Cauchy3-Book-21-Poems: Sexes And Psyches

Even if the end product in art i s outside the agent's control, making, like doing, but unlike chance or necessity, involves activity and responsibility. For politics, like ethics, is the site of the as if necessary practices of human beings that inorm their as if necessary natures NE ab Aristotle's answer seems to be yes: Aristotle insists, however, that Heidegger, Plato's Sophist, p.

To see how requires attending not simply to activity but also to what gives rise to it: Aristotle calls that which makes activity possible dunamis, which is translated variously as capacity, power, capability, or potentiality. Aristotle thinks that this account of activiy is absurd. Change or movement must happen rom one thing to another. The activity or actualiy of dunamis lies in its being possessed even when it is not at work.

The builder can have the capability to build even when he is not actually building. Under these conditions of accident or nonuse, there can be no building activity at all. Against the contemporary tendency to equate them, dunamis, power, is not the same as bia, orce. My analysis draws on Heidegger, Aristotle's Metaphysics, chap. As we saw above, without the capaciy or logos there could be no activity of its use; without good habits there can be no virtuous activity.

If dunamis powers activity, this does not make activity itself any less important. Dunamis may be that rom which change occurs, but it is not something inert, waiting to move to action. Rather, it efects change by way of its actualization, by doing its work, by practice. It is by perorming the activities or which it is holding itself in readiness that a dunamis becomes capable in the irst place.

It is, in other words, by building that a builder becomes capable of building Meta. The activity of building actualizes the builder's capability to build. Along similar lines, Aristotle remarks that "distance does not break of riendship absolutely, only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make men orget their riendship" NE b6 The nature of the doer is stable. But this is not to say that nature is once and or all determined.

This means that if the deed is the product of activity, it is not activity's sole product. For even as activities emerge rom a stable character, activities are, themselves, ormative of character. The more courageously I act, the more courageous I become. There can be no activity without capability, but there can also be no capability without activity. Each depends on the other. It is this interdependence between energeia and dunamis that makes possible the changes over time and movement that deine the nature of human beings and also their stability.

This interdependence also deines soul, the part of natural beings that contains their principle and source of motion. This distinction, as we have seen, rests on the practice of prohairetic activity. They say he deines nature in two senses, and they criticize him or sometimes avoring one and sometimes the other. In one sense, he says, nature is the primary stuf-matter-and, in another sense, it is orm.

But this is not to equivocate. It is both, and neither, and is captured in the process of growth itself. A natural being becomes and reveals its nature as it grows, changes, and moves through time. This way of understanding nature its well with Aristotle's treatment of nature as a telos and of tele more generally: Besides, the inal cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-suicing is the end and the best" Pol.

This suggests that it is the end, or telos, that guides movement and without which there could be no movement, only randomness. In the case of what Annas "Aristotle on Human Nature," p. Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right, pp. A telos does not stand over and against the process of coming into being, directing it rom without, but is, rather, paradoxical: As the domain of activity, it is also, and crucialy or Aristotle, the domain of ethics and politics NE b26 The Work of Man The work is the maker in act. And rom their interdependence the stability and unity over time that characterize natural beings are possible as well.

Against what Bernard Williams reers to as modernity's "dualistic distinction between soul and body," Aristotle treats the body as "ensouled" DA a. This is in contrast to Villa, Arendt and Heideger, pp. I have more to say about this peculiar quality of Aristotelian tele in chapter 5. Williams, Shame and Necessity, p. Lear, Open Minded, p. Discussing the requirements or virtue, Aristotle says that "nature, habit, and reason must be in harmony with one another; or men do many things against habit and nature, because of reason, if reason persuades them that they ought" Pol.

Requiring not the absence of al diference, and not a oneness of soul, the harmony that characterizes the unity of the soul requires diference and so the possibility of disharmony or conlict to enable both the movement and the stability that deine it. I must answer or what I do and I am responsible or what I do, which is to say, I must account or my actions, however imprecisely.

In the moment of activity, the soul retains its internal diferences. Activities in the world produce capabilities. Capabilities, produced by activities, in turn power activities. Guided making and self-making cooperate though not in the sense that their ends always coin- Annas, 'Aristotle on Human Nature;' p. Movement and dependence show the soul to be an "integration of distinct elements rather than a uniorm unity.

Moderation, Aristotle says, preserves practical wisdom NE ob I discuss the virtue of moderation urther in chapters 2 and 3. As Hans-Georg Gadamer notes, Aristotle " interpreted the Socratic equation of virtue and nowledge in such a way as to include the giving of accounts as part of the moral essence of ethics.

As Aristotle puts it: This work is learned by "a certain kind of study and care" NE b He is not advocating theoretical or scientiic study but choosing good mentors, speciically mentors with practical wisdom. Choosing good mentors, of course, already calls or good judgment, itself a matter of the very habits that emulating the mentor is meant to cultivate. Here we come up against a circularity that is characteristic of Aristotle's philosophical method. For some, this circularity gives Aristotle's politics its conservative and exclusionary bent: Those habituated to act well.

Those who exercise good j udgment and choose as their mentors people with practical wisdom. Who exercises good j udgment and chooses well? Those with good habits. Although it is true that, in Aristotle's understanding of virtue, those who are not properly habituated will not be able to act virtuously, insoar as good habits can be learned by anyone so disposed, in the absence of otherwise constraining social and political institutions, there is no reason to draw rom this circularity an elitist conclusion.

Indeed, Aristotle insists that neither birth nor wealth determines one's capacity or excellence Pol. But there is no necessary connection between being so disposed and the accident of birth or great wealth. We have seen this already in Aristotle's treatment of birth as a matter of accident in the cases of citizen and slave identity. Further evidence of Aristotle's disaggregation of birth and wealth rom virtue may be ound in his rejection of traditional markers of status as qualiications or rule and his insistence, in their place, on virtue Pol.

Citizens, who are also rulers, make the laws to which they are subject. In other words, they ollow their own law. In this way, democracy is a mode of governance that has its source and authority in itself. It is the same with the practice of virtue: Intellectual and moral virtue both involve modes of activity-prohairetic activity-whose origin and authority lie in themselves. The self-sovereignty associated with these practices is the same as the self-sovereignty characteristic of democracy.

A unity in diference exempliies Aristotle's understanding of the harmonious whole that is the soul and of the harmonious whole that is the polity as well, which he characterizes as not a unison but a plurality; a rhythm, not a single beat Pol. I explore this topic in chapter 2. Staging the question of natural slavery as a question of justice, he lays the groundwork or his treatments in Politics III of citizenship, which I have discussed in this chapter, and of j ustice, to which I turn in chapter 3. This is a question I take up in chapter 4. My aim is to investigate Aristotle's treat- I discuss the harmony of the well-constituted polity in chapter 5.

I end, in chapter 5, with an exploration of the constitution that best guides these institutions and practices even as it is produced by them. For commentators who read Aristotle as defending a system of private property, see. Mayhew, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic, pp. For theorists who cite Aristotle as a defender of private property, see Schlatter, Private Propert, p.

Aristotle does not mention that Plato's Socrates endorses common ownership only among the guardians in RepublicV. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights, pp. I agree with those who argue that there are no "rights" in Aristotle, although this issue is beyond the scope of this book: Strauss, Natural Right and Histo, pp.

Like many contemporary advocates of private property, Aristotle opposes orced redistribution on the ground that it leads to civil strife, stasis Pol. That he introduces and elaborates his account of property as one of the practices of managing one's own home Pol. This suggests that there i s a public dimension t o Aristotelian property a s well. He uses ktemata and chremata separately and together most oten in the irst two books of the Politics to refer to what is held or use in the home.

He usually uses timema in reference to constitutional property qualiications and ousia when referring to the whole of a person's estate their possessions combined with their things in use, as well as other intangible properties. He uses choregia to reer to the external goods necessary to the good lie of a human being and of a polity and also in its more usual sense, as one of the most important public service institutions at Athens. I will use propery to capture all these signiications, maring their diferences rom one another and rom contemporary usage where necessary.

Thus, some writers conclude that property is exclusively part of the household: As the practice of holding as one's own and using with others reserves of individual and collective goods, property, in Aristotle's understanding, is both private and public at the same time. Contemporary scholars typically treat property as undamentally instrumental.

For economic eiciency theorists, it is a means to the end of wealth maximization. But this is not Aristotle's view. An excessive amount of property, he insists, will harm its possessor Pol. And these are all owned, oikeia, secure, ree, and useul" Rhet. B u t i t i s also something more: Wealth, the sum of property, is not only what one 7. For discussion of the relation between private and public in ourth-century Athens, see Cohen, Law, Sxuali, and Socie, chap. Aristotle insists that the things we hold as our own may be used well or badly.

As we will see, property, to Aristotle, has a noninstrumental or constitutive role in shaping both individual character and the character of a polity. If contemporary paradigms tend to treat property as a sae haven rom political life, in what ollows I argue that the practice of Aristotelian property, as an activity of use bound to virtue, is instead integral to a political life. The Activity of Use In Politics I, Aristotle introduces property as one of the practices of managing one's own home, oikonomike. The job of the householder is to supply the goods that are "necessary or life, capable of being stored, and useul or the community of the household and polity" Pol.

Meikle, Aristotle's Economic Thought, pp. Traces of this way of understanding property may be ound in Aquinas, John Locke, and the present-day property theorists Joseph Singer and Joseph Sax. The relation of the householder to his property is not the only relation in the home that is of concern to Aristotle. He also considers the relationships between master and slave, husband and wie, and ather and children.

I discuss Aristotle on slavery in chapter 1. For a nuanced and illuminating discussion of Aristotle on gender, see Sxonhouse, Women in the History ofPolitical Thought, chap. Aristotle thus deines acquisition and preservation as activities of use. Things are taken and preserved speciically or what he calls "proper use" Pol. The central activity of the household with regard to property, then, is proper use. Using properly what is held refers not only to the things taken or immediate use in the home. It also refers to what is held to be shared or given away among riends, among neighbors, and among citizens in a polity.

This means that riends' goods are held as their own, although held in this way or use together. Holding things as one's own or proper use is also the mode of owning suitable among neighbors, citizens, and rulers. Aristotle maintains that such things as land and crops are used properly when they are held as one's own and given over to neighbors to use when they need provisions on a journey Pol. See also Dobbs, "Aristotle's Anticommunism;' p.

Rather than carving out a clear distinction between oikos and polis, home and city, private and public, Aristotelian property, in its use, marks continuities between how we take and use things in the home and the practices of social and political life Pol. Proper use in the home becomes, among riends, neighbors, and citizens, a using with others, which is to say, common use. If we generally treat property as a moat that excludes other people rom interfering with what is ours and protects a private sphere in which we can do with it what we will, Aristotelian property operates also as a bridge.

Note that in all these practices of property, things are used properly when they efectively disappear into their use: Aristotle, however, insists that using things properly preserves them. Racham notes that in Aristotle, choregia "has almost or quite ceased to be felt as a metaphor. The material equipment of lie is used to the end of the person or constitution it sustains. In the case of choregia in its usual senses, by contrast, it's the play that is is inappropriate as well: A s w e wil see, what Aristotle says about ousia a n d ktemata i n h i s discussions o f the virtue of liberality, about ploutos in his discussion of the virtue of magniicence, and about the ktemata held or chresis in Politics I suggests that my analysis of proper use by means of choregia would hold or these signiications of property as well.

Traceable to the seventh century B. This involved supplying the chorus members with everthing they needed to prepare or their perormance and to perorm, including a space to live in and to practice in the home of the choregos, clothing, ood and other things necessary or their training, costumes, and masks.

This suggests that there were two domains of choregic activity: I explore in turn the relation of each of these choregic practices to Aristotle's use of choregia. The relation between the choregia as the equipment that sustains the chorus and the equipment of life that Aristotle calls choregia is straightorward enough. For the chorus to play, it needed its equipment. Choregia is thus necessary to the playing of the chorus.

The material equipment of life taken in the home to the end of living, choregia in Aristotle's usage, is no diferent. Without costumes and masks, the chorus could not perorm. If it thus depends on choregia because equipment allows it to play, choregia also depends on the chorus because they give For a comprehensive and ascinating account of the institution of the choregia at Athens, see Wilson, Athenian Institution of the horegia, on which the olowing draws.

Hornblower and Spaworth, Oxford Classical Dictionary, pp. The equipment of life may belong to the household members, but this suggests that they also belong to the equipment of life. The two, like a chorus and its necessities, belong together. Choregia is thus the necessary equipment of both the household members and the chorus.

This analysis suggests that preserving a thing is using it in a way that allows it to be what it is. Aristotle calls this sort of use proper use. Aristotle insists that it is the user of the house, the oikonomikos, who judges the house better than does its maker, the pilot who judges rudders better than the carpenter, and the diner, not the cook, who is the better judge of a banquet Pol. The one who actually dwells in the home, steers the ship, eats the ood-the one who uses the things as things in use-is best able to know and to judge them.

Nor does a thing's disappearing make the use in which it disappears improper. This is because, as Wilson, Athenian Institution of the horegia, p. I take up the question of judgment explicitly in chapter 3. For a helpul discussion of use as a practical activity, see Heidegger, Being and Time, secs. Natural things involve a diferent mode of relation between user and thing. The proper use of land or agriculture, or example, requires explicit attention and concern to monitor how wet or dry the soil is, watch or pests, and so on.

Letting the land disappear into its use would render it useless. It thereore produces nothing other than the action included in its actual use Pol. To use such things properly, oikeios, is to let them be what they are, that is, to allow them their own, oikeion. Allowing something its own preserves it.

If choregia in the ormer sense is a tool of action, in the latter sense it is a tool of production. In Wilson's analysis the activity of equipping a production with a chorus was, indeed, a public perormance by the choregos motivated by the desire or an occasion to ostentatiously display his wealth so as to enhance his own prestige, and, more broadly, to consolidate the interests of his class. Choregia, so understood, acted as a "symbolic stage" where the wealthiest citizens of Athens competed in a context of "agonistic self-assertion" to outdo one another in order to gain social and political goods.

If, as I claim, Aristotelian property is best understood via its disappearance into use and noninstrumentally, then it can only be disanalogous with the choregia as a public spectacle staged by the choregos and instrumental to the end of securing social and political power. In my reading, Aristotle's account of magniicence ofers an alternative, indeed, a corrective to the choregic practice of wealth Wilson describes. Aristotle's account orients attention away rom the holder of wealth and toward the works the wealth chremata, or things in use, NE a20 produces, thus pointing toward a practice of proper use of choregic wealth no diferent rom the proper use of choregia as the material equipment of a chorus or householder.

Aristotle calls the magniicent man, megaloprepes, an artist in expenditure NE a34 - He is an Wilson, Athenian Institution ofthe horegia, pp. T H E U S E O F P R O P E RT Y 63 artist because his virtue lies in producing great works with good taste, and he is an artist in expenditure because the virtue of magniicence, unlike, say, the virtue of liberality, concerns not all actions dealing with wealth but with spending great sums NE a Aristotle insists that the motive of the magniicent man in spending his wealth is no diferent rom the motive driving the practice of other virtues.

In all cases, it is the nobility of the activity itself NE b7. Echoing the deinitions of virtue and wealth he ofers elsewhere NE ba4; Rhet. But in Aristotle's discussion of this virtue it is not the man himself but his activities and works that are described as "magniicent," "brilliant;' and "great" NE b Motivated by the nobility of his activity, Aristotle's magniicent choregos spends his vast wealth to promote the greatness of his work; he derays the cost of the chorus to display not himself but his work, in this case, the play.

When, by contrast, he takes center stage, no less than when the equipment or the chorus ails to disappear into its use, the play does not work. In this way of thinking, it is not only the case that the choregia belongs to the choregos, although this is true. The choregos also belongs to the choregia. His example is Alcibiades, who oten appeared on stage, vying or the attention of the audience and indulging in violence against his rivals pp.

It is not that the choregos appeared nowhere: He is choregos only insoar as he gives choregia in all these ways and so produces the work. Read together, Aristotle's choregia as the material necessities of life and choregia in its usual signiications, as bound with play, disclose the practice of proper use. Proper use may be practical, as when choregia disappears into its activities of use.

It may also be poetic, as when choregia disappears into its work.

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It is or this reason that Aristotle sometimes uses the language of nature to deine modes of use Pol. The thing in use depends on the user to preserve it as a thing in use, and the user depends on the thing in use or his self-preservation. Similarly, in proper poetic use, the work and its producer orm a unity that preserves producer and work. There can be no dramatic production without a chorus equipped by a choregos, and he is not a choregos if he ails to provide, and provide or, a chorus. If, when used properly, property disappears into its poetic work or practical use and thus preserves works and things, makers and users, the practice of property may also open the way to destruction, exploitation, and oppression.

See also Salkever, "Aristotle's Social Science," pp. Holding things or use opens the possibility of improper use or abuse, namely, use or the purpose of some end other than use or the work. The source of malpractice lies in the breaking up of the unity beween the one who uses and the thing in use or the maker and his work. This breaking up irst occurs when something useul stops being useul. Think, or example, of a pen or a ork or a shoe. When a pen runs out of ink or when a ork ails to pick up ood, it stops being a useul thing and we stop using it as a thing in use. Why has this stopped working?

Similarly, when the unity brought about by proper poetic use breaks up, the work ceases to work. What happened to the play? Use ceases to be practical when the ailure of a thing in use causes a person to stop using it as a thing in use. It ceases to be poetic when the creator of a work eclipses his achievement. When the unity between user and thing in use or maker and work is thus broken, the good of use is no longer given by the activity of using or by the work produced by use.

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This may happen with the rise of money. Each home initially meets its own needs by taking things to the end of living. Over time, needs become more complex. As households become unable to meet their needs, barter evolves. Barter involves a giving over and taking of diferent things useul to the end of living, or example, wine or corn Pol. As use that renders a thing in use or something else, barter involves not immediate or proper use but what Aristotle calls "not proper" use Pol.

In order to meet the requirement of commensurability among things that are diferent, money is introduced: Referring to the "niggardly. It is made to so many ends, Aristotle implies, so that it can be exchanged or many things. It is this use that can be compromised by the rise of money. The danger posed by money is not only that it can efect an alienation rom proper or not proper use, as in the case of the Delphian knife, but also that the art of money-the activity of wealth-getting-can replace the practice of all other arts.

Medicine may, or example, be practiced with a view to health, an end internal to the practice of medicine, or it I discuss the importance of the category of not proper use in relation to the practice of reciprocal j ustice in chapter 3. In truth, says Aristotle, things that are diferent cannot be made commensurable without denying their diference NE b15 Money, nomsma, is the measure of all things only by convention, nomos.

The true measure, that which money can measure only relatively and by convention is use, chreia, that is, the activity of using things in use. I discuss this in detail in chapter 3. M e il e, Aristotle's Economic Thought, p. With the rise of money, wealth-getting threatens, in the words of William Mathie, to "take the place of [ politics ] as the art that orders all other arts because the end it seeks may be alsely regarded as the greatest good of human action. In that case, it becomes not a means to some urther end but an end in itself.

The same is true when a maker ails to disappear into his poetic work and becomes of interest in his own right, to wit, the self-displaying choregos. Under these conditions, property ceases to be a prohairetic activity of practical or poetic use and becomes instead theoretical. There is much to be said or the act that money rees human beings rom the necessity that otherwise limits acquisition and use. Aristotle's description of ways of life "whose work or operation arises by itself" Pol.

Their modes of living are deined by and limited to the taking of things to meet daily needs. Aristotle may call the nomadic life the most leisured life Pol. A question, says Aristotle, is "best investigated" when it takes in abstraction what does not exist separately Meta. Mathie, " Property in the Political Science of Aristotle," p. See also Booth, "Politics and the Household: Mathie, "Property in the Political Science of Aristotle;' p. He recounts an anecdote about the philosopher Thales, who was "reproached or his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy was of no use.

B y using what Aristotle twice calls a inancial scheme of"universal application," i n other words, b y abstraction, Thales created a monopoly and got rich Pol. Aristotle implies that both money and theory, like property, have a proper use. This means that there is nothing inherently wrong, in Aristotle's scheme of I deal here only with proper and improper use. Use, so understood, is rooted in neither immediacy nor abstraction but in analogy, which combines both.

Theory and abstraction nonetheless pose a danger to the practice of property. Insoar as money and theory must, to do their work, abstract rom use, they open the possibility that use, the activity of property, will be orgotten and, along with it, the practice of property that use regulates. Moreover, when use is orgotten, the good of property must be referred to something outside property, such as wealth maximization. This, as we will see next, is the virtue of property.

For the distinction between external goods that are instrumental to happiness and those that are intrinsic, see Nussbaum, Fragiliy of Goodness, pp. See Cooper, "Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune;' p. As Aristotle's treatment o f magniicence suggests, property is itself a site of the practice of virtue. For habit takes it in itself not to bring a good to completion, even when the habit lies there as a ruling principle, arche. But activity, energeia, not so; or the activity, energeia, will of necessity be acting and acting well, praxis" NE ba4.

The language Aristotle uses is striking. He speaks of habit as a kind of holding or possession and of action as a mode of use. He speaks of virtue, in other words, in terms of property. And he does so in two ways at once. There is, on one hand, an analogy between property and virtue: And just as good habits emerge rom acting well, so too does holding well depend on proper use.

This suggests that habit is a ind of holding and that holding is a matter of habit. It also suggests that action is a mode of use and that using is a matter of action. Putting these points together, we can see that good habit, as a matter of holding properly, depends on using properly what is held, that is, acting well. And we can see that acting well, as a mode of proper use, depends on holding properly what one has as one's own, hence ownership. Pace Hare, "Eleutheriotes in Aristotle's Ethics," pp. This insight is at the heart of Aristotle's rejection, in Politics II, of common ownership.

It explains why the argument of Irwin, "Generosity and Property in Aristotle's Politics," that the virtue of liberality can be exercised in the absence of private ownership is wrong. And, a s the practice o f holding and using habits properly, virtue requires property. It is by understanding property as a verb and not strictly as a noun, as an activity of use and not strictly as a ungible thing, that we see that property is bound to, is indeed a site of, virtue.

Property, in this reading, is both an external good and a characterological good, or a good of the soul. Aristotle, however, appears to distinguish these categories of goods Pol. Identiying the end of a good life- eudaimonia-with virtuous activity of the soul, he claims, or this reason, that virtue belongs among the goods of the soul and not among external goods NE b18 Apparently limiting the goods of the soul to the virtues of intellect and character, he cites as external goods, by contrast, good children, ine birth, and beauty, as well as wealth, political power, and riends NE ab6.

But Aristotle, we have seen, treats wealth not only as what is owned or use but also as the activity of use itself Rhet. It is also to miss the point that virtue is not external to property relations but rather emerges within the practice of property in the presence of a proper ordering of the soul even as the practice of property contributes to that ordering. Aristotle's treatments of liberality and moderation underscore this dynamic and reflexive relation between virtue and property and the degree to which property is an external and a characterological good at the same time. In Nicomachean Ethics IV Aristotle says that liberality is the mean in regard to the giving and taing of useul things, especially with respect to giving.

Not giving enough is being mean, aneleutheros, that is, caring more about taking than about giving useul things. Giving in excess is illiberal in the mode of asotia, prodigality. Someone can give too much when he has a lot to give or when he does not have Socrates insists on this understanding of wealth as well in the Euthydemus A- E , t h e dialogue that Aristotle cites when he distinguishes among inds of goods NE 1. It is not bad when the one who gives too much has a never-ending supply, because he need not worry about depleting his resources NE b When someone gives too much who does not have that much, however, two possibilities arise: Or he may "waste his substance" and thus ruin himself NE oa1.

Wasting one's substance is, in this sense, "losing oneself" NE oa One has as one's substance what one holds as one's own or use. This is property in its usual signiication. One also has as one's substance one's habits, and these constitute one's character, who one is. What is owned or proper use-things or habits-is what is proper to one, ta oikeia. As what is owned or use in both senses, property brings well-being, eudaimonia, by use or well-doing. Aristotle may distinguish external goods rom goods of the soul, then, but, in doing so, he marks not only their diference but also the degree of their interrelation.

Moderation is the mean between akolasia, lack of discipline, and anaisthesia, want of sensation. It is a mean relative to overindulging in every pleasure, as hedonists do, and to shunning all pleasure, as boorish persons do. Rather, it is desire or what is pleasant to the most basic of our senses, the sense of touch NE b; DA a3 - 4. As the virtue related to the pleasures of touch, moderation directs Aristotle calls touch the most basic sense or these reasons: It is signiicant, in this regard, that one orm of immoderation is anaisthesia; the person without desire cannot be moderate.

Moderation, then, calls not or mastering desire but or being moved by the active orce of desire itself. Insoar as moderation is especially concerned with the sense of touch, it is a virtue of property. Touching requires that something be at hand to be touched. We have things at hand when we hold them, as we do in certain cases of property.

At the same time, touch is distinctive among the senses insoar as, unlike hearing, seeing, or smelling, in which, Aristotle tells us, air mediates between the one who senses and what is sensed, what we touch is unmediated: Given the immediacy of touching, we run the danger of orgetting that the things we touch are other than us. Property, we have seen, is the site of the belonging together of persons and things. It is the site of their mutual preservation and thus of their interdependence. It is also a site of desire insoar as we reach toward that which we need or our self-preservation.

As we saw, the disappearance into use of things in use produces a unity between user and thing. But, as noted, this is not an indiferent unity. A thing that disappears into its use is not nothing. Property, when used properly, is the site of the preservation of the person and of the thing as a thing in use.

This means that property, properly practiced, preserves person and thing in their diference. Moderation is a virtue not only of immediate use but of mediated use as well. In barter, in which things are exchanged or other things useul to the end of living, things mediate relations with other people. The things we barter and exchange with others thus disclose our dependence on one another and bind us together.

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Aristotle, as we will see in chapter 3, calls reciprocal j ustice, as the barter of goods and services, the bond of polity. Just as acting properly toward things we use calls or treating them in a manner proper to them, so too does acting moderately toward other people call or respecting them in their diferences, by, among other things, recognizing that they are not ours to use as we will.

The reason Aristotle emphasizes sex in his discussion of moderation Pol. Aristotle says that a life of moderation alone slips into a life of misery. A good polity, Aristotle insists, requires moderation and liberality Pol. His answer is that having nothing in common is impossible, or a political community, as such, is, at the very least, a site common to its citizens Pol. If having nothing in common is impossible, is it better to have everything in common? He may agree with Plato's Socrates that having everything in common secures unity.

But to Aristotle the commonality secured by common property is the wrong sort of unity or a well-constituted polity. Aristotle's question about property in Politics II asks about the best mode of owning or a well-constituted polity and also about the possibility of polity itself. For liberality as a prerequisite to community, including political community, see Dobbs, "Aristotle's Anticommunism,'' p. Nor is property somehow prior to polity, needing only to be secured by law. Rather, property and polity constitute one another.

Property is, in this sense, constitutional. It may also be seen in the later chapters of Politics II, where Aristotle judges existing constitutions through the lens of their property arrangements, including their arrangements of oices. He criticizes Sparta or ailing to provide common meals at public cost Pol. Property's constitutionality may b e seen a s well i n Aristotle's classiication of regimes. He initially classiies regimes on the basis of whether their rule is by one, few, or many, and whether the rulers promote the common interest or their own.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and polities, ruled respectively by one, few, and many, are rightly ramed, or they aim at the common good. Tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies, ruled respectively by one, few, and many, are bad, or they aim at the interest of the ruler or rulers Pol.

Just ater he taxonomizes regimes on this basis, however, Aristotle says that, in truth, wealth and poverty underlie the Wealth and povery determine a polity's constitution because whereas other capacities may belong to the same people, it is impossible or a person to be both wealthy and poor Pol. Insoar as wealth and poverty cannot be shared, they threaten the commonality necessary to polities. The original mistake of oligarchies and democracies is the same. The practice of virtue-bound, as we have seen, with the proper practice of property-alters a polity's arrangement of property and, hence, its constitution.

The proper practice of property thus alters the constitution of a polity rom one based on inequality and strife to one of greater equality and concord. If wealth and poverty, as statuses associated with property ownership, cannot be shared, this is not true of the things that are held as one's own, or these may, and in Aristotle's political and moral economy ought to, be shared by way of proper use. The proper practice of property, as we will see more ully in chapter 5, thus works to actualize a polity as a site of sharing and concord.

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Holding as one's own or common use is better than either common ownership or strictly private ownership. Even if property is reconceived as the power to hold things or use with others, this power may still be withheld. And even if things held or use are given away, property may simply reinscribe social hierarchies by producing patronage relations.

Although i t i s true that wealth in Athens aforded citizens the opportunity o r self-display, increased their public proiles, and bolstered their political power, Aristotle insists that the wealthy ought to spend their great sums on things "or which the whole polity is enthusiastic" NE a2- 5 , in other words, as we have seen, to beneit the collective.

Vene, Bread and Circuses, pp. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, pp. Aristotle disavors this sort of equalization not only as a way of determining the proper distribution of property in a polity but as the criterion or the just distribution of any goods in a polity, including power. Decrees, determined by aggregating the votes of citizens who are individuated and equated on numerical grounds alone, do not respect qualitative or, in his words, proportional or geometric individuation.

In order to be just, distributions of power, property, and other goods must recognize diferences among people. As he puts it: For those who are unequal the shares must be unequal" Pol. Insoar as Aristotelian property is a matter of holding things as one's own, it individuates and distinguishes. Dependent on even as it cultivates the self-generated good will of those who hold and use, Aristotelian property relects Most liberal democrats do not argue or strict egalitarianism, and the reasons they give oten resonate with those of ristotle: See Frank, "Democracy and D istribution: Promoting integrated human activity and also individual ethical habituation, Aristotelian property relects a dual commitment to collective action and individuation.

Treating property as an activity of proper use, and, hence, as a site of virtue reveals property's ethical, political, and, indeed, democratic potential. It does so by disclosing the ways in which the practice of property, bound as it is to the habits and actions of political agents, can produce a self-governing collectivity that also preserves individual distinction.

This relation is not instrumental. Rather, politics depends on property insoar as property, what we hold as our own or use together, is, as such, a practice that is constitutive of a political life. This mode of owning is adequate to the richness of the dualities of politics, because it is itself a duality. Property is mine, that is, not yours.

In being mine, it diferentiates me rom you. At the same time, in diferentiating me rom you and you rom me and each one rom every other, it treats us as distinctly equal. To waste one's ousia, we saw, is also to lose oneself NE oa1- 4. One has as one's own one's habits, and these constitute who one is, or one is who one has been.

Aporia is poverty Pol. It is also a question, puzzle, or dificulty NE b6. Studying property 4 9. Hegel's account of property, like Aristotle's, exposes property's duality: For this description of ousia, see Heidegger, Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p.

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I t is also studying the question o r puzzle o f who one is to be. Studying the question of property continues, in this way, the study, begun in chapter I, of being and not-being, identity and diference. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes comprehensive justice rom particular justice. Readers generally take comprehensive justice to be more undamental than the speciications and, thereore, to shape or guide them.

In the words of Richard Kraut, "lawulness is the one characteristic that all justice has in common. Aristotle's appreciation of law calls any straightorward understanding of the relation between lawulness and j ustice into question, however. Aristotle, indeed, maintains that the laws of most cities aim at domination Pol.

Lawulness may be "the one characteristic that all justice has in common" but, to Aristotle, it is also the case that lawulness depends on justice NE b Accordingly, he explores the nature of the polity by way of his investigation of citizenship. Legal and political theorists tend to ocus on his accounts of distribution and correction. In Aristotle's hands, these speciications appear to work, institutionally and substantively, in much the same way that they do in contemporary law and politics.

He treats distributive justice as a legislative matter concerning who, in a polity, should get honor, wealth, power, ofices, and other divisible goods and beneits. We do the same. For him, as or contemporary law and politics, distribution and correction are matters of equality. Aristotle does not 2. Whereas Danzig claims that reciprocity is a orm of corrective justice, I argue the reverse, namely, that correction, along with the other speciications of justice, are orms of reciprocal justice. This suggests that his account of reciprocal justice is not a theoretically thin account of a market economy.

Rather, as we will see, it is a rich and nuanced treatment of an ethical and political mode of exchange, what historians have called reciprocative or git exchange, that operates at many levels of citizen relations. Reciprocity thus accommodates a key feature of justice understood as the proper treatment of others that is missing rom distribution and correction. In reciprocal justice alone the practitioner and the subject are both doers and suferers at the same time. I return especially to this last point in the inal section of this chapter.

Reciprocity somehow accommodates both equality and diference. This capacity is evident if we look not only at the parties practicing reciprocity but also at the goods they exchange. The housebuilder and the shoemaker exchange houses or shoes, but this does not mean that houses are identical to shoes. To maintain social harmony, the many may demand material goods while the better of demand honor, but this is not to eface the diferences beween material goods and honor.

Reciprocity, in each case, establishes an equivalence that does not elide the diferences among the things or people being equated. The recognition of diference in sameness that is characteristic of reciprocal justice is, we will see, the work of practical wisdom, phronesis, speciically, good judgment. The practices of reciprocity exempliy, in other words, what in chapter 1 I called prohairetic activity. I f acting justly is a matter o f acting well, this means that both comprehensive and particular justice require good judgment on the part of their practitioners and that doing justice requires attending to virtue.

This is true, of course, of other practices of citizenship as well, as we have seen in the case of property and, as we will see in chapter 4, in the case of law. Like other political practices, it teaches and depends on phronesis. The work of reciprocal j ustice, so un- 7. If living in accordance with moral virtue i s living in accordance with one's o w n nature, oikeiosis, living this way in regard to other human beings is justice, which depends in crucial ways on good judgment.

See Engberg-Pedersen, " Discovering the Good;' pp. Reciprocity Reciprocal justice regulates exchanges of services, of previously distributed goods, and of other things of use between two people. Coming in Nicomachean Ethics V. Briely, distributive justice is concerned with allocating a polity's divisible goods and involves a relation to persons as well as to things Pol.

Reciprocal justice requires commensurability as well. Indeed, it appears to treat as commensurable the parties to an exchange and the things being exchanged: As such, reciprocal j ustice may be similar to distributive justice and, insoar as it regulates voluntary transactions, it may appear to be a mode of corrective j ustice. Aristotle maintains, however, that reciprocity "does not coincide" with either of them NE b23 Second, he shits the standpoint rom that of an authority administering justice-a j udge in the case of corrective j ustice, a legislator in the case of distributive-to that of the parties to the exchange.

Most commentators take his answer to be money. Aristotle says that all things exchanged "must be able to be compared in some way. It is to meet this requirement that man has introduced money. Indeed, measure presupposes commensurability. For some scholars, this constitutes a ailure. How, without a theoretical account of commensurability, is exchange possible at all, let alone air or equal exchange? Aristotle answers by looking to use, or chreia. It is, thus, a common term. But use, as we saw in chapter 2, also safeguards diferences among things.

A shoe is or wearing Pol. Meikle, Aristotle's Economic Thought, p. Usually mistakenly translated as "demand;' chreia is also sometimes translated as "need," which is better but does not capture the act that, or Aristotle, as we saw in chapter 2, chreia is a prohairetic activity. Aristotle's understanding of use is distinctive. Aristotle's approach to use is diferent. The commensurabiliy of pleasure derived rom the attainment of each exchanged thing, we just saw, determines the justice of the exchange.

To Aristotle, however, pleasure is not measurable. Rather, the pleasure that desire anticipates is the pleasure one derives in use and, as we saw in chapter 2, it is inseparable rom use as determined by the things in use themselves. How do things in use determine their use? How do we know, or example, that a shoe is or wearing? In the primary mode of use discerned by Aristotle-proper use Pol.

In our daily conversations, or example, we choose our words immediately and, or the most part, unrelectively. How, we wonder, might we ever j ust use it again? Or consider the case of riding a bicycle. The ride is smooth so long as we unrelectively and immediately use the bicycle or riding. When we begin self-consciously to steer clear of each approaching rock or pothole, or think too I agree with Meikle's analysis of chreia insoar as he rejects its translation as "demand" and recognizes that chreia cannot be what makes products commensurable.

But insistent as he is on inding a solution to the commensurability problem, he does not see the key role of chreia in simultaneously maring the incommensurability of things and allowing or their exchange: Such relections make or a bumpy ride. The case of exchange is diferent. Aristotle calls the sort of use involved in the barter of shoes or a house "not proper use" Pol. Unlike proper use, in which a thing disappears into its use, in barter the thing is an object of scrutiny as a thing to be exchanged.

But not proper use is not "improper use" Pol. When a shoemaker and a builder exchange shoes and houses, the house is or the shoemaker to inhabit and the shoes are or the builder to wear, both in the mode of proper use. This determination is not essentially diferent rom the determination of the purpose of a thing of immediate use. In both cases, the determination of the purpose, based on the our causes material, orm, end, and unction , is more or less inchoate.

But in the case of the mediated use of barter, the determination of use sometimes has to be made explicit.

When that happens, an explicit discussion about the material, orm, unction, and destination of the shoes and houses will arise. Even the explicit determination of use, a product of relection between the parties to an They are in the proper mode of use, that is, unless the exchangers are in the shoe or the real estate business, when the proit motive may alienate rom use and alter the practice of exchange. I return to this point in the context of the rise of money j ust below. This transition rom inchoate to explicit, rom private to public, is efected in acts of positive reciprocity here under discussion.

It is also efected in acts of negative reciprocity discussed by lle n, World of Prometheus, p.

There is a undamental diference between this account of the "value" of the things to be exchanged based in the our causes and the more usual accounts of value based on, or example, labor, professional standing of the makers, or supply and demand. The uses "giving shelter" and "protecting one's feet" are, ater all, as incommensurable as the items "houses" and "shoes.

It relects the parties' judgment about what is air and, in this way, it j ustiies the exchange. The agreement the parties reach is contingent. Lodged in a consensus between speciic people about speciic uses of speciic items, it j ustiies only the exchange of this house or those shoes. Voices from the Soul. There Is a You. Romance - How to Find and Keep It. A Cosmic Message of Divine Opportunity. A Deeper Understanding of Mind. Opposites Do Not Exist: On the Commerce of Thinking. Cauchy3 - Catchy Poems. How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long.

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