Aristotle’s Household Politics: Arche Politike in the Oikos and the Polis

• In Event: The Polis Examined: Aristotle and Isocrates

Abstract

Aristotle would not be surprised to hear that the personal is political. As counterintuitive as it might sound, the reason behind this is that Aristotle does not think that political rule (arche politike) is limited to the polis. Indeed, the oikos has a primordial example of political rule: the rule between spouses (arche gamike). This is because spouses, like citizens, are in a position of freedom and equality, even if they might have vast differences of wealth, resources, and abilities. Hence marital rule (arche gamike) is a kind of political rule (arche politike).

There are three main objections to the claim that marital rule is a kind of arche politike: that arche politike is rule of citizens over citizens (republican rule) (see Kwak, 2021; Lockwood 2006, p. 29; Riesbeck 2015, p. 134), that arche politike as rule over polity (polity management) as opposed to rule over household (household management or domestic rule) (see Crespo 2008, p. 282; Miller 1995, p. 13; Rosler 2005, p. 106; Schollmeier 2003, p. 23), or that marital rule is a kind of monarchy or aristocracy. All of these claims are made by Aristotle and can be reconciled with each other and with the claim that arche politike is the rule over free and equal people (civic rule). The reconciliation happens by pointing out that sometimes a single term or word is used to refer to several connected but different concepts.

Aristotle uses the term “arche politike” to refer to three different but interconnected concepts. The first is the rule between free and equal people, which I call “civic rule”. The second is rule between citizens, which I call “republican rule”. The third is the rule over a polity (which I call “polity management”). The rule between free and equal people (which I call “civic rule”) is the fundamental concept that is called “arche politike”. Republican rule is the central case of civic rule, hence it retains the name “arche politike”, while the non-central case of civic rule - marital rule - receives a new term “arche gamike”. Since most residents of a polity are citizens either strictly speaking (capable of holding office) or weakly speaking (disenfranchised native freeborn people, like women), polity management most often involves ruling over these people, who are free and equal to the rulers, even if they are not allowed to hold office. That means that polity management mostly involves some kind of civic rule, which most likely is republican rule. Hence polity management also keeps the term “arche politike”.

To be able to show this point, it is necessary to show that for Aristotle arche gamike is indeed the rule between spouses rather than the rule of the husband over the wife (see Riesbeck 2016, p. 146) or the rule of man over woman (see Bates, 2002, p. 76; Deslauriers 2015, p. 46). There are two answers that can be given to this issue. One is by emphasizing the role of deliberation in the relation between free and equal people. The ability to deliberate is the central aspect of being equals. While Aristotle thinks that a wife might not be a perfectly reliable deliberator, she is capable of deliberating well. This is in contraposition to the natural slave who is not able to deliberate. This means that while she is deliberating, a wife is equal to the husband. The other answer is by thinking of the corruption of faculties into a slavish state (which can come from extreme weather). If the husband is corrupted enough by slavish activity or extreme weather, he can end up in a position near the state of a natural slave. In this case the wife would be the superior deliberator of the pair. This explains the clause Aristotle gives in the Politics I.xii that “a male, unless he is somehow constituted contrary to nature, is naturally more fitted to lead than a female” (1259a1-2).

Author

• Armando Perez-Gea, Stanford University