“Golden Mean.” We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too
little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor ex-
travagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant).
The same goes for eating. It is dangerous to eat too little, but also dangerous
to eat too much. The ethics of both Plato and Aristotle contain echoes of
Greek medicine: only by exercising balance and temperance will I achieve a
happy or “harmonious” life.
Politics
The undesirability of cultivating extremes is also expressed in Aristotle’s
view of society. He says that man is by nature a “political animal.” Without a
society around us, we are not real people, he claimed. He pointed out that the
family and the village satisfy our primary needs of food, warmth, marriage,
and child rearing. But the highest form of human fellowship is only to be found
in the state.
This leads to the question of how the state should be organized. (You
remember Plato’s “philosophic state”?) Aristotle describes three good forms of
constitution.
One is monarchy, or kingship—which means there is only one head of
state. For this type of constitution to be good, it must not degenerate into
“tyranny”—that is, when one ruler governs the state to his own advantage.
Another good form of constitution is aristocracy, in which there is a larger or
smaller group of rulers. This constitutional form must beware of degenerating
into an “oligarchy”—when the government is run by a few people. An example
of that would be a junta. The third good constitutional form is what Aristotle
called polity, which means democracy. But this form also has its negative
aspect. A democracy can quickly develop into mob rule. (Even if the tyrannic
Hitler had not become head of state in Germany^ all the lesser Nazis could
have formed a terrifying mob rule.)
Views on Women
Finally, let us look at Aristotle’s views on women. His was unfortunately
not as uplifting as Plato’s. Aristotle was more inclined to believe that women
were incomplete in some way. A woman was an “unfinished man.” In
reproduction, woman is passive and receptive whilst man is active and
productive; for the child inherits only the male characteristics, claimed
Aristotle. He believed that all the child’s characteristics lay complete in the
male sperm. The woman was the soil, receiving and bringing forth the seed,
whilst the man was the “sower.” Or, in Aristotelian language, the man provides
the “form” and the woman contributes the “substance.”
It is of course both astonishing and highly regrettable that an otherwise
so intelligent man could be so wrong about the relationship of the sexes. But it
demonstrates two things: first, that Aristotle could not have had much practical
experience regarding the lives of women and children, and second, it shows
how wrong things can go when men are allowed to reign supreme in the fields
of philosophy and science.
Aristotle’s erroneous view of the sexes was doubly harmful because it
was his—rather than Plato’s—view that held sway throughout the Middle
Ages. The church thus inherited a view of women that is entirely without foun-