For Hobbes, there is nothing “more repugnant to government” or “more ignorantly” said than much of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics. But it does not take such sharp wit to discern the tension between Aristotle's thought and a liberal tradition that prizes the freedom of each to pursue happiness as he or she sees fit. Indeed, one of the aims of this tradition has been to liberate the individual from the kind of religious authority and sectarian strife for which Hobbes blamed the “ghostly” Aristotelianism of his time. As Rawls notes, liberalism emerges as the solution to the problem of creedal and salvationist religions, and it is with a view to solving this problem for the sake of future peace that, in response to the attacks of September 11th, we are now attempting to remake the world in our image. Given the political goods of liberalism, then, perhaps we should simply abandon Aristotle's political philosophy, as Hobbes advises, or reformulate it to make it consistent with the democratic pluralism of our age, as some scholars today urge. I have argued, to the contrary, that it is precisely because Aristotle does not share liberal presuppositions that his thought becomes useful to us. In particular, by exploring dimensions of the moral and political world that we neglect or obscure, he illuminates the question central to his political philosophy and before us once again: What is a citizen?

During an interview on the first anniversary of September 11th, author David Halberstam was suddenly moved to remark, “I used to say I was a New Yorker. Now I like to think of myself as a citizen of the city.” As a response to the attacks on America's most cosmopolitan city, Halberstam's comment spoke powerfully to the newfound sense of citizenship that then gripped the nation and has since struggled for definition. For what, indeed, does it mean to be a “citizen”?

To be sure, the events of September 11th and their aftermath have impelled all serious observers to speak anew of the sacrifices and duties of citizenship or of a deeper commitment to community. Beyond this, however, language often fails. With Rousseau, perhaps, some had sought to efface the very word citizen from our vocabulary, or, with Kant, to search out a higher notion of world citizenship, or, with Hobbes, to rest content as subjects rather than citizens as long as life and liberty were otherwise preserved. But if, in the face of present challenges, such notions seem inadequate – if, in particular, we are awake to aspects of citizenship that our own principles and assumptions obscure or resist – where might we turn for understanding? This study turns to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, the two works in the history of political philosophy that together contain the most comprehensive and systematic investigation of the question “What is a citizen?”

THE PROBLEM OF PRUDENCE

When Aristotle concludes the account of the particular moral virtues to turn to intellectual virtue, the question of the standard to which the morally virtuous person and the law look in determining right action forms a new horizon in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE 1138b13–14). That this question remains is indicated immediately by the fact that he returns to the subject of right reason he had earlier postponed (NE 1138b18–20). The investigation of right reason is inseparable from a consideration of the target (scopos) at which the virtues aim and the boundary (or limit, horos) within which the mean is identified (NE 1138b21–5, 32–4). In the absence of such a consideration, the definition of virtue – as the mean defined by the prudent human being (phronimos) – is true but unclear (NE 1138b25–6).

Despite the apparent urgency of this task, Aristotle does not approach it directly, instead undertaking a lengthy treatment of the characteristics of the rational or intellectual parts of the soul. While we might then expect his discussion of prudence, the rational characteristic that governs deliberation in the realm of action, to shed light on the question of right reason, this discussion proves first to complicate rather than illuminate the matter. A simple sketch brings out the central difficulty. In short, we learn that prudence is required for perceiving the right thing to do in a particular situation.

As a principle of the political order, justice is the focus of much scrutiny in contemporary political theory, yet even among neo-Aristotelians, little attention is paid to justice as a characteristic or virtue of the individual. Aristotle, by contrast, begins his inquiry by emphasizing that justice is like the other virtues in constituting a characteristic that disposes us to act well, namely, “to do just things, act justly, and wish just things” (NE 1129a3–11). His first task, then, is to examine justice as a virtue that constitutes our perfection. The immediate complication is that justice has two meanings that are similar but not the same: “the lawbreaker is thought to be unjust,” but so too is “the one who takes more than his share [pleonektēs] and is unfair [lit. “unequal,” anisos]” (NE 1129a32–4). In short, justice may mean either “lawfulness” or “fairness,” alternatives that Aristotle classifies under the respective headings of general and particular justice (NE 1129a34–b1). Accordingly, there exist two different, though related, characteristics in the case of justice. General justice as lawfulness is complete virtue, understood as the sum of all the virtues directed toward the good of another (NE 1129b26–30). Particular justice as fairness is the proper disposition concerning the good things – security, money, and honor – in which all who belong to the political community must share (NE 1130a32–b5).

THE IDENTITY OF THE CITIZEN

Aristotle's consideration of the dispute over rule is preceded and made necessary by the problem with which he introduces Book III and presents first as a practical and legal matter: the problem of the city's identity (Pol. 1274b32–4). He indicates that he will proceed by dividing the city, a composite whole, into its component parts (Pol. 1274b38–41; cf. 1252a17–20). This is formally the procedure he employed at the beginning of the Politics when he divided the political community into the natural associations that form for the sake of some good and then established the city as the natural whole that completes the human quest for the good. In Book III, by contrast, Aristotle begins from a part of the city whose identity is an object of dispute: the citizen. By Book III, the question of the political community has become a part of a larger investigation of the regime, and Aristotle is considering the city not as a natural whole but first and foremost as an arrangement of offices having an authoritative ruling element and directed toward the end established by that element (Pol. 1274b36–8, 1279a25–7, 1289a15–18). In this context, the city acquires its identity, as does the citizen, through the institution of a particular regime, and the identity of the city becomes most obviously a question when it must be constituted – when it is founded or undergoes a revolution.

The current debate about liberal citizenship is marked by a pervasive doubt about such fundamental liberal principles as the primacy of the individual, the neutrality of the contractual state, and the priority and universality of rights. To be sure, there have been past disputes about the political and legal terms of citizenship. In the American case, for example, disputes have ranged from the arguments concerning naturalization at the Constitutional Convention to the battle over voting rights to more recent discussions of immigration. But these past disagreements also reflected a more fundamental consensus that “the first mark of American citizenship,” and of liberal citizenship in general, is the “political equality of rights,” and that defining citizenship largely entailed working out the full meaning of these terms. Since the current debate follows from critiques of liberal thought itself, however, we now confront fundamental questions concerning the very ideals and principles that have traditionally undergirded discussions of citizenship.

In providing an overview of these critiques and the ways in which scholars have subsequently sought to reconceive liberal citizenship, I seek not to recapitulate this ongoing debate but to describe the general context within which it has arisen and to draw out problems that provide a bridge to Aristotle's thought. I begin from two developments. First, in the last decades of the twentieth century, a growing perception that liberal thought, and the Enlightenment project in general, failed to make good on its promise to ground morality in a rational and nonteleological framework raised serious doubts about liberalism's capacity to defend its own moral and political principles.

Understanding the complexity of moral virtue and the perspective that informs it requires attention to the substance and order of Aristotle's discussion of the particular virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics. It is necessary, before turning to this discussion, to address a couple of objections to this claim, objections represented by the strong statement of Sir David Ross and largely responsible for a general neglect of the virtues:

Such a view would supply a good reason for the neglect of the particular virtues, and while students of Aristotle rarely subscribe to the whole of Ross's view, many assume the validity of some part of it. The full case against this position requires the substantive examination of the virtues (cf. NE 1107b14–16, 20–1, 1108a1–2), yet it is possible to address the main propositions in a prefatory way by speaking first to the question of the organization and order of the list and then to the connection of the virtues to Greek convention.

Leading up to his account of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses three virtues that pertain to “our associations” and “the speeches and deeds of our common relations”: friendliness (philia, lit. “friendship”), truthfulness, and wittiness (NE 1126b11–12). His account of these virtues is prepared by his treatment of the nameless characteristic pertaining to anger, which he chooses to call “gentleness” (praotēs). Generally speaking, the person who possesses this virtue becomes angry “in the circumstances and at whom he ought, and further in the manner, when, and for as much time as he ought” (NE 1125b31–2). In choosing to name the virtue “gentleness,” Aristotle associates it with its also nameless deficiency, and the gentle person in fact tends toward a deficiency of anger. The gentle person, who “wishes to be calm and led not by passion but as reason would command,” is more disposed to forgive than, as is more common, to seek revenge and punishment (NE 1125b33–1126a4, 1126a30). Indeed, this disposition toward forgiveness sometimes makes the gentle human being an object of blame rather than praise: He is thought to be a fool and slavish, for he appears to endure foul abuse and to overlook his own affairs (NE 1126a4–8). Moreover, in certain circumstances, not gentleness but harshness, the excess of anger identified as most opposed to the mean, is praised: Harsh human beings “are sometimes praised as manly on the grounds that they are able to rule” (NE 1126a36–b2).

Gorgias must be impressed by Socrates' success in at least taming Polus and by what Socrates has shown about Polus' concerns. Yet doubts might reasonably linger about whether Socrates' success with Polus, even as limited as it is, could be duplicated with a more demanding interlocutor. And Gorgias also might wonder whether the attachment to justice that Socrates has revealed in Polus is really a sign of a deep concern in the human soul rather than a reflection of Polus' susceptibility to bouts of shame. If these are Gorgias' thoughts at this stage of the dialogue, he will welcome the entry of Callicles. As soon as Callicles enters the conversation, the tone becomes more serious and demanding. This change can be felt from the moment Callicles speaks up to ask whether Socrates is really being serious in defending the position he has been defending, and then exclaims: “For if you are being serious and these things that you are saying are really true, wouldn't that mean that our lives as human beings are now turnedupside down, and that everything we do is the opposite of what we should do?” (481c1–4). Unlike Polus, who displayed a willingness half-heartedly to follow arguments wherever they might lead, Callicles has a much sharper sense of the gravity of the conclusions of Socrates' arguments. In this respect at least, he first comes to sight as the most impressive of Socrates' interlocutors.

The Gorgias is divided into three main sections of unequal length. The shortest of the three sections is Socrates' opening conversation with Gorgias, which is followed by a longer conversation with Polus, and then by Socrates' much longer confrontation with Callicles. This movement from briefer to lengthier conversations would seem to mirror the dialogue's ascent in intensity. That is, the dramatic tension is greater and the themes are more profound in the Polus section than in the Gorgias section, and the Polus section is surpassed in turn by the Callicles section. Yet the impression conveyed by this movement, as I stressed in the introduction, should not lead us to overlook the crucial question of the unity of the dialogue: What ties the three sections together? Nor should we overlook the fact that the dialogue is called Gorgias, a title that may be intended to call attention to the special importance of the opening section of the dialogue as somehow holding the key to its unity.

A more obvious reason that the dialogue is named after Gorgias is that he is the person to whom Socrates has come to speak as the dialogue opens (447a1–c4). He is also by far the most eminent of Socrates' three interlocutors. A man who in his own time and for several generations afterwards would need no introduction, Gorgias was one of the ancient world's most famous rhetoricians and teachers of rhetoric.