Ancient Political Thought Aristotle And Plato Essay — страница 2

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more of all with their own things, but less with common things” (1261b33-35). Aristotle compares sharing children with an entire community to a master who employs too many servants. A servant will be less motivated to perform specific actions, because he very well might assume that another servant has already taken care of that task. Furthermore, if the servant knows that the task has not been competed but fails to perform the task himself, if he is caught slacking off, he can simply exonerate himself by making the claim that he thought that task was already competed. If, however, a master only had one slave, this slave would not be able to claim that the work was not done, or that he was not needed, because he is the only one who can serve in the entire household. From this

example, Aristotle infers that if our children are brought up in a communal setting, the same thing will happen to human relationships that happens to masters with too many slaves. If we all share our children, “There comes to be a thousand sons to each of the citizens,” and this forms a situation in which “any chance man is equally the son of any chance man, such that all [the "fathers"] will equally neglect them (all the sons)” (1261b38-1262a1). No matter how close a “father” feels for one of his “sons,” he will end up neglecting the child since it is quite natural, or in some cases tempting, to think that another “father” is taking care of that “son.” (62, dude). This neglect will lead to a weakened father-son relationship. Every father will

only recognize himself as one of many fathers in the village, and all the children will see all the fathers as an unorganized whole. If there are 1,000 fathers in a village, the child will therefore be only 1/1000 of each individual father. This fragmentation leads to a decrease in concern or care. Furthermore, since the father does not know which son is really his, he will begin to doubt the entire system. He may think that a child is someone else?s based on the child?s resemblance to another father in the village, and then completely shun the child away. The system also leads to a lack of respect for each father. If a child steps out of line, and a father in the village tries to reprimand that child, he will be justified in saying, “I?m not going to obey you. You are not my

father.” Imagine another situation in which a family has a son and a daughter and they are brought up by the entire community, never knowing who their parents are, nor the fact that they are siblings. There remains a chance that the two could be united and procreate, never realizing that they are of relation. Aristotle would argue that Plato, therefore, in his vision of the most unified and perfect polis could, in fact, have numerous incestuous relationships. Another factor, that Aristotle fails to mention, is the situation in which a child were born mentally or physically challenged. This child would still be loved by his parents under Aristotle?s system of the household. However, if this child were released into the entire community to educate and to nurture, chances are

members of the community would not treat this child in the same way that his birth parents would. Under Plato?s system he may be deemed a social outcast, rather than a loved and cared for member of a family. All of these examples add to Aristotle?s arsenal of criticisms against Plato?s vision of a literally unified community. Plato cannot escape the reality of the fact that common things are given the least care. If we share everything, society would only become more fragmented and most likely to fall apart because no real unity or sense of belonging would exist. While both Aristotle and Plato feel that friendship is essential to holding a community together, they seem to differ radically as to the types of friendship that would create unity. In arguing against Plato?s vision of

the perfectly unified city-state, Aristotle is really proving the importance of a community having different interacting households, rather than one unified household. Bibliography plato’s republic