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Introduction3with one's mate, overseeing servants, transacting business, keep ing friends, and philosophizing all require virtue of some kind,and each activity can be perfected . By trying to perfect such ac tivities, human beings realize their own potentials . Achieving vir tue requires discounting or being insulated from common, dilutedconceptions and misconceptions of virtue . To live only according toprevailing expectations precludes discovery of one's potential . ForAristotle, the raison d' etre of privacy is to enable one to turn awayin order to achieve excellence .This point raises the second topic of this book: the relation be tween the public and the private . Traditional accounts of Aristotle'spolitical philosophy, especially Hannah Arendt's, maintain that heexalts the public realm over the private-a view usually derivedfrom the assumption that he equates the private with the house hold and the household with the realm of necessity. On this view,Aristotle believes that the private opposes the public as necessityopposes freedom . 4I n this book I dispute that interpretation . Insofar a s Aristotleindicates that private activity requires pulling away from the dragof common opinion, he presents the private in opposition to thepublic . But insofar as he suggests that private activity in the formof, say, friendship or philosophy can transform common opinioninto right opinion, he believes that the private serves the public .His account suggests, moreover, that human beings carry virtueearned in private into the public, whereas the human propensity tocherish what is one's own and desirable (Pol 1262b22-23) protectsthe private from being corrupted by opinions learned in public .The public should accommodate and if possible facilitate the pri vate, according to Aristotle . By way of law, ruling, and education,the public should provide opportunities and resources to cultivatevirtue . By facilitating the forming of families, for example, a regimeencourages kinship, a kind of friendship and moral virtue; by al lowing a free market, it invites citizens to cultivate judgment andself-restraint; and by furnishing a liberal arts education, it pro motes moral and intellectual virtue . 5 Private endeavor repays theArendt, Human Condition, 27.5 See also Richard Mulgan, "Aristotle and Political Participation," Political Theory18, no. 2 (1990), 198. Although I agree with Mulgan that Aristotle thinks the privateshould be "a concern of the community and its laws," I maintain that Aristotlewants regimes to keep in view the difference between interfering in and facilitatingthe private .4

4T H E P U B L I C A N D T H E PRI V A T Epublic: families provide future citizens, the economy effects dis tribution, and the educated are able to rule and teach . A regimeshould aim to bring about such a dynamic equilibrium between thepublic and the private, for then it will be self-sufficient, "what isbest" (Pol 1253al).Why should members of contemporary liberal societies take noteof Aristotle's recommendations regarding the public and the pri vate? Perhaps because the liberal conception of the private and ofits relation to the public is wanting. The distinctively modern liber al view of privacy arguably derives from Hobbes and Locke inparticular. 6 Hobbes contributes to the modern view of privacy inarguing that nature, by both imposing on human beings and ar ranging no escape from the desire for self-preservation, sanctionsone's resistance to threats:If the sovereign command a man, though justly condemned, tokill, wound, or maim himself; or not to resist those that assaulthim; or to abstain from the use of food, air, medicine, or any otherthing, without which he cannot live; y et hath that man the libertyto disobey.If a man be interrogated by the sovereign, or his authority,concerning a crime done by himself, he is not bound, withoutassurance of pardon, to confess it.?Nature figuratively shields each individual with the right to self protection . Shielded by this right, each individual inhabits a "pri vate world" -necessarily distinct from the worlds of others in thatits raison d' etre is that individual's security. 8Because self-defense cannot reliably ward off threats to self-pres ervation, Locke observes that individuals need a legal "fence" toprohibit all threats, including any from the ruling power. Locke notonly seals the sphere around each individual (by replacing natural6 Hobbes's political theory, though not itself liberal, was instrumental in the riseof liberalism; see Andrzej Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philoso phies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 1 1 - 12,25-29, 63-65 .7 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a CommonwealthEcclesiasticall and Civil, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946),XXI . 142; see also XIV.B4, and Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 49, 75-76, 83 .8 Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 76-77.

Introduction5right with the rule of law) but, through his theory of labor, enlargesit. Each person's fence- the law as it applies to that person-en closes not simply his life but also whatever "he hath mixed hislabour with. "9From both Hobbes and Locke then emerges the conception ofprivacy as a sphere . 'This view . . . of a private sphere surround ing [man] that cannot be entered (first by other individuals andeventually by the state) without his consent, became the standardview of freedom in the liberal tradition . " I O Indeed, one finds evenin J. S. Mill's account of liberty the notion of "self-regarding"spheres, dictated not by natural but by constituted rights derivedfrom the greatest happiness principle . l 1 And some contemporarytheorists following in the liberal tradition conceive privacy as asphere . 12Because a sphere takes up space, it must compete with whateverelse takes up space-the state, or public sphere . In the liberalaccount, what is not private is that which intrudes . The effect of theimagery is to pit the private and the public against one another. 13Aristotle would point out that the imagery works against the aim ofliberalism insofar as it suggests that the private cannot expandwithout cost to the public. He would also say that liberalism com pounds this general and abstract difficulty by encouraging morallyinadequate conduct in each sphere . Hobbes, for example, allowssubjects to do anything not forbidden by the sovereign. Thiswould not seem so radical were it not for Hobbes's belief thathuman beings are fundamentally irrational, keeping obligationsonly out of fear of human or divine retribution for breaking them . 149 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1980), sees . 17, 27, 93, 1 23-24, 137-38, 171; see also Rapaczynski, Natureand Politics, 189.1 0 Ian Shapiro, The Evolu tion of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1 986), 277; see also 278.11 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York: Penguin,1982), 1 5 1 , 141, and Mill, Utilitarianism, with Critical Essays, ed. Samuel Gorovitz(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 18.12 For example, Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books,1974), and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1971). See also Shapiro, Rights, 278-79 .1 3 Thus, Arendt's account of Aristotle's political philosophy reflects the influenceof the liberal tradition; see again, Human Condition, 27, for example.1 4 Leviathan , XXVl. 1 74. On insatiable desires, see Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics,32, 34, 42, 64; on keeping obligations, see 23 n. 15, 72-75, 88-90, 99, 1 04-5 . I findRapaczynski's positivist interpretation of Hobbes more persuasive than the pruden tialist one .

6T H E P U B L I C A N D T H E PRI V A T EFurthermore, Hobbes allows the sovereign to forbid anything including what Aristotle would consider virtuous-either ex pressly or by imprinting on the "clean paper" of "commonpeople's minds" whatsoever he deems necessary or beneficial tothe security of the state . IS The moral conduct of subj ects, derivingfrom their own or the sovereign's will, must then be either arbi trary or in accordance with necessity.Locke, in contrast, gives the responsibility of defining moralitynot to the sovereign or to the individual but to the maj ority. Heappears to give this responsibility to the individual in indicatingthat moral conduct derives from a dialectic between the indi vidual's reason and practical sense experience . The moral prin ciples to which this dialectic gives rise are, however, those thatmost rational agents find acceptable . Locke differs from Kant, then,in allowing reason (in the service of morality) to accommodatenatural preference s . But he differs from Aristotle in allowing rea son to accommodate "normal" preferences . I6Locke says, in effect, that the standards of the private shouldderive from the public . He opens the private to corruption by themultitude . Aristotle argues, in contrast, that the standards of theprivate should emanate from wisdom, an attribute of few. Wisdomis not denaturalized Kantian reason but knowledge that dis tinguishes between natural preferences that are consistent withliving nobly and those that are not. For Aristotle, then, privacydoes not permit ordinary vices but requires extraordinary virtue s .It does n o t sanction a right t o do a s o n e pleases or even mandatemorally acceptable conduct (what is appropriate in public) buturges doing as one ought . I 7 In sum, in Aristotle's view human15Leviathan , XXX . 221; see also XVIII . 1 l 6- 1 7, XXV1 . l 74, XLVl . 446 .Aristotle would commend Locke for naturalizing rationality but would findthat he overcompensates for the inadequacy of Kant's theory in leaving morality tothe rational capacities and life experiences of the majority. This abbreviated accountof Lockean morality and the comparison between Locke and Kant derive fromRapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 156-76, especially 1 66-67, 1 70 .1 7 John Gray, in Liberalism (Minneapolis: University o f MinnesotaPress, 1986), 4,correctly finds in Aristotle a duty-based conception of natural right insofar as Aris totle connects virtue with choice making . But Gray maintains that this connectionintimates a "rudimentary . . . conception of natural human rights," which is prob lematic. For, as Gray notes, these allegedly intimated rights are "very unequal" (tocall them h u man rights is then misleading). Accordingly, "they coexist uneasily withAristotle's . . . defence of natural slavery." In addition, they do not generate "aright to noninterference," because (as Gray does not note) not all virtue results fromchoice making (NE 1 l 03a17, 1 l 06all -12, 1 139a33-34, 1 157b6-7, 31). If we under16

Introduction7beings should conceive privacy not as a sphere that should (at best)accommodate common opinion but as activities that cultivate vir tue and discount common opinion .But what are the aspects of Aristotle's view of the private thatmake it worthy of consideration by contemporary liberal societies?First, the private is as important to Aristotle as it is to liberalthinkers . Aristotle agrees that the maintenance of the private isessential to the self-sufficiency and happiness of the individual andof the body politic . Accordingly, he would endorse the merging ofliberal theory and classical economics . Second, Aristotle's concep tion of the private as harboring excellence justifies the public sec tor's expansion of the private, fostering the aims of liberalism.Third, privacy on Aristotle's account includes the freedom not toparticipate in political life which many liberal theories protect . In deed, arguing that the best regime is an aristocracy, Aristotle advo cates the political participation of, where possible, only the vir tuous, whose numbers are normally small . 1 8 He would disagree,then, with communitarian critics who think that liberalism over emphasizes the private as such, encouraging preoccupation withthe self and discouraging public-spiritedness. 19 Fourth, Aristotle'sconception of the private allows for "limited moral pluralism," asdoes classical liberalism: 20 "To each man the activity in accordancewith his own disposition is most choiceworthy" (NE 1 1 76b26-27).Again, only the nature of the limits differ. Finally, Aristotle indi cates that incorporating privacy into political society depends lessstand Aristotle's advocacy of independent, virtuous choice making not as "someconception of natural human rights" but as a part of his conception of privacy, thenthese difficulties disappear; in Aristotle's view, every human being has a right toprivacy insofar as everyone-from childre,n to the slavish to the philosophical should be granted (by those who rule them) opportunities to cultivate the mostvirtue of which they are capable. But this right may sometimes require denyingsome persons (for example, children, law breakers) freedom to make choices, or itmay circumscribe their choices; and it does not grant the eligible merely the freedomto choose, but also the resources and thus the encouragement or direction to choosevirtuously.18 At least one scholar argues that Aristotle endorses monarchy even over aris tocracy; see P. A. Vander Waerdt, "Kingship and Philosophy in Aristotle's BestRegime," Phronesis 30, no. 3 ( 1985), 249-73 .1 9 Aristotle would thus be surprised to find some of these critics invoking him intheir critiques of liberalism; see, for example, William A. Galston, Justice and theHuman Good (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), and Alasdair MacIntyre,After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,1981).2 0 See Shapiro, Rights, 275-76.

8THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATEon political than o n individual initiative, and s o his political philos ophy provides fewer political directives than insights into how tolive . For all these reasons, liberal societies should find Aristotle'sconception of the private eligible .In sum, by way of its understanding of the public and the pri vate, Aristotle's political philosophy indirectly illuminates theshortcomings of liberalism and provides insights into how liberalsocieties might mitigate or rectify their deficiencies . By assimilatingAristotle's teaching about the public and the private, in particularabout the centrality of excellence to private activity, a liberal societycan transform itself into a form of polity that promotes true free dom and approaches true aristocracy.

1THE H O US E H O L D:A P R IV ATE S O U RCEO F PU B L IC M O R A L ITYAccording to a widely accepted interpretation, one promotedunreservedly by Hannah Arendt, Aristotle depicts the private inthe following ways: ( 1 ) as distinct and separate from the public; (2)as corresponding to the household; (3) as serving only individualand species survival; and, most notably, (4) as justifying "force andviolence . . . because they are the only means to master necessi ty-for instance, by ruling over slaves . " On this interpretation,Aristotle reveals "tremendous contempt" for the private by depict ing it as a dark, despotic, and subhuman sphere in which freedomdoes not exist. "In ancient feeling the privative trait of privacy,indicated in the word itself, was all-important; it meant literally astate of being deprived of something, and even of the highest andmost human of man's capacitie s . " lIt follows i n this widespread interpretation that Aristotle thinksthat a "truly human" life awaits in the public sphere . One mustearn this life by mustering the courage to leave the sheltered andpredictable (if wretched) household . 2 One needs courage also toparticipate in the unpredictable world outside the household : thespeeches, deeds, and political affairs of men . Moreover, in chal lenging men to initiate speech and action, the political realm calls1 Hannah Arendt, The Hllman Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1958), 24-38, 45-46, 71 -84 . Arendt thus implies without resolving that the privateon this account is both opposed to and the condition for freedom (see especially 27,30-31).2 Arendt tries in this way to address the difficulty her interpretation creates : if thehousehold is a miserable place, then why does it take courage to leave it?9

10T H E P U B L I C A N D T H E PRI V A T Eo n each lito distinguish himself from all others, to show throughunique deeds or achievements that he was the best of all (aienaristeuein)." Freedom lies exclusively in the political realm becauseonly through political speech and action can one excel and revealone's individuality. On this account, Aristotle connects freedomwith excellence and excellence with individuality, and he specifiesagonistic political action as the means to all thre e . Accordingly,Arendt claims, lithe 'good life,' as Aristotle called the life of thecitizen, therefore was not merely better, more carefree or noblerthan ordinary life, but of an altogether different quality."3As I noted in the Introduction, I contest the view that Aristotleequates the private with the household . I argue that he conceivesthe private as activities, not as sites, and as activities not restrictedto the household . An activity qualifies as private, if it cultivatesvirtue without accommodating or conforming to common opinion .Because in Aristotle's view the household can and should containprivate activities, my interpretation acknowledges that he regardsthe household as a private place; that is, the private status of thehousehold derives from its affording an opportunity to practiceunqualified virtue . 4In the first three chapters of this book I consider the activities(and, to illuminate them, their agents) that Aristotle believes thehousehold should contain and contest Arendt's interpretation ofAristotle's notion of the household . I do not dispute that Aristotlethinks the purpose of the household is to meet basic needs andfoster the survival of the species, but I do dispute that he thinksfulfillment of this purpose requires

2 Mastery and Slavery 31 Slavery: A Nonpublic, Domestic Practice 32 Natural Slaves, Animals, and the Slavish 33 The Master-Slave Relationship 36 The Natural and Private Status of Slavery 41 3 Women, the Public, and the Private 44 The Female: A Biologically Inferior Being? 45 The Household: A Woman's Domain 52