The Worst Of The Best Regime: Aristotle Vs. Plato

Throughout history there have been many people whom have proposed the “best’ regime for a society. Two of the most notable and influential people in history were two classical Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato. Both philosophers had their own approaches, when explaining which of the six regimes worked best. The six regime types are a kingship, an aristocracy, a polity, a democracy, an oligarchy and finally a tyranny. It is seen that the ‘best’ regime is a kingship, the second best is an aristocracy, and the least of the best is a polity, or a politeia, also known as a constitutional republic. Each of the ‘best’ regimes have polar opposites that are considered the worst regimes. The worst of the worst is a tyranny, next worst is an oligarchy

Compared to Plato he used more of a scientific approach. When determining his choice of the ‘best’ regime, Aristotle had to make the assumption that people by nature are ‘zoon politikon’ which is translated to political animals, in other words humans are inheritably social animals. Because he sees humans as political animals, he believes that the ‘best regime is the one that comes natural to the society. Even though he agrees that the ‘best’ overall regime is a kingship, it is one that could be easily corruptible, which is called a tyranny. A tyranny would be awful for the majority of society because the leader would only be acting on self-interest. An aristocracy, being a regime ruled by the best class within a society would be the next best option, but when corrupted becomes an oligarchy; and this is when those in control act on class-interest and neglect the rest of the classes within the society. An oligarchy according to Aristotle is best when the rich outnumber the poor, so in the end they would be making decisions for the majority. Aristotle feels the least worst of the corruptible regimes is a democracy because at least the majority would rule, and this regime works best if the population of the poor exceeds that of the rich. Ultimately he feels like a polity would be the most natural to a society with a large middle class. There isn’t much problem with having a large middle class because it eases tension between the poor and the rich, since it’s the richest of the poor and the poorest of the rich. A polity, also known as a constitutional republic, is when everyone is involved in certain matters, but only a small group for other issues. Even though a polity might not be the best regime in general, Aristotle says it’s the most practical and most realistic of all