Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero: Ideal Political Regimes

Posted on Jan 5, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

For any regime, the best regime is always going to be the regime that is most connected to the end. It meets the end of political life most fully.

Why Plato Favors the Callipolis as the Best Regime

The Callipolis is the best regime, on Plato’s view, because it meets the end most fully. Democracy falls afoul of the end and is a degenerate regime.

Plato’s Hierarchy of Regimes

• Aristocracy
  • Rule on the basis of reason
  • Thymos
  • Material Appetites
• Timocracy
  • Honor/Thymos
  • Material Appetites
  • Cause: The upper class begins to favor themselves
• Oligarchy
  • Love of Money vs. poor
  • Cause: Honor is valuable to the forces of wealth, especially if that wealth is not based on principle
• Democracy
  • Freedom and Equality
  • Poor Many vs. The rich few
  • Cause: Gap between rich and poor widens
  • The many insist on liberation, and all desires are unleashed
  • All the appetites are unleashed, and faction might occur
• Tyranny
  • Love of desire
  • Tyrant – savage appetites vs. everyone
  • Cause: The poor few turn against the remaining oligarchs and are whipped up by demagogues (political leaders who appeal to desires instead of reason)

Plato: The Callipolis as the Best Regime

The Callipolis is the best because it is ordered on the basis of merit in such a way that all natures are satisfied.

Characteristics: Rule by the few, philosopher-kings who possess some superiority in reason and thymos. These rulers direct those who are merely thymotic and not preeminent in reason. This group, in turn, governs those who are awash in their appetite for material things.

Why does Plato hold that Thymos and reason ground that which is considered the best regime? Thymos and reason are determinants of human behavior. Thymos is important for self-governing and self-rule.

Aristotle: Rule for the Common Good

Aristotle holds that a regime is good insofar as it rules with a view to the common good and on the basis of merit. A bad regime does not do either. Monarchy is rule by one for the common good. Aristocracy is rule by a few good with a view that is best for the city and those sharing in it. Polity is when many govern on the basis of good laws and institutions with a view to the common advantage.

Aristotle’s Classification of Regimes

Aristotle claims that a monarchy is the best regime, but it is a mere ideal because it is not often a ruler is god-like and, by extension, a virtuous person. Aristotle will argue that only a small percentage of society is virtuous. The monarchy is best absolutely because it is the best meritorious person ruling for the common good. The monarchy is a mere ideal because Aristotle will say that it is very rare to find a person who is godlike/perfectly virtuous.

An aristocracy is directly perfectionist; it inculcates eudaimonia in the citizens and makes virtue a condition of full citizenship. This is the second best because it is ruled by the group who is most eudaimon, who has the most virtue. The group of people who rule the aristocracy are a subset of those few virtuous people in society.

Polity is indirectly perfectionist. It creates conditions favorable to the cultivation of eudaimonia by citizens. So it’s orderly, lawful, and moral. Its institutions and laws are most meritorious, not the people.

The monarchy, aristocracy, and polity are all meritorious but in different ways.

In the monarchy, the king is the most meritorious person, whereas in the aristocracy, the group of rulers are the most meritorious.

Cicero: The Mixed Commonwealth

The best regime is the mixed commonwealth, formed through an institutional system of checks and balances involving all three elements of good regimes: Monarchy (authority and power), Aristocracy (virtue, merit, wisdom), and Democracy (the love of liberty). By incorporating all three of these things, the commonwealth is more durable, orderly, and stable—less liable to degenerate into a tyranny, oligarchy, or mob rule. It is in accord with natural law and is more durable and achieves the end of the city more fully. Because of the system of checks and balances, the mixed commonwealth succeeds in meeting the end of the city more durably and more reliably.

The problem is that the three unmixed regimes tend to slip into their degenerate forms.

Cicero’s View on Good and Bad Rule

• Good Rule: In accord with natural law for a particular community
• Bad Rule: Not in accord with natural law and not for the sake of a particular community

Types of Rule According to Cicero