Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [92]
Both sides overlook the highest end of political association, which for Aristotle is to cultivate the virtue of citizens. The end of the state is not “to provide an alliance for mutual defence… or to ease economic exchange and promote economic intercourse.”6 For Aristotle, politics is about something higher. It’s about learning how to live a good life. The purpose of politics is nothing less than to enable people to develop their distinctive human capacities and virtues—to deliberate about the common good, to acquire practical judgment, to share in self-government, to care for the fate of the community as a whole.
Aristotle acknowledges the usefulness of other, lesser forms of association, such as defense pacts and free trade agreements. But he insists that associations of this kind don’t amount to true political communities. Why not? Because their ends are limited. Organizations such as NATO and NAFTA and the WTO are concerned only with security or economic exchange; they don’t constitute a shared way of life that shapes the character of the participants. And the same can be said of a city or a state concerned only with security and trade and that is indifferent to the moral and civic education of its members. “If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,” Aristotle writes, their association can’t really be considered a polis, or political community.7
“A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.” While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. “The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.”8
If the political community exists to promote the good life, what are the implications for the distribution of offices and honors? As with flutes, so with politics: Aristotle reasons from the purpose of the good to the appropriate way of distributing it. “Those who contribute most to an association of this character” are those who excel in civic virtue, those who are best at deliberating about the common good. Those who are greatest in civic excellence—not the wealthiest, or the most numerous, or the most handsome—are the ones who merit the greatest share of political recognition and influence.9
Since the end of politics is the good life, the highest offices and honors should go to people, such as Pericles, who are greatest in civic virtue and best at identifying the common good. Property holders should have their say. Majoritarian considerations should matter some. But the greatest influence should go to those with the qualities of character and judgment to decide if and when and how to go to war with Sparta.
The reason people such as Pericles (and Abraham Lincoln) should hold the highest offices and honors is not simply that they will enact wise policies, making everyone better off. It is also that political community exists, at least in part, to honor and reward civic virtue. According public recognition to those who display civic excellence serves the educative role of the good city. Here again, we see how the teleological and honorific aspects of justice go together.
Can You Be a Good Person If You Don’t Participate in Politics?
If Aristotle is right that the end of politics is the good life, it’s easy to conclude that those who display the greatest civic virtue merit the highest offices and honors. But is he right that politics is for the sake of the good life? This is, at best, a controversial claim.