Suchergebnisse

Contemporary political discourse is marked with the language of
democracy, and Western countries in particular seek to promote democracy
at home and abroad. However, there is a sublimated conflict in general
political discourse between a desire to rely on alleged political experts
and a desire to assert the supposed common sense of all men. Can the
struggle between the democratic and aristocratic values embodied in this
conflict be reconciled? The question is perennial, and raises issues that
are central to constitutional design. Aristotle, developing in significant
ways insights made by his teacher Plato, grapples with it in his
Politics. Aristotle's views on these matters are
relevant—by way of the American Founders'—to contemporary
American politics and modern democracies generally. During the eighteenth
century, the Founders, some of whom explicitly reached back to Aristotle's
work, also struggled—especially in The Federalist
Papers—with these thorny issues of constitutional design. They
created the U.S. Constitution in part to address these very same
problems and issues. We are living in some ways, then, in the shadow of
Aristotle's political theorizing, albeit as transposed by the American
Founders. Both Aristotle and some of the American Founders theoretically
favor aristocracy over democracy, but concede that in practice a blend of
the two has to be integrated into the fundamental structure of political
society. We need to reconnect with these important political discussions
in order to come to terms with aristocratic and democratic values in our
current circumstances.