Recognition and redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis

We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s exposition between views of democratic justice as, in one sense, based on equality ‘according to worth’ and in another based on arithmetic equality. Balot, we contend, misconstrues our original argument when he represents us as claiming that, according to Aristotle, the injustice which leads agents to engage in stasis exists entirely in their own minds. We did not and do not hold that view and therefore (pace Balot) are in no way committed to any Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2023 09:58:28AM


Introduction
In Polis 40 (2023) Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll -'former and current members of Polis' editorial staff' , no less -express their disagreements with our study, 'Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle's Account of Stasis' , published in the previous year's issue of the journal.1 We are grateful to the editor for giving us the opportunity to reply and to Professors Balot and Knoll for criticisms that allow us to clarify our position.We are pleased that our discussion has sparked such interest, and also by the very large measure of agreement between our discussion and those of our critics -greater, indeed, than Balot and Knoll recognize or are willing to acknowledge.Remaining disagreements rest primarily on the issue of point of view and its role in Aristotle's analysis of stasis in Politics 5.This issue was at the core of our original discussion, and it is useful to be able to return to it here in defending an interpretation that, in our view, accounts for the evidence better than do those of our critics.

Knoll: Proportional and Arithmetic Equality
Knoll's criticism is the more specific and limited of the two, and so we deal with that first and more briefly.At issue here are a number of passages in the Aristotelian corpus that bear on the nature of distributive justice.At Eth. Nic.5.3.1131a25-29 it is said that all agree that distributive justice should be 'in accordance with some standard of worth or value' (κατ' ἀξίαν τινά), whether freedom (favoured by democrats), wealth, nobility of birth, or virtue.In Politics 5.1 (1301a25-28), we find a similar statement: forms of πολιτεία such as democracy and oligarchy are said to depend on different conceptions of justice as proportional equality (τὸ κατ' ἀναλογίαν ἴσον), each failing in its own way to bring about such equality in its unqualified sense.In this passage, the justice at which democracy aims is, at least in the eyes of the democrats, a matter of proportional equality.At 1301b28-35 in the same chapter, however, two kinds of equality are distinguished -numerical/arithmetic and 'according to worth or value' (τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀριθμῷ τὸ δὲ κατ' ἀξίαν), only the latter of which is proportional.Aristotle then continues (Pol.5.1.1301b35-39): ὁμολογοῦντες δὲ τὸ ἁπλῶς εἶναι δίκαιον τὸ κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, διαφέρονται, καθάπερ ἐλέχθη πρότερον, οἱ μὲν ὅτι, ἐὰν κατὰ τὶ ἴσοι ὦσιν, ὅλως ἴσοι νομίζουσιν εἶναι, οἱ δ' ὅτι, ἐὰν κατὰ τὶ ἄνισοι, πάντων ἀνίσων ἀξιοῦσιν ἑαυτούς.
Although all agree that justice in absolute terms is justice according to worth (κατ' ἀξίαν), they differ, as said above, the one party in that they think they are wholly equal if they are equal in some respect, and the other in so far as they deem themselves worthy of inequality in all things, if they are unequal in one respect.
In Book 6, in turn, the view of democratic justice as based on arithmetic equality, and not equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, is emphatically restated (Pol.6.2.1317b3-4 καὶ γὰρ τὸ δίκαιον τὸ δημοτικὸν τὸ ἴσον ἔχειν ἐστὶ κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀλλὰ μὴ κατ' ἀξίαν).2 In our original article in this journal, we take issue with earlier statements on Knoll's part in which he argued that, whereas in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle accepted that democratic notions of justice were based on ἀξία (worth), in the Politics he distinguishes between democratic justice based on numerical or arithmetic equality and other notions based on proportional equality or equality according to worth (κατ᾽ ἀξίαν).We argued then and still maintain that in the Politics too Aristotle sees democratic justice as in one sense κατ᾽ ἀξίαν and in another arithmetic.
Knoll himself has now changed his position to acknowledge that reference is made to both forms of equality in connexion with the democrats' position in Politics 5.He now argues, however, that there is no tension between these views in that discussion, because the view that democratic notions of justice rest on axia is a democratic perspective that Aristotle himself rejects.The statements Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 that 'all agree' on the relation between distributive justice and proportional equality 'in accordance with worth' in the Ethics and Politics represent merely an ἔνδοξον (MK, p. 215): As a consequence of my proposed interpretation to read Aristotle's recurring formulation 'all agree' as referring to a 'respected opinion' (endoxon) close to his own view, but not identical with it, the alleged 'tension between proportional and numerical equality' 'at the heart' of Pol.5.1 disappears.
Neither in Knoll's account of Aristotle's views nor in ours, however, is the position so simple, and the complexity turns precisely on the issue of point of view.When Knoll writes (p.214), 'This respected opinion on political justice should, however, not be identified with his own view' , a great deal depends on what 'this respected opinion' is taken to be, what precisely one means by Aristotle's 'own view' , and how strictly one wants to interpret 'identified' .
On the passage at 5.1.1301b28-39,where both views are found, we wrote (CCM, p. 14, emphasis added): In a single passage, then, Aristotle states that democrats, like oligarchs and others, base their claims to justice on equality according to worth; yet in rejecting both democratic and oligarchic principles as mistaken and partial conceptions of justice he presents the democrats' version as numerical or arithmetic equality.
The similarity between this view and Knoll's should be clear: the highlighted phrases indicate that we are well aware that we are dealing with a contrast between how democrats themselves present their claims and how Aristotle interprets them.But though in a sense Knoll is right that democratic equality and democratic justice are κατ᾽ ἀξίαν in their view, arithmetic in his, it turns out to be far too simple to make this just a matter of democrats' views versus Aristotle's, and it seems to us that Knoll gets himself into considerable difficulty in trying to do so.The basic issues are these: democrats make a claim -does Aristotle believe that claim is groundless?The ground for the democrats' claim is their equality in terms of free birth -does Aristotle deny the validity of free birth as the basis for a claim, and does he deny that free birth is a form of ἀξία?
Knoll writes: 'in the Politics Aristotle holds that democrats aim at numerical equality and not at proportional equality' (MK, p. 212); he continues 'democratic justice demands a distribution of political power and recognition according to numerical equality' (MK, p. 215).These are statements of Knoll's view of Aristotle's understanding of democrats' aims and demands.But how do democrats themselves construe their aim and demands?If democrats want what Aristotle calls arithmetic or numerical equality, they do so, as Knoll agrees, because they construe such a distribution as just.But a numerically equal distribution is just only if it distributes to each what they deserve, if it recognizes their worth.Democrats do not pursue arithmetic equality simply because it is equal; to be motivated by perceived inequality they must believe that what Aristotle calls arithmetic equality is what they are entitled to on the basis of their free birth.The point that Aristotle makes in Eth.Nic 5.3 is that, for democrats, free birth is precisely the operative criterion of ἀξία.When he echoes that passage in Politics 5.1, saying that all, democrats and non-democrats, alike agree that justice in distribution rests on equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν or κατ᾽ ἀναλογίαν he is at least conceding that, in the minds of democrats, what they aim at, though it amounts to numerical equality in his eyes, is in their eyes a form of equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν.It is therefore true only in a qualified sense that 'Aristotle holds that democrats aim at numerical equality and not at proportional equality' (our emphasis); the necessary qualification is that, while democrats aim at equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, what they aim at amounts in Aristotle's view to arithmetic equality.The pursuit of numerical equality as such and without reference to ἀξία is not part of the democrats' own ideation.
In the view that what they seek is equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, democrats are, according to Aristotle, in some sense wrong; but it is not Aristotle's view that they are wrong to base their notion of distributive justice on a conception of equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν.He too believes that distributive justice must be based on a notion of equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν.Where Aristotle differs from democrats (and from oligarchs) is thus in the conception of what constitutes equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν, in what in fact constitutes ἀξία.
We argue this at length in our original paper and need not rehearse those details here, because, in fact, Knoll explicitly agrees with our statement 'that any interpretation of the democratic notion of numerical equality that deprives it of any reference to worth altogether is doomed to failure' (MK, p. 216, quoting CCM, p. 15).'This argument is convincing' , Knoll goes on, 'because the democrats base their distributive claims also on their understanding of "worth" (axia)' .Knoll also accepts a further point that we make and document in the original paper, that 'Aristotle concedes this position a limited right' .3 Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 'Nevertheless' , he adds, 'he repeatedly disagrees with it' .Yes, indeed he does.But evidently neither Knoll nor we are arguing that what Aristotle disagrees with is that the democrats believe that their claims are based on ἀξία.What he disagrees with is the idea that the democrats' conception of ἀξία should be adopted as the correct one without qualification.In disagreeing with that, Aristotle clearly accepts both that democrats think their case is based on ἀξία and -if it has a 'limited right' -that it is indeed based on ἀξία in some way and to some extent.
Knoll then poses the following question (MK, p. 217): Why does Aristotle claim that democratic justice is not one interpretation of justice 'according to worth or merit' , but an application of 'numeric' or 'arithmetic' equality (Pol.6.2.1317b4 …)?
His answer to this question is -in essence if not in every detail (and see n. 4 below for an important corrigendum to his formulation) -our answer: in Aristotle's view, the democratic conception of justice is inadequate in failing to distinguish proportionally between free individuals.The reader might compare the following two formulations.The first is Knoll's (MK, p. 217): As early as in Eth.Nic.5.6.1131a25-29,democratic justice is treated as a subset of proportional justice and equality.However, while it is sound to say that democratic justice distributes power and recognition according to equal status or worth (defined as equal freedom), it makes little sense to claim that it distributes these goods in proportion to freedom, a quality equally shared by all citizens.A distribution in proportion to some specific quality requires qualities -such as 'wealth' , 'virtue' , and 'noble birth' -that allow for a gradation of 'more' and 'less' and therefore bigger or smaller proportional shares.Strictly speaking, distributions can be in proportion to some inequality, but not in proportion to some equality.4 which Aristotle proposes in Pol.5.1.1302a7-8for a stable political system, does not refer to democracy, but to the constitution Aristotle calls 'polity' (politeia).But this is a misrepresentation: we do not claim that the accommodation of democratic and non-democratic conceptions is itself democratic -that would be perverse and inept.The important point is that, in a constitution that is better and more just (in Aristotle's view) than a democracy, the democratic principle, even in the unfavourable terms in which Aristotle himself describes it, should be accommodated (cf.6.3.1318a27-33).Why should it be so?Because the claim that it advances is just to some extent: free birth is a form of ἀξία.The second is ours (CCM, p. 16):5 That the democratic notions of equality and justice should be in one sense κατ᾽ ἀξίαν and in another κατ᾽ ἀριθμόν is a characteristically Aristotelian stance that makes due allowance for different perspectives.By the same token, it emerges that there are marked and unmarked senses of equality and justice κατ᾽ ἀξίαν: in the unmarked sense, any criterion of worth counts, while in the marked, it is characteristic of 'worth' that individuals should manifest it to different degrees.It would be misleading to claim that these positions are not to some degree in tension, but it would be equally wrong to say that the tension is resolved in favour of an absolute denial that democrats base their own claims (their ὑπόληψις) on ἀξία.
When Knoll then goes on to write that 'Aristotle does not deny the value of "freedom" or "free birth" (eleutheria); it has real "worth" (axia)' there is no sense in which he is departing from our position (as stated at CCM, pp.13-16 in particular).This is precisely our point, and to insist on that point is not to claim that Aristotle endorses democratic claims in every respect.We make it clear, in so many words (CCM, pp.8-9, 11-12, 14-15, 17, 32-34), that Aristotle believes the democrats' claim, like that of other groups, is partial, inadequate, and wrong about what ἀξία consists in.We never make the claim that Aristotle endorses the substance of the democrats' claim, nor are we in any sense unaware that he does not see either democratic or oligarchic criteria of ἀξία as 'supreme values' (MK, p. 217).But if Aristotle accepts the democrats' claim in any sense not only as partially legitimate, but also as an entitlement claim,6 then he is committed to the view that it is based on ἀξία, in spite of unequivocal statements to the contrary such as Pol.6.2.1317b3-4.It is in this sense that there is indeed a tension, not just between one part of the Politics and another, or between the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, but right there at the heart of the discussion in Politics 5.1, between the democratic view of justice as (on the one hand) Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 based on a view of ἀξία that is in some sense and to some extent legitimate and (on the other) as amounting to no more than a notion of arithmetic or numerical equality.
Our way of accommodating this is to suggest that in effect Aristotle is using κατ᾽ ἀξίαν in marked and unmarked senses (cf.above).Knoll's way of accommodating it is to introduce a distinction between two senses of ἀξία, as 'worth' and as 'merit' (MK, p. 218).Though Aristotle does not draw precisely that distinction in precisely those terms, it is true that ἀξία is a capacious notion in the Aristotelian corpus and one that does encompass a range of different grounds on which groups or individuals may be considered worthy, deserving, or meritorious.7It is also true that it is only in the case of the virtuous that one could regard ἀξία unequivocally as 'merit' -there is no particular merit in being lucky enough to be of free birth, and though it is sometimes the case that wealth is secured by an individual's merit, Aristotle's problem with the wealthy is precisely that their wealth leads them to conflate luck with desert (Pol.5.1.1301a31-35,Rh. 2.16.1390b32-1391a2; cf.CCM, p. 31 with n. 68).What Knoll fails to notice, however, is that this formulation does not resolve or eliminate the tension that we identify in Aristotle's account of democratic views of justice, but rather exacerbates it, since Knoll now wants to uphold two contradictory claims: (a) that Aristotle's insistence that democratic justice rests on numerical equality excludes an allowance that it entails a notion of justice based on equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν; and (b) that the free birth on which democrats base their claims is a form of ἀξία (one that can be described as worth but not as merit).Knoll's attempt to have things both ways reflects the very tension that he originally set out to deny.8We accept that tension and explain both how it arises and how it fits into the argument of Politics 5.1-3.When we thus argue that democrats and oligarchs espouse different notions not only of distributive justice but also of proportional equality we are not, as Knoll claims, 'confused' (p.219 n. 33); on Aristotle's account and even on Knoll's, malgré lui, it emerges that democrats do have notions of both equality and justice that rest Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 on their particular conception of ἀξία and which therefore differ from notions of equality and justice that are based on other conceptions of ἀξία.

Balot: the Causes of Stasis and the Motives of Its Agents
Balot is more fundamentally critical of our approach.In CCM we make two basic claims: first, that among the three general causes of stasis that Aristotle discusses (1. the disposition of revolutionary agents, πῶς ἔχοντες; 2. honour and profit as the goals of stasis, τίνων ἕνεκεν; 3. the seven or eleven 'occasioning' causes of stasis, τίνες ἀρχαί), the most fundamental is Cause 1, the agents' conception of distributive justice.The second and perhaps more important claim is that these conceptions of distributive justice are not only, or not primarily, about the distribution of material resources, but also, and more fundamentally, about recognition.With this latter point we sought to achieve two aims.First, to stress the importance of τιμή as a motive of the revolutionaries and to resist Balot's tendency (in his book Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens) to dissociate honour from wealth as objects of pursuit.9True, as Balot notes, Aristotle in Politics 1 investigates the causes of the unlimited desire for wealth associated with unnatural χρηματιστική and locates them in an erroneous conception of the scope of human existence.But Aristotle examines wealth not only as a good in its own right.He also points to its positional aspect and its relation to honour (Eth.Nic.4.3.1124a17-19),and it is our contention that these insights should be brought to bear on the analysis of the causes of stasis.Honour (τιμή) is important as a motivating factor in stasis because it has a dimension that goes far beyond mere esteem.Revolutionaries, and people in general, do not want τιμή purely in order that they may have more of an external good.They want it because τιμή (in their own eyes and in the eyes of others) says something about their ἀξία, their worth or value as citizens.
The second aim was to draw attention to the continuing relevance of Aristotle's analysis, as it raises concerns similar to those that arise in contemporary debate in political science, in particular the debate between Fraser and Honneth regarding the primacy of redistribution or recognition as the Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 generating force of social and political struggle.Our position is that Aristotle sees the motives of honour and profit as inextricably intertwined and that, accordingly, his account exhibits similarities with that of Honneth, which sees redistributive demands as an aspect of a wider struggle for recognition.Thus, when revolutionaries engage in stasis, they do not pursue honour and wealth as separate motives; rather, they are interested in the symbolic aspect of material resources, in what their material condition says about their social status or worth -they see their material condition as a reflection of how they are valued as members of the community.10 In his response, Balot does not say much about our second main point, the importance of honour (except perhaps in his n.36).He focuses almost entirely on the first point and expresses two main objections: first, he argues that Cause 1 and Cause 3 are not 'interconnected and mutually entailed' as we argue; rather, Cause 3 is temporally prior to Cause 1.11 Second, he claims that our focus on the subjective disposition of the revolutionaries as the main cause of stasis shifts attention away from the 'objective' reality of greed and abuse of power on the part of political elites.12On this view, our position risks exoner-10 So, our intention is not to vindicate Honneth through Aristotle, as Balot suggests (RKB, p. 209).11 'The relationship of the three causes is contested.However, Aristotle's statement that cause 3 is the "cause" and "origin" of the other two causes makes clear that cause 3 should be understood as temporally prior to the other two' (RKB, p. 191); 'Cause 3 is usually a specific event which then, in turn, gives rise to a perception of injustice; this perception of injustice gives rise to faction' (RKB, p. 192); 'Cause 3 is the origin of stasis, because it gives rise to the perceptions of injustice that are the principal motivating cause of stasis (cause 1).In these ways, temporal priority is critical to Aristotle's discussion of gain and honor in cause 3' (RKB, pp.192-193); 'The authors' explanation may be hard to understand, but the text itself is straightforward: cause 3 is the origin and cause of the other two causes' (RKB, p. 193); 'Then, in describing cause 3, Aristotle proposes to examine the sort of activities that prompted citizens to form factions in the first place.This interpretation does not detract from the importance of cause 1.In accordance with Aristotle's explicit statements, however, it does show that cause 1 itself has a cause and origin -namely, cause 3' (RKB, p. 199).12 'their unusual interpretation of the third cause, in fact, leads them to disregard Aristotle's emphasis on the elite abuse of power' (RKB, p. 190); 'the consequence of this argument is that the reasons for stasis are mostly, if not entirely, "in the heads" of presumptive victims of oppression; they are found in the "eyes of the beholder"' (RKB, p. 196); 'the theory offered by Cairns, Canevaro, and Mantzouranis overemphasizes the subjectivity of victims, at the expense of the reality of exploitation.Aristotle is not so one-sided in his account.He does justice to the factionalizers' beliefs while also illustrating for readers the realities of exploitation to which those beliefs respond' (RKB, p. 196, n. 26); 'if the third cause is not independent of the first, but is only a "subjective" opinion of the factionalizers, then Aristotle's account leads to the view that elite abuse lies "only in the ating the powerful by downplaying the objective circumstances of injustice, greed, and abuse of power on their part, and focusing instead on the victims' perception of injustice.
With regard to the first objection, Balot observes that 'Cause 3 is usually a specific event which then, in turn, gives rise to a perception of injustice; this perception of injustice gives rise to faction' (RKB, p. 192).We agree that Cause 3 is a 'specific event' , but the 'perception of injustice' needs some unpacking.This perception presupposes an idea of justice in relation to which the current state of affairs (the specific event) constitutes an injustice.For Aristotle, as we originally emphasized, this perception of injustice is based on a certain understanding (ὑπόληψις) or set of beliefs about the nature of just distribution, specifically that distributions should be on the basis of freedom, or wealth, or virtue (Cause 1).Cause 3 has to do with specific events or forms of behaviour, while Cause 1 has to do with a more general view of the principles of correct distribution.Balot asks us to believe that people first experience a specific event (Cause 3), and then form this general conception (Cause 1).We argue that they already have a general conception (Cause 1), but that this is triggered by a specific event (Cause 3) that, in their view, exemplifies the injustice of the constitutional (and recognition) order under which they live.
One general consideration strongly confirms our case.Aristotle begins the whole discussion of stasis at Politics 5.1 by observing that existing (flawed) constitutions are predicated on a certain (flawed) conception of distributive justice held by the dominant element in each case (1301a26-28).Democracy and oligarchy are the prime examples, and the principles on which those constitutions are based are explained.The faults of these constitutions are precisely that they instantiate a partial conception of justice held by only a section of the community, one that denies and so fails to take sufficient account of the claims of the other side (5.1.1301a28-36).Thus the form of justice that the constitution embodies is eo ipso a form of injustice from the point of view of other members of the community whose views are not reflected in the dominant political order.As Aristotle says, this is why stasis comes about -people engage in stasis when they live under a constitution governed by a ὑπόληψις (a conception of distributive justice) that is not their own (καὶ διὰ ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν, ὅταν μὴ κατὰ τὴν ὑπόληψιν ἣν ἑκάτεροι τυγχάνουσιν ἔχοντες μετέχωσι τῆς factionalizers' heads"' (RKB, p. 199); 'Does Aristotle believe that there is no "reality" to the injustice that (at least some) factionalizers perceive?' (RKB, pp.199-200); 'Greek political thought altogether originated in the voices of the oppressed.They objected powerfully to the depredations of a powerful elite.As author after author proclaims, those depredations were real; they were not simply "subjective", not "all in the protesters' heads"' (RKB, pp.208-209).πολιτείας, στασιάζουσιν, 5.1.1301a37-39).The ὑπόληψις of the revolutionaries is the obverse of the prevailing ὑπόληψις of their opponents.Precisely this point is made at 5.3.1303b3-7, as part of the discussion of Cause 3 itself: στασιάζουσι δ' ἐν μὲν ταῖς ὀλιγαρχίαις οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἀδικούμενοι, ὅτι οὐ μετέχουσι τῶν ἴσων, καθάπερ εἴρηται πρότερον, ἴσοι ὄντες, ἐν δὲ ταῖς δημοκρατίαις οἱ γνώριμοι, ὅτι μετέχουσι τῶν ἴσων οὐκ ἴσοι ὄντες.
In oligarchies the many engage in stasis on the grounds that they are unjustly treated, because, as was said before, they do not have an equal share, though they are equals, and in democracies the notables do so, because they have an equal share, though they are not equals.
The causes and origins of political changes, whereby people are disposed in the way discussed above and with regard to the things already mentioned, are in one way seven in number, and in another way more than seven.
On this passage Balot (RKB, p. 193) quotes CCM, p. 24: [Cause 1 and 3] are interconnected and mutually entailed at a more fundamental level, and while the text clearly states that the diathesis [sic: original διάθεσις] takes off from them, they also do not make sense outside the framework of the diathesis [sic: original διάθεσις] to which they give rise.agents) and each itself in a different way reinforces and helps actualize (and thus may be said to "generate") this diathesis' [sic: original διάθεσις] (p.25).It is not possible, however, to have it both ways.The causes of cause 3 cannot 'reinforce' cause 1 and also be its origin and cause.
We still hold that view, because the alternative would be to commit Aristotle to a position that is not only implausible, but also at variance with his emphasis on the intimate relation between a regime and its particular conception of distributive justice.Cause 1, the conception of distributive justice that motivates stasis, will naturally have causes, but it is extremely unlikely that no such conception will exist until some specific event of the sort that precipitates stasis under Cause 3 brings it into being.Rather than saddling Aristotle with the view that citizens have no sense of the injustice under which they live until some specific event brings it home to them, we argue that such precipitating events cause stasis by activating and exacerbating the διάθεσις with regard to justice and equality that is itself a cause of stasis and derives from the party's fundamental notion of the kind of community they would like to live in.The precipitating events do not bring that διάθεσις into existence ex nihilo, but, as themselves causes of stasis, activate it as a cause of a more general and more fundamental sort (Pol.5.1.1302a22-31).
Let us consider the case of the 'insolence' (ἀσέλγεια, 5.5.1304b21) of the demagogues in democracies (RKB, p. 205).On Balot's interpretation, the rich experience the insolence of the demagogues and the poor (Cause 3), and then develop a certain conception of distributive justice (that since they are rich, they should have a larger political share as well) and a sense of being unjustly treated (Cause 1), and as a result they resort to stasis.Our scenario, instead, views stasis as the result of a difference of perspective that persists over time until triggered by certain actions of those in power (in this case the democrats) that bring things to a head.On that scenario, the rich already entertain a certain conception of distributive justice (Cause 1).Since they live in a democracy, they do not have a share of political rights and power in proportion to their wealth, and so what they regard as an unjust state of affairs obtains even before they take any action to change it.At some point, the demagogues become insolent, and the demos goes too far (Cause 3).At this point, when the rich realize that continuing to acquiesce in an unjust regime is no longer compatible with maintaining their wealth, they resort to stasis in order to enact their own conception of distributive justice (Cause 1).
Our interpretation is reinforced by the complementary example about oligarchies at Pol. 5.8.1308b33-38.The many and the poor are excluded from political offices in an oligarchy.They do have their own idea of a just distribution (Cause 1), and they do know that this idea is not realized in their oligarchic city.Nonetheless, they do not resent being barred from office (οὐ γὰρ οὕτως ἀγανακτοῦσιν εἰργόμενοι τοῦ ἄρχειν); on the contrary, they are happy to be left alone to deal with their own affairs (ἀλλὰ καὶ χαίρουσιν ἐάν τις ἐᾷ πρὸς τοῖς ἰδίοις σχολάζειν).Cause 1 is there, even if the many do not yet act on it.But when they perceive that the oligarchic elite, who already hold all offices in violation of the many's notion of distributive justice, go so far as to steal from common funds (ἐὰν οἴωνται τὰ κοινὰ κλέπτειν τοὺς ἄρχοντας, Cause 3), the many become aggrieved by both things, that they have no share either in honour, i.e., political participation and the esteem and recognition that come with it, or in profit (τότε γ' ἀμφότερα λυπεῖ, τό τε τῶν τιμῶν μὴ μετέχειν καὶ τὸ τῶν κερδῶν).This example does not suggest that the many first perceive that they are treated unjustly when they see the oligarchs stealing from common funds (Cause 3).They know that their constitution does not exemplify their own idea of a just distribution (Cause 1), but they acquiesce in it so long as the wealthy few appreciate the benefits of their superior position and conduct themselves moderately.But when the ruling elite goes too far, to the extent of stealing from common funds (Cause 3), then the many resent the injustice of their position both in terms of wealth and in terms of their exclusion from political participation, and so they revolt.Balot remarks (RKB, p. 192): 'If citizens were angry enough to factionalize prior to the magistrates' pleonexia, or prior to the Rhodian or Delphic events mentioned by Aristotle, then why would those causes be necessary in the first place?What role would we then assign to cause 3?' .But factionalizing does not occur in a moment -it involves a complex interaction between deep-seated resentments at what are perceived to be unjust political arrangements and particular events that catalyse those resentments into a determination to overthrow the dominant order.
Balot believes that his emphasis on Cause 3 restores what he sees as Aristotle's emphasis on the reality of the injustices to which victims react.His representation of our position is that we focus only on the victims' perceptions -this is his second objection to our paper.13This, however, is a 13 In fact, Balot seems to take us to be arguing that, as initiators of stasis typically act on a perception of injustice, so dominant elites typically regard their own stasis-provoking actions as justified (see RKB, p. 203).Otherwise, it is not clear why he includes a long and irrelevant section (RKB, pp.201-207) on the stasis-provoking actions of rulers and the extent to which they may or may not feel themselves justified in committing them.We did not argue that rulers are never genuinely rapacious (etc.)nor that all agents at all times regard their own behaviour as justified (though no doubt, in some sense, they often do).
Our focus was on Aristotle's account of the role of perceived injustice in the motivation of Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2023 09:58:28AM via free access false antithesis between Cause 1 and Cause 3 and between Balot's position and ours.Balot's argument in this respect is thoroughly fallacious and involves a wholesale misrepresentation of our article.
As noted above, we acknowledge at multiple points in our article something that Aristotle -as Balot insists and we readily and explicitly accept -makes abundantly clear in his account of stasis, namely that perceptions of injustice on the part of those who see themselves as its victims may relate in various ways to the facts or to the judgements that an impartial observer may make of the same state of affairs.One can be right or wrong in one's judgement that one is not receiving one's due, just as one can be right or wrong about the rapaciousness of an elite or the demands of the masses for greater contributions from the rich.Cause 3 does indeed relate to specific events.These will normally be real events in the world; but they will motivate others to action only if they are perceived in a certain way.Both Cause 3 and Cause 1 involve states of affairs construed as unjust.If an unjust state of affairs or an unjust act is to arouse one's indignation and motivate one to action, it must first be construed as such.This is not just a fact about Aristotle's account, but a fact of life.Our paper argues, and takes Aristotle to recognize, that the perception of injustice is the crucial intermediate step between the fact of injustice and the act of resistance or revolution.Where agents revolt, we take Aristotle to be arguing, they typically do so on account of states of affairs and specific acts that they construe as unjust.Now, Balot agrees with us that such agents, if they react against what is not in fact unjust, nonetheless perceive it as such (RKB, p. 200): As we have seen, Aristotle agrees with factionalizers sometimes and disagrees with them at other times (in either case, of course, the factionalizers themselves believe that they are pursuing justice, while they believe that others are behaving unjustly).This is precisely our position.Aristotle, Balot (at least in his current incarnation),14 and we all agree that events and states of affairs, if they are those who act to overthrow existing constitutions.We note that, as we emphasized above, these constitutions will indeed embody the ruling faction's conception of justice.But this does not necessarily mean that rulers see each and every one of their actions as just.14 Balot claims (at RKB, p. 188 n. 7) that we misrepresent his position in Greed and writes: 'Factionalizers seek these goods in order to satisfy their desire for distributive justice; they are not motivated by greed and ambition as such' (RKB, p. 189).For this he quotes (RKB, p. 189 and n. 9) his own book: 'revolution is rooted in a sense of injustice, rather than the desire for more …' (Balot,Greed,p. 47).Yet, in each of his two quotations of those to motivate, have to be construed as unjust by those who see themselves as their victims.There is thus no way of dispensing with the subjective construal of those who see themselves as wronged, whether we are talking about Cause 3 or about Cause 1.By the same token, indignation at injustice and the determination to set it right require a perception of injustice that can arise both when the facts are as the victim takes them to be and when they are not.But if Balot agrees with us on that point, he is committed also to agreeing with our interpretation of Pol.5.2.1302a38-b2:15 διὰ κέρδος γὰρ καὶ διὰ τιμὴν παροξύνονται πρὸς ἀλλήλους οὐχ ἵνα κτήσωνται σφίσιν αὐτοῖς, ὥσπερ εἴρηται πρότερον, ἀλλ' ἑτέρους ὁρῶντες τοὺς μὲν δικαίως τοὺς δ' ἀδίκως πλεονεκτοῦντας τούτων.
For people are stirred up against one another because of profit and because of honour, not, as was said above, in order to obtain them for themselves, but because they see others, some justly, some unjustly, having more of them.
Balot's discussion of this passage and of our interpretation of it is long and confusing (RKB,.But if one cuts through the obfuscation, the position words (in the main text of RKB p. 189 and in n. 9) he omits the previous sentence as it appears in the original context (Greed, p. 47), which reads (our emphasis): 'At first glance, Aristotle's most general claim seems to suggest that greed as such does not motivate stasis and revolution.Instead, revolution is rooted in a sense of injustice, rather than the desire for more …' .We take this to mean that in Greed Balot is not entirely committed to the view that the perception of injustice plays a crucial role in stasis.In the conclusion of his chapter on Aristotle he writes: 'Aristotle's own evidence and analysis suggest that the perception of injustice is not at the core of political instability.Although we have charted certain complications with this view, Aristotle believes that the real root of political instability is self-aggrandizing behavior of every sort, and in the Ethics and Politics he offers a penetrating analysis of the psychology and causes of such behavior' (Balot, Greed, p. 56).Thus it seems to us that in this article Balot has departed from his position in Greed in two ways: (a) he commits himself more strongly to the view that a perception of injustice plays a crucial role in stasis, and (b) he associates greed as a cause of stasis more closely with power holders than with political agents in general.In Greed, this distinction is not so clearly drawn -e.g.'In Aristotle's conception, individuals and groups strive to get more, not only when they feel unfairly treated, but also simply because they want more -more than others, and even more than they deserve.To put it in terms of Politics 1, this urge originates in the regrettably common tendency to desire life qua biological function and its attendant bodily pleasure, rather than natural human well-being' (Balot,Greed,p. 49 ).But in this case, they do get angry, and they do revolt -as Balot agrees, they 'necessarily come to think that all those who "get more" are unjust' .Our view that this sentence combines Aristotle's focalization and the embedded focalization of the 'characters' (i.e., the agents of stasis) is inescapable -on the former, such agents are sometimes wrong to see themselves as unjustly treated; on the latter, they regard themselves as justified.Therefore -from those different points of view -the sense of the verb πλεονεκτεῖν must also differ: from Aristotle's point of view it must be neutral ('having more') if it is to apply to both just and unjust forms of behaviour, but from that of the rebels it must refer to having more than one's fair share -even when, in Aristotle's view, their opponents are entitled to that share.16Our interpretation of this passage is not, as Balot claims, an 'unusual expedient' that is 'implausible at first glance and impossible upon reflection' (RKB,; it is a standard feature of the presentation of point of view in narratives of many different sorts that will be familiar to any classical scholar who has been paying attention in the 35 years or so since narratology became a core method in the disciplinary toolkit.17As we have said and as Balot seems to agree, in order to be motivating, injustice has to be construed as such.A construal is a subjective act, but its object is a feature of the world that the subject takes to be an objective state of affairs.In the case of stasis, as Aristotle presents it, the subjective construal of injustice amounts to a claim that there is indeed injustice in the world.Aristotle thinks Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 that such claims can sometimes misrepresent the world, but he does not think that they always do so.Balot, however, thinks that only his interpretation of Aristotle involves a relation between the world and agents' perception of it.And he represents us as arguing that Aristotle's account of stasis involves no such relation.He can do so, however, only by means of an egregious fallacy.This is apparent when Balot cites the abstract of our article (RKB, p. 196): Their view is that 'The whole discussion of the causes of stasis should be read through the filter of individual/group motivation -as a reflection of what goes on in the heads of those who engage in stasis' .
The quotation is accurate.But Balot then goes on (RKB, p. 196): The consequence of this argument is that the reasons for stasis are mostly, if not entirely, 'in the heads' of presumptive victims of oppression; they are found in the 'eyes of the beholder' .This statement is a misinterpretation of Aristotle and a potentially problematic idea in its own right.
It is not clear to what 'this statement' refers.If it is the statement 'that the reasons for stasis are mostly, if not entirely, "in the heads" of presumptive victims of oppression; they are found in the "eyes of the beholder"' , then this is not a statement that we ever make nor is it a deduction that can legitimately be made from the statement that Balot quotes from our abstract.Throughout his article, Balot repeatedly attributes to us the position that injustice exists only in the heads of 'factionalizers' .Here is a typical example (RKB, pp.199-200): If the third cause is not independent of the first, but is only a 'subjective' opinion of the factionalizers, then Aristotle's account leads to the view that elite abuse lies 'only in the factionalizers' heads' … Does Aristotle believe that there is no 'reality' to the injustice that (at least some) factionalizers perceive?
Compare his conclusion (RKB, p. 207): 'Is the injustice that motivates factionalizers only in their own heads?Is it only in the eye of the beholder?'18The fallacy lies in the insidious insertion of the adverb, 'only': that all injustice must be construed by its victims as such in order to motivate them to action does not in any way entail that the victims' construal bears no relation to reality.Our Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 point is not that subjective perception is all there is, but that, if the injustice we believe we endure is to motivate our indignation, we must first construe it as injustice, and not as a reflexion of our true place in the world.We, for example, perceive Balot's remark, that 'Unlike Cairns, Canevaro, and Mantzouranis, Aristotle did not desire to make politics only a mental activity, or to reduce politics to psychology' (RKB, p. 208), to be a flagrant misrepresentation of our argument.This is not a confession on our part that the misrepresentation exists only in our heads; our perception of misrepresentation entails a claim that it is indeed a misrepresentation.Far from disclaiming a relation between our construal and the facts, our construal of this as a misrepresentation is a way of asserting and drawing attention to precisely that relation and precisely those facts.
We argue that, according to Aristotle, agents in stasis act on the basis of a perception that existing distributions fail to reflect their claims, claims which assert a certain view of distributive justice in the light of a conception of equality κατ᾽ ἀξίαν.We are interested in Aristotle's account of the motivation of such agents, and motivation depends on construal of those salient characteristics of situations that elicit a certain response.We argue that this emphasis on motivation runs right through Aristotle's account of the phenomenon of stasis in Politics 5.1-3.If one is to be motivated to oppose injustice, one must believe the state of affairs in question to be unjust.This emphasis is not only front and centre of the approach that we adopt from Honneth in our original article; it also reflects an inescapable fact of life.We do not believe, and never say, that any injustice so perceived exists only in the mind of the perceiver.That is a misrepresentation of our argument that rests on a fallacy, the illicit equation of the claim that injustice must be perceived as such if it is to motivate with the claim that injustice is no more than a matter of subjective perception.
Where Balot's misrepresentation becomes offensive -in our construal of the facts as we see them -is in his statement that the views that he attributes to us -that 'the reasons for stasis are mostly, if not entirely, "in the heads" of presumptive victims of oppression; they are found in the "eyes of the beholder"' -are 'potentially problematic' (RKB, p. 196).In a footnote, he helpfully explains (RKB, p. 196 n. 26): Why 'potentially problematic'?The theory offered by Cairns, Canevaro, and Mantzouranis overemphasizes the subjectivity of victims, at the expense of the reality of exploitation.Aristotle is not so one-sided in his account.He does justice to the factionalizers' beliefs while also illustrating for readers the realities of exploitation to which those beliefs respond.The authors' lack of caution on this point has potentially significant Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2023 09:58:28AM via free access consequences.In analyzing protest movements, such as the 'MeToo Movement' , should we be so one-sidedly focused on 'what goes on in the heads' of protesters?Shouldn't we also pay attention to the actions of the powerful?
The #MeToo Movement is rather a good example of what we take Aristotle to be claiming.At a particular historical juncture, a combination of specific events and conditions served as a catalyst to activate a long-held perception of fundamental injustice, a failure to treat women in ways that recognized their legitimate claims to equality, their ἀξία as persons, as citizens, as professionals, as co-workers, and more, precipitating a movement that clearly articulated a sense that 'enough is enough' and sought thereby to instigate a new order that would justly reflect the movement's claims to recognition.Nothing would have happened without the protesters' sense of the way that specific experiences exemplified entrenched injustice as they had long perceived it and as it had long existed.The first -but not the last -step in conferring the recognition that protesters legitimately claimed was to listen to their claims and accept their perspectives.Attention to the testimony of those who survive abuse is essential if abuse is to be ended.We do not posit a solipsistic world in which abuse is only a matter of subjective opinion.It is offensive to suggest that we do.We do not hold the view of the #MeToo movement that Balot says is entailed by our argument.Nor is it, in fact, entailed by our argument.This goes far beyond the bounds of acceptable academic debate.It goes beyond mere fallacy and misrepresentation to constitute instead a wholly inappropriate attempt to smear us by means of a spurious association with views on contemporary politics that we unequivocally and emphatically reject.And to be clear: in stating this perception we are not in any sense allowing that it may be no more than a figment of our imagination.Balot has not only misunderstood but also comprehensively misrepresented the argument of our paper.Our focus on the motivation of those who engage in stasis was intended to emphasize that, when perceived injustice motivates agents to rise against it, their motives are rarely simply material, focused only on the distribution of resources, but typically -even when they do focus on the distribution of material resources -entail claims to the recognition they believe they deserve in the light of their own conception of ἀξία.Misrecognition may be every bit as real, and every bit as unjust on the part of those who perpetrate it, as is an unjust distribution of material resources.Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2023 09:58:28AM via free access Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 He continues (RKB, p. 193 n. 20): Subsequently, Cairns et al. write, 'these factors [of Cause 3] are conditioned by the principal cause (the diathesis [sic: original διάθεσις] of the Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2023 09:58:28AM via free access Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek AND ROMAN Political Thought 40 (2023) 349-368 ). 15 For that interpretation, see D. Cairns, M. Canevaro, and K. Mantzouranis, 'Aristotle on the Causes of Civil Strife: Subjective Dispositions, Proportional Justice, and the "Occasions" of Stasis' , Maia 72 (2020), pp.551-570, at p. 563.is not only quite simple and uncontroversial, but also one that Balot himself seems actually to accept.As Balot says, the view that the πλεονεξία at issue here may be just or unjust is clearly Aristotle's own.But it is also a plain fact that τοὺς μὲν δικαίως τοὺς δ' ἀδίκως πλεονεκτοῦντας is the object of ὁρῶντες.Thus it is also a fact that the sentence offers Aristotle's point of view with regard to the point of view of those who engage in stasis.The intentional object of the rebels' perception (what they see, ὁρῶντες) is the πλεονεξία of their opponents.But τοὺς μὲν δικαίως τοὺς δ' ἀδίκως cannot form part of the propositional content of this perception.As Balot himself says (RKB, p. 195), 'In this context, the future stasiōtai necessarily come to think that all those who "get more" are unjust; otherwise, what would prompt them to become factionalizers?'If one were to think that others have more, but that this is entirely justified, one would have no motive for stasis.People do not get angry when they feel they are being treated justly, as Aristotle observes in another context (Rh.2.3.1380b16-17