America, Aristotle, and the Politics of a Middle Class. Leslie G. Rubin. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2081. Today the middle class in the United States is threatened, with its decline and diminishment exacerbating political conflict at home and schizophrenic policies abroad. The result is that America appears to be in trouble with political polarization, economic stagnation, and government dysfunction. For Rubin, the underlying cause of these symptoms is the collapse of the middle class as an economic, social, and political element in American politics, a diagnosis that Aristotle outlined in his
Hi, Lee... I wrote this about Rubin's book.. which I like but still have serious issues regarding her understanding of the mixed regime and its questionable standing as a regime type in Aristotle:
On Leslie Rubin
Just did my first read of Leslie's book. I was rather disappointed, she wholly ignored my (from the 2004 book she surely knew of, especially it's prominent review in Interpretation and references in Pangle's book on Aristotle) critique of the mixed regime argument. Given her doubling down of that argument, I would expect her to address and respond to my attack on it.... as well as the critiques of others who suggest a similar criticism of the polity view. Her failure to address such scholarship mars what would be otherwise a very powerful book.
Also tied to not addressing my critique of the polity view in Aristotle, her not addressing the Martin Diamond critique against the mixed regime argument in the American regime is also problematic. She is wholly silent on Martin Diamond's democratic regime argument. Also given she new Coleen Sheehan it leaves me wondering why Leslie did not look at the last two books of Coleen Sheehan on Madison which reinforces a Diamondian take on the democratic character of our regime via Aristotelian regime frames in the works Madison relied on in his Thoughts on Government.
Yet, this book nevertheless is a rather valuable addressing of the question of the interplay of the question of the multitude and the given regime, which is the heart of Aristotle's regime science. Leslie ties this concern with Aristotle's political science to the question of the American regime. I will return to this book many times and I think other will similarity benefit from it as well. It is a shame Leslie is no longer with us, so we could push her on her silences.
Harvey Mansfield in TWS gives a review of the late Leslie Rubin's book on America, Aristotle and the Politics of the Middle Class.
I would disagree with Harvey (and Leslie as well) about there being in Politics 4 a discussion of a middle class regime. The whole discussion about the Middle Class was not about the formation of a new regime type but a discussion about how to bring justice about in regimes. That is to say, Aristotle was offering a strategy to help regimes to moderate the forces that undermine justice in regimes.
I woke up at 5am to go the bathroom, after returning to bed I saw a message from an FB friend regarding Leslie Rubin's new book. I wrote a short quick reply to him and then went back to bed. While trying to return to sleep this thought came to mind and it kept pestering me that I needed to write it out, as I did in my little black moleskin notepad. Yet after that, I typed out and slightly elaborated my thought as a reply to my FB pal. Here is what came to me:
The discussion of the middle-class regime seems to be dropped after Politics 4.11, as it is nowhere continued it Book 5 or 6. The possibility of the middle-class regime or polity is completely absent in book 5 with its focus on regime change and preservation. There Aristotle is utterly silent about either how the middle-class regime falls into revolution or change, or how it is to be preserved. Also, no explicit mention of it is seen in Politics 6 where the regimes of democracy and oligarchy are again thoroughly examined, repeating yet expanding on what was done in Politics 4. In 6.4, where Aristotle gives about of the different democratic multitudes and how they affect and shape the various democratic regimes. There he shows the impact upon the character of democracy as the ruling multitude shifts between the early farming multitude up to finally the urban laboring one. It is the rise of this multitude, which seems to freely allow slaves and migrants to be included in the ruling citizen body which Aristotle labels "the last democracy", which is in fact little more than a form of tyrannical rule.
Hi, Lee... I wrote this about Rubin's book.. which I like but still have serious issues regarding her understanding of the mixed regime and its questionable standing as a regime type in Aristotle:
On Leslie Rubin
Just did my first read of Leslie's book. I was rather disappointed, she wholly ignored my (from the 2004 book she surely knew of, especially it's prominent review in Interpretation and references in Pangle's book on Aristotle) critique of the mixed regime argument. Given her doubling down of that argument, I would expect her to address and respond to my attack on it.... as well as the critiques of others who suggest a similar criticism of the polity view. Her failure to address such scholarship mars what would be otherwise a very powerful book.
Also tied to not addressing my critique of the polity view in Aristotle, her not addressing the Martin Diamond critique against the mixed regime argument in the American regime is also problematic. She is wholly silent on Martin Diamond's democratic regime argument. Also given she new Coleen Sheehan it leaves me wondering why Leslie did not look at the last two books of Coleen Sheehan on Madison which reinforces a Diamondian take on the democratic character of our regime via Aristotelian regime frames in the works Madison relied on in his Thoughts on Government.
Yet, this book nevertheless is a rather valuable addressing of the question of the interplay of the question of the multitude and the given regime, which is the heart of Aristotle's regime science. Leslie ties this concern with Aristotle's political science to the question of the American regime. I will return to this book many times and I think other will similarity benefit from it as well. It is a shame Leslie is no longer with us, so we could push her on her silences.
Harvey Mansfield in TWS gives a review of the late Leslie Rubin's book on America, Aristotle and the Politics of the Middle Class.
I would disagree with Harvey (and Leslie as well) about there being in Politics 4 a discussion of a middle class regime. The whole discussion about the Middle Class was not about the formation of a new regime type but a discussion about how to bring justice about in regimes. That is to say, Aristotle was offering a strategy to help regimes to moderate the forces that undermine justice in regimes.
I woke up at 5am to go the bathroom, after returning to bed I saw a message from an FB friend regarding Leslie Rubin's new book. I wrote a short quick reply to him and then went back to bed. While trying to return to sleep this thought came to mind and it kept pestering me that I needed to write it out, as I did in my little black moleskin notepad. Yet after that, I typed out and slightly elaborated my thought as a reply to my FB pal. Here is what came to me:
The discussion of the middle-class regime seems to be dropped after Politics 4.11, as it is nowhere continued it Book 5 or 6. The possibility of the middle-class regime or polity is completely absent in book 5 with its focus on regime change and preservation. There Aristotle is utterly silent about either how the middle-class regime falls into revolution or change, or how it is to be preserved. Also, no explicit mention of it is seen in Politics 6 where the regimes of democracy and oligarchy are again thoroughly examined, repeating yet expanding on what was done in Politics 4. In 6.4, where Aristotle gives about of the different democratic multitudes and how they affect and shape the various democratic regimes. There he shows the impact upon the character of democracy as the ruling multitude shifts between the early farming multitude up to finally the urban laboring one. It is the rise of this multitude, which seems to freely allow slaves and migrants to be included in the ruling citizen body which Aristotle labels "the last democracy", which is in fact little more than a form of tyrannical rule.