Agency vs. The Goodness of the State

For my first blog, I’d like to discuss last week’s reading On Ethics. I wrote my preparatory exercise on “character.” In my exercise, I named agency and strong moral ethics to be the characteristics Aristotle considers most associated with the “Supreme Good.”

I think, however, Aristotle’s concept of the “Supreme Good” conflicts with his concept of agency. In the beginning of the treatise Aristotle defines the “Supreme Good”: “For even though it be the case that the Good is the same for the individual and for the state, nevertheless, the good of the state is manifestly a greater and more perfect good, both to attain and to preserve. To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement.” Marx came after Aristotle, but the society that Aristotle describes here sounds like a Marxist society. In The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, it states, "He [Marx] thought that a dictatorship of the proletariat would temporarily emerge in the wake of capitalism and ultimately be succeeded by a socialist, classless society without need or use for any such government." 

It seems to me that for Aristotle's concept of goodness to work, a society would have to be classless like in Marx's ideal, but a classless society seems more likely to have to forfeit some of its agency or independence in order to function. For instance, if there were no government in a society, then the citizens would have to rely on one another for essential needs. If a farmer needed bread but had none, he would have to ask a neighbor for some because there would be no government to provide it. 

Aristotle says, "Goodness must be something proper to its possessor and not easy to be taken away from him." In a Marxist society where the citizens all work to benefit each other, it seems that no man would be able to individually possess his own goodness. The goodness would have to be shared.

When Aristotle said “Goodness must be something proper to its possessor”, it put me in mind of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, which I thought was funny because The Fountainhead preaches a lot about laissez-faire capitalism. In general, what I took from The Fountainhead was that a person can only really achieve happiness through individual means; they can’t rely on others to make them happy. I feel like this supports Aristotle’s idea that goodness must be “something proper to its possessor.” It, however, contradicts the idea that happiness can come out of a Marxist society. It has to come out of a society in which people are competing against one another. 

I feel like Aristotle needs to reconcile his ideas between agency and the good of the state. I don’t think a person can maintain his/her agency and contribute to the good of the entire state.