Originality and innovation in laws and legislation - Aristotle's Politics ΙΙ.12

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE discusses the ambiguities in ΙΙ.12 of the Politics, which records a list of lawgivers who were the first to make some discovery or invention relating to societal and political organization, to which they then gave material form in some law or body of legislation. The piece considers the doubts regarding the authenticity of this passage harbored by most modern scholars, who argue that the passage is an interpolation, in view of the messy context and the grammatical inconsistencies evident in the paragraph. The article particularly considers the use of the adjective idion (ίδιον), which the passage employs as an index of the uniqueness, the originality and the priorities in the work of a lawgiver. Aristotle's quest for the idion is here an expression of the widespread interest οη the part of the Ancients both in the question of who was "the first" to find or discover some innovation and in the matter of innovations themselves in various fields of knowledge. Idion, however, does not serve as an index of importance here, since, in Aristotle's view, provocative ideas and radical changes to laws were capable of threatening the stability of the state, thereby defeating the purpose of legislation, which is the attainment of the common good. The list of lawgivers in the passage contains both legislators from the past and lawgivers contemporary with Aristotle, from all over the Greek world.