to buy
things rapped up in ridiculously small containers or in containers
that cannot be used a second time: all this in order to promote
continuous new productions. Everybody knows that this causes a
deluge of refuse that gradually threatens to pollute earth, water,
and air to such an extent that it becomes a danger for all mankind.
But though there is an increasing number of men of knowledge
and insight who try to enlighten everybody concerning this im-
minent danger, nearly all political leaders, even if personally im-
31
 pressed by these warnings, shirk the issue because they are afraid
of having to struggle against the fierce opposition of those who
have vested their 'interests' in unnecessary and harmful produc-
tion.
The second way of coping with the problem of unemployment
looks,. on the face of it, quite harmless, even leading to a great
benefIt for all mankind. This is the increasing reduction of work-
ing ~ours that has taken place everywhere in recent years. It
certamly leads to a partial realisation of the dream of Herbert
Marcuse. But it has already been shown that this dream too is to
a large extent an illusion. All the initiators of socialist theories
being intellectuals themselves, believed that in the same measur~
as the necessitiy for manual work could be reduced through mecha-
nical devises an ever greater part of mankind could be set free
for the pursuit of higher creative work. Friedrich Engels, in other
respects by far the most realistic and intelligent of the theorists of
socialism, even nourished the dream that ultimately the necessity
for manual work could be reduced to such an extent that it could
be evenly distributed among all the able-bodies citizens of a socialist
state, who then could and would devote the rest of their time to
higher arts and thinking. But this dream is in conflict with
Aristotle's observation that not all human beings are primarily
gifted for intellectual pursuits as the theorists of socialism naturally
were. That he was right is clearly shown by the fact that since the
numbe: of weekly working hours of laborers in many capitalist
countnes have been reduced beyond a certain measure, the problem
of what to do with the free time left has become one of the major
problems of our time. Contrary to the universal belief of early
socialist theorists that the only cause of criminality was poverty,
i.e. the lack of sufficient means for a satisfactory life, criminality
has not decreased but increased with the reduction of poverty, and
nobody who lives with open eyes can be unaware of the fact that
a major cause of the increase of criminality is the boredom created
by too much leisure.
There are, of course, also other, less violent and destructive ways
32
1__.__ _
to overcome the boredom. One is the habit of a small part of the
workers to take on additional work in their free time, even in
countries where the acceptance of additional paid work is frowned
I
upon or outright prohibited by labor unions or by law. Ostel;1sibly
this is done for the sake of earning more money, but in actual fact
undoubtedly also for the satisfaction of doing something worth
while and to escape boredom. Where this is not done the inner
I
!
I
emptiness created by the lack of a fruitful occupation finds its ex-
pression in a craving for constant stimulation: one is tempted to
say: simple irritation from without: for instance the desire for a
constant flow of 'music' in restaurants, in department stores, in
offices, even in the study-rooms of students: a <music' that is not
perceived as music, i.e. as a work of art that has a structure, a
I
or
beginning and an end, but merely as a kind of stimulation of the
sensory organs. Still greater and universal is the crave for something
new, which in its present form has often the most pernicious con-
sequences in the humane sciences. While in the natural scienoes any
I new theory is at once subjected to severe tests and rejected if it
does not really lead to a new insight, in the humane sciences
I
!
originality is frequently valued more highly than truth. This had
its worst effects in psychology and above all in education, where
i contradictory doctrines-coddle your baby, don't coddle your
:1
baby, guide your child with authority, refrain carefully from any
i
[
authority-each of them claiming absolute validity, follow upon
one another in rapid succession so that the poor mother who reads
,l! such books finds herself in the position of the man with the long
beard whose attention was drawn to the problem of whether it was
i, better to sleep with his beard above or under the blanket and who
,i
j from then on never could sleep again. But it is by no means for-
eign to classical studies where the libraries are being clogged with
j useless or semi-useless dissertations in which 'new ideas' and new
I interpretations are propounded without self-criticism. We even
succumb to this modern craze in our congresses where everytime at
least half a day is reserved for the presentation of new discoveries
1 in the presence of journalists who are especially invited for this
f 33
I
J
occasion. That the new discoveries be discussed at a congress be-
longs of course to its most legitimate tasks. That they are com-
municated to a larger public is also allright. But the obligatory
invitation of journalists to their display at congresses shows, that
though the new discoveries as a rule contribute hardly a millionth
part to the enormous treasure of great art and wisdom of which
we are the keepers, the general belief is that the public can be
induced to find any value in what we are doing only if there is
something new to be shown at which one can gape for a moment
and say 'how interesting' in order to have forgotten it the very
next moment.
Contemplating these aberrations and absurdities along with their
consequences against the background of ancient and especially
Aristotelian insights it would, on the face of it, appear not too
difficult to indicate the direction in which mankind will have to
go in order to alleviate, if not to overcome, the evils from which
it suffers and by which it is threatened in the immediate future.
But in practice the difficulty is immense. For the development
initiated and furthered by modern capitalism, regardless of whether
private or state capitalismus, has since its beginnings gained such
momentum that it carries everything before it like an avalanche.
Not only the whole industrial and commercial systems would have
to be changed with the consequence of hurting innumerable 'vested
interests' that are liable to put up a strong resistence. But the mind
and feeling of a very large number of people who have no vested
interests to defend, has been strongly affected by the creation of
new customs.
It was a belief of many theorists of socialism including Marx
that through a j·evolutionary change of society it would be possible
to create a new man, a kind of superman, free of the imperfections
and shortcomings of earlier generations and that-once the remain-
ing survivers of earlier generations who had been corrupted by a
corrupt society had died out-this new man would make possible
the withering away of the state and the realisation of a truely free
and harmonious society. But in actual fact the rulers of the so-cal-
34
led socialist states feel more and more compelled to defend them-
selves by ever more cruel and oppressive means against the cri-
ticisms and the attacks of men who were born after the great revo-
lution of 1917 and have entirely grown up within the revolu-
tionized society.
Turning then again to the West and private capitalism it is a
hopeful sign, that in most Western countries more and more voices
are raised by workers who demand better working conditions,
especially the replacement of the assembly line system by a system
enabling the worker to accomplish something of his own, rather than
higher wages. But an investigation recently made by a study group
from Harvard" showed that though there was a not quite in-
considerable group that wanted the assembly line system abolished
the majority of worker pleaded for retaining it. The main reason
given was that, if the system was abolished, cars would inevitably
become more expensive so that many workers who now owned a
car would no longer be able to afford one. Now it is true that
under existing conditions many workers need a car in order to get
from their lodgings to the place of their work. But at the same
time many common means of transportation especially many rail-
roads in the U.S.A. but to a lesser extent also in Europe have gone
out of business because people prefer to ride in their own cars.
The reason, again especially in the U.S.A., is that cars have become
a status symbol not only for the middle class, where a girl of
17 complains in a letter to a newspaper that she is looked down
upon by her classmates because she has no car of her own, but
also by many laborers. It has come down to the workers as a means
of 'conspicuous consumption', a kind of status symbol that Thor-
stein Veblen still considered restricted to the 'leisure class'.
Yet these means of locomotion, which also have become status
symbols, are one of the major causes, if not the major cause, of air
47 See Work in America. Report of a Special Task Force to the Secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare. Foreword by Elliot L. Richardson, Cam-
bridge (Mass.) and London, 1972.
35

pollution. With what results has been shown by an investigation
recently conducted in Munich. It had been observed that in recent
years there had been alarming incidents of lung cancer in children
of the age of eight to ten, something quite unheard of in earlier
times. The reason was not too difficult to discover. The exhaust
fumes of combustion engines, being heavier than air, remain im-
mediately above the pavement, just up to the level of the noses of
the children from three to six. They, therefore, when walking in
the streets going to kindergarten or accompanying their parents
inhale these fumes much more than. the adults, and the results show
themselves a few years later. This appears to be a very heavy price
to pay both for the convenience of an ever available means of in-
dividual transportation and for a status symbol.
Status symbols of course have played a large role long before
the beginning of capitalism. They are a means for the satisfaction
of human vanity that it will probably never be possible entirely to
do away with, human beings being what they are. But even here
the distortion of natural attitudes and evaluations through the
influence of capitalism can be shown up. As an illustration I may
perhaps permitted to mention an example that I have mentioned
elsewhere but which is worth repeating. I knew a man who had
both a very great talent and great enthusiasm for furniture mak-
ing. During his week-ends he used either to go to the woods in
order to select special kinds of wood which he then carefully
matured in order to use it for his work, or he worked in his private
workshop to make beautiful pieces of furniture. But during the
rest of the week he worked in a business firm as a moderately
successful business man; certainly not doing this work badly but
neither with enthusiasm nor with more than average talent. Ob-
viously, according to Aristotelian principles, it would have been
natural for him to make furniture making his main ocupation. The
reason why he did not do so was, that in order to earn as much
money for himself and his family as he did as a businessman, his
furniture would have had to be rather expensive and he would, at
least at first, have had considerable difficulty in selling it, secondly
36
-- ---- ~
that in our society a white collar worker is considered of higher
rank than a mere craftsman. Yet there can be hardly any doubt
that in most ages, i.e. in all periods that still had a sense of beauty,
most of all in that period of a revival of the classical spirit that is
called the renaissance, he would have been a very highly honored
and admired man, held in much higher esteem than an ordinary
trader.
But this again is one of the characteristicism of our times and
one of the worst consequences of the allpervading power of
capitalism that the most beautiful works of art produced by earlier
periods are either stored away in museums, the most famous of
which are overstuffed that they can display only a part of their
treasures at one time, or are degraded to means of financial specu-
lation while at the same time the uglification of the world in which
most of us are compelled to live in our every daylife constantly
procedes at a terrifying pace. And this too is hardly better in the
so-called socialist countries in spite of the famous Moscow subway
and other ostentatious public buildings of the Stalin era.
Yet the ability of consciously creating something beautiful has
been one of the most distinguishing features of man ever since he
rose above all other animals many thousands of years before what
we use to call the beginning of history. But it is characteristic of
our times that modern scientists and scholars make every effort to
prove that the most beautiful cave and Sahara drawings were made
without any conscious sense of beauty for purely utilitarian pur-
poses, as if a human beeing could produce beauty of such quality
without having a feeling for it and as if the side-by-side of artis-
tically indifferent drawings and drawings of the highest beauty in
the Sahara desert was not ample proof of the fact that the draw-
ings in general were made for utilitarian purposes on the basis of
the belief in magic, as the moderns believe, but that among the
authors of these drawings there were also artists who must have
been conscious of their art. It is even more characteristic of our
times that obviously some of the scientists mentioned are not per-
sonally blind to beauty-though some moderns like the great
37
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein obviously are, when they declare,
that beauty the most profound phenomenon of the world reach-
ing deep do~n into the animal world, is but a matter of subjective
taste. But under the influence of the money-thinking of the capi-
talist age, of which Aristotle so rightly says" that it is concerned
with pure living (~iiv), not with the good life (di ~iiv), they are
ashamed of admitting that beauty should have played a role in the
life of man ever since his rise above the animals.
It would be easy to go on and on showing up the aberrations
and absurdities produced by modern capitalism in both its forms.
What has been said, however, is amply sufficient to show that we
are faced with two main tasks. One of them, the preservation and
restoration of what is called the environment, is most urgent and
of such a kind that everyone who has recognised its nature and
urgency should do everything in his power as an individual to
promote its solution. But classical antiquity can contribute little to
it. The other is the reversal of those changes in human attitudes,
in human habits, and modes of feeling and thinking, that have
been brought about by the developments of excommunication from
early christianity to the secularised atheistic religions of to-day on
the one side, and by the development of capitalism on the other.
This is a task that can be accomplished only by a very long and
difficult process. Yet it is a task that has to be tackled and to be
carried through if mankind is ever to return to a more satisfactory
way of living: better adapted to the everlasting natural order of
things. To the solution of this task the study of ancient history
and ancient philosophy can make a very great contribution. It is
evident that to achieve this it is not sufficient to present a mem-
orandum to an international congress of classical scholars nor by
publishing an individual book about it, however large and com-
prehensive. It is necessary to keep working for decade: on :he
various problems arising in this connection in collaboratlOn with
scientists and scholars from other fields and to make the results
48 Aristotle, Politics I, 1257b, 32-1258 a, 2.
38
,
1·'.:··
continuously accessible to a larger public. This will still leave room
for all sorts of more specialised studies of the traditional kind. But
all of them should be integrated in this larger effort.
The analysis pursued so far, however, has left a number of loose
ends which must be taken up again if what has been said is to be
convincing. It has been said at one occasion" that the belief in the
possibility of expressing absolutely valid and binding principles
of human conduct in words was one of the major causes of the
habit of excommunication and of the refusal of the representatives
of the various modern ideologies seriously to listen to one another.
But how are we to find valid criteria for the solution of our pro-
blems at all if this belief has to be given up? It was said at another
occasion" that apart from the reason just mentioned there was still
another very effective reason for the same modern predicament.
These then are the two most important questions that have still to
be answered. There remain also some minor ones.
It is one of the most widely accepted beliefs of our times that
it is always society and only society that corrupts man: again a
belief that leads to the strangest consequences. Many of the young
rebels with whom our law courts, often vainly, try to cope,
seriously believe that one has only to destroy society and the
natural goodness of man will come to the fore. In the Western law
courts themselves nearly every crime or misdeed is more or less
condoned if the criminal inclinations of the accused can be blamed
on society. In the so-called socialist countries on the contrary,
where the existing society is officially claimed to be near perfect,
anyone who dares to criticise this society is considered a worse
offender than an ordinary criminal.
Yet on purely logical grounds, it is difficult to see how society,
which after all consists of individuals, could ever become corrupt
and corrupting, if the individuals, uninfluenced by and outside
~ society, are naturally good. Aristotle, in the first book of his Politics
J
I 40 See supra p. 11 ff.
50 See supra p. 14 f.
J 39
goes much further than this argument taken by itself would justify.
He gives in no uncertain terms expression to the opinions1 that
man growing up outside society is more savage than the most
savage beasts.
This view, so alien to widely accepted modern beliefs, seems
nevertheless to be confirmed by some most modern inquiries. A
few years ago a book was published in France under the title 'les
enfants sauvages'" the two authors of which, Lucien Malson and
Octave Mannoni, had collected all the documentary material they
could get hold of concerning human children that had been brought
up by wild animals, including the report of a doctor of the early
19th century, whose name, Jean Itard, appears then also among
the names of the authors of the book. There have been in fact an
astoundingly large number of well attested cases, many of them of
such a kind, that there can be not the slightest doubt that the
children were not exposed by their parents because they had mental
or bodily defects or defects of character, but that they were car-
ried away by wild animals during the first weeks or months of
their lives. By' far the most interesting case, however, is the one
described by Dr. Itard, because he is the only one who made a pro-
longed effort to bring the child back into human civilisation and
kept a daily diary concerning his efforts and their results.
He lived at the time of Napoleon and was officially entrusted
by the emperor with the care of a boy of about seven years-his
actual age could of course never be established-who had been
captured in the woods, who did not know any human language,
and who could only utter animal sounds. The most interesting
thing in this report is that the boy, in the course of time, learned
to express himself in a very primitive French, seems to have come
to like, in a way even to love the man who took care of him and,
51 Aristotle, Politics, I 1253 a, 1-7 and 31-37. But d. also infra p. 46 f.
52 Lucien Malson, Jean Itard, Octave Mannoni: Les enfants sauvages. My the et
Realite, Paris, 1964. German translation. Die wilden Kinder, Frankfurt,
1972.
40
in order to please him, tried to learn civilised behaviour. But, never-
theless, against his conscious efforts, from time to time 'his savagery
broke through again and again.
It is also interesting that not much later a girl in a similar condi-
tion came of its own accord to a farm, obviously in order to find
help after her twin sister, with whom she had lived until then, had
died. This girl proved much more amenable to the attempt to
civilise her than the boy had done: as the authors of the book
believe, not so much because she was a girl and not a boy but be-
cause she had had the company of one other human being while
living in the wilderness. In fact the two girls seemed to have
developed some primitive sound language by which they had been
able to communicate with each other.
But a still more conclusive proof that Aristotl's opinion is cor-
rect can perhaps be found in a more general observation. Konrad
Lorenz in his famous book 'Das sogenannte Bose' (translated into
English with the title 'On Agression') has shown that mammals
(with the exception of rats) and birds and, to a large extent, also
fish do not kill animals of the same species if these make signs of
submission; with three exceptions: 1. when there is cause for
special rage which, however, occurs rather rarely, 2. when they
are crowded into too narrow space, in whi~h situation they can
become savagely aggressive, and 3. in the case of extreme star-
vation. Apart from rats-and they kill, but as a rule do not eat
one another-man living under primitive conditions appears to
be the only exception to this rule. Cannibalism is a human special-
ity. Man is the only higher animal that hunts individuals of his
own species systematically for eating. Furthermore in such pri-
mitive tribal societies a man must prove his virility not by sub-
duing, but by killing a man belonging to a different tribe. The
tribe here, it seems, assumes the function of the species.
This observation is not made by Aristotle. But an inquiry into
early Greek developments starting from this observation produces
very interesting results which ultimately lead back to Aristotle's
doctrines: 1. According to Aristotle the xcn' UQfn]V eVEQYec,,: doing
41
 something well is the greatest cause of satisfaction, of happiness
for an individual as well as the major cause of his reputation in the
community to which it belongs. But as the earliest Greek poetry
shows ags'>1 in the earliest period is above all military prowess:
the greatest cause of pride and satisfaction for the individual pos-
sessing it and of reputation 2. As the early Greek legends show
there were originally no laws or conventions protecting a man not
belonging to one's own community from being robbed, captured
or even killed. He was considered free booty. On the other hand
the obligations towards individuals of the same tribe and especially
of the same family were considered very sacred. To maim or kill
a near relative even involuntarily or without knowing is something
terrible, causing a 'pollution' as a consequence of which the 'guilty'
individual is expelled from his community and has to be cleansed
from his pollution elsewhere. Both facts are illustrated by the
myth of Oedipus who, when he meets at a crossroad outside of his
territory a man who appears to him to assume a threatening
attitude, at once kills him: as he believes in self-defence. This does
not cause him the slightest scruple until he discovers that the man
whom he killed was his father, following which the very same
deed becomes something terrible and has to be expiated in the most
cruel fashion. 3. and this is the most important aspect: It can be
shown that the first extension of protection beyond the confines
of their own community was granted to men with exceptional
talents: seers, poets and singers, physicians, and to a certain extent
skilled metal workers: they became liauAo,: men not to be robbed
(a1JAi'iv), which in regard to ordinary individuals still for quite some
time continued to be legitimate. It is from these beginnings that
legal protection was gradually extended first through special treaties
to groups of communities and finally, to a certain extent, to all
human beings.
This development, which here cannot be followed up in detail
but only briefly referred to, confirms both of Aristotle's fun-
damental doctrines, the view that man outside society is more
savage than the most savage beast-the different human com-
! terms to turn them again into human beings. And it is obvious
42
I 43
1
I
I
mumtles originally being, so to speak, outside one another as if
they were different species-and the conviction of the extreme
importance of different human individuals working together in
different functions on the basis of different talents and inclina-
tions, the rarest and most outstanding talents gradually breaking
the boundaries of the isolated communities and bringing about a
greater unification of mankind.
These two fundamental insights of Aristotle's make it possible,
better to recognise the nature and causes of some of the greatest
evils plaguing our times. Obviously it is not primarily society-
even the most corrupt society being still better for man than no
society at all-that does the greatest harm to the individual, but
the exclusion from human society. In a way this has been realised
all along and it finds expression everywhere in the custom of law
courts of granting extenuating circumstances to offenders who can
be shown to have grown up more or less outside society. But other
conclusions drawn by many of the most violent critics of con-
temporary society are altogether erroneous. This is especially true
of the belief that one has only to destroy society for paradise to
break out through the natural goodness of man. The very opposite
is the case. This can most clearly be shown by the example of the
most fanatical critics themselves. Feeling themselves excluded from
the larger society to which they belong, they form small societies of
their own with the exclusiveness of primitive tribes, considering
everybody not belonging to their group as inhuman and therefore
not deserving the slightest consideration so that he can be freely
killed for the sake of the good cause. Clearly this is a reversal to
the most primitive tribal barbarism on an ideological basis, free
from any attempt whatsoever to put oneself in the place of an-
other man and to see things through his eyes.
It is one of the most urgent but also most difficult tasks of our
times to bring these groupes back into society, i.e. in Aristotle's
that this cannot be done by using against them the same methods
that they propose to use against those whom they consider their
enemies: threats and terror, though it is necessary to protect them
and society from their violence, even if temporarily this has to be
done by force. According to Aristotle", what most of all makes a
man a real human being is what he calls the A6yoC; 1lEQL tou &yu~ou
x.ut toU xU'X-ou, :rtfQL -rov b~xutou ",at tOV &Mxou; the discussion about
what is good and bad or evil and of what is just and what is unjust.
Here then we come back to our starting point: the necessity of
overcoming the habit of mutual excommunication. But at the same
time the second major problem left unsolved so far raises its head.
One of the major causes of the habit of excommunicating one
another seemed to be the belief in absolutely valid and binding
principles of conduct expressable in definite formulae. Yet: on
what basis can we conduct our discussion if such formulae may not
be used?
The solution of this problem given by Aristotle is what he calls
the method of tU1lC(> "EQl)'U~Elv54: the drawing of outlines within
which alone a sensible discussion of concrete problems of conduct
is possible. These outlines are drawn on the basis of those observa-
tions of the natural order of things and of man's place in this order
which were discussed at an earlier occasion". Looking at these ob-
servations one will find that they point to principles which at first
sight may appear contradictory but at closer inspection reveal
themselves as complementary to each other. On the basis of the
observation that man is so much a social animal that he cannot
even become a real human being without living in the society of
other human beings one can come to the conclusion that the inter-
ests of the individual are entirely subordinate to those of society
and have to be sacrificed to the latter. On the basis of the observa-
tion that the functioning of any human society depends on the
collaboration of different individuals with different talents and
inclinations and hence on the free development of· these talents,
53
54.
Aristotle, Politics I, 1253 a, 9-31.
Aristotle EN, I. 1094b, 11-20/21; X, 1176 a, 31 H.; II, 1104 a, 1 H.; 1107b,
14 H.; cf. also ltE(H-YUCPEtv I, 1098 a, 20 H.
55 supra p. 20 H.
44
one can come to the opposite conclusion that the free development
of these talents must in no way be hampered or interfered with by
society. Obviously the truth lies in the middle, and it depends on
the circumstances which of the two opposite principles should be
given precedence. If and when the existence of the society is
threatened the personal interests of the individuals must to a
certain extent be sacrificed to the survival of the community or
I
society. In times at which there is no serious threat of this kind
the interests of the community itself are best served by giving as
much leeway as possible to the natural inclinations of individuals.
~l On the basis of Plato's observation56 that the incidents of human
I
j
life are too variegated to make it possible to lay down the rules of
I human conduct, of what is right or wrong, in such a way as to do
! justice to all possible individual situations, since all laws by neces-
I
I
sity have to be set down in general terms, one can come to the
conclusion that the best thing is to make no laws and to leave all
legal decisions to wise judges who can make their decisions accord-
I
1
ing to the merits of the individual case. On the basis of the obser-
vation that where there are no formulated laws judges even with the
best intentions to be just and 'objective' will come to very different
II conclusions in quite analogous cases with the intolerable conse-
quence that nobody knows what he has to expect, one can come to
I the conclusion that everything must be fixed by law. It is the old
I controversy between the principle of rigid application of positive
law on the one hand, and the principle of fairness on the other, a
I
dilemma, with which jurists, lawyers, and judges have struggled
throughout the centuries. Again it is clear that the truth is some-
where in the middle, but that it is extremely difficult to find it in
the individual case.
! On the basis of the observation that unfavorable circumstances
often have a very strong influence on the development of criminal
I inclinations in individuals one can draw the conclusion that society
has no right to take punitive measures against the criminal, ,es-
j
56 Plato, Statesman 294 a, 10 ff.
45
I
I
pecially if he claims to act on the basis of his 'convictions', nor
even to defend itself against him by force. On the basis of the
observation that criminals by no means die out or disappear where
the supposed social causes of their existence have been eliminated
one can draw the conclusion that only the ruthless 'liquidation' of
criminal and 'asocial' elements can cleanse and improve human
society.
On the basis of the observation that the unrestricted accumu-
lation of wealth in the hands of few has often had most pernicious
consequences one can deduce that private property should be alto-
gether abolished and all striving for even temporary private gain
must be prevented by the most draconic measures. On the basis
of the observable fact that the accumulation of wealth in the hands
of some individuals has occasionally been used for highly beneficial
purposes, that could hardly have been effected by an inevitably
bureaucratic government organisation, one can deduce that no
limits must be set to such accumulation of wealth. Even the more
special question touched upon at an earlier occasion of when and
under what circumstances a difference of power between different
individuals is beneficial and necessary comes under this head.
Generally speaking all this shows what Aristotle meant when he
said, that the 'good' was a 'middle' (ftEOOV) between extremes. But
it is a 'middle'" that cannot be rigidly fixed for all times but has
always to be found with due consideration for all existing circum-
stances.
The same series of examples illustrates also clearly what the
function of the method of tV",!? ".QLAa~.Lv is and in what its ad-
vantage consists. The line drawn on the basis of an analysis of the
natural order of things and of man's place within this order leaves
outside the realm of meaningful discussion the question of whether
the assembly line system as suchis good for men. But it leaves in-
51 Aristotle, EN, IT, 1106 a, 26-1109, 20 ff.; Aristotle ibid. 1107 a, 23 fE;
points also out that this <middle' in a way is also an extreme (chtQov), since
there is a point which is the exactly right one, and which can be approached
and approximated from both sides.
46
I
,
side this realm the more specific question of whether at the time of
its introduction this might not nevertheless have given a beneficial
impulse at a time when the development of the payment of sensible
wages had reached an impasse, and it leaves even more clearly
open as sensible the discussion of how quickly and by what methods
the assembly line system can be abolished and replaced by better
working methods without creating too great economic disturbances,
which, through the resentment created by them, might hinder a
further advantageous development.
Thus the Aristotelian method of tV,,'!' "eQLA"~.LV opens wide the
room for unprejudiced discussion of all real problems of human
conduct, does away with the belief that everything can be regu-
lated by the literal application of formulated rules and maxims,
a belief that inevitably leads to mutual excommunication, and yet
has not to give up an ultimate orientation in life on the basis of
unquestionable insights. It is with the help of this method that it
may perhaps become possible gradually to stop and finally to re-
verse that trend of thinking and feeling that has led mankind ever
farther away from nature and to bring about a new enlightenment
concerning the natural foundations of human life, though the dif-
ficulties ate very great, where so many natural relations have been
perverted.
Konrad Lorenz in his most recent book", in which he deals
among other things with the relation between the generations
among men has made the observation that any established rules of
social intercourse have a tendency to become rigid and that it is
the task of the younger generation in any epoch to keep things
fluid by revolting to a certain extent against their fathers. This is
in general perfectly true, though, as Lorenz himself has pointed
out in this connection, in order to function well and for the benefit
of mankind it presupposes that the younger generation retains also
a good deal of the traditions handed down by their fathers, so that
58 Konrad Lorenz, Die Rlickseite des Spicgels. Versuch ciner Naturgeschichte
menschlichen Erkennens, Miinchen, 1973.
47
 the right 'middle'-again we encounter Aristotle on our way-is
attained. But the difficulty in our time is not only, as Lorenz ob-
serves, that the rift between the older and at least a very consi-
derable part of the younger generation has become too great, but
that many of the young rebels who consider themselves most pro-
gressive, quite against their natural task, advocate the establish-
ment of a society with very rigid rules and controls.
It is therefore necessary to dig somewhat deeper into the nature
and causes of this strange phenomenon. It is a fact that in the
progress of science not only in modern times, but also in antiquity
discoveries made by very young people have played a very great
role. This is especially so in the most abstract sciences, mathematics
and physics. Nearly all the greatest mathematicians and physicists
of the last century or so have made their great discoveries in their
earlier years and used their later years either to elaborate and to
expand their early discoveries, like Georg Cantor, Hilbert, Max
Planck, Einstein, and Heisenberg, or to bring the different fields
of their science together and to look for connecting lines, like
Felix Klein.
But this is true only of fields in which one can look at things
purely in the abstract. Yet with the modern overevaluation of the
socalled natural sciences this has led to the belief that this must
be so in all fields and that therefore we must look for young
people to solve also all our problems in the social and in the poli-
tical field. Only very recently the present secretary of the United
Nations, Mr. Waldheim, has called upon the governments of all
nations to encourage the young to think up new solutions to our
many social problems. In this form and in the present situation
~
this is, however, a great error. It is a characteristic of mathematical
and physical problems, that their best solutions are those that re-
dnce them to their simplest form. This requires great acumen, but
no experience. Human problems, to the contrary, are so complicat-
d that they cannot be dealt with in a sensible way without the
I
I
! 48
elp of experience, both in the form. of individual experience and
of that larger experience that is gained through a knowledge of
history. 'On ne comprend rien quand on est jeune' said old Auguste (
Rodin, one of the greatest artists of the end of the last century.
On the basis of this fundamental insight all periods in which social
life was comparatively sound, whether in classical Greece and
Rome, or in ancient China or India-or among some American
Indian tribes which had a very well integrated social system"-
have had a very high respect for old age. That this is no longer
so has many reasons, varying from one country to another: the
desire for something new for the sake of newness which is the
result of the inner emptiness promoted by the deficiencies of the
industrial age, in Germany by the bad conscience of many repre-
sentatives of the older generation for having supported the Nazi
regime or at least submitted to it, but above all a false concept of
democracy.
In antiquity this was most vividly pointed out by Plato in that
famous chapter in the 8th book of his Republic, in which he
describes 60 the deplorable state of things in a 'truely democratic
democracy' where the parents are afraid of their children and the i
teachers of their pupils and where the old men play up to the
young in order not to appear old-fashioned and authoritative. But
Plato in this connection also points out that this is not primarily
the fault of the young but of the old who have failed to educate
themselves, so that they have no natural authority and therefore
are unable to give the younger generation what it rightfully expects
of them. In the modern universities of the West this was the
consequence of the fact that an increasing number of university
teachers taught only their specialties in such a way that no insight
or guidance concerning the fundamental facts and problems of
human life could be gained from such teaching, while in the so-
called socialist countries of the East education was replaced by
indoctrination. This situation is of course not improved but made
119
60
See the excellent book by K. N. Llewellyn and E. A. Hoebel, The Cheyenne
Way, University of Oklahoma Press, 1941.
Plato, Republic VIII, 562 e-563 b.
49
worse by one of the most striking structural changes in German
universities through the most recent 'reforms': the splitting up of
the traditional faculties into small units, called 'Flachbereiche', thus
doing away with the last traces of that universality that makes a
university a university.
All this is the very opposite of what Wilhelm Humboldt con-
sidered the most essential task of a university. Humboldt's ideal of
a university is, of course, pooh-poohed in our days as antiquated
and undemocratic, designated to create and favor an 'elite' rather
than being established for the benefit of the people as a whole. The
real difference however is that Humboldt's ideal aims at making it
possible for everybody to reach the highest level of accomplishment
and hence also of satisfaction that he can reach on the basis of his
personal capacities while the modern concept of democracy aims
at bringing everybody down to a level so low that nobody can be
tempted to envy him. Envy is a bad criterion for the establishment
of justice, and on the basis of Aristotelian insights it is clear that
the modern ideal of democracy inevitably causes an overall loss of
satisfactory and 'good' living (dj ~fiv). And in fact the partial
realisation and actualisation of the principles of false democracy
has by no means allayed the combined resentment of those whose
envy has still not been stilled and of those who justifiedly feel
deprived of the possibility of making use of their talents, the
latter of course being especially the case with writers and artists.
All these factors combine to promote among a large section of
the young a blind activism, which finds it easier and more com-
patible with the restlessness of the age, constantly to demonstrate
with words and action for one cause or another without ever
spending much thought on the question of whether the cause in
itself is worthy of these efforts or, if it is, whether the means
applied to promote it are apt to have the desired effect. In this
situation it becomes the duty of the older generation, which after
all is not without responsibility for the impasse in which we find
ourselves, to take up the double task of trying to break through
the too narrow principles by which all sorts of ideologies attempt
50
to regulate human life and yet at the same time to show on the
basis of experience the limits of what human beings are able to
attain. It is also their duty not to allow themselves to be intimi-
dated by the attacks, theoretical and even physical, to which they
inevitably expose themselves by taking such a stand. In perform-
ing these duties ancient philosophy can be of very great help.
In order to deal with the problem of the limits of what human
beings as human beings can attain it is necessary to take up again
the last of the threads that have been left dangling in the earlier
part of the discussionS!; perhaps the most important of all. It is the
problem of the spice that appeared to be lacking both in the sound
and healthy state described by the Platonic Socrates at the begin-
ning of the discussion of the origin of human society and of the
state, and in the liberal non-oppressive socialism practiced in
Sweden in our time. What follows in Plato's Republic is very
strange and very complicated. First the Platonic Socrates de-
scribes a society that indulges in all sorts of luxurious living. Then
he says that such a society cannot exist without depriving other
people by force of their possessions". Hence, he says, such a luxu-
riant state or society will be in need of a great and very efficient
professional army". Then he discusses the training and education
of the warriors of this state; and the end of it is that all the luxury
has completely disappeared, but the warriors do not only remain,
but the rulers of the state are selected from their midst. It is not
possible to discuss all the details of this strange story in a limited
space. But the meaning is obviously that there is something militant
about the 'virtues', that they cannot truely develop in a laissez-
faire society, that they cannot exist without tension. Yet the ideal
state of Plato's Republic is itself a state in which everything is
regulated according to very rigid rules and everybody is subjected
61 See supra p.-28 ff.
62 Plato Republic II, 373 d ff.
63 Ibidem 374 c ff.
64 Plato, Laws, I, 642 c.
51
to the severest discipline. That there came a time in Plato's life
when he was no longer quite sure whether this was the best pos-
sible state of things is perhaps proved by that passage in Plato's
Laws", where the Spartan Megillos, after the strict discipline to
which all Spartans are subjected from their earliest age and the
severe education that all of them receive has been praised, observes
that all this is a good thing but that if an Athenian who has not
been subjected to such discipline nevertheless becomes an aVYjQ
ayuM" he surpasses all others. For such men alone who have
developed their qualities without constraint from the outside, alto-
gether out of themselves are in possession of true not artificially
("AUCn:W,) made excellence.
It is in agreement with this that later in the same dialog the most
rigid rules governing the life of the two ruling classes in the Re-
public are not repeated and a difference in the size of possessions
is permitted among men belonging to the same class. What is more:
it is said" that the society or state described in this dialog-even
though in itself in comparison to the state of the Republic only a
second-best state-is only a "uga5ELYflu, upon which one must look
in order to come as near as possible to an attainable ideal: in prac-
66
tice one has always to consider the existing circumstances in order
to see how far one can hope to approach this ideal. Yet in the
state constructed in this late work of Plato's everything is still very
strictly regulated and leaves little freedom to the development of
the indiviual.
Aristotle in his earlier years had also started with the construc-
tion of an ideal state, traces of which can still be discovered in what
are now the last two books of his Politics. In his later years he has
preferred on the one hand-in what are now the first books of his
politica-to draw those outlines within which according to his ob-
servations a sensible discussion of what is good for man and society
can take place, and on the other hand-in the central books of the
65 Plato, Laws, 746 hIe.
66 Ibidem 747 die; d. also 709 a fl.; 736 b fl.; 769 d.
52
same work-to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various
types of states and societies and the ways in which they can be re-
formed and improved without violence. What he expounds here
and in various parts of his ethical writings shows that in his most
mature age he no longer believed in the possibility or even the
desirability of the creation of a society in which everything is
regulated in the best possible way because this would take away
all risk and tension: the very spice of life: that therefore it is
necessary to leave some leeway also to hnman errors and follies
and that it is the task of social and political philosophy to prevent
these aberrations and the tensions resulting from them, through
enlightenment and reforms promoted by this enlightenment from
becoming destructive rather than to try to prohibit them alto-
getber.
And indeed it is the fundamental error inherent in all social and
political utopias from the earliest times to the present that they
aim at bringing human life into a perfect form by moulding it from
the outside. But it is of the essence not only of human life but of all
life that it can find its true form and perfection only by growth
from within: (UVTOljlUWS;) as Plato calls it in the first book of his
Laws", which since it is dependant on the outside world, inevitably
involves tension, risk and danger. The attempt, therefore, to free
life from all tension, risk, and danger is the surest way to kill it.
Ultimate safety is only in death.
Yet, since, as Aristotle has shown, man is also par excellence a
social animal and cannot become a real human being without
participating in human society we encounter at this point the last
and most essential of those antinomies, which constitute so central
a part of his social and political philosophy. In a way this is noth-
ing but another aspect of the first of the antinomies mentioned
before: the antinomy between the legitimate demands made by
67 Plato, La~s, I, 642c, 9; for a v\:!ry lively exposition of what a.t'n;ocpu&~
me~ns (;Vlthout reference to Plato) d. M. C. .Richards, Centering, Wesleyan
Umverslty Press, 1964.
53
society on the individual belonging to it and the equally legitimate
demand of the individual to be permitted to develop to the full
his inborn talents and capacities, ultimately for the benefit of the
same society. But as Aristotle has pointed out", there is also a pos-
sibility of overcoming to a certain extent this antinomy. Nobody
can become a real human being, much less a wise man or a saint,
without having gone through that education by society that is
provided by the A6yo~ JtfQt '(01) aya.frov ml 'X.m~ou, "tau (H,l<.atou x.aL
lOU &Bbw'U. A saint or guru of the age of sixteen is, therefore, ipso
facto suspect, especially if, differently from Saint Francis whose
conversion also took place at a but slightly higher age he considers
and proclaims himself a saint. But after having reached maturity in
this process he can, by developing what is 'divine' in him {to {lELOV),
rise above the status of a mere ordinary human being, so that he
is no longer to the same degree in need of the society of others,
though for his mere physical existence he may still to a certain
extent depend on their help. Or: as Aristotle has formulated it": a
man living outside of human society is either less or more than a
mere human being. For him, the philosopher, this status is attained
by a man who has retired from all other pursuits in life and devot-
ed himself exclusivly to the acquisition of knowledge and insight".
Some such view of the possibility of rising above the state of an
ordinary man, either in the form of a wise man or of a saint, can
be found in all higher civilisations and religions; and whatever
one may believe concerning the actualisation of this possibility, the
belief in it has certainly played a very great role in the history of
mankind.
At the end of this brief memorandum a few words have to be
said concerning its purpose and method. Its purpose is to show
what guidance a study of ancient history and ancient social and
philosophy can give us to the solution of some of the most burning
68 Aristotle, EN, X 7, 1177 a, 12-1178 a, 8.
69 Aristotle, Politics I, 1253 a 3/4.
70 EN, X, 1177 a, 19 ff.
54
problems of our times. It appears that the greatest enlightenment
in this respect can be gained from the philosophy of Aristotle. But
Aristotle's most profound insight are often compressed into one
or two sentences inserted into a context of specific problems of
his own time, as for instance the institution of slavery or the
necessity felt by him to criticise earlier philosophers in order to
defend his own point of view. I have therefore taken the liberty
of taking passages from different parts of his work together and of
illustrating them and elaborating them with the help of examples
taken both from antiquity and from modern times. This is, of
course, not the true philological method, which would have re-
quired first to interpret every passage in its own context, possibly
developing also its larger implications, then to interpret other pas-
sages in the same way and only then to bring the different passages
together and then to show how, by taking them together, by point-
ing out their implications and elaborating them further, the prin-
ciples of a comprehensive and comprehensible social and political
philosophy applicable to our problems can be derived. But it is
obvious that this would have required much more space than was
available in a necessarily brief memorandum. In these circumstances
it seemed to me a justifiable procedure to work out a consistent
system of such principles mainly on the basis of Aristotelian in-
sights without being able exactly to document the wording of every
part of it by a passage from Aristotle's writings. In other words:
I have treated Aristotle's philosophy as a real philosophy, which
naturally stimulates further thought and calls for further exten-
sion, especially if it is to be applied to a new situation and to new
problems, and not as an object of purely historical curiosity. Yet I
am confident that the notes will show how many isolated observa-
tions of Aristotle's scattered over different parts of different works
are mutually explanatory, and hope to be able to present in a not
too distant future a more detailed and more exactly documented
analysis of Aristotle's social and political philosophy.
With all this the present memorandum has dealt only with an
infinitesimal part of what can be learned from ancient history and
55
from ancient social and political philosophy. It has dealt only with Thus it may perhaps be hoped that this memorandum with all
some problems of what may be called ultimate criteria and it has its inevitable shortcomings may give some food for thought to some
dealt with these only in a rather abstract and general fashion with- and encourage them to pursue somewhat further the study of the
out the possibility of delving deeper into the nature of more relevance of ancient history and ancient social and political phi-
concrete and individual conflicts. It has not even touched upon losophy for the solution of the problems of our times.
the nature and importance of certain independent economic laws,
some of which can no more be changed or manipulated than the
law of gravity or the laws governing the expansions of gasses, and
concerning which much enlightenment can be found both in ancient
history and in Aristotle. It has touched upon one very special
aspect of the problem of power. From the modern point of view
one may, of course, content that the greatest ancient philosophers,
Plato and Aristotle, have disqualified themselves in this respect
because they succumbed to the prejudices of their times in acknow-
ledging, however hesitantly, the necessity of the institution of
slavery. But it is just from a thorough analysis of the history of
slavery that very fundamental insights can be gained. There are
the problems of the necessity of government and therefore of some
kind of unequal power of free men over free men and the problems
of civil liberties, which have been discussed over and over again
by ancient philosophers. There is the difficult problem of the dif-
ferent aspects of justice and the problem of the value of political
institutions. The discussion of all this problems must be left for
a'nother occasion.
Many of those who consider themselves as avantgardists and
'progressives' will probably raise violent objections to much of
what has been said in this memorandum, especially against the
emphasis laid on the experience of age. "We must free ourselves
from the fetters of all traditions and take an entirely new start" is
their slogan. Or as a young man put it when an older one spoke
of the importance of experience: "experience makes reactionary".
This statement is, of course, perfectly true, Experience makes react
against illusions and follies: but not only against those of our
modern avantgardists, but also against those of their opposites.
UI"IYCl<~IUAD DE NAVARRA
56 ~12lJOTECA DE HUMANIDADES 57