Critically examine Aristotle's classification of governments?

Answer 1

It had some interpretative value for his contemporaries, but I cannot see much value in attempting to wrap the modern world around it. Representative democracy, the most widely practised form of government in today's world, was not in Aristotle's sights. Military dictatorship, the second commonest now, bears some relationship to his "tyranny", but is not coterminous. The one-party-state, as practised by both Communists (China, NK, Cuba) and others (in Africa, e.g. Libya) has no parallel in Aristotle's world because party politics is a response to mass participation in countries much larger than Aristotle ever conceived of. Other contemporary models also absent from the Aristotelian schema include "Islamic Republic" (guidance by Sharia law) and "constitutional monarchy" (I don't mean places like the NW European countries where the monarch is little more than a symbol or at most a mediator after unclear elections, I mean ones where the monarch has a real role) e.g. Jordan, Morocco, Thailand. Aristocracy, as Aristotle conceived it, literally "the rule of the best" is a wonderful idea and was practiced in ancient India and to a degraded extent by the pre-Christian Celts, in the latter case based structurally on the practice of a prince being selected from among those eligible by birth, the voters being a princely selectorate on the advice of wise spiritual counsellor(s). The last recorded example of this practice was when St. Columba (Colum Kille) successfully advised the royal house of Dalriada to select the younger son of the late king to be the new king and not the elder (c575AD, I don't have the exact date). This "true aristo-cracy" does not exist in any polity today, because nowhere do the people trust their spiritual leaders to be wiser than themselves. If it were to come into being this century, I would think a free Tibet would be the most likely place.

Answer 2

Aristotle's classification of governments is a cyclical theory based on the premise that social change is constantly occurring. Basically, he sees a devolution from absolute good to absolute evil. If a society experiences absolute evil, then the only direction in which it can change is back to absolute good.

He believed that rule by a wise and benevolent king was best. Rule by a tyrant was worst.

So, society devolves from aristocracy, to oligarchy, to timocracy, to democracy, to tyranny. If one accepts the idea that change is constant, then the only possibility is a return to aristocracy, and the cycle repeats itself.

Aristotle's student, Plato, held this same point of view, except that he thought that history would exactly repeat itself. So over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, there would be an infinite number of Hitlers and an infinite number of Ghandis.

Answer 3

there is no "better kind" of personality. The best thing is to be somewhere in the middle. Any exaggeration is no good. Caring about other people's opinion is healthy as long as it doesn't become a constant concern. Not caring at all about what others think is the other extreme. Both extremes are pathological in that they are unproportional reactions.

Answer 4

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