The influence which Aristotle's moral and political theories
have had in later ages has followed a tortuous path determined
largely by the fact that Aristotle's cautious discrimination of
the practical sciences from the arts and the theoretic sciences is
rarely part of the influence he exercises, but instead some of the
broad analogies-criticized by Aristotle in the doctrines of Socrates
and Plato-by which doing is reduced to knowing and both
are identified with making, have controlled the interpretation
of Aristotle's doctrines. The influence of the Aristotelian ethics
has been limited largely to the repetition in uncongenial contexts,
usually traceable to Platonic sources, of his wise sayings
concerning the virtues, choice, deliberation, free-will, friendship,
prudence, wisdom, pleasure, happiness. Much of the language
in which ethics and moral problems are discussed still
bears an Aristotelian impress, but the particularity which his
constant insistence on choice and the efficient causes of action
brought to his words has been lost in the generality which has
come into ethics by emphasis on forms, actions, and ends. During
the Christian Middle Ages the ethics of Aristotle was introduced
into a moral theory built on eternal goods and divine
love which were often described in terms borrowed from Plato.
Eternal goods have not been without defenders even since the
Renaissance, but moral questions have been treated largely by
reference to the functions of the mind or the directions of actions
or the meanings of words, and inquiry has seldom returned
to habits which are relative to passions and subject to
rational formulation. In the place of a subsistent good, moral
problems have been referred for a time to reason, moral sense,
common sense, intuition, or some like power supposed to be
possessed by all men, until in more recent times a like generality
was achieved by actions subject uniformly to some pragmatic
test or by terms like "good" or "value" supposed to extend in
single or comparable meanings in all their applications.
The political theory of Aristotle has been continued and extended
in like dismembermenta, nd the analogiesu sed by Aristotle
have been adapted, as in the case of ethics, to reformulate
politics now as an art, now as a physical science. Such transformations
are easily accomplished by removing the controlling
influence exercised by final causes and the ends of the good life
in his analysis of politics, for their place is then taken by political
formsa nd laws which are imbedded,i n appropriateP latonic
fashion, in the nature of things, by the interests and intentions
of individuals or groups, by power and agreements, by rights
and duties, or by technical knowledge and competence. Inquiry
into the bases of justice in "natural justice," particularly as
continued by Stoics and Neo-Platonists, supplied the pattern
according to which political theory turned, in Roman law and
Christian theology, from the investigation of changing condtions to reiteration of the influence, rarely particularized, of
"natural law,"58 and the doctrine of natural law itself suggests
the modes of analysis, much practiced since the Middle Ages,
by which political problems are resolved by the unique determinations
of Reason or Will. Aristotle's vocabulary and distinctions,
the formal organizations of the study of politics and
of the institutions studied in it, have contributed recurrent
terms to the long literature of utopian projected states, to the
scientific discussiono f politics, to the pamphleteeringp reparation
for governments, and even to the language in which laws
and constitutions have been written and interpreted: thus, to
mention only the most obvious cases, the formal distinction of
the parts of a constitution has furnished, by way of Montesquieu,
the practical precept of the division of powers, and Aristotle's
manner of differentiating six states has become, more
than any other classificationo f states, part of political language.
In general, however, the effect of this formalizing of Aristotle's
terminology and theory may be seen in the tendency of the
two end-terms of his dialectic, the individual and the state,
which are determined in endless ways each relative to the other,
to become absolute in such fashion that all political problems
may be treated as instances of the opposition of rights and
duties, or even of Individualism and the Common Good. Even
more subtle and pervasive, however, has been the tendency of
Absolute Goods, when long established in discussion, to be
translated, with little effort or consequence, into the actions or intentions which are turned to them; when philosophers have
tired of formal causes, entitized as eternal beings, they have
sought solace, if not a different analysis, in efficient causes,
finding the common good in some manifestation of a common
will, or accounting for political organizations, which had been
called "natural," as conventional associations established by social contracts. This tendency repeats the fate which has befallen
Aristotle's physical theory, for in politics as in physics
all four of the Aristotelian causes have been reduced to efficient
causes-contracts and covenants have been advanced as efficient
causes to account for the pursuit of the "common good,"
the division of powers has been made the efficient cause of the
persistence of states, not the form of their organization-and
the tendency reached its completion at the close of the Middle
Ages, when Aristotle's political theory was no longer fitted in a
scheme dominated by "eternal law," in the first and most influential
of modern political theories, that of Machiavelli, which
is based almost exclusively on considerations, derived from
Aristotle's treatment of efficient causes in the Politics and of
persuasioni n the Rhetorico, f means by which to move or maintain
a state.
The influence and continuation of the method of Aristotle's
political theory must be sought in other regions than those
covered in later political and ethical speculation, for in the
philosophiesw hichh ave abandonedt he distinctionb etweent heoretic
and practical sciences, the method of the practical sciences
may be found, universalized and extended to any subject,
or even to all subjects. In pragmatisms, functionalisms,
operationalisms, instrumentalists, and positivisms, some vestiges
of the dialectic of morality-with its emphasis on agents
and outcomes,i ts concernw ith organici nterrelationsi, ts limitation
of perspective to relative and proximate causal influencessurvive
and have been made to disguise the uncongenial speculations
of metaphysics by supplying first principles which seem
to be based wholly on the confidence we can have in things
made or modified by man.