Organicism, Atomism, Family

The most prominent challenge to Political Organicism comes from Social Atomism, according to which there is no Social Whole that is greater than the sum of its Parts, and, accordingly, that there is no Highest Good that is greater than the sum of Individual Highest Goods.  But, the plain and familiar counter-example is the most fundamental of societies--the basic family unit constituted by reproduction and child-rearing.  Not only is this Society more than an adventitious association of three individuals, it also demonstrates the existence of a Good that transcends even all three individual Goods--the propagation of the Species.  And, if the Species is the ground of this Society, than it can be the ground of any.  So, not only does Atomism seem to have no adequate objection to Political Organicism, any association of humans that it can conceive presupposes it.

Character and System

The primary concern of Modern Political Philosophy is System--the number of Rulers, i. e. one, a few, or all, and the means of becoming a Ruler, i. e. inheritance or election, with a common third possibility, conquest, typically ignored.  Thus, the Moderns jettison a primary concern of the Ancients--Character, which is why Machiavelli is the last of the Ancients rather than the first of the Moderns.  Likewise, Organicist Political Philosophy is closer to the Ancient.  For, its concept of the Ruler--the writ large brain--involves both Character and System.  First, the fundamental principle of Character is that as an Organ in an Organism, it functions in the service of the latter, i. e. its conduct should not be self-serving.  Second, the brain is the focal point of the sensory-motor network.  Thus, likewise, the Ruler must receive and take into account information from everywhere in the Polis, which it must coordinate with motivating all its Members. Failures of each of these are common expressed as "out of touch", and "lack of leadership". So, the writ large sensory-motor network constitutes the most fundamental Political System.  On this model, the variations in the means of communication over history suffices to demonstrate the contingency of System.  Likewise is the ample evidence that Ruler corruption and/or incompetence is not exclusive to any System.

Polis and Health

Despite asserting that the Whole is prior to the Parts, Aristotle offers no concept of the Highest Good of a Polis qua Whole.  He is certainly aware of Plato's two Holistic Political concepts--Justice and the collectivization of property--but restricts the former to individual citizens, and rejects the latter.  He also has, from the resources of his system, a third alternative--a writ large version of his concept of Organism.  On that basis, the Highest Good of the Polis is Health, consisting in the optimal functioning of each of its interdependent Parts, which entails optimal interdependence.  Health is thus the Highest Good of both the Whole and of its Parts, though a possibility apparently missed by Aristotle. In turn, all other structures are means to that end, and to be evaluated as such.

Political Philosophy, Whole, Parts

The primary aim of a Political Philosophy is to posit the best Polis, from which the best means to that end is derived.  In contrast, Political Theory and Political Science classify and compare various means that have appeared.  Now, Aristotle seems inconsistent in conducting this enterprise.  For, even though he asserts that the Whole is prior to the Parts, in much of what follows, the Whole is a means to the Good of its Parts, e. g. when suggesting that the end of a Constitition is the cultivation of the Virtue in its citizenry.  In other words, he does not seem to define the Highest Good of a Whole qua Whole.  But, the inconsistency stems not from a failure to subordinate the Parts to the Whole; rather, it is from his opposing Whole and Part to begin with.  Instead, a Whole is a Whole of its Parts, so that the Good of the Whole is the Good of its Parts.  On that basis, the best Polis is one constituted by the optimal functioning of all its Parts, with the best system that which is an effective means to that end.  That the actualization of such a Polis is highly unlikely is not equivalent to its impossibility, and its mere possibility has value as a corrective to the pretensions of contingent inferior systems to inherent necessity, e. g. the prominent thesis that a 'state of Nature' is a condition of universal war.

Holism, Ruler, Ruled

Aristotle's formulation that a Whole is prior to its Parts is misleading in two respects.  First, it suggests that Whole and Parts are independent, whereas a Whole is a Whole of its Parts, and a Part does not exist in isolation from the rest of the Parts.  Second, it superficially entails that in its antithesis, the Parts are prior to the Whole, rather than there being therein only individual entities and their assemblage, i. e. absent a real Whole, the multiplicity are not Parts.  Now, the feature of Political Holism that is most difficult to grasp from the perspective of Political Atomism is that in it, Ruler and Ruled are each Parts, so that each is at the service of the Whole.  The difficulty is a consequence of the denial of the existence of the Whole, leaving the Ruled at the service of the Ruler, i. e. a Hierarchical ordering.  The Modern aversion to Ancient Political doctrine is that of an Atomism that mistakes Medieval Hierarchism for the fundamental concept Ancient Political Philosophy.

Organicism, Hierarchism, Atomism

In On the Soul,II,1, Aristotle characterizes an Organism as constituted by interdependent Parts.  However, he seems unaware of the profound antithesis to Hierarchism of Organicism--in the former, but not the latter, higher and lower are related as better to worse, but e. g. the brain of an Organism needs the foot just as much as the foot needs the brain.  The conflict is momentous when analogously magnified in the Geocentric writ large Organism , i. e. in the ancient Polis, specifically in the ruler-ruled relation--better-worse vs. interdependence. Now, Aristotle's advocacy of Holism--the priority of Whole over Part--at the outset of the Politics, strongly suggests that the subsequent doctrine is Organicist, but, unfortunately, he neglects any implication of it for Hierarchism.  Consequently, in fateful contrast, the Theological tradition that appropriates Aristotelianism is Hierarchist, and the subsequent Modernity vs. Medieval conflict is that of Egalitarianism vs. Inegalitarianism, with Aristotelianism subsumed under the latter.  Thus completely lost has been that the more fundamental antithesis between Aristotelianism and Modernism is actually that of Organicism vs. Atomism.  On that basis, presumed anti-Modernists, e. g. Strauss, because Atomist, are just as Modernist as the Egalitarianism that they oppose.

Soul, Political Body, Legislation

As has been previously discussed, one potential casualty of an academic disconnect of Philosophy and Political Science is the systemstic relation between the Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics.  Another is between the latter and On the Soul.  For, in the Politics, two paragraphs after the better-known thesis "Man is by nature a political animal" is Aristotle's principle that "the whole is of necessity prior to the part", which is the writ large correlate of a concept of Organism that he presents in On the Soul.  More precisely, Soul is the Form of the manifold parts that constitute a Body, unifying them by animating the Body.  Analogously, therefore, following Plato's example, rulership animates the manifold of the political Body by unifying them via Legislation, which constitutes its Soul.  Thus, lost in the academic disconnect is the scope of Aristotle's systematic ambition, thereby reducing the standard focus in the Politics to his comparison of the various modes of Legislation, which abstracts from the function of the latter as the Soul of the collective Organism.