Compare and contrast Aristotle’s and Plato’s conception of the state and political freedom
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Politics and state have been following people’s society since it was established. Everybody understands that there is impossible to live in the world where there is no order. Every person still appreciates the necessity of state and government even if he or she does not as if the way of ruling is their own country.
The problem of state was the topic of researches and thoughts for different famous people of ancient and modern time. Two of the greatest philosophers Aristotle and Plato devoted great part of their philosophic researches to the topic of conception of the state and political freedom. Let us compare and contrast their conceptions.
A man named Aristotle who was a Greek Truth-seeker, a logician, and a scientist has a teacher named Plato. Aristotle is widely known as the most prominent olden philosopher in many areas of philosophy, together with political hypothesis. His life appears to have inclined his political notion in different conduct: his biological interest has mixed in his political life. Also, his political interest and his compassion for the democratic system like dominion perhaps have been optimistic by his experience of various political systems; he condemned severely, while borrowing widely, from his teacher’s (Plato) democracy, statesman, and laws; moreover, his own political affairs is proposed to help rulers and statesmen, showing the main political systems that he moved.
Plato wrote a Socratic discussion called “The Republic” about the meaning of justice and the category and behavior of the present city and the present man. His best and most popular work, proved one of the academically and historically prominent works of philosophy and political hypothesis. In his work, many Athenians and foreigners talked about the meaning of justice and check if or not the present man is happier than the undeserved man is by suggesting a city governed by the philosopher-kings. The people, who participated, also talked about the theory of forms, the immortality of the heart, and the positions of the philosopher and the poetry in society.
Talking about Aristotle view of politics, he often compares the politician to an artisan. The similarity is inaccurate because politics is a structure of sensible knowledge, while an art like architecture or medicine is a structure of creative knowledge. Nevertheless, the contrast is suitable to the degree that the politicians create, control, and keep a lawful scheme. To be pleased about this similarity, it is useful to study that Aristotle explains production of manufactured article in conditions of four reasons: the material, formal, efficient, and final reasons. For example, clay (material reason), is molded into a vase shape (formal cause) by a potter (efficient reason) so that the Vase shape can contain a liquid (final reason).
To make this easier, Aristotle’s conduct of the concepts of the freedom can be summarized as follows. The resistance between slavery and freedom is important and useful for his examination of the domestic and of the polis as a profitable and social community. After Aristotle analyses the polis as a supporting community he takes the adjective eleutheros to designate the people, either the people as against the outsider and slaves, or the poor as against the rich. In both cases the eleutheroi are the first people in a democratic system and they are difference with the people in cruelty that are as slave owned by a bad master, or with the people in an oligarchy who are the focus of a high class rich people. Democratic Eleutheria is somewhat explained as a supporting contribution by ruling and in turn being ruled, and somewhat explained as the chance to exist as he or she likes.
Plato’s thought about eleutheria mostly are to be seen in his books Republic and in the laws. In these books, he explained democracy as the third among the differences from the supreme constitution.
The similarities, between the Aristotle concept of political and state freedom and the Plato’s concept of freedom is that, both of them are distinguishing the people that are into politics and the slaves. The main spotlight of Plato is a perfect society. He creates a proposal for a utopian humanity, in his book The Republic, out of his contempt for the nervousness of supporting life. This proposal was a draft of a society in which the troubles he thought were there in his society would be relieved. He wanted to treat the difficulty of both human society and their character. In fact, what Plato wants to achieve is an ideal society.
However, Aristotle is not troubled about perfecting or making the society good. He only wants some improvement on the existing society even good or bad. Instead of creating a draft for the ideal society, he suggested, in his work, The Politics, that the society should achieve the best possible scheme that could be achieved. Aristotle relied on the deductive approach, while Aristotle is an example of inductive approach. Utopia is key in conceptual, a solution that has no real or strong problem. There is no big proof that every societies are in need of such severe improvement as Plato proposes. Aristotle finds out that the best possible has already been gotten. All that is to be done is to try to advance on the existing one.
Both Plato and Aristotle have the same opinion that there is justice in an intentional way, that is, it state an idea that the high-quality life should be given to all people no matter how they are or how high/low their social status. Aristotle said that in democracies, for example, justice is considered to mean fairness, in oligarchies, again disparity in the allocation of office is considered just. Plato sees the justice and law as something that sets the strategy for communal action.
Plato and Aristotle are similarly two men who had thoughts on ways or method to advance the existing society. Plato, who was a political philosopher, was targeting the philosophical truth. Aristotle was troubled about the residents and the proposition of political institutions. Both of them had good idea and plans on how to make a better society. They both have had a wonderful impact on the present political scientists.
In conclusion, they were great philosopher and thinkers. Their thoughts and ideas on society and freedom, and its purposes were quite unusual, but they both had the same purpose, to build the best method of life for the societies they resided in and for the upcoming societies in the near future. We just need to hope that someday people’s community will find a way of having good leaders and a better life.
