Deliberation with persuasion: the ‘political’ in Aristotle’s Politics

ABSTRACT

This paper suggests the conception of the ‘political’ in Aristotle’s Politics as an alternative to the Hobbesian conception of the ‘political’. More specifically, I will develop two arguments in this paper. First, investigating Aristotle’s conception of the ‘political’ in the Politics, I will maintain that the ‘political’ rule (πολιτικὴ ἀρχή) is not a political ideal to be realised in the best possible regime but the necessary condition for making political life possible. Second, exploring ‘persuasion’ as the most imperative way in which a particular claim about justice may be justified in democratic deliberation, I will argue that in Aristotle’s conception of the political, democratic deliberation is not constrained by an architectonic political vision or a shared solidarity but guided by persuasion based on the fear of domination under which antagonistic contentions between citizens can contribute to making a tolerably good decision without empowering anyone who knows better.

本文认为可用亚里士多德政治学中的“政治”构想取代或霍布斯的“政治”构想。笔者提出两个观点。其一，笔者研究亚里士多德的 “政治”构想，认为政治统治并非一个可能而最佳的体制中要实现的政治理想，而是让政治生活成为可能的必要条件。其二，在民主审议中论证某项正义诉求最最重要的方法为“劝说”，笔者认为，在亚里士多德的“政治”构想中，民主审议并不被结构性的政治愿景或休戚与共所约束，而是受劝说的指引。这种劝说基于对统治的恐惧，恐惧下的公民间针锋相对的争辩有助于形成差强人意的决策而无需让知识更多的人更具权势。

KEYWORDS:

• Aristotle
• political rule
• the political
• deliberation
• persuasion
• domination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Aristotle defines the ‘political’ in various ways, so that the two aspects, politics as education and politics as art, cannot cover all varieties of the political in the Politics. As Patrick Coby elucidates (1986), in addition to these two aspects, ‘politics as law’ relevant to the protection of citizens and ‘politics as reward’ interwoven with the allocation of political power need to be accounted as equally imperative variations that constitute Aristotle’s conception of the ‘political’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant funded by the Ministry of Education in China [grant number: 17YJA720001].

Notes on contributors

Jun-Hyeok Kwak

Jun-Hyeok Kwak is Professor of the Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai) at Sun Yat-sen University, China. His research interests lie at the crossroads of political philosophy, contemporary political theory, and comparative philosophy. He is currently serving as the General Editor of the Routledge Series, Political Theories in East Asian Context, and he is a co-editor of Journal of Social and Political Philosophy.