By challenging the outcome, Gore seems to have prevented the kind of consensus that you talk about. Bush is said to have more or less thrown away the National unity that formed after 9/11 through his policy in Iraq, but the 9/11 hearings with their absurd blaming of Bush for the attack, set the stage for all opposition to his policy in the Middle East. Our politics have only gotten more radical. God grant that we are spared such an election in 2012.
No, but you are the one who suggested a man would be selected by the elite to rule them:shrug:
Influential isn’t the same as right.
Well since God is Truth Beauty and LOVE everything must have an element of truth
So is there something in particular you disagree with? I disagree with him a lot, but a lot of what he says is true and proven. Even Marx had some truth to his philosophies, but they were generally blown out of proportion to the detriment of all that followed him.
Well, women are generally inferior to men in size and muscular strength. It was once assumed that they were naturally inferior intellectually, and there is some truth in that too. I do not think women are less intelligent, more that they are less schoolable, But men and women do look at the world differently. War and politics are men’s “games” Aristotle was a great empiricist who knew the constitutions and histories of the City states and the world about them. Every political scientist since his time has learned much from him. He knew what men were like. Hard to understand how he could think that the brain was just an organ to cool the blood. But he did know how to think with his own.
Are you Catholic?
I disagree with him a lot, but a lot of what he says is true and proven. Even Marx had some truth to his philosophies, but they were generally blown out of proportion to the detriment of all that followed him.
what he meant I think, is that physically not mentally.,…at least I hope.
This isn’t a major part of his political philosophy and certainly is not a principal I have employed in this conversation.
Again, looking back to the Roman Empire, they had four main ways to become Emperor: Support of the Army, support of the Senate, being son (natural) of the previous Emperor, being adopted or otherwise designated by the previous Emperor.
Yes, unfortunately, as you say, that process of reuniting is badly damaged these days. But is it a response to specific events, or a gradual loss of civility and unity? Or both?
No. There is no guarantee that any government will perpetually uphold moral law.
No, because that would not be inherently good, but rather good for its theoretical effects, which can be reproduced by other systems in theory once identified.
That is incorrect. The polis is a political unit that can be ruled by any of the three systems of government Aristotle mentions. Athens did not cease to be a polis in 404-3 BC simply because it happened to be ruled by an oligarchy.
No.
That is clearly not the case. Furthermore, consider the extremely violent rebellions and revolutions in a number of Eastern bloc countries. The dictators retained power in spite of an unwilling populace.
What does that even mean? How can women both be naturally inferior and not naturally inferior? What does “schoolable” mean?
That does not make them inherently “men’s games.”
I didn’t say Athens ceased to be a polis; it simply ceased to be a polity, or republic, in the Aristotelian model of governments.
This is the terminology used by some later schools of thought, but that would not have helped me demonstrate the truth expressed by Aristotle that any of the three numbers of government can be good or evil. (Including a papal monarchy.)
More Aristotle here: by not being so at the same time or in the same way. (I do not agree with Robby)
As long as you equate polity with republic, then you are correct.
Aristotle explicitly states that aristocracy is the good form of oligarchy.
Clearly only the second case is relevant, in which case Robby misspoke. Aristotle’s logic still applies on these forums – one cannot be X and not X simultaneously; if this appears to be the case, then a specification problem is in play.
I said as much already. Did you read my first post or just lightly skim it?I did. Everything that you said was terminology used by later thinkers was in fact stated explicitly by Aristotle, hence my confusion. Which part of my post was post-Aristotelian?
He is not right. Prior to your post, no one had invoked Aristotelian terminology. Therefore, to this argument is fallacious because a crucial assumption – that he and you were speaking about the same “democracy” – is incorrect. The modern definition has no moral value.
Which also happens to be the Aristotelian term for all constitutions and all governments, as I stated above.
This is true of any form of government – those ruling need to be virtuous. This gets us no closer to that which everyone has recognized as the actual issue since the beginning of the thread: whether it is easier to ensure moral leadership in a monarchy or a democracy, using the simplified terms of Aristotelian government.
What is the basis for that judgement in the first place? It seems to me that it stems not from logic but from a bias and a lack of attention to social pressures and prejudices towards women that would surely stunt the academic development of women.And, actually, if Robby can prove that the smartest man is smarter than the smartest women, the Aristotelian burden would be met.