ARISTOCRACY

The rule by a few by reason of their wealth, nobility, or virtue.

Early Concepts. For plato (c. 427–347 b.c.) the perfect state was the aristocratic state. This ideal was given its best expression in the Republic: "Unless philosophers become kings, or those now called kings become philosophers, there will be no end of evils for mankind" (473). Plato describes a state in which social justice would be fully realized as embracing three classes of men: the king-philosophers, or the ruling class, who constitute the legislative and executive power; the soldiers or guardians of the state; and the workers. The rulers must be intensely trained to become true philosopher-kings and must be subjected to a rigid process of selection that will bring the best philosophic minds to the top. Rulers and soldiers must be supported by the state; they cannot hold private property or enjoy normal family life because these are incompatible with full devotion to their duties. This system is proposed as a "model fixed in the heavens for human imitations, but not attainment" (592). Aristotle (384–322) attempted to describe the existent state. To discover an ideal state, he observed in the Politics, it is necessary to begin by examining both the best states of history and the best that the theorists have imagined. The best practical policy is aristocracy, the rule of the informed and capable few; this is nowhere described realistically, however.

St. thomas aquinas (c. 1225–74) also insisted that the state should be governed by the ablest. Right order among men demands naturally that the more intelligent should rule (C. gent. 3.81). Later St. Thomas more (1478–1535) revived Plato's conception in his Utopia, describing an imaginary communist state so governed as to secure universal happiness. The City of the Sun of Tommaso campanella (1568–1639) substituted wise priests to rule instead of philosophers. In the New Atlantis, Francis bacon (1561–1626) placed scientists at the head of the state.

Modern Forms. An imitation of an aristocracy might have been the appropriate political form under feudalism, in which ownership of land was accompanied by special duties of armed defense. In modern circumstances, aristocracy can be described as the dominance of a single, well-organized interest group over other community groupings. Perhaps the most obvious examples are the hereditary aristocracies that alternated in power with absolute monarchies in European history until the time of the French Revolution and even later. Also, merchant groups ruled many prosperous European states, such as Venice and the states of the Hanseatic League.

Plato's Republic has also been the source of inspiration for modern and contemporary theorists, such as Charles de montesquieu, G. W. F. hegel, J. F. renan, Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo emerson, Edmund burke, Friedrich nietzsche, and George santayana. These theorists generally claim that men have always been governed by aristocratic institutions; that political power has changed its shape but not its nature; that every people is governed by an elite, by a chosen element in the population; that aristocracies have been more favorable to literature, arts, and sciences; and, in a phrase that summarizes their theory, that all civilization is the work of aristocracies.

The managerial aristocracy of business corporations corresponds to the members of a mediocre state bureaucracy. It is an aristocracy of wealth. In 1933 President F. D. Roosevelt enlisted a so-called brain trust to cure national ills. Some theorists advocate an aristocracy of talent and the reconstruction of the federal and state system to arm the executive branch with great and immediate power. They find traditional democracy dangerously unworkable when faced by the challenge of the cold war. They fear collapse and defeat by default for the democratic Western world unless something along this line is attempted.

Democratic theorists, on the other hand, such as K. R. Popper or D. Spitz, deny the above allegations, and indict Plato and his followers as forerunners of modern totalitarianism. Plato's ideal state is not regarded as a means to an end, but becomes an end in itself. Such a view militates against sound philosophy and Christian belief. Plato held that each individual and family exists for the state; Christianity holds that each individual and family possesses certain natural rights that every government must respect and protect. Among these rights are the right to life and to a reasonable amount of liberty of movement, of self-assertion, and association.

Bibliography: r. h. crossman, Plato Today (London 1937). h. w. eldredge, The Second American Revolution (New York 1964). The Works of Plato, tr. b. jowett (New York 1936). d. grene, Man in His Pride (Chicago 1950). k. r. popper, The Open Society (Princeton 1963). b. f. skinner, Walden Two (New York 1948). d. spitz, Patterns of Anti-democratic Thought (New York 1949). j. wild, Plato's Theory of Man (Cambridge, Mass. 1946).

[a. j. osgniach]