Right Aristotelianism

Aristotle's political teaching is in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, from fourth-century Athens. The city exists for a good life, not only for safety or for trade. The constitution he spends the most patience on is a mixture: monarchical, aristocratic, and popular elements, under law, with a large middle group of citizens, so that neither the very rich nor the very poor simply rule. He defends private property against the common ownership Plato proposed for the guardians, and he warns against chrematistics, the pursuit of money without limit. Right, in the modern left-right sense, is not his word. Later catalogs attach it because the teaching keeps hierarchy, property, and inherited practice, and rejects both an assembly of everyone and the abolition of property.

The same books draw a hard line around the citizen. Women, slaves, and many laborers are outside the group that deliberates. Politics I argues that some people are slaves by nature. That argument has been rejected, for a long time and for good reason, as a rationalization of domination. A mixed constitution that reserves deliberation for men with property and leisure is not a hidden liberalism. Virtue is a real standard in this teaching, and it is also a test that can be written so the same families keep passing it. This page states that limit. It does not offer the constitution as a model.

Christian Aristotelianism, from Thomas Aquinas onward, is a later history: Aristotle read inside a church. It is not the same text as the Politics, and it is not a score on the Religion axis. People who say right Aristotelianism are usually pointing at the mixed regime, the defense of moderate property, and the suspicion of both tyranny and pure democracy. They are not pointing at a thirteenth line on this quiz. Aristotle did not take the test. A percentage beside his name on another website is that website's estimate.

The search 12 axes right arestotelianism asks for an axis this test does not have. Arestotelianism is a misspelling of Aristotelianism. If a chart uses either spelling as one of the twelve lines, it is using a label from somewhere else. The lines the teaching actually touches are ordinary ones. Representation runs from Democratic to Autocratic. A mixed constitution under law sits off both pure poles: not one ruler, and not an assembly of all. Economy runs from Collectivize to Privatize. Private property of a moderate size sits toward Privatize and stops short of unlimited accumulation. The test can show a market-leaning economy. It cannot show moderate on purpose.

Culture runs from Progressive to Traditional. A teaching that wants the city's inherited practices, and is wary of rapid change in morals, sits toward Traditional. Aristotle's tradition is a specific ancient argument about virtue, not a modern party. Power runs from Security to Freedom. The aim is the flourishing of the city, not modern individual liberty and not a surveillance state, so the axis is a poor fit. Forcing the teaching onto one pole throws the distinction away. Religion is not fixed. The unmoved mover is a piece of philosophy, not a program of clerical law. Structure, federal or unitary, is a question about modern states. The polis is a city. The text does not answer it.

Immigration, trade, the military, and technology are not answered by the Politics in the vocabulary of these axes. Catalogs that file Aristotelianism as Right sometimes publish a full twelve-number profile. Those numbers are not reproduced here, and they are not Aristotle's answers. The 38 reference positions include conservatism, distributism, and liberalism. None is named Aristotelianism. Conservatism is the nearest published sketch of order, property, and caution about rapid change. It is still a modern ideology. The chart below is that ideology's chart.