Human flourishing and labour: Aristotle, MacIntyre and Marx

Abstract

Aristotle’s exclusion of workers from the ideal polis is well known to any student of Aristotle’s ethical and political works. In order for Aristotelian considerations on human flourishing, as well as for any other philosophical approach as to what is conducive for human well-being, to have relevance for contemporary societies, the question of labour must be made central: most of us, after all, need to work to earn a living. Thus, Aristotle’s views on the status of workers are not negligible when considering his ethical theory. In this chapter, my aim is not to reject or accept Aristotle’s arguments, but to highlight the tension between human flourishing and labour, as it appears in Aristotle’s works, and then to comment on two different attempts to deal with this tension: Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Karl Marx’s. I start with Aristotle’s arguments of why workers cannot be citizens of the best polis and lead a flourishing life. I then turn to MacIntyre’s attempt to make Aristotle’s ethics more egalitarian and to reconnect virtue with work. Finally, I introduce Marx’s considerations about freedom and labour to show that Marx retains and radicalizes some of Aristotle’s arguments about human flourishing