Some Nussbaum

[Sam Pawlett]

"To value a public scheme of education is to value something both
vulnerable and difficult to realize. Aristotle's arguments against
prevailing custom in Politics VII makes it clear that anything
approaching adequate general practice is rare. And even if it is
possible to become good in less ideal surroundings, cultural instability
of a sort familiar in his time will frequently bring practice below the
threshold of acceptability. Furthermore, even in a good and stable
culture, because of economic necessity there will always be those who,
living the life of manual laborers, will be debarred by the exigencies
of daily work from having the education requisite for full human
excellence. 'If one is living the life of a craftsman or hired servant,
it is not possible to practice the things belonging to
excellence'[Politics 1278a20-1; cf. 1329a39-41]. Even the life of the
farmer is not compatible with full human excellence, 'for leisure is
required both for the coming to be of excellence and for political
activities.'[1329a1-2]. But craftsmen, hired servants and farmers will
always be needed for the sake of survival and prosperity. The conclusion
we must draw from these facts is that even in a good city the best human
life cannot be open to all, since it requires conditions that cannot at
any one time be distributed at all. Aristotle, looking upon these
difficult facts, does not conclude that these social conditions, after
all, be genuine necessary conditions for excellence. He concludes
instead that, even excellence should be available, as he has said, to
all who are not naturally able to attain it, that is not for all people,
the way the world is. Some injustice is required by the exigencies of
social life itself under contingent existing economic conditions. To put
things this way is, in his view, better than to define the good in terms
of the possible: first, because it provides an incentive to the
legislator to work against these limitations as much as possible;
second, because to aim only at what is, for everyone 'commensurate with
life' is to aim at a lower and impoverished mark." *Fragility of
Goodness* p347

Shades of Sen? Was Aristotle a bourgeois liberal after all?

Sam Pawlett