The virtuous group - Foundations for the 'argument from the wisdom of the multitude'

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 53-84

  Risse, Mathias ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84937411312     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2001.10717560     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. I use R. Robinson's translation for the Politics, Books III and IV (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995);
2. H. Rackham's translations for the remainder of the Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990)
3. and the Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1994);
4. and the translations in J. Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol 1 and 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984) for other Aristotelian works.
5. K. Kahlenberg, 'Zur Interpretation von Buch in der Politik', in P. Steinmetz, Schriften zu Politika des Aristoteles (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag 1973) 102-81, at 119, points out that this is what Athenian history has taught Aristotle, which is also reflected in his writings about the development of the Athenian constitution.
6. I use the name 'accumulation argument' and not 'summation argument' (cf. E. Braun, 'Die Summierungstheorie des Aristoteles', in Steinmetz, 396-424;
7. E. Schuetrumpf, Die Analyse der Politik durch Aristoteles [Amsterdam: Gruener 1980]) to have a term covering 'summation arguments', but not restricted to conceptualizing the ascription of the property in terms of some summation.
8. J. Waldron, 'The Wisdom of the Multitude', Political Theory 23 (1995) 563-84
9. For recent discussion cf. J. Bookman, 'The Wisdom of the Many: An Analysis of the Arguments of Book III and IV of Arisotle's Politics', History of Political Thought 13 (1992) 1-12
10. J. E. Garrett, 'The Moral Status of "the Many" in Aristotle', Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993) 171-89
11. J. Waldron, 'The Wisdom of the Multitude';
12. The most extensive recent analytical study of the Politics, F. D. Miller, Nature, justice, and Rights in Aristotle's 'Politics' (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), only briefly touches on the issues relevant for this paper;
13. The situation is more involved, but that should not matter here; cf. S. Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991), 67-71.
14. For Aristotle on liberty, cf. J. Barnes, 'Aristotle and Political Liberty', in G. Patzig, ed., Aristoteles' 'Politik'-Akten des XI. Symposium Aristotelicum (Gottingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht 1990) 249-63.
15. It was done in E. Braun and E. Schuetrumpf; and J. Waldron and D. Keyt 'Aristotle's Theory of Distributive Justice', in D. Keyt and F. D. Miller, eds., A Companion to Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Blackwell 1991) also criticized it. E. Braun criticizes Aristotle on the grounds that a summation cannot do, but does not explore other possibilities (175).
16. M. Nichols in Citizens and Statesmen: A Study of Aristotle's Politics (Savage, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1992) says: 'Aristotle's argument in favor of the collective judgment of the many would be simply valid only if the city were not more than the sum of its parts' (67).
17. A reference to J. Madison, A. Hamilton, and J. Jay's Federalist Papers, I. Kramnick, ed. (London: Penguin 1987) might be of interest here: those authors were quite worried about the results of collective deliberation and therefore about its proper places in the American constitution.
18. This pessimism is also shared in one of the earliest studies of social psychology, G. Le Bon's The Crowd (Atlanta: Cherokee 1982): 'In a crowd, men always tend to the same level, and, on general questions, a vote recorded by forty academicians is no better than that of forty water-crriers' (191).
19. R. Bodeus, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press 1993), chapter 5, elaborates on Aristotle's insistence that experience is also required of the reader of the Politics.
20. On this theorem, cf. B. Grofman, G. Owen, and S. Feld, 'Thirteen Theorems in Search of the Truth', Theory and Decision 15 (1983) 261-79.
21. cf. B. Grofman and S. Feld, 'Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective', American Political Science Review 82 (1988) 567-76
22. and Discussion Note in the section on 'Democratic Theory and the Public Interest: Condorcet and Rousseau Revisited', American Political Science Review 83 (1989) 1328-35;
23. D. Estlund, Discussion Note in the section on 'Democratic Theory and the Public Interest', American Political Science Review 83 (1989) 1317-22;
24. and J. Waldron, Discussion Note in the section on 'Democratic Theory and the Public Interest', American Political Science Review 83 (1989) 1322-8;
25. J. Waldron, in 'The Wisdom of the Multitude', discusses it in connection with the key passage.
26. Cf. also F. D. Miller, 83-4 and B. Yack, The Problems of a Political Animal (Berkeley: University of California Press 1993) on this important passage.
27. For an interpretation of the passages on the god-like individual as king in the context of myths relating to earlier (heroic) times, cf. R. Bodeus, Aristote et la Theologie des Vivants Immortels (Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1992), chapter III.4.
28. J. Larsen, 'The Judgment of Antiquity on Democracy', Classical Philology 49 (1954) 1-414 quotes some other passages from the Politics showing that Aristotle was not a democrat (4).
29. Mill seemed to think mat books, newspapers, and pamphlets could to some extent replace personal acquaintance with regard to issues of political importance in territorial states (J. S. Mill, 'Considerations on Representative Government', in J. M. Robson, ed.. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill [Toronto-. University of Toronto Press 1977], 547).
30. A. de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, J. P. Mayer, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1969) repeatedly pointed out the comparative homogeneity of America (!)
31. For an illuminating historical discussion of such ideas mostly in French writers between the Renaissance and the times of Rousseau, cf. N. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980).
32. For a discussion of the history of the notion of general will, cf. J. Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986).
33. For a contemporary discussion of parallels between groups and individuals cf. J. Elster, Solomonic Judgments: Studies in the Limitations of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989), chapter 4.