Democracy, Agreement and Public Deliberation in Aristotle’s "Politics"

Abstract

This paper analyses the appraisal that Aristotle devotes to the different forms of democracy, specially focusing on the books of Politics. My main aim is to highlight the connections between the theoretical frame that authors choose to survey the grounds of public deliberation and the judgment they yield about the political formulas they consider most appropriate. I take as centre of my analysis a classical thinker in order to understand the genealogy of the European political vocabulary. The paper also aims at casting light over Aristotle’s praise of homonoia in Nicomachean Ethics, where this condition appears as a necessary factor for the social union of the polis, and over his mistrust regarding the political requests of the plethos and the procedure of ballot and vote highly spread in the Athenian democracy of V and IV Centuries. I shall draw some conclusions about the reasons, usually of epistemological nature, that hinder a thinker as Aristotle to consider democracy a political form useful for the human community.