 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson. I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego And this is the second or part two of my lectures on Aristotle's politics book one Here I cover chapters 8 to 13 on household management or economics the art of acquisition and of wealth-getting and on domestic and paternalistic rule Now to remind you of the overall outline of Aristotle's politics in the first two chapters He gave the definition of the state and an account of its origin and growth in Chapter three he introduced the idea of household management or economics as a presupposition of politics The next three chapters were devoted to considering one part of household management that dealing with the rule of masters over Slaves or despotic rule and he offered a critique of it showing that most Existing applications of despotic rule are unjust and contrary to nature Although there is a kind that is in theory in accordance with nature that kind of rule Differs naturally from the rule from other kinds of rule in the city including political rule, but also From other kinds of rule in the household in chapters 8 to 11 He discusses households management in general and distinguishes it from the art of acquisition and offers a critique of wealth-getting Which he considers an unnatural form of the art of acquisition This is the section we'll start with in this talk and in the last two chapters He gives a differentiation and comparison of despotic paternalistic and political rule and considers the extent to which both rulers and ruled can cultivate virtue Now in chapter 8 Aristotle distinguishes the art of acquisition from but also relates it to the art of household management so the art of household management or economics is Distinct from the art of acquisition and the art of getting wealth Household management should be understood basically to use the resources manage and organize and distribute the resources in the household resources which the art of acquisition Understood as a separate art provides to the household and there are many Arts of acquisition. I mean Beginning in wider nature for each animal species since each of them are pleased with different kinds of food Some being herbivores others carnivores, etc They all have different means of acquiring their sustenance and Among the much more complex humankind there are different humankind that live by different means of and arts of acquisition including shepherding hunting farming fishing piracy and so forth Now there is a natural limit to the art of acquisition as Aristotle controversial claims Quote property in the sense of a bare livelihood Seems to be given by nature herself to all both when they are first born and when they are grown up So to some animals plants are provided by nature to other animals either those animals that eat the plants or still other animals are provided from their Sustenance and to humans all or most of these other animals are provided for our sustenance so To all animals he points out who are born live are Naturally provided a sort of initial sustenance in the form of mother's milk So this shows that when they're first born and when they're grown up nature is set up to provide all of these living kinds with The sustenance and the basic things they need the question is how it's to be used and managed Now in a practical sense the plants that they need to survive belong naturally to the herbivores and who thus justly eat those plants and those Animals that they need to survive justly belong to the carnivores naturally belong to the carnivores and thus carnivores justly eat them and all the other animals Naturally belong to the humans who thus justly eat them according to the argument and so Aristotle describes the hunting of animals as a kind of just war one that is practiced against Wild beasts and as he points out beast like humans although he doesn't get into the implication On the latter point all he wants for the current point is that nature has Provided that there are means of our for our sustenance now The justice of these various arts of acquisition depends on them following nature and in fact Observing their natural limits quote for the instruments of any art are never Unlimited either in number or size and riches may be defined as a number of instruments to be used in a household or a state Thus the art of acquisition is limited to what is needed for the household To exist to survive and to flourish Within the state and what is needed for the state to exist and continue and flourish But only the art of acquisition that observes this natural limit is just quote of the art of acquisition there is one kind which is By nature a part of the management of a household in so far as the art of household management must either find ready to hand or Itself provide such things necessary to life and useful for the community of family or state as can be stored unquote but that natural form of Acquisition which is part of the necessary art of household management Can be differentiated from another variety Quote there is another variety of the art of acquisition which is commonly and rightly called an art of wealth-getting and Has in fact suggested the notion that riches and property have no limit Being nearly connected with the proceeding it is often identified with it But though they are not very different neither are they the same the kind already described as given by nature the other kind gained by experience and by art Now Aristotle here introduces a distinction between two kinds of value that a thing may have One for its use another for its exchange for example shoes may be used for protecting the feet or they may be exchanged for money Or for a for food or for a house Etc. All Possessions may be used in both ways either for their Kind of intrinsic use and their intended purpose or to exchange for other goods or for money and The art of exchange or retail trade arises at first He says from what is natural from the circumstance that some have too little Others have too much of certain things But since it depends on the unnatural exchange value as opposed to the natural use value of things that is it exchange The unnatural exchange value of the possessions that are exchanged the art of Exchange or retail trade is not itself natural Now elsewhere in the context of his discussion of justice in the second common book of the ethics Aristotle describes a Fundamental problem with exchange value in commensurability There is no way according to nature to translate different kinds of substances like shoes food or houses into commensurable Units so that they would correspond to money if there were then we could fix what the natural price of everything should be but we cannot fix what the natural price of everything should be because we can't say how many pairs of shoes for example is equivalent to a house or How many meals can be exchanged for a pair of shoes? Nothing can metaphysically convert one of these kinds of substance into another kind or into a third kind that Consists of commensurable units for both So this problem further underscores the unnaturalness of the art of wealth-getting. It's unnatural Because it depends on this unnatural exchange value and this unnatural exchange value has no natural form of determination a Further indication of its unnaturalness is that within the family unit the natural family unit. There's no retail trade There's no retail trade because all things are held in common and are distributed in accordance with natural differences and functions within the family for a kind of natural division of labor the kind of Primitive barter that is practiced among barbarians as Aristotle says is similar to this So they might exchange wine for corn and corn for wine in accordance with the kind of division of labor that Corresponds exactly to their needs some who grow corn have too much corn But not enough wine those who grow grapes have too much wine and not enough corn and so they each take on the tasks of doing the labor related to these and then Distribute or exchange them among each other in a kind of barter system Now money originated as a convention for the sake of convenience for this unnatural art of Exchange initially they used things for money that were actually Useful but easy to carry like bits of iron silver and so forth later They simply stamped various kinds of metal to market's value without needing to weigh it Retail trade arose from the practice of bartering when it was realized that profit could be made in the process of exchange itself and the art of wealth-giving thus arises simultaneously with retail trade and Coined money with the result that coinage is And the amount of possessed coined money is assumed to be wealth and the art of acquiring coin is Assumed to be identical with the art of wealth getting but according to Aristotle Some consider coined money not at all to be a natural thing, but actually to be a sham Since coin has to actually be exchanged for something naturally good like food or shoes or houses Which are good in their own right because they can be eaten or worn or lived in and thus are useful Whereas the money is only useful in the secondary sense on the assumption. It could be exchanged for something actually useful Now household management is about these actual Natural goods not the coin that can be exchanged for it Aristotle says quote for natural riches and the natural art of wealth-giving are a different thing in their true form They are part of the management of a household Whereas retail trade is the art of producing wealth not in every way, but by exchange end of quote Now the art of wealth getting itself has no Natural limit so the investor always wants more money just as the doctor always wants to have more health But the art of acquisition that is a proper part of household management as we saw does have a limit Unlimited acquisition of wealth is not the end of the household the end of Household management is utilizing and distributing the resources organizing them and so forth preserving them so that so as to Allow the sustenance and survival and flourishing of the members of the household And so that they can contribute to the survival and flourishing of the state But beyond this limit of whatever is necessary to realize To realize those things we get into an unlimited and unnatural art Now Aristotle says that the reason people become confused and think that the art of wealth-giving Is a natural part of household management is that they confuse Mere living and survival with the good life They identify the good life with pleasure and they think that the only limit to their pleasure is The limitations of their ability to acquire wealth so they turn every other art Even those which naturally have other ends like medicine does health and architecture does buildings They would turn these things into money and turn Giving health care into an art of making money or building buildings into an art of making money And they would even he says subordinate the virtues including courage to the acquisition of wealth So they would go to war and hold their line in battle in order to make money not for the sake of the security and Justice of the state or something like that But since the good life is not identical with pleasure and even unlimited riches could not provide all the goods That are natural for humans and necessary for living the good life Then this is not a natural art Those goods are provided instead by the arts of household management and politics Those arts are natural, but the unlimited art of acquisition or wealth-giving is unnatural Now a little more about unnatural forms of wealth-giving There are both Natural and unnatural arts of acquisition the ones that are necessary for securing the good life for both the household and the state is Natural the one that aims at unlimited acquisition is unnatural as we've just said and Household is less about taking resources from nature than about using and distributing them in a way that's conducive for the good life and we can assume that the household manager is supplied already with the necessities for life and That his main task is to organize and utilize these so as to produce the best possible life and Similarly we can think of political science not as being concerned with producing human beings with making more human beings, but instead Taking some of those from nature that are already provided and ordering and organizing them so as to produce the best possible life The most unnatural form of wealth-giving he argues is Usury here we're at as far or remove as possible from the limited natural art of acquisition Which supplies to the household manager the resources necessary to provide for the good life and we're merely reproducing conventional things that are far detached from our natural goods So in summary about household management, there's the arts of animal and plant husbandry Which are the true natural arts of wealth-giving they allow the household to be provided with what it needs to flourish and to help the state flourish there are then the arts of exchange commerce usury and service for hire which are unnatural arts of wealth-giving and Then there are some intermediate arts intermediate between these unnatural and unnatural arts of wealth-giving like mining and resource extraction and Aristotle makes moral comparison between these different forms of wealth-giving Those occupations he says are most truly arts in which there is the least element of chance They are the meanest in which the body is most deteriorated the most servile in which there is the greatest use of the body and The most illiberal in which there is the least need of excellence So you could go through and figure out which ones are more which ones less Liberal which ones are more or less Servile which ones are more or less means and which of them are most or at least truly arts Aristotle refers to several earlier writings on wealth-getting and he suggests that it would be good to collect all the scattered stories of the ways in which Individuals have succeeded in amassing a fortune for all this is useful to persons who value the art of getting wealth and I think this call for him to collect these Anecdotes and research this further and take a attention pay attention to the earlier accounts of them He essentially calls for research into and an empirical art or science of economics He himself relates several anecdotes about wealth-getting most of them are fairly simplistic explaining how profit could be made by monopolizing scarce Resources and there's also another work in the Aristotle corpus entitled the economics which essentially consists of such stories and Though these seem Like pretty primitive economic theories compared to ones that we have now This is the origin of the idea of empirically Investigating economics and household management so the later growth of economics begins from these humble foundations Now Aristotle doesn't actually seem much interested in economics or household management for its own sake But he considers it necessary for politicians to understand at least to a certain extent Quote and statesmen as well ought to know these things for a state is often as much in want of Money and of such devices for obtaining it as a household and even more so and some public men devote themselves entirely to finance So those three chapters discussed household management a natural Art of household management, which includes a natural art of acquisition But it describes some other activities that arise out of these which are less natural and eventually an unnatural Art devoted to wealth-getting which is contrasted with the natural art of household management The next two chapters discuss other Aspects of the household so we've already discussed the aspect of the relationship between master and slave And we've discussed the aspect that deals with acquiring the resources that one needs to Manage within the household now we look at the two other Relationships within the household that between husband and wife and that between parent and child Resulting in three kinds of rule in household management In each case there is an inequality Masters are unequal to slaves husbands unequal to wives parents unequal to children and in each case a superior element is assumed to rule an Inferior one masters husbands Parents being superior slaves wives and children being inferior Nevertheless the rule of a husband over a wife is likened to a kind of political and even constitutional rule in That kind of rule as we'll see when we get to discussing actual politics and not just its presuppositions Equals take turns ruling and being ruled in a constitutional Republic Now husband and wife are not Fully equal Because as I've said men are assumed to be superior to women in certain respects by Aristotle But husband and wife divide labor within the household and each rule in specific tasks for the sake of the good life of the entire household So in this way they resemble the division of labor Within a political association that exists for the sake of the good life of the entire Political community and so it is a relatively more equal relationship than that between master and slave The rule of father over Children is likened to Kingly or royal political rule again the rule is of a superior to the inferior the old and The parents in this context taken to be superior to the young and the children But the rule is for the sake of the good life of the entire household Once again and the ruler and ruled are of the same kin Unlike the rule of husband over wife, which I've been calling Domestic rule the rule of parent over child, which we can call paternalistic rule Does not entail a division of labor or taking turns in ruling or being ruled Now in the final chapter Aristotle discusses the extent to which both rulers and ruled can be virtuous and This really comes down to the question of to what extent both sides share in reason as we have seen Household management is more concerned with ruling over living things ruling over slaves women and children Then it is with the acquisition or even the management of inanimate property and the main concern of this rule will be the promotion of Excellence or the virtue of those ruled Thus there arises a question about the possibility of virtue even for slaves quote whether they can have virtues of temperance courage Justice and the like or whether slaves possess only bodily or ministerial qualities. This is a question raised by Aristotle Now Aristotle points out there's difficulties With the views that slaves do and the views that slaves do not have the possibility of virtue If they do have the possibility of virtue Then they don't as differ essentially from freemen and if they could attain all of the same Virtues then why not consider them to be free and so if they're slaves, they must be all be conventional slaves But since they are no doubt human and thus rational they have to have The possibility of action and thus of some kind of excellent or virtuous action Now it would be absurd if the master were to have Virtues such as temperance, but the slave not have virtue for then the slave won't do his duty And so what the master requires for his virtuous activity will not be complete So there must be a sense in which slaves do have virtue Now recognizing that slaves can be virtuous doesn't actually require Admitting that all manual laborers can be virtuous and it's a surprising doctrine of Aristotle that quote the slave shares in his master's life But the artisan is less closely connected with him and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave the meaner sort of mechanic or Manual laborer has a special and separate slavery and whereas the slave exists by nature Not so the shoemaker or other artisan. So once again, we see the doctrine that the the master acts in a in such a way that actually benefits the Slave and the slave in a way shares in the master's reason and shares in his virtue But no such relationships exist between those people who are merely workers The general idea is that the rational rules the rational But in application this works in several different ways Because the kind of reason that is possessed by the rule differs in each cases in each case Quote for the slave has no deliberative faculty at all The woman has a deliberative faculty, but it's without authority and the child has a deliberative faculty, but it is immature Thus all of these different kinds of humans masters slaves husbands wives parents children But not manual laborers all have virtues, but in different ways So both ruler and ruled have virtues both ruler and ruled Participate in reason, but the ruler always possesses the active rational principle Whereas the ruled lacks some kind of aspect of rational principle the slave Completely lacks deliberative faculty a woman lacks Authoritative deliberative faculty and the child has an immature deliberative faculty Now the slave is permanently in that condition because of their congenital defect. They cannot They have a mental problem that they can't deliberate in their own interests and execute Decisions in their own interest But women in a way can and children in a way can and so their Education is essential to the state since they're free people and they Themselves do or at least will take part in rule and thus they need to be virtuous And so Aristotle says quote And as much as every family is a part of a state and these Relationships are the parts of a family and the virtue of the part must have regard to the virtue of the whole Women and children must be trained by education with an eye to the Constitution if the virtues of either of them are supposed to make any difference in the virtues of the state and They must make a difference for the children grow up to be citizens and half the persons Free persons in a state are women end of quote So remember this chart we have of natural composites rulers and ruled we've seen that the rulers Rule in their own interest, but they also benefit the ruled Incidentally in the case of slavery directly and deliberately in the case of domestic or paternal rule, but This analogy is made to do Heavy work that it assists the virtue of the ruled if the ruler is able to Exert its power and influence and rule Just as again It's better that humans rule beasts and not beasts rule humans or it's better that the mind rule the body and not the body The mind or that the intellect rule the appetite and not the appetite the Intellect and that if the soul rules the body The body and soul can both have virtue and if the intellect rules the appetite both intellect and appetite can be virtuous And if humans rule beasts they can both have a kind of virtue So if males rule females correctly and parents child and masters slave then all of these will have a kind of virtue So this leads me to a summary of all of book one of the politics We've seen that the state or polis is a community or Association that comes into being for the sake of the good life It only comes to be among humans Humans can be defined thus as political animals as opposed to gods or beasts who don't need politics for life or for the good life The state is prior to any of its individual members whether we're talking about citizens or non-citizens The state can exist without any individual But an individual as a political animal cannot exist without the state Unless the individual is again a beast or a god who either don't need or cannot use politics to secure the good life The state came to be Naturally out of villages and villages out of family households Family households consist of a husband who's also a father and a master a wife children and slaves Wives and children are naturally free slaves are not The rule over slaves were despotic rule differs from rule over women and children Which I've been calling domestic or paternalistic rule And its present form Slavery is unjust, but there is in theory a just form of it that involves rule over a person with a congenital mental deficiency Which prevents them from making executive decisions on their own behalf Such people are better off being enslaved This of course is not the condition of most actual slaves who have been Unjustly enslaved by being taken captive in war or sold Political rule which is between equals who take turn ruling and being ruled Differs from both despotic and domestic or paternalistic rule So far Aristotle has actually said very little or almost nothing about politics itself This entire book has been about the presuppositions of politics things that must exist by hypothetical necessity if the political life is going to exist and Also comparison of Political rule to other kinds of rule. We've now examined the other kinds of rule The rest of the books will be devoted to explaining political rule Finally, we've seen that household management or economics presupposes but is not identical to an art of acquisition which supplies the resources that the household manage or Orders and distributes for the benefit of all the parts of the household The art of acquisition Since the introduction of coined money has become confused and conflated with the art of wealth of wealth getting But whereas the art of acquisition is natural and limited to what is required by the household for the good life the art of wealth getting is Unnatural and unlimited and that's the conclusion of book one of Aristotle's politics. Thank you