The Equality (And Inequality) of the Species

Creating the Good Life :Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness
by James O'Toole

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Because Aristotle sees members of the human species as inherently unequal in their ability to engage in abstract reasoning, modern critics have been inclined to throw out his philosophy on the grounds of political incorrectness. Clearly, the major error in Aristotle's observations is his conclusion that observed differences among individuals are linked to the social class, caste, or gender to which they belong. Living in an age when slavery was rampant, Aristotle observed that slaves in Athens never engaged in higher-order intellectual activities; there were no slave politicians or philosophers. Instead, slaves behaved slavishly, engaging solely in repetitive toil, doing only what their masters bade them. Based on this observation, Aristotle concluded that there are "natural slaves" incapable of higher-order reasoning. His notion stood for some 2,000 years, until French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau identified the logical error in the Ancient's thinking. "Aristotle was doubtless right" in terms of his observation, Rousseau wrote in 1740, that slaves do behave in a servile way. But they do so because they are beaten by their masters when they try to do otherwise. Hence, Rousseau explained, "Aristotle mistook the cause for the effect."

Because Aristotle's mistaken belief that caste differences are "natural" has been so thoroughly refuted, we may assume that Aristotle himself would have been convinced by Rousseau's logic and would have come to agree that his own philosophy is made more just, robust, and universal when applied equally to all humans. In fact, Aristotle's ideas are more logical if the observed differences among people are viewed as reflecting the variety of abilities and aptitudes found among individuals instead of as group traits. In the next chapter, we see how Harriet Taylor Mill "improved" Aristotle by expanding his conclusions to include women.

So it is safe for us to interpret Aristotle's notion of differences in a way to make it self-evidently true: People are as manifestly unequal in terms of their natural abilities as they are in terms of their height, but there is no reason to conclude that those differences demand differences in treatment. Quite the opposite, because on the issue mattering most to Aristotle, he himself recognizes that everyone is capable of learning and capable of development. While he believes individual potential is fixed at birth, he does not see this as an excuse for those with the smallest capacities not to try to develop their minds to the full. He argues that no one, regardless of the size of his or her potential, ever succeeds in fulfilling it. Therefore, the good life comes about from the process of filling, that is, learning, and not from the impossible end of a filled container, an idea as absurd as the Gary Larson cartoon depicting a grade school student with hand raised, asking: "Teacher, may I go home? My brain is full."

Proof we never fulfill our potential is found in the fact that all healthy people can continue to learn, even in extreme old age. Indeed, Aristotle says that developing our minds is the one activity everyone can engage in equally in old age. Because today's men and women in their fifties can expect to live at least another three decades, his insight is even more important now than in his time, when few people survived through their sixties.

Nonetheless, Aristotle is not saying Grandpa Bill ever will be as adept at learning French as Grandma Sue is or, conversely, that she can end up playing pinochle as well as he, no matter how hard he tries or how long she lives. One person simply has a greater capacity than another for learning one thing or another. In this way, Aristotle claims that people are different and unequal. He is fair and logical, but not relativistic, as we now shall see.

Why Politics and Philosophy Top The
Hierarchy of Human Endeavors

He is particularly nonrelativistic when it comes to evaluating different types of activities. He would say the ability to ride a bike is not equal to the ability to perform heart surgery. Instead, there is a natural hierarchy of human activities (to Aristotle, there is a hierarchy of everything), and the measure of an activity is the degree to which it requires the highest-order, most abstract, mental capabilities. It is simply harder to learn calculus than arithmetic. Yet, as a believer in human development, he argues that a great many people who quit studying math after arithmetic would be surprised to learn that they are, in fact, capable of learning much more, up to and including calculus. He adds that if they make the effort to do so, they are likely to have the sense of fulfillment he calls happiness. (Of course, calculus wasn't invented until nearly 2,000 years after Aristotle's death. Here and throughout the book, I freely use anachronistic examples to illustrate Aristotle's timeless ideas.)

Aristotle concludes that the highest-order, most-human activities are "politics and philosophy" because these require the greatest deployment of abstract reasoning. This assertion is easily misinterpreted. Aristotle is not assuming that only people engaged in his kind of philosophy are using their full range of abilities. He is not so proscriptive. In the category of philosophy, he includes all of what we call the sciences, arts, and learned professions. Thus, engineers, lawyers, and doctors are "philosophers," as are journalists, teachers, playwrights, and so on through the professions. In the category of philosophers, he includes people who are merely studying those subjects, not just those who make their living practicing them. Likewise, he includes more than those serving in elected office when he talks about politics. To Aristotle, that category includes what we call community service, unpaid as well as paid. Later we see why he would include leadership of business organizations in his catchall category of politics.

The important thing to Aristotle is not a person's job, profession, or career; rather, it is the extent to which an individual is using his or her higher-order mental capabilities. Thus, his concepts of philosophy and politics should be thought of as inclusive: A factory worker who participates in decision making and problem solving is using those higher-level capabilities every bit as much as is the company's CEO.

Still, there is no denying that Aristotle is judgmental and elitist in a way that's unfashionable today. He not only believes there is a hierarchy of humans, he is willing to state who is at the top! Using the same principle of organization he applies to animals, he says individuals atop the human hierarchy are those who have both the greatest natural capacity for and, more important, the most fully developed potential in politics and philosophy. Granted, this is not the way we speak in an era in which the equality of our species is a given. Nonetheless, for good or ill, it is the way economists think and the way in which the hierarchical structure of organizations is justified, even if unconsciously.

© 2005 by James O'Toole. All rights reserved. No Part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

About the Author

James O'Toole, is research professor in the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California and Mortimer J. Adler Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute. He has written 14 books, the most recent being Leadership A-Z.