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ARISTOTLE ON THE POLITICS OF MARRIAGE:

MARITAL RULE IN THE POLITICS
David J. Riesbeck
The Classical Quarterly / Volume 65 / Issue 01 / May 2015, pp 134 - 152
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838814000755, Published online: 02 April 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009838814000755

How to cite this article:
David J. Riesbeck (2015). ARISTOTLE ON THE POLITICS OF MARRIAGE:
MARITAL RULE IN THE POLITICS. The Classical Quarterly, 65, pp 134-152
doi:10.1017/S0009838814000755
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Classical Quarterly 65.1 134152 The Classical Association (2015)

doi:10.1017/S0009838814000755

134

ARISTOTLE ON THE POLITICS OF MARRIAGE: MARITAL RULE

IN THE POLITICS*

In the Politics, Aristotle maintains, contrary to his predecessors, that there is a distinctive
mode of authority that husbands should exercise over their wives.1 He even coins a word
for it: , the marital art or marital rule (Pol. 1.3, 1253b810; 1.12, 1259a37
9).2 Marital rule is supposed to differ from the authority that fathers have over their children and from the kind of rule that citizens exercise over one another. Yet it is not clear
whether there is any conceptual space between political and paternal rule for marital rule
to occupy. Where fathers rule and children are ruled, citizens take turns ruling and being
ruled. Husbands, however, either share their rule with their wives, or they do not. If they
do not, then marital rule seems indistinct from paternal rule; if they do, then it seems
indistinct from political rule. To add to the confusion, Aristotle says that husbands properly rule their wives politically, but without alternating in positions of ruling and being
ruled. On its face, this idea seems flatly contradictory. Political rule just is shared, reciprocal rule, and so if the husband rules permanently and his wife is merely ruled, then his
rule cannot be political. So Aristotles own description of marital rule appears inconsistent, and in any case it is difficult to see how marital rule could have the distinctive character that he insists it does.
In what follows, I argue that there is indeed conceptual space between political and
paternal rule, and that we can make sense of the comparison between marital and political rule while preserving their distinctness. Understanding marital rule requires understanding Aristotles theory of the varieties of ruling and being ruled as a theory about the
different ways in which decision-making can be distributed among the participants in a
cooperative activity. On the view I develop, marital rule resembles political rule because
in both kinds of rule the participants share in joint deliberation about their common
activities. Yet because common deliberation is compatible with permanent hierarchy,
the two forms of rule are distinct: in marriage, the husband always properly retains a
position of superior authority, while in political rule hierarchies are typically temporary
and always subject to the approval of the people ruled. Seeing the coherence of
Aristotles account of marital rule therefore not only enables a better understanding

* Earlier versions of this essay were delivered at Dartmouth College, Transylvania University and the
2012 meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. In addition to the audiences
present on those occasions, I am grateful to Eugene Garver, Margaret Graver, Donald Morrison,
Stephen White and an anonymous referee for Classical Quarterly for comments and discussion.
1
Plato and Xenophon argue in different ways that all forms of rule are identical in kind and that
women can possess virtues that qualify them to rule over men: e.g. Pl. Plt. 258e59d; Resp.
453b2456c2, Xen. Mem. 3.4; Oec. 710. For a concise but informative account of their views,
see S.B. Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1994),
4150.
2
All translations are my own except otherwise noted.

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135

of his conception of the household, but also helps to sharpen our appreciation of what is
perhaps the central thesis of his political philosophy, that political rule is a distinctive
kind of rule that differs in fundamental ways from other forms of authority.
A brief word about my approach. Aristotles claims about women have prompted
many scholars to condemn his position and to seek to unmask it as the product of a reactionary misogynist ideology.3 Others have attempted to defend the philosopher on the
grounds that he does not in fact hold the views usually attributed to him.4 In many
cases, an excessive concern with whether we should praise or blame Aristotle has contributed to oversimplification, implausibly strained interpretations, and even blatant misreadings.5 I pursue neither strategy here. I instead follow the many philosophers who
have aimed to apply the principle of charity within the bounds of plausibility in order
to arrive at a careful and nuanced understanding of what Aristotle thought about
women and why, but without attempting to defend him against the accusation of uncritically relying on his own and others prejudices.6 My goal is not to convict or acquit

3
Out of a large literature: M.C. Horowitz, Aristotle and woman, Journal of the History of Biology
9 (1976), 182213; S.M. Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Cambridge, 1979); J.B.
Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman (Princeton, 1981); S.R.L. Clark, Aristotles woman,
History of Political Thought 3 (1982), 17791; E.V. Spelman, Aristotle and the politicization of
the soul, in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics,
Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. S. Harding and M.B. Hintikka (Kluwer, 1983); and
now H.N. Parker, Aristotles unanswered questions: women and slaves in Politics 1252a1260b,
Eugesta 2 (2012), 71122. Even M. Schofield, Ideology and philosophy in Aristotles theory of slavery, in Saving the City: Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms (London, 1999), 10123,
which aims to acquit Aristotles theory of natural slavery of the charge of being ideological, dismisses the claims about women as a classic instance of false consciousness (p. 108).
4
A.W. Saxonhouse, Women in the History of Political Thought (Praeger, 1985); H.L. Levy, Does
Aristotle exclude women from politics?, Review of Politics 52 (1990), 397416; S. Salkever, Finding
the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton, 1990); M. Nichols,
Citizens and Statesmen: A Study of Aristotles Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 1992); J.A.
Swanson, The Public and the Private in Aristotles Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY, 1992); D.
Dobbs, Family matters: Aristotles appreciation of women and the plural structure of society,
American Political Science Review 90 (1996), 7489; P. Schollmeier, Aristotle and women: household and political roles, Polis 20 (2003), 2242; D.B. Nagle, The Household as the Foundation of
Aristotles Polis (Cambridge, 2006); D.J. Stauffer, Aristotles account of the subjection of
women, Journal of Politics 70 (2008), 92941.
5
Misunderstanding and misreading have been especially common in discussions of Aristotles
biology, on which see G.B. Matthews, Gender and essence in Aristotle, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy 64 (1986), 1625; R. Mayhew, The Female in Aristotles Biology (Chicago, 2004); A.
Kosman, Male and female in Aristotles Generation of Animals, in J.G. Lennox and R. Bolton
(edd.), Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Alan Gotthelf (Cambridge, 2010),
14767. I concentrate here on interpretations of the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, which have
tended to cluster around one or the other of what R. Mulgan, Aristotle and the political role of
women, History of Political Thought 15 (1994), 179202 labels Aristotle the ideologue of sexism
and Aristotle the female sympathizer and crypto-feminist. I share Mulgans judgement that both sorts
of view are misguided, though my understanding of the texts differs from his in ways that I detail
below.
6
On the Politics and Ethics, esp. W.W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on slaves and women, in J. Barnes,
M. Schofield and R. Sorabji (edd.), Articles on Aristotle, vol. 2 (Duckworth, 1977), 1359; N.D.
Smith, Plato and Aristotle on the nature of women, Journal of the History of Philosophy 21
(1983), 46778, D.K. Modrak, Aristotle: women, deliberation, and nature, in B.-A. Bar On (ed.),
Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle (Albany, 1994), 20722;
Mulgan (n. 5); M. Deslauriers, The virtues of slaves and women, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 25 (2003), 21231; T.C. Lockwood, Justice in Aristotles household and city, Polis
20 (2003), 121; J. Karbowski, Slaves, women, and natural teleology, Ancient Philosophy 32
(2012), 32349.

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Aristotle of any charges against him, but to understand his ideas and arguments and to
assess them in terms of their coherence and historical plausibility.

1
The Politics opens with the insistence that political rule differs from household management, and the guiding project of the first book is to substantiate that claim with an analysis of household management and its parts (Pol. 1.1, 1252a1623). It quickly becomes
apparent that Aristotle regards the parts of household management as differing among
themselves as well. The household is a community composed of three sub-communities:
husband and wife, father and child, and master and slave (Pol. 1.3, 1253b57). Each of
these relationships involves the exercise of a kind of authority or rule () distinct
from the other two. The rule of a master over a slave, despotic rule (,
), differs most clearly from the others because it differs most fundamentally.
Unlike rule over free people, despotic rule does not aim at the good of the ruled. Rather,
the master regards his slaves as instruments of his own action, and hence as having no
good that is not ultimately a function of their contribution to their masters good (Pol.
1.4, 1253b303).7 A well-ruled slave will, Aristotle thinks, benefit from being so ruled,
provided that he is a slave by nature rather than a naturally free person who has been
unjustly enslaved (Pol. 1.5, 1254b29, 55a13; 1.6, 1255b415). But the slaves benefit
is not the masters guiding aim; it is at best a subordinate goal or an incidental effect.
Unlike slaves, who are like parts of their masters, naturally free people exist for their
own sake, and hence cannot justly be treated as the mere tools or possessions of others
(Pol. 1.4, 1254a113; cf. Metaph. 10.2, 982b267). Unlike despotic rule, therefore, rule
over the free aims at the good of the ruled or at a good common to ruler and ruled (Pol.
1.7, 1255b1620; 3.6, 1278b3040).
In drawing this contrast, Aristotle is of course not making a descriptive empirical
claim. As the central books of the Politics make clear, he is all too aware that most
actual instances of political rule are to some significant extent corrupt. The diverse
forms of corruption are various ways in which free people are subjected to rule that
does not aim at their good (Pol. 3.7, 1279a2231). These corrupt forms of political
rule nonetheless remain political in part because they retain the characteristic forms
of political rule assemblies, courts, offices (Pol. 4.14, 1297b4198a3) and in part
because the evaluative standards of political rule continue to apply. To say that rule
over the free aims at the good of the ruled is to speak of the proper, uncorrupted
form of rule over the free, and to speak in this way is consistent with recognizing
that many and perhaps even most particular instances of rule over free people fail to
rise to this standard. This point is important for interpreting Aristotles claims about
the forms of rule in the household. These are not claims about what happens, but
about what happens when things happen correctly. So when Aristotle tells us about
marital rule, he is not telling us how husbands and wives do in fact relate to one another

7
Cf. Eth. Nic. 8.11, 1161a32b5; Eth. Eud. 7.9, 1241b1724. It is sometimes thought as e.g. by
Schofield (n. 3) that the accounts of slavery in the Politics, Eth. Nic. and Eth. Eud. are inconsistent
with one another. I follow T.C. Lockwood, Is natural slavery beneficial?, Journal of the History of
Philosophy 45 (2007), 20721 in seeing them as consistent in substance, if not in every point of terminology, and I am indebted to his analysis of natural slavery.

A R I S TOT L E O N T H E P O L I T I C S O F M A R R I A G E

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in day-to-day life, but about how they relate to each other when they relate to each other
in the appropriate way.
One aspect of the husbands rule over his wife is, then, clear: the husband rules his
wife as a free person, which is to say that he exercises authority over her with a view to
her good. Yet the same is true of his relationship to his children and of the relationship
of citizens to one another, and so this feature distinguishes marital rule only from despotism and not from paternal or political rule. Unfortunately, when Aristotle attempts to
clarify the difference between marital and paternal rule, matters become less clear:
A man rules both his wife and his children as free, but not in the same manner of rule. Rather, he
rules his wife in a political way and his children in a royal way. For the male is, by nature, more
suited for rule than the female, unless of course he is constituted contrary to nature, and the
older and mature is more suited for rule than the younger and immature. Now in the majority
of cases of political rule, the ruling and the ruled change places; for they tend to be equal in
nature and to differ in nothing.8 None the less, when one rules and another is ruled, they
seek a difference to exist in their clothing and their speech and their honours, just as Amasis
said about his footpan. But the male is always like this in relation to the female. (Pol. 1.12,
1259a39b10)

This is a puzzling passage. It begins by distinguishing marital from paternal rule through
a comparison with politics.9 As it goes on to indicate, politics is characterized by shared,
reciprocal rule, usually achieved through alternation in positions of authority. This is
consistent with Aristotles account of political rule throughout the Politics: political
rule involves ruling and being ruled, and since there are usually too many people to
rule all at once, alternation in office is typically the best arrangement (Pol. 1.7,
1255b1620; 2.2, 1261a32b6; 3.6, 1279a821; 7.14, 1332b1242). So at first blush
an analogy between marital and political rule should lead us to expect that husband
and wife will share authority and take turns exercising it over each other. Yet as the passage continues it seems to say exactly the opposite. Political rulers adopt conventional
means of marking the distinction between ruler and ruled through special forms of dress,

8
I follow C. Lord, Aristotles Politics (Chicago, 2013), T.J. Saunders, Aristotle: Politics, Books 1
and 2 (Oxford, 1995) and C.D.C. Reeve, Aristotle: Politics (Indianapolis, 1998) in translating
here as tend, a not infrequent usage of the word in Aristotle (see LSJ s.v. , III
and the examples cited there: Pol. 1261b12, 1255b3, 1293b40; Gen. an. 778a4; Sens. 441a3). In
favour of this translation and against that of P.L.P Simpson, The Politics of Aristotle (Chapel Hill,
1997) they wish by their nature to stand on equal ground and to differ in nothing are the following points: (i) for by [their] nature we would expect a dative or the phrase , and not
the accusative; (ii) reading as wish with the accusative would more naturally suggest that
ruler and ruled wish to be equal in respect to their nature or that they wish their nature to be equal,
neither of which seems relevant in this context and both of which seem doubtful; (iii) the idea that citizens properly alternate in ruling and being ruled because they tend to be equal in nature and not to differ
in any relevant way is a central doctrine of the Politics (2.2, 1261a37b6; 3.17, 1287b4188a6; 7.3,
1325a34b10), and seems to be just what Aristotle should say in this context. Stauffer (n. 4), 9367 supplies an example of the unnecessary problems generated by the translation wish.
9
It seems clear that, in this context, Aristotle is using political in its broad and inclusive sense that
contrasts with despotism, paternalism and marital rule rather than in the narrow and exclusive sense in
which it names one specific kind of political arrangement the specific constitution or regime
() often translated as polity. Not only is Book 1 preoccupied with this distinction, but
the specific kinds of political arrangement do not receive attention until Book 3, where Aristotle
flags the narrower use of the term as though he does not expect his audience to assume
that he uses the term in this way (which he in fact does not in the Eth. Nic.). Hence, contra
Mulgan (n. 5), 188 and others, this passage is not in tension with Eth. Nic. 8.10, 1160b3261a1
and 8.11, 1161a225 (on which see Section 3 below).

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formal modes of speech, and expressions of deference and respect. The difference
between them is one of outward form and function, not one of nature. The Egyptian
Amasis, who had become king despite his low birth, responded to his subjects disdain
for his origins by having his golden footpan melted down and reshaped into a statue of a
god, which the Egyptians duly worshipped.10 Though the statue and the footpan had the
same underlying nature, their outward forms and functions called for very different treatment.11 But while citizens mark their temporary differences of authority by conventional
means, males, Aristotle thinks, are always marked out as by nature more suited for rule
than females.12 So the implication seems to be that husband and wife do not alternate in
ruling and being ruled.13 But if so, then it is hard to see what remains of the comparison
between marital and political rule.
The difficulties that this passage raises are reflected in the different interpretations it
has received in the two most recent English commentaries. Trevor Saunders denies that
Aristotle means to suggest that wives rule in any way; marital rule, on his reading,
resembles political rule only in the limited sense that women, like fellow citizens,
require consultation, argument, and persuasion.14 Hence for Saunders the husband
does not rule his wife in a genuinely political way; his rule is simply more like political
rule than anything else. Peter Simpson, on the other hand, regards the husbands rule as
straightforwardly political. The husband can rule his wife in a political way by treating
her as a ruling citizen would treat a ruled citizen; the difference is simply that the husband and wife will not exchange roles.15 Simpson and Saunders perhaps agree about
what marital rule will look like on the ground: a husband does not just bark orders at
his wife, but seeks her consent through persuasion and argument. But this cannot be
the point of the analogy between marital and political rule. Aristotle tells us that masters
should even reason with their slaves: those, he says, who deprive slaves of rational
speech and tell us that we should merely give them commands do not speak well; for
slaves need to be admonished even more than children (Pol. 1.13, 1260b57).
Presumably masters need to explain their commands and the reasons for them because

10

The story is reported by Hdt. 2.172.

This reference to Amasis has inspired scholars inclined toward esoteric readings most recently Stauffer (n. 4) to find in it a tacit admission on Aristotles part that marital rule arbitrarily excludes
women from rule, since Amasis rules permanently despite his underlying equality with his subjects.
But Aristotle introduces the Amasis story to illustrate a point about political rule, not marriage, and
there is in any case no good reason to find a complex and subtle allusion to Herodotus story here,
let alone one that supposedly contradicts the explicit message of the text. Mulgan (n. 5) provides a
persuasive critique of this sort of crypto-feminist reading.
12
Unless, as Aristotle puts it, things turn out somehow contrary to nature. This parenthetical remark
shows that Aristotle acknowledges cases in which particular women are more suited to rule than particular men. He does not consider what should be done in such cases, but, as my account below shows,
there is reason to doubt that he would regard female rule as a satisfactory solution.
13
Most scholars agree that the passage denies alternation in rule between husband and wife: Clark
(n. 3); Smith (n. 6); Levy (n. 4); Salkever (n. 4); Modrak (n. 6); Mulgan (n. 5); Saunders (n. 8); Dobbs
(n. 4); P.L.P. Simpson, A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle (Chapel Hill, 1998);
Deslauriers (n. 6); Stauffer (n. 4). Disagreements cluster around the reasons for and implications of
non-alternation. Schollmeier (n. 4), 29, however, argues that the Amasis example suggests that the
husband and wife do rule by turns, since Amasis was someone who was once ruled but now
rules. But, while this point is often missed (e.g. Mulgan [n. 5], 188; Dobbs [n. 4]; 79; Simpson
[n. 13], 63), the Amasis example is set in contrast to the case of husband and wife. Hence even if
it is supposed to illustrate the propriety of alternation, it does not suggest that alternation is appropriate
for husbands and wives.
14
Saunders (n. 8), 97.
15
Simpson (n. 13), 63.
11

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slaves, unlike children, cannot be expected to work these reasons out for themselves.
But Aristotle clearly expects proper household management to operate primarily through
reasoned discourse rather than force or coercion. So if the comparison between marital
and political rule is to have any point, it will need to be a more substantial one.
Saunders and Simpson therefore both fail to provide an adequate account of the similarity between marital and political rule. Simpsons view, however, also threatens to collapse the distinction between the two altogether. But Aristotle cannot afford to collapse
it, because his fundamental thesis is that political rule is distinctive. It differs from other
forms of rule not just in the number of people involved, but in the manner in which the
rule is exercised. The difference cannot rest on alternation, because alternation alone
does not amount to a difference in kind. Aristotle describes the view he rejects as holding that alternation is sufficient to distinguish political rule from royal or kingly rule,
and he takes this distinction as an application of the more general claim that the varieties
of rule differ not in kind or form (), but only in quantity (Pol. 1.1, 1252a916).
Since he nowhere argues that alternation alone yields a difference in kind, it seems
clear that he agrees with his opponents that it is only a quantitative difference. That
agreement is well founded, since alternation of ruler and ruled does not entail any difference in the kind of authority the ruler exercises at any given time.16 Hence if alternation alone distinguished political and marital rule, Aristotle could not consistently
maintain that they differ in kind. If the analogy between politics and marriage is to
fit coherently into the theory of rule, there must be a difference in kind between marital
and political rule as well as a similarity sufficient to warrant the comparison.
The differences between these forms of rule become more apparent in light of
Aristotles account of their rationale. Slaves, children and women each supposedly
exhibit specific psychological deficiencies that purportedly justify the free adult
males rule but also constrain the shape that his rule can legitimately take. These deficiencies are deficiencies of the capacity for rational deliberation:
For the free rules the slave and the male rules the female and a man rules a child differently. All
the parts of the soul exist in all of them, but in different ways. For the slave altogether lacks the
deliberative capacity, and the female has it, but it lacks authority, and the child has it, but it is
incomplete. (Pol. 1.12, 1260a914)

In rough outline, the connection between these deficiencies and the related modes of
authority is straightforward. A person who is, on Aristotles view, justly subjected to despotic rule is one who lacks the capacity to deliberate for himself and to live his life accordingly. Such a radically incapacitated person needs someone else to do his deliberating for
him, and this is the kind of authority that despotic rule involves.17 Children are similar to
slaves, but with the crucial difference that their deliberative capabilities are under development. Hence paternal rule aims at preparing children to become free adults, and though

16
Alternation will, no doubt, affect the deliberation of a fully rational agent not subject to temporal
bias; if you know that tomorrow I will have arbitrary and unchecked authority over you, you will likely be less inclined to exercise your arbitrary and unchecked authority over me today in ways that will
make me hostile to you. But this is a difference in strategy, not in the relationship of arbitrary and
unchecked authority that we take turns holding over one another. Aristotle does not deny that quantitative differences can affect how rulers decide to rule, but only that they do not alter the nature of the
rule that they decide to exercise.
17
For the theory of natural slavery, see especially N.D. Smith, Aristotles theory of natural slavery, in D. Keyt and F.D. Miller, Jr. (edd.), A Companion to Aristotles Politics (Oxford, 1991), 145
55; R. Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2002); and Lockwood (n. 7).

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parents initially do all of their childrens deliberation for them, children gradually develop
their capacity and expand the scope of their independent deliberation.18
Once again, however, when we turn our attention to women, matters become less
clear. Here we are told that women have the capacity for deliberation, but that it
lacks authority (). As in the other two cases, the nature of this deficiency
should explain the character of the husbands rule. But Aristotles description of the
deficiency is obscure, and so too is the sort of rule he envisions. To understand it,
we need to answer three closely related questions. First, what, according to Aristotle,
do women have that children and slaves lack? Second, what do women lack that free
adult men have? And finally, what difference does it make for womens role in the
household and their relationship to their husbands? I will take up each question in turn.

2
First, when Aristotle says that the wife and the children have, but the slave lacks, the capacity for deliberation, there are two things that he does not mean. On the one hand, he
does not mean that slaves lack, but women possess, the faculty of reason. Even allegedly
natural slaves remain human beings, and hence rational animals.19 Recall that Aristotle
encourages masters to reason with their slaves rather than simply giving them orders. Even
the ability to understand complex commands requires distinctively human conceptual capacities; by advising masters to reason with their slaves, Aristotle shows that he expects
slaves to be capable of grasping the reasons behind their masters orders. Aristotle elsewhere distinguishes two senses in which we might speak of the soul as having reason:
either as having it in itself and actively engaging in reasoning, or as being receptive to
reason, listening to reason, as he puts it, as to a father (Pol. 1.5, 1254b224; Eth. Nic.
1.7, 1098a35; 1.13, 1103a13; Eth. Eud. 2.1, 1219b2636). Everyone, on Aristotles
view, has this receptivity to reason. So when he attributes to women the possession of
the deliberative capacity as well, he means to attribute to them the more robust capacity
for the active employment of their own practical reasoning.20
Just how robust this capacity is we can see from the second thing that Aristotle does
not mean when he says that women have it but slaves do not. From much of Aristotles
discussion, we might expect that deliberation is just a matter of means-end reasoning
(Eth. Nic. 3.3, 1112b1120, 1112b324; 6.9, 1142a31b33). But Aristotle acknowledges cases in which supposedly natural slaves practise crafts that involve fairly complex means (such as cooking, Pol. 1.7, 1255b2237), and in any case it seems
implausible to suppose that people capable of following instructions and understanding
the reasons behind them could be altogether incapable of thinking about how to achieve
their goals. Many readers of the Politics have concluded that Aristotle simply contradicts himself here.21 Others have found this contradiction too obvious and have
18
On children in the Aristotelian household, see E. Belfiore, Family friendship in Aristotles ethics, Ancient Philosophy 21 (2001), 11332 and Lockwood (n. 6).
19
For this point and its implications, see Deslauriers (n. 6) and Karbowski (n. 6). Smith (n. 17)
gives reasons to doubt that Aristotle is altogether consistent on this point.
20
Modrak (n. 6) and Deslauriers (n. 6) rightly make this point central to their interpretations of this
passage.
21
Scholars given to esoteric hermeneutics often read this alleged contradiction as part of Aristotles
tacit critique of slavery: W. Ambler, Aristotle on nature and politics: the case of slavery, Political
Theory 15 (1987), 390410 is perhaps the best representative of this point of view.

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preferred an interpretation that sets a higher bar on what counts as deliberation.22 There
are in fact good independent reasons to think that much of what we might intuitively
think of as means-end reasoning falls short of full-blown Aristotelian deliberation.
Though the details of Aristotles moral psychology are complex and controversial, it
is tolerably clear that he follows Plato in distinguishing three irreducibly distinct varieties of motivation or desire () in the human soul: non-rational appetite
(), spirited desire or emotion () and rational desire, often rendered as
wish ().23 Each kind of motivation is able to yield voluntary action on its
own without or even in opposition to the others (Eth. Nic. 1.13, 1102b1331).
Genuinely rational action or praxis differs from mere voluntary action by being based
on a rational decision (), itself reached via deliberation that proceeds from
a rational desire (Eth. Nic. 3.2, 1111b269; 3.3, 1113a25; 6.2, 1139a31b5).
Children and non-rational animals act voluntarily without deliberation, and so are incapable of praxis (Eth. Nic. 3.2, 1111b810). Yet it would be false to describe them as failing to seek means to their ends. In fact, Aristotle recognizes that many non-human
animals display remarkable cognitive abilities in pursuit of their goals, and he is willing
to ascribe to them a kind of intelligence analogous to practical wisdom (Eth. Nic. 6.7,
1141a268; Hist. an. 1.1, 488b1526).24 This sophistication in finding means to ends is
not deliberative, Aristotle thinks, because it does not involve rational thought, but
requires only the integrated exercise of perception, memory and imagination.25
Deliberation, by contrast, is an active process of reasoning that involves an abstract
grasp of the causal and explanatory relations between means and ends (Eth. Eud.
2.10, 1226b2030; Eth. Nic. 6.9, 1142a31b33).26 This abstractness helps to account
for the broader scope, complexity and critical potential of deliberation compared to
the non-rational pursuit of ones goals. At the limit, deliberation yields rational decisions

22

Kraut (n. 17), Chapter 8.

Eth. Nic. 3.2, 1111b1012; Eth. Eud. 2.7, 1123a267; 2.10, 1225b24; De an. 2.3, 414b2; 3.9,
432b56; 3.10, 433a226; Pol. 7.15, 1334b1725; Rh. 1.10, 1369a114. The Eth. Nic. does not clearly formulate these distinctions as the Eth. Eud., De an. and other texts do, but they are plainly assumed
throughout. My account follows, in rough outline, J. Cooper, Some remarks on Aristotles moral
psychology, in Reason and Emotion (Princeton 1999), 23752, who adds De motu an. 6, 700b19
and [Mag. mor.] 1.2, 1187b37 to the texts cited above. For a more detailed treatment, see G.
Pearson, Aristotle on Desire (Cambridge, 2012). On the relationship between Aristotles views and
Platos, see H. Lorenz, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 2006).
24
Hist. an. 8(9).1, 588a15b4 describes the similarities in intelligence between humans and nonrational animals as a similarity of analogy between different traits, in contrast to differences of
degree in the possession of the same traits; this helps to explain how Hist. an. 1.1, 488b1526 can
claim that some animals are intelligent () and devious () while also claiming that
humans alone are capable of deliberation ().
25
Hence it could be misleading to describe Aristotle as denying that non-human animals can think
about the means to their ends, since he takes them to be capable of imagining prospective behaviours
that would enable them to fulfil their desires and of behaving accordingly as a result. The cognitively
rich interaction of imagination, memory and perception in non-rational animal behaviour would pass
as thought on many non-technical and even some technical conceptions of thought. Hence it is
important to emphasize that what Aristotle denies to non-human animals is rational thought conceived
in an especially robust and substantive way. For a fantastic discussion of these issues, see Lorenz (n.
23), especially Chapter 12.
26
Eth. Eud. 2.10, 1226b2030 is more explicit than Eth. Nic. 6.9, 1142a31b33 that deliberation
involves an understanding of causal relations: for the deliberative part of the soul is the part that contemplates a certain kind of cause. The Eth. Nic. passage, however, gives a prominent role to thought
() and calculation (), and hence implies the ability not only to find means to ones
ends, but to represent possible means to oneself in terms of their abstract explanatory relations to
those ends, and consequently to reflect critically on them.
23

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about how to live our lives as a whole. We can not only devise clever ways to fulfil our
desires, but can consider what sorts of desires we ought to cultivate in light of the standard set by the ideal of a complete and self-sufficient good that makes life choiceworthy
and lacking in nothing (Eth. Nic. 1.7, 1097b15). Deliberation so conceived transcends
the ability to find ways to gratify an appetite for food or to calm ones fear of danger by
finding a route of escape.
Deliberation, on this view, is likewise more demanding than following even a fairly
complex set of instructions to produce a particular result, such as baking a cake. Though
baking a cake will require finding and taking means to various ends, it need not involve
the reflective discovery of those means in the first place; the ability to bake cakes well
does not depend on the ability to work out for oneself how to bake cakes. In the craft of
baking, a better analogue to deliberation would be discovering through reasoned reflection that flour, eggs, milk, sugar and butter can be mixed up and baked into a delicious
treat.27 People who lack the capacity for deliberation nonetheless retain capacities of
reason-responsiveness, and so can be taught to perform complex technical tasks. No
doubt they can also employ the considerable cognitive resources of perception, memory
and imagination in performing these tasks. For all that, they do not need to deliberate.
Whether or not Aristotle is right to suppose that it is possible to lack the capacity for
deliberation altogether without also lacking the capacities of reason-responsiveness, it
should be clear that it is this higher-order ability of rational deliberation, and not just
the bare ability to find means to ones ends, that he denies to non-rational animals,
slaves and immature children but attributes to adult women.28

3
If this is what women have, then what are they supposedly missing? Aristotle says that
the womans deliberative capacity is without authority (), but there are several
competing interpretations of what this term implies. Disagreement centres on two issues:
whether the term describes an intrapersonal or an interpersonal feature of the womans
psyche, and whether it is a natural or a conventional one. Perhaps the most common
interpretation, and the one that I will defend, is an intrapersonal naturalist one:
women can deliberate, but they tend to be controlled not by their deliberations, but
by their non-rational motivations.29 Against this, interpersonal interpretations maintain
that womens deliberations lack authority not over their own desire and action, but over
men.30 This interpersonal lack of authority is usually taken to be conventional, though

Kraut (n. 17), 289 takes a similar view of the technical abilities of natural slaves.
I take the distinction between these two kinds of rational capacity to be coherent; it is an empirical question whether they can in fact come apart. That question is not the same as asking whether
there are or could be any natural slaves, since the chief defect of Aristotles theory of slavery is ethical and not empirical.
29
Fortenbaugh (n. 6); Clark (n. 3); Smith (n. 6); Spelman (n. 3); Modrak (n. 6); Saunders (n. 8);
Simpson (n. 13); Schollmeier (n. 4); Karbowski (n. 6). This was the view of W.L. Newman, The
Politics of Aristotle, 4 vols. (Oxford, 18871902), 2.218.
30
Saxonhouse (n. 4); Levy (n. 4); Salkever (n. 4); Nichols (n. 4); Swanson (n. 4); Dobbs (n. 4);
Deslauriers (n. 6); Lockwood (n. 6); Stauffer (n. 4). Defenders of an interpersonal reading sometimes
take the term to be deliberately ambiguous; e.g. Saxonhouse (n. 4), 74; Stauffer (n. 4), 937. Others,
such as Smith (n. 6), have interpreted the term as simultaneously intrapersonal and interpersonal.
27
28

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several important scholars have taken it as natural in one way or another.31 Similarly, the
intrapersonal deficiency might be seen as having conventional causes.32 Rather than
arguing against each of these alternatives in detail, I will instead consider some reasons
to prefer the intrapersonal naturalist reading, and will then answer some prominent
objections that have been raised against it.
The intrapersonal naturalist interpretation has much in its favour. First, it fits nicely
into Aristotles moral psychology, with its complex view of motivation. Second, it gives
some theoretical refinement to a common Greek stereotype of women as dominated by
their emotions and appetites, a view that Aristotle elsewhere seems to accept.33 Finally,
it can play the role in the argument of Politics 1 that it is evidently supposed to play.
This last point is the most troublesome for conventionalist and interpersonal readings.
As I have noted, Aristotles theory of the varieties of rule is normative and not merely
descriptive; it does not purport to tell us how things are, but how they are when they are
correct. Yet on conventionalist interpretations, we are being told about a contingent
social fact that does no justificatory work.34 Similarly, the strategy of the argument is
to appeal to psychological differences to justify varied modes of rule. On an interpersonal interpretation, marital rule would, uniquely, be justified by an appeal to a social relation rather than a psychological capacity.35 These problems are, to my mind, decisive
against interpersonal and conventionalist readings so long as the standard interpretation
is defensible. In the interest of clarifying as well as defending it, I want to consider two
important objections that have been raised against it by one of most sophisticated proponents of the conventionalist view, Marguerite Deslauriers.
The first of these objections is lexical, the second philosophical. The lexical objection is that the term is applied elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus only to
things that lack authority owing to convention rather than to some natural incapacity;
we read, for instance, of invalid contracts or defunct laws as .36 But while the
term does not appear to pick out a natural incapacity elsewhere in Aristotles practical
writings, it seems to do just that in his biological works. Perhaps the most straightforward example is a discussion of hermaphrodites in the Generation of Animals, where
we are told that in every hermaphroditic animal, one set of genitalia is and
the other (Gen. an. 4.4, 772b27). In this context, these terms seem clearly to
mean that one set is operative and the other not. This is a natural incapacity if anything
is. Later in the same book, Aristotle supports the claim that the movements of the waters
31
Dobbs (n. 4) and Deslauriers (n. 6); Deslauriers classifies her view as conventionalist, but supplies a purportedly natural explanation of the relationship. Dobbs is more straightforwardly naturalistic. I discuss these very different views in more detail below.
32
As it is by Nagle (n. 4), 169.
33
See especially Hist. an. 8(9).1, 608a21b18 and Mayhew (n. 5), Chapter 6. Dobbs (n. 4), 85
rejects this reading of the Hist. an. passage on the grounds that women are there said to be less spirited () than men, but this objection depends on drawing too close a connection between
and emotion more generally. It is perhaps worth noting that Aristotle seems not to think that
males are typically unemotional, since he believes that many (most?) men in fact follow their appetites
and emotions (Eth. Nic. 1.3, 1095a28; 8.3, 1156a313; 10.9, 1179b1016).
34
Since conventionalist readings often take Aristotles esoteric point to be to suggest that marital
rule is not justified as, for example, Saxonhouse (n. 4) and Stauffer (n. 4) this point will not count
against them directly. There is, however, no reason to prefer an esoteric interpretation when a coherent, straightforward (i.e. non-esoteric) interpretation is available, as I am arguing there is in this case.
35
Dobbs (n. 4) grounds the interpersonal lack of authority in natural psychological features, and
hence escapes this objection. I critique his view below.
36
Deslauriers (n. 6), 2234, citing Rh. 1376b12, b27; Eth. Nic. 1151b15; Gen. an. 772b27, 778a1;
De motu an. 698b7; and [Ath. Pol.] 45.3.4, 68.3.4, 68.4.11.

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depend on the movements of the celestial bodies by appeal to the reasonable principle
that the movements of the less authoritative things ( ) follow the
movements of the more authoritative ( , Gen. an. 4.10, 778a12).
Presumably the celestial bodies do not exert this control over the waters merely by convention. In the Movement of Animals, we find the claim that any rest within the animal
is ineffectual [] if there is not something outside which is unqualifiedly at rest
and unmoved (De motu an. 2, 698b8).37 Animal motion, no less than the movement
of the waters or the celestial bodies, is not fundamentally governed by convention.
So from this and other passages, we should conclude that something can be
by nature as well as by convention. In other words, the lexical objection is simply
false.38
The philosophical objection is more serious. This objection is that the incapacity that
the standard interpretation attributes to women would render them unable to possess
genuine virtues, a conclusion that Aristotle explicitly rejects. If women are by nature
prone to be driven by non-rational motivations to act contrary to their own deliberation,
then they naturally suffer from akrasia. Aristotle distinguishes akrasia from vice, since
the akratic persons deliberation and decision may be correct; but since they are ineffective, akrasia falls short of virtue as well. Yet the claim that womens deliberative capacity lacks authority is introduced in the context of an explanation for how women
can have virtues. Like children and slaves, women are said to possess virtues of the relevant kinds through their relationship to the adult male head of the household. Slaves can
have virtues of character such as courage and temperance only if they are guided by their
masters practical wisdom; though they cannot themselves possess virtues of intellect,
they can develop dispositions to respond appropriately to correct reasoning (Pol.
1.13, 1260a1420, b35). Analogously, a womans virtues are enabled by her husbands
rule: as Aristotle puts it, the mans virtue is ruling virtue, while his wifes is assisting
virtue (Pol. 1.13, 1260a204).39 If women were, in Deborah Modraks phrase, constitutionally akratic, then they could not have virtues of any kind, whether assisting or
ruling.40
There is a fairly straightforward response to this objection: Aristotles claim need not
be understood to be that akrasia is inevitable in women, but that marital rule is precisely
what enables women to overcome this natural deficiency and to put their deliberation in
control.41 Yet the objection points to an important aspect of Aristotles view. Marital
rule cannot enable a womans virtue simply by empowering her to resist her non-rational
motivations, for while that achievement would free her from the bonds of akrasia, it
would make her only enkratic, and not virtuous. Virtue, as Aristotle understands it,
involves a harmony between reason and desire, and for deliberation to have authority
37

Trans. M.C. Nussbaum, Aristotles De Motu Animalium (Princeton, 1978).

It is none the less worth stressing this point, since Deslauriers takes the objection to be a strong
one despite citing the very passages that tell against it.
39
For the translation assisting and the meaning of this term, see n. 56 below.
40
Deslauriers (n. 6), 2234, citing Modrak (n. 6). Schollmeier (n. 4), 27 raises the same objection,
but Deslauriers nicely explicates the structure of the argument of Pol. 1.13 and helpfully situates it
within Aristotles psychology. Karbowski (n. 6) dismisses the objection on the grounds that
Aristotle recognizes different standards for virtue in women and men; but we should still be able
to distinguish between virtue and enkrateia, and so the objection must be met rather than brushed
aside.
41
Thus Modrak (n. 6). Deslauriers, though preferring a conventionalist reading, agrees that
Aristotle regards women and slaves alike as becoming virtuous through their relationships to the
adult male head of the household, and her analysis illuminates this idea.
38

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is not simply for it to emerge victorious from a struggle with appetite and emotion, but
to guide and shape appetite and emotion in accordance with the deliverances of reason.
The texts are silent about how a husbands rule is supposed to enable his wifes virtue,
and so we can only speculate as to what Aristotle might have thought about this. But he
need only have thought that women are somehow affected emotionally by being subject
to their husbands authority, so that their non-rational motives cooperate with rather than
oppose their reason.42 Most of us will not find this idea especially plausible, to say the
least, but it is not uncharitable to attribute it to Aristotle. It is of a piece with conventional Greek views of women as highly capable of deliberative rationality but dangerous
when not subordinate to men.43 Hence it could easily have seemed to have ample empirical confirmation. More important than the precise mechanism is that marital rule, on
this view, enables a womans virtue not by supplementing any rational defect on her
part, but by inhibiting the non-rational obstacles to the effective employment of her
deliberative capabilities.44

4
Aristotles account should therefore lead us to expect that wives play an important deliberative role in the household, and this would help to explain why he compares a husbands rule to political rule: like political rule but unlike paternal and despotic rule,
marital rule gives the ruled some scope for deliberation. Taking the analogy with politics
seriously, however, requires that wives somehow share in rule. Aristotle elsewhere
seems to say as much. In a discussion of justice in Nicomachean Ethics 5, he explains:
There is no justice without qualification in relation to ones own things, and a possession and a
child, until it reaches a certain age and becomes separate, are, as it were, parts of oneself, and no
one deliberately chooses to harm oneself. That is why there is no injustice towards oneself, and
so there is not political justice or injustice either. For it [political justice] exists in accordance
with law and among those who are naturally suited for law, and these are people who have
equality in ruling and being ruled. That is why justice exists more in relation to ones wife
than in relation to ones children or possessions. (Eth. Nic. 5.6, 1134b916)

We can speak of justice towards slaves and children, Aristotle thinks, because we can
recognize some standards governing our treatment of them. But these standards are standards of justice only with qualification, because the interests of slaves and immature
children are too closely bound up with the interests of their masters and parents to
amount to fully separate interests. Neither of these relationships fits the model of the
relationship between citizens, which Aristotle takes to be the paradigmatic relationship

42

Modrak (n. 6), 213 develops a plausible account based on her interpretation of akrasia; on this
view, a virtuous husbands authority helps his wife to overcome her constitutional akrasia by helping
to make the connection between general principles and concrete circumstances sufficiently vivid to
guide her non-rational motives in the right way. Plausible as this interpretation is, it is not necessary
to endorse any particular view about how marital rule is supposed to affect the womans psyche in
order to agree that Aristotle is committed to maintaining that it somehow does.
43
For these and other conventional claims about women, see Pomeroy (n. 1), 4150.
44
This point is perhaps reinforced by Aristotles focus on virtues of character in Pol. 1.13. One
reason for this focus is that children and slaves cannot have intellectual virtues; but while women
can possess intellectual virtues, Aristotles question in 1.13 is the same for women as for slaves
and children: how can they come to possess settled dispositions of character that reliably motivate
them to act correctly? The answers are different in each case because the obstacles are different.

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of justice (Eth. Nic. 5.6, 1134a2430). Yet justice between husbands and wives more
closely resembles political justice because here too the participants have a kind of equality in ruling and being ruled. What this passage claims, then, is that a husbands rule
over his wife, though not a form of political rule, resembles it because the wife shares
in ruling as well as being ruled.
It might seem sufficient to say that the wife shares in rule because she has the recognized authority to issue commands to other members of the household, helping to ensure
that her husbands decisions are properly implemented and thereby exercising her
assisting virtues. The ability to issue commands, however, is insufficient for sharing
in rule as Aristotle conceives it. This becomes clear when we consider that even slaves
can be in a position to give orders. Not only can some slaves be put in charge of others,
but slaves can give commands to their masters young children: slaves might, for
example, be entrusted with the task of teaching free children to read and write, and a
slave, no less than a father or a mother, could be expected to tell children to stop playing
dangerous games with farming tools, particularly if his masters had explicitly instructed
him to make sure that the children stayed out of trouble.45 So too could an older brother
be expected to help ensure his younger brothers compliance with their fathers rules.
Yet neither slaves nor brothers are described as ruling each other or anyone else in
the household.
One likely reason why slaves and siblings do not count as sharing in or exercising
rule when they issue commands to other members of the household is that their ability
to give orders derives from the adult male householders authority. If a slave can give
orders to a child when he is teaching that child to read and write, the force of those
orders none the less depends on the fathers previous instructions: he directs the slave
to teach the child his letters, and he orders the child to study his letters with the
slave. Similarly, when a slave tells a child to stop fooling around with dangerous
tools, the childs choice to obey the slave flows from the supposition that his father
would at least endorse the command if he has not already explicitly given it himself.
If we imagine, by contrast, a slave ordering his masters child to perform some particularly unpleasant bit of manual labour, the child can disobey with impunity and can even
disregard the command altogether if he knows that his father would never support it. It is
not that slaves can in no way succeed in giving commands that their masters would not
support. It is, rather, that any regularly recognized authority that slaves have over their
masters children depends entirely on their masters endorsement.46 The same condition
applies to siblings in their relations to one another and even to children in their relations
with slaves. If the ability to issue commands to other members of the household does not
suffice for slaves and children to count as sharing in rule, then it will be no more sufficient to account for how wives share in rule.
The insufficiency of issuing commands for ruling is clearly implied in the most general characterization of rule offered in the Aristotelian corpus: the entry for in the
philosophical lexicon of the Metaphysics. The concept of an as a principle is
central to Aristotles metaphysics and epistemology, and as such it bears a number of
complex and related senses, most related to the basic meaning of the word as beginning, origin, source, starting point. The word also carries some less technical but

45

I take my inspiration for these examples from Pl. Lys. 207d209a.

When Socrates points out to Lysis that his parents let a slave rule him, Lysis responds So what?
Hes ours. Pl. Lys. 208c34.
46

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closely related meanings; the of a road, for instance, is just the place where the
road begins (Metaph. 5.1, 1012b34). The entry in the lexicon distinguishes six uses
of the term, the fifth of which is its use in political contexts. Though Aristotle inherited
from ordinary Greek the use of - terms to describe the exercise of rule by some people over others, the entry in the lexicon not implausibly treats this sense as related to the
others:
is also said of that according to whose decision things that are moved move and things that
change change, as the offices in cities and dynastic powers and kingships and tyrannies are
called , and so are the crafts, and the most architectonic of these in particular.
(Metaph. 5.1, 1013a1014)

This use of the term is not merely equivocal in relation to the others, whether the mundane (the beginning of a road) or the technical (metaphysical and epistemological principles). On the contrary, it is common to all to be the first thing from which
something either is or comes to be or is known (Metaph. 5.1, 1013a1719). The use
of the term in political contexts thus picks out the exercise of rule as the initiation of
collective or cooperative action. By adding that the same sense of the term applies in
the realm of crafts, the passage suggests that there is nothing essentially political
about rule per se. Rather, rule can be exercised in any collective human enterprise,
whether it is a case of action () or production (); politics and craftsmanship simply serve as useful illustrations because ordinary language reflects the exercise
of rule in these contexts with its talk of offices () and architectonic craftsmen.
The most distinctive feature of this practical and productive sense of as rule is
the role of decision (). The involvement of decision distinguishes rule from
the other senses of by bringing it within the scope of intentional human action, but
it also distinguishes the exercise of rule from other ways in which human beings can
influence one anothers behaviour. In the paradigm case, when one person rules and
another is ruled, the latter implements a decision that the former has made. Hence ruling
differs from offering advice, making suggestions, proposing bargains or inflicting violence. One person rules another when her decision is the source of that other persons
action. Yet, as I noted above, Aristotelian decisions are the products of deliberation. If a
wife shares in rule, then, we should expect that she will contribute to the deliberation
that issues in decisions that govern some range of behaviour of some other members
of the household. The question is, which behaviours, and which members?
One plausible answer that has been attractive to many scholars is that the wife and
the husband rule in different spheres: the wife rules over the traditionally feminine
domestic sphere concerned with spinning wool, preparing food, nursing babies and
the like, while the husband rules in the traditionally masculine sphere of farming, protection, and representing the household in politics.47 It is clear enough that Aristotle
accepts the traditional Greek gendered division of labour, and that he regards it as
grounded in physiological and perhaps psychological differences between men and
women. In the Nicomachean Ethics he observes that human beings do not form couples
for the sake of procreation alone, but for the things that pertain to life. His explanation
is that the tasks required for the things that pertain to life are distinct, and women and
men are suited for different tasks (Eth. Nic. 8.12, 1162a1624). The Politics clarifies

47
Clark (n. 3), Swanson (n. 4), Dobbs (n. 4), Deslauriers (n. 6), Lockwood (n. 6), Schollmeier (n.
4), Nagle (n. 4) and Karbowski (n. 6) all give a prominent place to the gendered division of spheres.

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that the mans task in household management is to acquire, while the womans is to preserve (Pol. 3.4, 1277b205). This distinction captures the traditional division of
womens and mens spheres fairly well, and a similar division is in fact central to
Xenophons account of the household in the Oeconomicus. Xenophons expert household manager likewise appeals to the technical division of labour involved in maintaining a household, and goes on to argue that excellence in these tasks requires distinct
mental and bodily aptitudes, ones that correspond to the dispositions and abilities of
women and men. So, for instance, womens greater susceptibility to fear makes them
more cautious and hence better guardians of what men bring into the household,
while masculine courage suits men for defending the household against aggressors
(Xen. Oec. 7.225).48
Aristotle does not explicitly offer this sort of sociobiological explanation in the
Politics or the Nicomachean Ethics, but it is consistent with his treatment of male
and female dispositions in the biological works.49 If it lies behind his endorsement of
the gendered division of labour, it would explain why he regards that division and
the hierarchy he takes it to imply as natural and appropriate and not mere contingent
social facts. The Nicomachean Ethics twice compares the relationship between husband
and wife to an aristocracy: for, as he puts it, the husband rules in accordance with
merit and concerning the things the husband should, but the things that are fit for a
woman he hands over to her. But if he lords it over everything he turns it into an oligarchy, for he does this contrary to merit and not in so far as he is better (Eth. Nic.
8.10, 1160b3261a1; cf. 8.11, 1161a225). Like Xenophon, then, Aristotle apparently
thinks that women should rule in the household over the tasks of preservation because
they are better suited for it, and that men should rule over the works of acquisition
because they are better suited for that. Both will exercise their deliberative capabilities
in their respective spheres with a view to directing and co-ordinating the work of others,
whether slaves or children. If all goes well, both will thereby develop and display virtues
of character and of intellect. The similarities between this view and Xenophons are so
striking that it begins to seem difficult to appreciate why some scholars have praised
Xenophon for taking a progressive and counter-traditional view of women while condemning Aristotle as a reactionary defender of the status quo.50
The difference, however, is that Aristotle is much clearer than Xenophon that he
regards the wife as subordinate to the husband. Though she rules in her own sphere,
her husband retains a superior position: every household, Aristotle has it, is a monarchy,
and the wifes virtues are, after all, merely assisting virtues (Pol. 1.7, 1255b19; 1.13,
1260a223). We might wonder why this should be. After all, nothing about the

48
Xenophon thus takes the division of tasks between those that belong inside the house and those
that belong outside it as fundamental, in contrast to Aristotles emphasis on the tasks of acquisition
and preservation. Xenophons example of defence does not fit comfortably into either side of
Aristotles division.
49
The central passage often discussed in this connection is Hist. an. 8(9).1, 608a21b18. M.
Deslauriers, Sexual difference in Aristotles Politics and his biology, CW 102.3 (2009), 21531
denies any dependence of Aristotles political discussion of women on his biological discussion of
females, though she bases her argument on a somewhat peculiar interpretation of the priority of formal
to material causation, and largely ignores the Hist. an., where biology and psychology most clearly
intersect. Mayhew (n. 5), 96104, drawing on J.G. Lennox, Aristotle on the biological roots of virtue:
the natural history of natural virtue, in J. Maienschein and M. Ruse (edd.), Biology and the
Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge, 1999), 1031 presents a persuasive account of the connection
between biological and moral psychology as Aristotle practises them.
50
As e.g. Pomeroy (n. 1).

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gendered division of spheres per se entails any inequality between them. Deslauriers has
argued to the contrary that the husbands authority derives from the superiority of the
masculine sphere. The mans tasks take him out of the household and into the city.
But since the household, on Aristotles view, exists for the sake of the city, the activities
of politics are superior to and authoritative over the activities of the household. Women
are subordinate, that is, because, as Deslauriers puts it, the deliberative faculty of
women operates in only a particular domain, the household, which exists for the sake
of another domain, the city.51 But this view is, I think, neither philosophically nor interpretatively satisfactory. It seems, first of all, implausible that anyones deliberative capacities should be strictly limited to a particular domain; if women can deliberate about
the female domestic sphere, then they should be able to deliberate about any sphere.52
More pressingly, however, the sort of teleological superiority and legislative control that
Aristotle sees as characteristic of the citys relation to the household entail nothing about
relations of authority within the household. The household may exist for the sake of the
city, but the city exists for the sake of the flourishing of its members, including, Aristotle
explicitly notes, its women (Pol. 1.13, 1260b820; 2.9, 1269b1319; cf. Rh. 1.5,
1361a511). Even within this teleological framework, the view that men are uniquely
suited for politics is wholly consistent with supposing that women should have more
authority than men in the household. Though the decisions of the political community
constrain the activities of households, decisions within the household could be made
entirely by women even if political decisions were made entirely by men. So there is
no obvious direct route from the gendered division of labour to the gendered division
of authority.53
In fact, we have already seen reasons to think that the wifes rule is not entirely
restricted to the feminine sphere. Aristotle claims that husband and wife have a kind
of equality in ruling and being ruled; that is to say that both share in being ruled as
well as ruling. We might easily suppose that this means only that husbands are ruled
in the female domestic sphere. But this seems mistaken, for two related reasons.

51

Deslauriers (n. 6), 228.

Schollmeier (n. 4), 29 n. 7 makes much the same point against the similar view of Smith (n. 6).
Schollmeier, however, concludes that Aristotle would approve of giving women a role in political
deliberation; Section 2 above shows why that conclusion does not follow. In defence of
Deslauriers claim (endorsed and elaborated by Karbowski (n. 6)), one might think that the same principles that purportedly explain the gendered division of labour make the restriction of womens deliberative capacities to some specific domain appear rather plausible after all. But the idea of
domain-specific deliberative capacities clashes with Aristotles conception of psychic capacities and
his claim that there is a single capacity for rational deliberation: capacities are distinguished by
their objects (Eth. Nic. 6.1, 1139a315, cf. De an. 2.4, 415a1322), not by some sub-set of those
objects encountered in some narrow domain. Aristotle of course recognizes domain-specific deliberative competencies (e.g. Eth. Nic. 6.5, 1140a2431) this is, in part, what a craft () is but these
evidently depend on a single underlying capacity for deliberation, just as the domain-specific theoretical competencies of zoology and meteorology depend on a single underlying scientific or contemplative capacity (Eth. Nic. 6.2, 1139a315).
53
Dobbs (n. 4) argues, drawing on the Hist. an., that women, as Aristotle sees them, are less suited
for rule because they are less spirited than men; men require a more authoritative and lordly ordering operation of deliberation (85) because their appetites are more unsettled than womens. Quite
apart from questions about the defensibility of Dobbs reading of the Hist. an., his application of it
to the Politics fails to provide anything that Aristotle would recognize as a justification for male
rule. The closest we come is a claim that the males more spirited nature enables him to overrule
his wife (86), but it is hard to see what this could mean if not that males are more prone to make threats
of violence in circumstances of disagreement, and Aristotle rejects the view that superiority in force
gives anyone a just claim to rule (e.g. Pol. 1.6, 1255a1240).
52

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First, it just seems false: the husband does not act in the female sphere under the direction of his wife, but leaves it to his wife to take care of matters in that sphere. Second, if
the husband merely leaves it to his wife to govern the female sphere, then he is simply
delegating authority. But if someone delegates authority to me in some domain, I do not
thereby gain authority over that person in that domain.54 As Aristotle conceives it, being
ruled is centrally a matter of being subject to the deliberative decisions of another person. Delegating authority to someone does not entail becoming subject to that persons
decisions. As anyone who has been a part of a bureaucratic organization well knows, if I
have authority delegated to me in some subordinate domain, I may be empowered to
make decisions within that domain, but I am not thereby given any role in the processes
of deliberation and decision that generate the policies that I must observe and implement; I might share in rule in some sense, but the higher-ups are not ruled by me
in any sense, because I do not share in their decision-making. So too, if the husband
is ruled within his own household, it must be through the influence that others have
in the deliberation that leads to his decisions. It is in this sense, I am suggesting, that
marital rule resembles political rule: the wife, though ruled, also contributes to the formation of the decisions by which she is ruled, and therefore also shares in rule; the husband, though ruling, concedes a role to his wife in forming the decisions by which he
rules, and therefore is also in a sense ruled.
How does this take us beyond Saunderss description of marital rule as requiring
consultation, argument, and persuasion? It is possible to consult another persons preferences and to make use of arguments aimed at persuasion without allowing that person
to share in the deliberation that issues in a decision. Imagine a Greek father who plans to
marry his daughter to a promising young fellow of aristocratic lineage. He might seek
his wifes opinion about the match: if she is favourably disposed, he will go ahead; if
she is unsure, he will need to persuade her in order to make things go smoothly; if
she is firmly opposed, he may even abandon the plan if he thinks the marriage would
not be worth the trouble. In any case, his wife does not contribute to the process of
deliberation that forms his decision. Rather, her judgements figure in her husbands
deliberation as external aids or obstacles to the implementation of a decision he has
already made. We often take this sort of stance towards children: we consult their preferences and opt for persuasion over coercion, but we do not enter into joint deliberation
with them. Participants in joint deliberation take one anothers judgement seriously in
deciding together what to do. It is this idea of shared deliberation that can explain
both the similarities and the differences between marital and political rule.

5
On this account, marital rule resembles political rule because in both cases the person
who is ruled also shares in the deliberative decision-making that is ruling. In a

54
Dobbs (n. 4), 79 anticipates this objection and dismisses it on the grounds that the husband does
not delegate his own authority to his wife, but recognizes her authority over what is naturally hers.
Semantic quibbles aside, whether the authority is delegated seems not to be a matter of whether
the husband could rightly fail to allow his wife to exercise it, but whether the sphere of her authority
is wholly subordinated to his or whether her exercise of authority is wholly subordinate to his. If the
husband alone rules the entire household, and the wife rules only a subordinate part, then her authority
is delegated in the sense relevant to my argument.

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democratic political assembly, each member is entitled to raise issues for discussion, to
make proposals, to speak for or against those proposals, and, in the end, to vote on those
proposals. This is a process of collective deliberation, and all of the members of the
assembly contribute to it, even if only by voting. So all of them are exercising rule.
Yet the assemblys decision will govern the actions of all of its members, and hence
they are all ruled, as well. So too in the household husband and wife deliberate together
and reach decisions guiding and constraining the actions of the households members,
including themselves. The difference is that in politics, justified hierarchies are typically
temporary and always conditional on the recognized political virtue of the rulers (Pol.
3.13, 1283b4084a17; 3.17, 1287b411288a29).55 By contrast, in the household the
male always occupies a superior position upon which all other authority depends.
Though husband and wife share in common deliberation, the decisions that rule the
household are, in the final analysis, his decisions, aided by the contributions of his
wife. This, I take it, is why the husband is consistently described as the ruler and
why the husbands virtues are ruling virtues, while his wifes are assisting virtues.
The wife assists not in the sense of merely obeying or serving her husband, but by
contributing to the deliberation and decision-making over which he retains control.56
The husband rules in that his deliberation and decision are ultimately the source of
the households collective action; his wife is a genuine co-deliberator, but the authority
that she helps to exercise is her husbands. By contrast, when women assume independent authority, they gain control of their husbands, and Aristotle consistently regards that
as a bad thing (Eth. Nic. 8.10, 1161a13; Pol. 2.9, 1269b334). But his disapproval of
female control is consistent with his endorsement of female contribution.57 Husbands

55
It will perhaps strike some readers as doubtful whether Aristotle takes just or correct rule to
depend on the recognition by the ruled of the rulers superior political virtue. I defend this claim at
length elsewhere.
56
I translate as assisting, in line with Simpson (n. 8) (cf. Reeves [n. 8] of an assistant) and against Saunderss (n. 8) of a servant, Lords (n. 8) serving, and the obeying of
Lockwood (n. 6). Saunders and Lords translations obscure the difference between wives and slaves,
since servant despite the cultural associations that have given the word a softer set of connotations
basically means slave. Lockwood avoids this problem, but wrongly highlights obedience rather
than assistance as the distinctive characteristic of female virtue: both Greek usage and the context
show that assistance is the core idea here. Though are often slaves and typically subordinates of some kind (e.g. Pol. 1.4, 1253b2754a8; 3.16, 1287a21; 4.15, 1299a24; Rh. 1.9, 1366b13;
[Ath. Pol.] 35.1, 50.2, 63.5), to assist is not inherently to be subordinate: the great-souled man eagerly
assists others (Eth. Nic. 4.3, 1124b18), friends assist one another (Eth. Nic. 8.8, 1159b5; 9.2, 1164b25;
Eth. Eud. 7.2, 1237b19; 7.10, 1243a214; 7.11, 1244a2), and one can assist others either out of kindly
benevolence or calculating self-advantage (Rh. 2.7, 1385a32b7). Aristotles only other use of the
adjective suggests that one craft is assisting with respect to another, rather than identical to or a
part of it, if it provides either material or instruments for the latter (Pol. 1.8, 1256a5). It is perhaps
worth considering whether the wifes deliberative contributions can be understood as material or
instruments for the husbands rule, but Aristotle does not draw this connection, and it is unclear
whether the model of productive crafts can or should be applied to the husband and wifes practical
deliberation. In any case, it should be clear that describing her virtues as assisting is consistent with
taking her deliberative contributions to be her most important form of assistance.
57
Female deliberative contribution is likewise consistent with Aristotles approval of the proverb
he cites at 1.13, 1260a30, silence brings adornment to a woman. Though the proverb can of course
be put to a variety of uses, Aristotles use of it surely does not commit him to holding that women
should never speak, but that they should speak less than their husbands, as he seems to indicate at
3.4, 1277b23. Perhaps women should only speak when theyre spoken to, but their husbands
might none the less speak to them quite frequently. As Simpson (n. 13), 68 rightly argues, there is
no need to see the proverb as a complex allusion to Soph. Aj. 293, as readers inclined to esoteric interpretation have (e.g. Stauffer [n. 4]), since the Sophoclean text itself describes the proverb as

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and wives can share in ruling and being ruled even as the male retains the superior and
properly ruling position, and it is that permanent hierarchy that distinguishes marriage
from politics. In marriage, the wifes deliberative role is an extension of her husbands
and owes its authority to his. In politics, the authority of the rulers is, in effect, delegated
to them by the ruled.
Aristotles view of marriage is plainly flawed. It is grounded in claims about female
psychology that are empirically false. Even if they were true it is doubtful, to say the
least, whether the recommendations that Aristotle draws from them would be justified.
None the less, the view is internally coherent and its intuitive plausibility to a fourthcentury Greek male is readily apparent. Hence its historical significance is clear. Its
philosophical significance lies not in any insights about family life, but in what it
helps to show us about Aristotles theory of politics. That theory makes very strong
demands for political inclusion and equality among adult men. Yet those demands
have often been watered down by scholars, as though it were enough for political
rule that the rulers rule in the interest of the ruled, take their opinions into account,
leave them some scope for deliberation, or give them opportunities to exercise authority
in some subordinate sphere.58 Aristotles account of marriage shows that this is not
enough, because it shows that shared authority is compatible with unconditional hierarchy. Political rule differs from marital rule because it is not enough for political
rule that we should sometimes get to make some contribution to the decisions that
guide our actions and structure our lives. Aristotelian citizens, unlike Aristotelian
wives, are not unconditionally subordinate to anyone. This is the kind of authority
that Aristotle regards as crucial for the full development and expression of our nature
as rational and political animals, and though much more would need to be said to elucidate the distinctive nature and value of Aristotelian political community, the virtue of
his account of marital rule is that it can help us to see more clearly just what it is that
needs to be said.
Rice University

DAVID J. RIESBECK
david.j.riesbeck@rice.edu

commonplace, and Tecmessas rational superiority to Ajax hardly constitutes a counter-example to

Aristotles explicit claims about women.
58
For three otherwise rather different examples of this tendency, cf. T.H. Irwin, The good of political activity, in G. Patzig (ed.), Aristotles Politik: Akten des XI. Symposium Aristotelicum 1987
(Gttingen, 1990), 73101; R. Mulgan, Aristotle and the value of political participation, Political
Theory 18 (1990), 192215; and Nichols (n. 4), 33.