Greetings Everyone,

This year, before we delve into specifics about America towards the spring semester, we want to take time to examine the big questions about culture and governance that apply to all civilizations everywhere.

To that end, we spent time this week with Aristotle’s thoughts on what makes a state. We looked at an excerpt from his Politics which reads,

It must be the case that only a shared sense of goodness and justice amongst its citizens can make a state. Merely occupying the same territory together with other men cannot make a state, as can be shown through example. If the citizens of Megara and Corinth [bitter rivals, but very close geographically] were put under one government together, that would not make them one in fact. 

Nor can a state be made merely through common association and interest. Suppose a group of people with different professions—a carpenter, a farmer, a merchant— all living together exchanging goods under a common system of law. Imagine their number to be in excess of 10,000 [a very big number for ancient Greeks]. Imagine these people had nothing in common other than the necessities of living and obedience to the law. 

The members of this group all might come together in a common place to exchange goods and services, but if each person treated their own house and their own person as a state unto itself, how could they be a state, even  if they happened to occupy the same geography?

It is clear, therefore, that a city is not only people occupying the same geography under the same law. Their true unity must come from their common purpose and common life together. True– no state can exist without a sufficient number of people living under the same law. But this in itself cannot make a state.

Aristotle wants us to distinguish between “name” and “fact.” We can all understand, for example, that if I held up a pencil and called it a pen, that would not in fact make it so. Even if I made this assertion for years, the pencil would not be any closer to a pen than when I started.

We can take this a bit deeper. Imagine someone made a robot that looked just like you. It talked like you, walked like you, and more or less mimicked you perfectly. We might even call this robot by your name. But the robot is not you. Among other things, it lacks what we cannot directly see or observe, such as a soul, a conscience, thoughts and beliefs, and so forth. Calling it “you” would not make it so. In other words, we properly name things not just by what they are made of, but by their purpose, their “telos” or end. What a thing is made from is not what a thing “is.”

If we apply this concept to country’s, we may find ourselves a bit uncomfortable. Aristotle pushes us to think of a state as more than a group of people following the same laws, within a defined border, exchanging goods and services. This, he argued, may be a country in name but not in fact. It may look like a country from the outside, but from the inside, nothing exists to bind the people together. The people have no shared purpose, no shared “telos,” no shared love.

I asked the students to think about whether or not Aristotle would call the United States today a country in fact, or in name only.

In favor of the “name only” position some argued that

• We do not share a common religion
• We do not share a common culture
• We do not have a common point of attention with movies, music, or other media
• We are deeply divided politically, with many not trusting our basic institutions
• We have essentially become “states unto ourselves.” With online shopping, we don’t even need to interact with each other to buy and sell things

But others countered that

• Sports provide us a way to come together across cultural, religious, and polticial divides
• American ideals of freedom and self-determination still unite (almost) all Americans
• When we have to, as in the case of natural disaster or war, we can still “rally round the flag.”
• Sure, Americans fight with each other, but we always have. Think of our nation’s identity like a big, noisy family that argues with each other but still get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We find a way to “hug it out.”

As always, the students are encouraged to take whatever position they think correct and defend it as best they can.

Thanks so much for your support, and have a great weekend,

Dave