Aristotle’s Evil “Goodness”

ARISTOTLE’S PROMOTION OF ELITE GOODNESS AND GREATNESS WERE FOUNDATIONS FOR MILLENNIA OF PLUTOCRATIC RULE. 

Aristotle demolished democracy for the next two millennia. And probably did much more than that, demolishing democracy in the minds of the Macedonian elite which took over Greece… and much of the world, in Aristotle’s lifetime. We are taught badness through bad men, when they are presented as greatness, and, or, goodness incarnated. Aristotle was a towering thinker. He instituted biology as an observational science (fossils had confused observers). He also contributed to logic. 

So greatly was Aristotle respected as a thinker in general that his blatantly idiotic physics was viewed as truth. Aristotle had pontificated about motion: Aristotle thought that a force had to be applied continuously for an object to keep on moving. Aristotle had neglected friction. That was denounced by Buridan in Paris in the mid fourteenth century. Buridan introduced momentum and the law of inertia, according to which only a force can modify motion… The fact that the tyrant Antipater was Aristotle’s best friend, was overlooked. Antipater may have assassinated Alexander, and certainly assassinated Demosthenes, while torturing to death many others and imposing war and then plutocracy on Greece and Athens in particular… All this was carefully overlooked by two millennia of corrupt thinking.  

Indeed, much of these other towers of thoughts Aristotle erected, remarkable and highly remarked, served as the foundations of more than two millennia of plutocratic rule. Evil power rule. 

Aristotle’s Politics I 2-5: “For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth,some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. […] the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. “

Need I say more?

Aristotle’s sense of greatness, justice and goodness ruled for millennia. Even Nietzsche would repeat them faithfully, 23 centuries later… while presenting them as… new.

Aristotle taught to more than Alexander the Great and his “companions“. Aristotle encouraged tyrants for millennia to come. The symbol I added on Aristote’s chest is a personal imitation of what was found in Philippe II of Macedonia’s tomb. The original was much prettier and in gold. It’s the sunburst symbol of the Macedonian regime. The Macedonian Svastika. It’s also called the Vergina Sun. It has 16 rays. Philippe was Aristotle’s friend, employing him as private teacher and mentor of his son.

Aristotle was long the incarnation of rectitude and even logic. Aristotle was the right zero for a wrong world. Aristotle’s world vision about greatness is all about “He”. Aristotle is a sexist fundamentalist. Sexism was characteristic of Athens… in contrast to Sparta, which was in many ways radically the opposite. The victory of Sparta over Athens was greatly caused by Spartan women doing all what was necessary, including keeping Helots in line, while the relatively few Spartan warriors went to war…

Socrates, a bit earlier, had made a point that he learned rhetoric, among other things, from Aspasia and probably the theory of the Open Society, which she authored and is Socrates’ underlying moral system. Socrates also says he learned the theory of love from another woman, Diotima who “convinced him he was mistaken” (it is possible that Diotima was an avatar for Aspasia) Two women taught Socrates… Plato informs us. And in any case, Aspasia was a towering figure, as she was the brains behind Pericles. So Aristotle’s insistence that greatness implicitly means “He” is a direct attack against what made ancient Greece great. 

“Good” is not defined. What about the Theory Of Knowledge, mother of virtue according to Socrates? Aristotle’s society as superiors and inferiors, and, worse of all, slaves. Superior in mysterious, undefined “goodness”. The “lower classes” are outright not worth asserting oneself against. In other words, the high-minded man, if he wants to avoid being crude, will be careful to alienate himself from the “lower classes”.

Although Aristotle was against jogging, he promoted thinking and debating while walking, another excellent idea. But he is a peripatetic philosopher with a low speed limit… (Being on a horse at full galop would have revealed to him the existence of air friction…)

The historical context is that Aristotle hanged around the worst of the worse: the Macedonian plutocratic terror fascists. With them fascists, no adjustment needed. This is why “he looks down on others”. With his dear friends, from whom he hides neither hate nor love, and can be himself entirely, and truthful.  

Does everything Aristotle define goodness with wrong? No. Is contempt for the lower intellectual classes justified? Yes. Should they be interacted with, those armies of trolls? No. Should alienation from intellectual slaves be a way of life? Yes. And to have a long memory for wrongs is a trap because it leads to revisiting the past obsessively… instead of building a better future…

The fundamental problem with Aristotle is that classes in society are (implicitly) identified with intellectual classes… And greatness with plutocracy… In the sense of the evil-power (Pluto-Kratia).  

After the picture of the perpetrator, a relevant passage from his Ethics…

“The high-minded man will do good, but he is ashamed to accept a good turn, because the former marks a man as superior, the latter as inferior. Moreover, he will requite good with a greater good, for in this way he will not only repay the original benefactor but put him in his debt at the same time by making him the recipient of an added benefit…

It is, further, typical of a high-minded man not to ask for any favors, or only reluctantly, but to offer aid readily. He will show his stature in relations with men of eminence and fortune, but will be unassuming toward those of moderate means. For to be superior to the former is difficult and dignified, but superiority over the latter is easy. 

Furthermore, there is nothing ignoble in asserting one’s dignity among the great, but to do so among the lower classes is just as crude as to assert one’s strength against an invalid. His actions are few, but they are great and distinguished. 

He must be open in hate and in love, for to hide one’s feelings and to care more for the opinions of others than for truth is a sign of timidity. He speaks and acts openly: since he looks down upon others his speech is free and truthful, except when he deliberately depreciates himself in addressing the common run of people. 

He cannot adjust his life to another, except a friend, for to do so is slavish. That is (by the way) why all flatterers are servile and people from the lower classes are flatterers. He is not given to admiration, for nothing is great to him. He bears no grudges, for it is not typical of a high-minded man to have a long memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them. 

He is not a gossip, for he will talk neither about himself nor about others, since he is not interested in hearing himself praised or others run down… He is a person who will rather possess beautiful and profitless objects than objects which are profitable and useful, for they mark him more as self-sufficient. 

Further, we think of a slow gait as characteristic of a high-minded man, a deep voice, and a deliberate way of speaking. For a man who takes few things seriously is unlikely to be in a hurry, and a person who regards nothing as great is not one to be excitable. But a shrill voice and a swift gait are due to hurry and excitement.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1122a34-1125a18)

Aristotle was long the incarnation of rectitude and even logic. Aristotle was the right zero for a wrong world. Aristotle’s world vision about greatness is all about “He”. Aristotle is a sexist fundamentalist. Sexism was characteristic of Athens… in contrast to Sparta, which was in many ways radically the opposite. The victory of Sparta over Athens was greatly caused by Spartan women doing all what was necessary, including keeping Helots in line, while the relatively few Spartan warriors went to war…

Socrates, a bit earlier, had made a point that he learned rhetoric, among other things, from Aspasia and probably the theory of the Open Society, which she authored and is Socrates’ underlying moral system. Socrates also says he learned the theory of love from another woman, Diotima who “convinced him he was mistaken” (it is possible that Diotima was an avatar for Aspasia) Two women taught Socrates… Plato informs us. And in any case, Aspasia was a towering figure, as she was the brains behind Pericles. So Aristotle’s insistence that greatness implicitly means “He” is a direct attack against what made ancient Greece great. 

“Good” is not defined. What about the Theory Of Knowledge, mother of virtue according to Socrates? Aristotle’s society as superiors and inferiors, and, worse of all, slaves. Superior in mysterious, undefined “goodness”. The “lower classes” are outright not worth asserting oneself against. In other words, the high-minded man, if he wants to avoid being crude, will be careful to alienate himself from the “lower classes”.

Although Aristotle is against jogging: he is a peripatetic philosopher with a low speed limit…

The historical context is that Aristotle hanged around the worst of the worst: the Macedonian plutocratic terror fascists. With them fascists, no adjustment needed. This is why “he looks down on others”. With his dear friends, from whom he hides neither hate nor love, and can be himself entirely, and truthful.  

Does everything Aristotle define goodness with wrong? No. Is contempt for the lower intellectual classes justified? Yes. Should they be interacted with, those armies of trolls? No. Should alienation from intellectual slaves be a way of life? Yes. And to have a long memory for wrongs is a trap because it leads to revisiting the past obsessively… instead of building a better future…

Classes in society are (implicitly) identified with intellectual classes… And greatness with plutocracy… In the sense of the evil-power (Pluto-Kratia). The fundamental problem with those who have taken guidance from Aristotle has been their lack of awareness that Aristotle was mostly writing politics to help himself and his closest friends to keep on going with their exploitative schemes of the “lower sort” and even of women (while Socrates and Plato made an effort, although located in ultra sexist Athens, to promote Aspasia and the enigmatic Diotima… there is nothing like that in Aristotle). 

It’s high time for “Non Aristotelian” thinking…

Patrice Ayme

ARISTOTLE DESTROYED DEMOCRACY

Abstract: Aristotle was, in many ways, a great philosopher. He even contributed to several sciences, for example logic, biology and mathematics (Aristotle mentioned, crucially, non-Euclidean geometry theorems demonstrated… a century before Euclid).

However, Aristotle promoted good vibes rather than debate, as the fundamental principle of the Polis. Aristotle substituted the “pursuit of happiness“, and a meek general “feel good” (eudemonia) to “wisdom”. Aristotle claimed that feel-good should take precedence on freedom, openness, and intelligence, fostered by the direct vote of We The People. Direct legislation is democracy, real democracy.

So doing, Aristotle demolished the supremacy of the natural, instinctual, fiercely debating human ethics, which had triumphed in Athenian civilization for the two preceding centuries… and replaced democracy by the acceptation of plutocracy… A plutocracy led by his Macedonian sponsors, friends, and students.

The worst aspect of Aristotle as thinker is his position as mastermind of the tiny Macedonian elite which destroyed Greek democracy for the next 22 centuries! His life is justified by his writings and vice versa.

The love of Aristotle for the dictatorship of one (“monarchy”, he called it) fatally weakened the animal spirits, the mass human ethology, without which democracy is impossible (that involves the love of debate, a form of combat distinct from eudemonia).

Thus, more fundamentally than even Christianism, and not just by defending slavery extensively, Aristotle and his atrocious, mass murdering, yet trusted, and beloved, pupils, students and friends, dictators of Greece and the world, launched the mental processes that pushed civilization back for millennia in the direction of oligarchy, villainy, mass despondency, crushing stupidity, formidable theocracy and overwhelming fascism.

It’s high time to understand how much of this slick Aristotelian garbage, incompatible with democratic civilization, festers at the root of today’s systems of thoughts and moods. All the more as plutocracy, Aristotle’s baby, is going all out, once again nowadays, to seize power absolutely.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, SPA, for short, were master thinkers. Their influence was so great, they changed human psychology, in the master civilizations, for millennia to come. However the way SPA changed human ethology, in some important ways, towards submission to self-proclaimed elites, civilization cannot tolerate, let alone like it. If civilization liked submission to the few, it would be self-destructive.. As it would promote pontificating stupidity rather than educative debate. Submission to the few, to an oligarchy, is the most likely demolition mechanism of most civilizations.

And this cultural inheritance of SPA, towards submission, is precisely what we have seen all too much after SPA’s poisonous influence infected souls… for the last twenty-four centuries.

***

Aristotle Taught These Two Guys Above That Democracy Was A Devious Beast

[Painting Allegedly Representing Macedonian Plutocrats Antipater and Craterus Killing a Lion; these are the Antipater and Craterus found in the present text; top predators, indeed; shortly before Alexander The Great died, Alexander had ordered Antipater, then ruling Europe, to come to Babylon to answer the charges of Olympias, Alexander’s mom, that Antipater was conspiring to seize power; Antipater refused to come, and sent another of his sons in his stead; his youngest son was Alexander’s closest valet… More on this further down. Yes, at the time, there were lions in the Middle East, and in Europe.]

***

WHEN ATHENS BETRAYED DEMOCRACY, THAT IS, HERSELF:

In 330 BCE, more than 23 centuries ago, the Spartans, led by king Agis, made an all-out effort to destroy Macedonian hegemony. The prospects were good: Antipater had only 13,500 genuine Macedonian soldiers, as Alexander, then fighting the Persian plutocracy, had mobilized all the manpower he could find, to fight far away all over Eurasia. Alexander, though, sent lots of gold in a hurry, so that Antipater could recruit a huge army of northern barbarians to boost his small force.

These were strange times: for about a century much of the elite of the Persian army consisted of Greek mercenaries. Moreover, most Greeks had refused to follow Alexander. No doubt that the fact Alexander had annihilated the ancient city-state of Thebes, and sold 30,000 surviving women and children into slavery, had to do with the passive hostility of Greece against him. Some of the Persian plutocrats were bad, but the Macedonian plutocrats, in many ways, were worse. The Persians managed an immensely complicated empire, the Macedonians just had to keep (their slaves) extracting the gold, while breeding horses to keep invading further with ever more violence.

The Battle of Megalopolis against Antipater’s 40,000 mercenaries was bloody, long indecisive. But, from the sheer weight of numbers, the 20,000 Spartans, after breaking Antipater’s lines, lost. 5,300 of the best ones died. Diodorus comments:

“Agis III had fought gloriously and fell with many frontal wounds. As he was being carried by his soldiers back to Sparta, he found himself surrounded by the enemy. Despairing of his own life, he ordered the rest to make their escape with all speed and to save themselves for the service of their country, but he himself armed and rising to his knees defended himself, killed some of the enemy and was himself slain by a javelin cast.”

So what was Athens doing while Sparta led the entire Peloponnese against Macedonia? Nothing. Athens sat on her hands. A wounded Spartan king fought, even on his knees, while Athens watched. Some derangement had infected Athena’s city. Was it still Athena’s city? Or was it the city of admirers, friends, lovers, advisers and teachers to tyrants? In spite of a blitz by Demosthenes, the pseudo-Demosthenes, and other philosophers, who saw the terrible danger civilization was in, Athens did not send an army to help Sparta. There is no doubt that the smallest Athenian army would have allowed to extirpate the Macedonian metastatic cancer, all the way to where it festered from, Macedonian gold mines.

If that had happened, the history of the world would have been different, and the event would be barely mentioned in Alpha Centauri libraries. (Just before the Macedonian tyrannical takeover, Greek science was expanding at an astounding rate.)

Once he was rid of Alexander, the senior Macedonian general and dictator Antipater, turned against Athens.

The fate of democracy was decided on the sea. The Athenian fleet, having suffered losses in two battles, surrendered. It did not even try to fight to death. The captains of the Athenian ships were not as determined as their ancestors, who, 170 years earlier, had confronted the Persian fleet and its Greek allies, under incomparably greater odds.

***

THE PHILOSOPHICAL TROIKA FROM HELL CHANGED ATHENS’ MIND ABOUT THE HIGHEST GOOD:

Historians are at a loss to explain that massive change of psychology. Why did Athens not fight for freedom in 330 CE, while it had gone all out for it in 500 CE?

Some may suggest that Alexander and Antipater were not as antipathic as Darius and Xerxes. Well that is not even true: the massacres the two Macedonians engaged in were worse. The Persian plutocracy found plenty of Greeks to help it, over a century, including all of Sparta for decades, and generations of top notch mercenaries. By contrast, very few Greeks accepted to work for the Greek speaking Macedonian tyrants, and Sparta always refused to do so.

So, when the Athenian captains decided to surrender to Antipater, without much fighting, it was not because they did not perceive him to be a monster. They knew he was a monster. It was widely suspected, for excellent reasons and strong circumstantial evidence, that Antipater had used one of his sons to empoison Alexander.

Something else had happened to change the psychology of the Athenian elite: accepting monstrosity had become acceptable. Thanks to whom? Aristotle’s student, Alexander (“the great”)? No, he was too busy crucifying thousands in Tyr for having dared to resist him. Nor was Alexander known for intellectual babbling (whereas Antipater was an author).

My explanation for this degeneracy in the minds of Athenian warriors, and statesmen, is that, thanks to the pernicious influence of the troika Socrates-Plato-Aristotle, Athenians changed their notion of superior wisdom.

***

ARISTOTLE’S EUDEMONIA, OR BEING GOOD TO ONESELF AS THE HIGHEST PRINCIPLE:

The freedom that had made their ancestors, and other Greeks stand on the pinnacle of civilization, had been displaced by an obsession with self-flourishing (“Eudaimonism”).

An ethical system where Eudaimonia, that is good (eu) spirits (daimon) is viewed as the highest good, is the door to materialism and the lowest passions.

the problem about the pursuit of happiness as the highest good, is that human beings out-lion, lions. Let’s have Conan the Barbarian (1982) lead the charge against Aristotle’s pursuit of happiness:

“Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?

Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?

Conan: Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.

Mongol General: That is good! That is good.”

[Thanks “Wtquinn” a commenter from Scientia Salon!]

The point: our ancestors have been top predators for a few million years. A top predator, at some point, will take pleasure in deploying top ferocity. Lionesses and wolves have been seen adopting orphan baby preys, out of goodness, and that clearly make them happy. But, still, their business is ferocity.

One needs to base one’s ethics on a more stable base than one’s own perception of what constitute happiness.

***

PROPER ETHICS: SALAMIS. DYING FOR FREEDOM AS THE HIGHEST CALLING: :

An ethical system where dying for freedom is the highest calling is very different from one where one is pursuing the vague notion of “happiness”, and “self-flourishing”. Were the 300 with king Leonidas happy at Thermopylae? Yes! Why? They were happy to die for freedom. They were not just into their little self-flourishing as the Athenian captains confronting Antipater’s armada would be 170 years later.

The happiness of Themistocles’ sailors at the Battle of Salamis while their city burned in the background, and the invader Xerxes watched from a throne, came from fighting for causes bigger than themselves, freedom and justice. If they had been pursuing happiness, they would have fled, as Aristotle, faced with freedom and justice, did. Instead Themistocles’ men confronted a thousand ships.

Human beings cannot just pursue self-flourishing, because, instinctually, or as we moderns say, ethologically, human beings have evolved to make others in the group flourish, as an even higher good.

Salamis was perhaps the most important battle in the history of civilization. That’s when freedom looked for a fight, and broke the back of plutocracy, in spite of overwhelming odds.

375 freedom ships confronted a plutocratic armada of 1200. But the Greeks had better equipment, better training, better spirits, their cause was just, freedom on their sides. Born free, they knew how to swim (most Persians did not). The narrow confines prevented the vast Persian fleet to maneuver, and surround them.

The entire population of Athens had been moved to the island of Salamis. Themistocles had around 200 Athenian warships. When his Peloponnesian allies threatened to fold, he threatened to move the entire population of Athens to the Western Mediterranean (this is how Marseilles, Massilia, had been founded from Phocea). Athens had a colony there, Athenopolis (unfortunately called Saint Tropez nowadays).

Or, at least, this is what the immensely clever Themistocles succeeded to make Xerxes believe.

In one of the best plots ever written, Themistocles, using this sort of subtle disinformation and outright lies, misled emperor Xerxes into battle, in spite of the objections of the much more clever Artemisia, evil queen of Halicarnassus, commanding the fiercest squadron of the plutocratic fleet.

It does not take much to influence a human mind. Themistocles knew this, and played with Xerxes’ as a cat with a mouse. Artemisia, an experienced warrior, clearly saw that the battle in the narrow confines between the island and the mainland was an unnecessary risk.

***

SOCRATES, PLATO AND ARISTOTLE WERE LOVERS OF PLUTOCRACY:

Those who advocate that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle could not have possibly sabotaged civilization understand little to the power of the mind.

Generally, it goes like this: when one points at their philosophical failures, such as the advocacy of dictatorship by Plato, their partisans smirk that the fact that the fact the philosopher spent years with the tyrant of Syracuse has nothing to do with it (see Massimo’s intervention in the preceding essay).

However, the failure of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not personal accidents (such as Francois Villon murdering a priest). Socrates’ courageous battle exploits and death are shining examples. Plato, and Aristotle exhibited personal courage, close and personal, licking the toes, of some of the worst tyrants in history.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle’s failure was systemic, not personal. And it’s all of the same kind. They replaced freedom, equality, and brotherhood with an obsession with taking care of the oligarchic self. Instead it is the greater primacy that they accorded to some values which devalued.

The Athenian fleet was defeated at the Battle of Amorgos (322 BCE) and failed in stopping reinforcements to reach Antipater.

The Athenian and allied democrats were finally defeated in 322 BCE at the Battle of Crannon in central Thessaly helped by another Macedonian gangster, Craterus. They beat back the weary Athenians in a long series of cavalry and hoplite engagements. Once again, their spirits failed the Athenians. While they were not routed, Athens and her allies, spurning Demosthenes strident, and cogent warnings, sued for peace on Antipater’s terms.

Antipater forced Athens to dissolve her government and establish a plutocratic system in its stead. Only those possessing 2,000 drachmas or more could remain citizens. The Demos was viewed, correctly, by the Macedonians, as the cause of the war.

But the Demos wanted to be free, and Aristotle wanted slaves.

***

23 CENTURIES OF PLUTOCRACY FOLLOWED, BUT THAT’S NOT US, ETHICALLY, & ETHOLOGICALLY:

The very failure of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, made their success. The common denominator ethics that they promoted was favorable to tyrants, and that it is precisely why their work survived through the Dark Ages. Whereas those who defended freedom, equality and democracy were extinguished by the Christian censors and their plutocratic sponsors.

Am I advocating a return to some kind of paleo-state and, or, instinctual ethics?

Well, yes. Except it’s not a return, because we never left. We are what we are. Human ethology exists, and is a subset of primate ethology. We are 60 million years of evolution as primates.

What is the basic principle, the fundamental evolutionary force, of a primate? Higher, superior intelligence. How do we get it? Through independent minds then allowing their ideas to compete inside vast cultural system. Only openness, freedom and justice enable this independence. This was all pointed out in Pericles’ famous Funeral Oration. So it’s not like the plutocratic troika of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, never heard of the notion.

Instead, what Pericles celebrated, the glory of the all-thinking Demos, was exactly the opposite of what Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Antipater wanted.

Pericles was on the winning side, the side of Instinctual Ethics.

Monkey studies show that “instinctual ethics” is a fact. (Whatever “instinct” really mean: it could actually be logic masquerading as innate!) To talk about ethics without that fact front and central would be like talking about atoms, while discounting anything that may have been discovered after Lucretius.

Aristotle was the first biologist. He invented categories, now at the forefront of mathematics, where they increasingly replace old fashion algebra, by lifting up its essence into richer structures.

The ethical attacks of Socrates against (direct) democracy were always justified. What was not justified was the lack of temperance that made him throw the baby, democracy, with some of the problems it caused.

The intellectual troika from hell was all the more dangerous, that those were master thinkers. Aristotle was the first biologist. He invented categories, now at the forefront of mathematics, where they increasingly replace old fashion algebra, by lifting up its essence into richer structures.

The ethical attacks of Socrates against (direct) democracy were justified. What was not justified was the lack of temperance that made him throw the baby, democracy, with the bath, into the trash.

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TOLERATING ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS IS TOLERATING PLUTOCRACY:

Their influence is still all too great, and solidly tied to minimizing the phenomenon of plutocracy, and how it influences people. A few hours ago, I met with an engineer, who reigns over a major international airport, a man of many languages and many countries. I fumed against Aristotle, but he told me: ”Yes, but we owe him everything!”

The exact opposite is true. Although the troika from hell made important contributions, it was much more important to have democracy survive and prosper.

Democracy is intelligence. If Athens had survived, and established a second, larger empire, displaced and replaced Rome, civilization could well have got millennia ahead… Although, of course, slavery would have had to be outlawed, be it only because it blocked technological progress (by discouraging and out-competing it).

So let’s sink the ethics of good spirits. Aristotle’s eudemonia. Instead let’s pursue the grim war of freedom against plutocracy, and the hellish superstitions which support it.

Some will smirk that plutocracy is not everything. But that’s like saying metastatic cancer is not everything. By killing the freedom of spirits, plutocracy kills what makes humans human and replaces it with the stupidity of primitive beasts.

History demonstrates this: Greek science, not just philosophy, tragedy (etc.) peaked immediately before Antipater, as Alexander’s executive regent, organized the fascist “Hellenistic” plutocratic dictatorships which ruled until the Roman Republic, a democracy, swept them away.

And peaked science did. In the last year of the Fourth Century BCE, Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric system, Euclid wrote the Elements, Archimedes invented Infinitesimal Calculus, and the Greek number system came very close to the one we use today.

Aristotle classifies democracy, the rule of We The People, as a deviant constitution. Being a crafty polemicist, he gives it a bone by saying in Politics III.11, that the multitude may be better than the virtuous few, sometimes. But that’s in an ocean of praise for aristocracy.

When he died in 322 BC, Aristotle named his student Antipater as executor-in-charge of his will. And what a will: destroy democracy, establish plutocracy. Enough said about Aristotle’s ethics.

Patrice Ayme’