/lit/ - Literature

What's the dichotomy? Mandeville assumes a state which can channel human desires towards economic ends (So Vice is beneficial found, When it’s by Justice lopt and bound), and arguably Hobbes also grounds his contractualism in these very same vices. They are more complimentary than contradictory in my interpretation.
Hirschman, i assume?

>>20537569
Surprisingly good post. It's refreshing to see this kind of analysis on /lit/, actually—too many people here divorce ideologies from their historic and sociological foundations.

Is there any reason not to adopt a perdurantist account of persistence? From my experience it has been far more capable of handling problems of diachronic identity than endurantism, especially when you start accounting for problems in other areas of identity. But i've heard temporal parts is the more controversial thesis, why?

>>16712183
Perhaps it was too far to say that they were natural slaves, but neither would Aristotle consider them masters either, or truly free.
>The best city-state will not confer citizenship on vulgar craftsmen, however; but if they too are citizens, then what we have characterized as a citizen's virtue cannot be ascribed to everyone, or even to all free people, but only to those who are freed from necessary tasks. Those who perform necessary tasks for an individual are slaves; those who perform them for the community are vulgar craftsmen and hired laborers.
So the wage labourer cannot participate in the proper virtues of the master or the citizen, as they are still preforming necessary tasks, and further labouring for another. Which ties in with what Aristotle was initially talking about with the polis being complete when it reaches maximal self-sufficiency. That simply mean material sufficiency which frees citizens to pursue the good life, dedicating themselves wholly to public life, philosophy, and moral matters. That is, to human flourishing—the final cause of humans. Which is why the final cause of the city-state is demonstrated in the famous opening lines...
>We see that every CITY-STATE is a COMMUNITY of some sort, and that every community is established for the sake of some GOOD (for everyone performs every ACTION for the sake of what he takes to be good). Clearly, then, while every community aims at some good, the community that has the most AUTHORITY of all and encompasses all the others aims highest, that is to say, at the good that has the most authority of all.
The good that has the highest authority of all, as we know from NE, is eudaimonia, human flourishing.
Which is also what Aristotle talks about with the slave and master needing each other to survive and flourish; the natural slave, being unable to direct his own self through reason, requires the master to both survive and flourish (they would never be able to participate in higher virtues anyway, because they lack reason. Their full virtue is as a directed labourer); the master, being unable to pursue higher goals without the slave to provide a material basis, also cannot flourish. So the wage labourer could be the master with no slave, which would be a defective master. They posses reason, but are unable to properly direct it.
In any case, Aristotle was not fond of labourers in general, as labour corrupts one's character and is unfitting a master. Maybe even a NEET, depending on how they spent their time, would be closer to a master than a wage labourer. The unlikely inheritors of the aristocratic class...