"The artisan only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a
slave," and the slave is only a living instrument of the good life. He
exists for the state, but the state does not exist for him.
2. Aristotle in his account of the ideal state seems to waver between
two ideals. There is the ideal of an aristocracy and the ideal of what
he calls constitutional government, a mixed constitution. The
principle of "tools to those who can use them" ought to lead him, as
it does Plato, to an aristocracy. Those who have complete knowledge of
the good must be few, and therefore Plato gave entire power in his
state into the hands of the small minority of philosopher guardians.
It is in accordance with this principle that Aristotle holds that
kingship is the proper form of government when there is in the state
one man of transcendent virtue. At the same time, Aristotle always
holds that absolute government is not properly political, that
government is not like the rule of a shepherd over his sheep, but the
rule of equals over equals. He admits that the democrats are right in
insisting that equality is a necessary element in the state, though he
thinks they do not admit the importance of other equally necessary
elements. Hence he comes to say that ruling and being ruled over by
turns is an essential feature of constitutional government, which he
admits as an alternative to aristocracy. The end of the state, which
is to be the standard of the distribution of political power, is
conceived sometimes as a good for the apprehension and attainment of
which "virtue" is necessary and sufficient (this is the principle of
aristocracy), and sometimes as a more complex good, which needs for
its attainment not only "virtue" but wealth and equality.
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