A Model for Civic Friendship: Aristotle on Marriage

• In Event: The Polis Examined: Aristotle and Isocrates

Abstract

In discussing civic friendship, the Nicomachean Ethics appeals to three family “similitudes . . . and sort of paradigms” (8.9, 1160b23-24). Each family love—parent-child, husband-wife, sibling-sibling—is a regime-specific metaphor. The friendship of king for subjects is paternal, like fatherly love. Civic friendship among aristocrats, or the ruling class of an aristocratic regime, is analogous to the love between husband and wife. And finally, the civic friendship found in broad-based regimes is fraternal.

The marriage model is the real surprise here: fraternity still remains a democratic metaphor today, and the paternalism of dictators is perhaps perennial. But did aristocrats really think of themselves as “married” to one another or to their regime? The paper explores this marriage model.

Being excellent is the title to rule in Aristotle’s aristocracy, where office follows upon virtue. Proper husbands, he says, rule only in those spheres where they have worth or merit (8.10, 1160b33-1161a1). What the wife is good at, she rules. If the husband tries to take over everything, including affairs she alone excels in—household affairs seem intended, but the principle seems generalizable—he transforms their marriage from an aristocracy into an oligarchy, a bad regime. For “he does it contrary to merit and [does not rule] where he is better.” On the polis level, the decline of aristocracies into oligarchies is due to “vice of the rulers, who allot the city’s things contrary to merit, [taking] all or most good things for themselves, and the offices for themselves, making the most of getting rich” (1160b12-16). Similarly, the bad husband appoints himself officer over every sphere of competence, including home economics, perhaps too concerned about making money, like the oligarchs. Wives can end up in the driver’s seat for related reasons: “Sometimes wives rule because they are heiresses. But of course such rule does not come into existence in accordance with excellence but on account of wealth and power, just as in oligarchies” (1161a1-3).

While the model clearly intends to promote virtue, it is unclear how aristocrats would appeal to it amongst themselves. Fraternity is a rallying cry. But marriage? I argue that fraternity is a rallying cry because it is a concrete metaphor for equality. If equality is the democratic principle, and virtue is the aristocratic principle, then marriage would have to be a concrete metaphor for virtue. Something like this seems to be borne out in Aristotle’s continuation (8.12, 1162a16ff.). He says that lower animals form partnerships for reproduction alone, whereas humans form households not only for child-production but to supply means for living (a19-21). “For immediately their functions differ, and there are different functions for the man and different ones for the woman.” Husband and wife “each contribute their peculiar [gifts] into the common store” (a21-23). He moves quickly from the resulting utility and pleasure, as the basis for marital love, to the possibility of virtue: “and if the partners are decent, it may even be [sc. a friendship] based on virtue” (a24-26). In the limit, for spouses of decent character, each may delight in the special virtue of the other: “For each [sex] has an excellence and they can rejoice in that” (a27). Virtue is the strongest basis for friendship.

The remainder of the paper explores the applicability of the model to liberal democracy, on the assumption that liberal democracy is a mixed regime, mixing aristocratic with democratic elements. Fidelity is the virtue most associated with marriage in modern thought, but marriage also has an advantage over fraternity in that it is contractual and hence closer to our liberal ideal of citizenship than are involuntary blood ties. Marriage is also more meritocratic: spouses merit or achieve their affection, whereas the fraternal metaphor is one of siblings stuck with each other by accident of birth.

However, Aristotle’s most important insight may be the overcoming of envy: rejoicing in virtues we do not possess (but have access to through a partner). It is not easy to freely acknowledge superiorities in others. But if one’s partner puts her superiority at one’s disposal or uses it to advance the partnership, it ceases to be a threat and becomes a common possession.

How would such “pooling” of superiorities work in practice? Would partners of a firm, say, or any member of a group larger than the family, place their talents at the disposal of the group or of the larger society? I suggest ways in which such pooling already takes place. I argue that greater familiarity with and usage of the marriage model, in ordinary speech and in political rhetoric, would provide a concrete (and non-threatening) way of talking about virtue, which could conceivably enhance and expand civic friendship.

Author

• Paul W. Ludwig, St. John's College