Aristotle’s Plural Power Problem

I. Introduction

While Aristotle counts many things as members of the category of substances that seem intuitively to be substances,¹ one wonders whether Aristotle is right not to include social entities like families, city-states, or mobs, in any of his explications of substances. Individual persons as substances can be the bearers of active powers, but Aristotle is silent on whether social entities can bear active powers. By ‘active powers’, we mean powers by which a thing changes, acts on, or alters something. We can contrast active powers with passive powers, which are powers by which a thing is changed, acted upon, or altered. Thus, a social entity like the French mob can use the active power to destroy, but only insofar as each of its individual members bears the power to destroy and uses that power as an individual. So one could argue, but is this correct? In this paper, I examine whether Aristotle rightly and intentionally does not include social entities from his list of things that are substances and can thus have active powers.² The answer, I contend, is no.

I argue that either communities (also translatable as partnerships) are substances in virtue of their status as bearers of powers or Aristotle is wrong that only substances are the bearers of powers. I focus specifically on active powers, because the case is clearer for social entities possessing active powers than passive powers. However, many of the points I make may indeed apply to both kinds of powers. To make this argument, I begin with a primer on Aristotle’s discussion of active powers, followed by an account of how Aristotle regards social entities in the Politics. Here, I look specifically at Aristotle’s conceptions of powers, substances, and social entities, and their interpretations rather than later conceptions of any or all of the above that are inspired by Aristotle. Next, I discuss contemporary views on the ontology of social entities – specifically Margaret Gilbert and Ludger Jansen’s plural subject theory – with an eye for how their accounts shape our understanding of the actions and powers of social entities. Putting these pieces together, the paper will articulate Aristotle’s plural power problem, setting up the problem as one requiring defenders of Aristotle (i.e. those who think Aristotle’s views about substances, powers, and social entities are correct)³ to pick a horn of the dilemma in order to make Aristotle’s views compatible with a more accurate understanding of social entities. If this argument succeeds, Aristotelian conceptions of powers, substances, and social entities must evolve or face obsolescence.

II. Primer on Powers

Aristotle (1984: Metaphysics VII.12.1019a15–16) defines active powers as the ‘source of motion or change which is in another thing or the same thing qua other.’ Jonathan Beere gives a more simple and general definition to go along with Aristotle’s: ‘A power is a capacity connected with change’ (2009: 37). Based on this idea of powers, both active and passive, Aristotle gives the example of the art of building, the art by which a structure is constructed. A builder, using this active power, can build a building. Another entity, in this case the materials used to build the building, has the passive power to be built. This entity is the patient of the action, while the builder, or, rather, as Aristotle (1984: Metaphysics I.7.324a30-b3) suggests, the art of building is the agent. Thomas Tuozzo (2014: 33–34) affirms Aristotle’s line of reasoning here, arguing that the art of building is the agent rather than the builder because the art of building is unchanged through the action of building, while the builder is an intermediate part of the causal chain since the builder undergoes change. In any case, the active power and the passive power work in tandem. As Anna Marmodoro (2021: 11) states, ‘Powers… are activated by interacting with their partner powers, operating on them and changing them.’ Marmodoro includes Aristotle’s example of teaching, where the teacher and pupil exemplify the partner relationship of powers: the teacher teaches and the student learns as a pair. So, active and passive powers work in tandem. Any change that happens involves the ‘mutual activation’ of powers, whereby an active and a passive power are utilized simultaneously (Marmodoro 2021: 22). Thus, the realization of these powers are causally interdependent in the sense that one cannot be activated without the other being activated (Marmodoro 2021: 24). Of the two, the active power is the power that, when used, causes an effect.

When speaking about powers with causal language like this, where a teacher causes a pupil to learn using the art of teaching or a builder causes a building to be built using the art of building, we speak of efficient causation. Aristotle contrasts efficient causation with formal, material, and final causation. As Tuozzo (2011: 448) explains, efficient causation involves something producing something else by exercising some power. Returning to the building example, Tuozzo (2011: 448, 457) says that the builder – more specifically the soul of the builder using the art of building – is the efficient cause of the thing being built. Active powers thus work within this context of efficient causation, where agents, using active powers, cause an effect in a patient.

Importantly, substances are the only kinds of things that can have and use powers, active or passive. Aristotle makes this clear through his exploration of substances in Metaphysics VII. There, he notes how substance is that which is predicated of and that which acts. He says:

Substance is the existent thing, according to Aristotle, that which walks, sits, is healthy, is hot, is good, or is the subject of any other action or predicate.⁴ By extension, only substances can be the bearers of active powers, which Aristotle (1984: Metaphysics VII.1.1028a28–29) argues when he says that predicates like ‘good’ and ‘sitting’ are only used reference to a substance. A part of a substance, like the hand of a person, does not bear an active power when it picks up a stone, even though it is part of the causal process, nor does a power act as an agent itself. It is the person, the substance, that bears the active power to pick up the stone. The crucial point here is that Aristotle envisions substances as the exclusive bearer of powers. To possess and exercise active powers, an entity must be a substance. Social entities, then, if understood as entities composed of (but not themselves) substances (i.e. individuals), do not bear active powers, since they are not substances. Social entities may use active powers, but only in virtue of each of their individual members, the substances that compose the social entities, bearing and using active powers. I will bear this out more in the next section. But as we will see, discounting social entities as substances is premature. Let us now shift to how Aristotle discusses social entities in the Politics.

III. Social Entities in the Politics

In the Politics, Aristotle discusses social entities – specifically states and families – and, in so doing, lays the groundwork for understanding social entities as the bearers of powers. In this section, I look at how Aristotle describes social entities, focusing on their substance-like qualities and whether they bear active powers. I aim to show that Aristotle’s depiction of social entities in the Politics challenges the view that social entities are not substances and cannot bear active powers. While Aristotle does not explicitly categorize social entities as substances in the Politics, he uses language that emphasizes the unity and substance-like qualities of social entities.⁵ To bear this out more fully, I want to focus on two relevant points concerning social entities in the Politics, which will lead into our discussion of Gilbert and Jansen: Aristotle’s argument that families and states are less unified versions of individuals and his discussion of individual and joint deliberation. Our examination of these views will reveal that Aristotle is unclear about whether states are substances, and he portrays states as the bearers of active powers, something which should only characterize substances.

Before we begin, it is important to note that Aristotle’s examination of social entities hinges in part on how one understands the word he uses for communities, namely ‘κοινωνία.’ David Riesbeck points out (2016: 48–50) that this word does not have an obvious English lexical equivalent, and, though it is usually translated as ‘community’ or ‘association,’ ‘commonality’ is probably the most literal translation. Though the translations of Aristotle I quote use ‘community,’ ‘association,’ and ‘partnership,’ Aristotle would not have discriminated between any of these uses. So, regardless of which word we use, the main point is that sharing something in common is the key aspect of each of the various kinds of social entities Aristotle examines.

Now, what does Aristotle have to say about states and families as compared with individual persons? In Politics II, he compares a state to a family and a family to an individual in virtue of the level of unity within each. He says:

Aristotle’s choice of words here is highly illuminating. The state ‘becoming a family’ and the family ‘becoming an individual’ by dint of how unified each is gives us a picture of a sliding scale of unity, where increasing the level of unity eventually leads to a change towards a more unified entity.

Because individuals are substances, and because the difference between individuals on the one hand and families and states on the other is one of degree, then, by extension, families and states have substance-like qualities, including unity, which can be increased in degree to make families and states more like individuals. Aristotle uses the language of tending towards greater unity in the above quotation when he says that a state tending towards greater unity becomes a family, and a family tending towards greater unity becomes an individual. This language indicates a sliding scale of unity, where higher unity equates to a more substance-like nature in an entity. States, though two steps removed from individuals on this scale, are unified like individuals, just to a lesser extent. This does not necessarily mean that states are substances – nor does it mean that states could ever in reality become families or families individuals – but this picture does communicate that the line between states, families, and individuals, is one of degrees of unity

Per this passage, the degree of unity indicates whether a state remains a state or becomes something else. A state clearly has a proper amount of unity according to Aristotle, but it can increase or decrease in its degree of unity and can change depending on the level. This supports the above reading that what separates states from families and families from individuals is the degree of unity in each. Of course, there are other differences between the three entities, as a glance at any of the three will tell you, but, again, Aristotle’s description of the three makes it seem like the main difference between the three is degrees of unity rather than other substantive differences. These degrees of unity could be correlated with distinct entities, such that states and families are different in kind from individuals while also different in degree. However, Aristotle does not say what this difference in kind could be that separates states and families from individuals when he uses the idea of degrees of unity. Rather he emphasizes the level of unity as the differentiating factor between these three entities.

While I do not know if Aristotle would explicitly agree with this characterization of states as substance-like, his description of these three entities allows for them to be characterized this way. Here, I refer to David Roochnik, who points out that Aristotle himself is unclear in the Politics about whether states are substances. Roochnik (2010: 280) concludes that states might be substances in a secondary sense of the word, and that the category of substance itself is flexible. Relatedly, Roochnik claims (2010: 284) that Aristotle’s comparison of a state to the cosmos (1984: Metaphysics VII.3.1325b25–30), where the cosmos is a substance with other substances as parts, gives more evidence that Aristotle viewed states as substances. Though this grinds against the view that substances cannot have other substances as parts, Aristotle knowingly makes this comparison. Furthermore, Aristotle’s description of states at the beginning of the Politics depicts the state as prior to households and individuals. There he says the following:

So, while individuals may possess a higher degree of unity than families, and families than states, states are the whole of which families and individuals are parts. Also, this passage indicates that states as wholes analogically resemble bodies, where the analog to bodily parts are the individual members that make up the state. This too makes states look like unified, substance-like entities.

There is even an interesting similarity between a state going through a change when it loses its form and the death of an individual when the union of matter and form ceases. In De Anima II, Aristotle (1984: Politics II.1.412b15–17) says that natural bodies that are alive are composites of form and matter. When a body dies, it no longer has the form of a living body. A body still exists, but it is not a living person, because it is no longer the same unity of matter and form, body and soul. Compare this to Politics III, where Aristotle (1984: Politics III.3.1276b1–8) describes the change in form of a state:

For, since the state is a partnership, and is a partnership of citizens in a constitution, when

Just as a chorus can change from tragic to comic without a change in its members, so too can a state change when its form of government changes. In fact, Roochnik argues (2010: 288), based on Politics III.1.1274b35–37, that the form of government of a city-state is ‘the ordering principle that unifies a multitude of citizens into a natural, unified being; into [a] substantial city.’ On this view, the form of government is strictly speaking the form of the city-state, which is a substantial entity. So, as a change in form equates to a change in substance from a person to a corpse in the case of a living human, a change in form equates to a change in composition in a state. Here too, the line between state and individual is blurred as changes in form apply in similar ways and lead to similar results in both. Even the description of how a soul rules a body in Politics I uses a social entity analogy. Aristotle (1984: Politics I.5.1254b2–5) writes the following: ‘We may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule.’ As with the rule of the body by the soul and the appetites by the intellect, so too with states, which themselves can be ruled constitutionally or despotically.

I should note, Aristotle’s comparison of a state to a union of elements in the above passage might be analogical, in which case he does not view states as literally like unions but only similar in appearance. Even on this reading, however, the state clearly has substance-like qualities in that it has aspects like matter (i.e. the individuals who compose it) and aspects like form (i.e. the constitution that makes the state what it is). Pair this reading with the degrees of unity, and we get a picture of states where increasing their unity makes their matter-like and form-like aspects more matter-like and form-like respectively. If a state increases in unity until it becomes a family, and the family in turn increases in unity until it becomes an individual, then the matter-like and form-like aspects can also become more matter-like and form-like until they, presumably, become the matter and form of the individual. Thus, even an analogical reading of the relationship between a state and a union allows for states to have important substance-like qualities that can become substantial qualities given a high enough degree of unity.

The upshot of these observations about the relationship between states, families, and individuals is that Aristotle uses unity to explain what states and families are and how they resemble individual persons. As these passages indicate, the difference between the three entities is one of degree, and much of the language used to describe individual persons, who are substances, resembles language used to describe states. This does not get us all the way to saying that a state is a substance in the way an individual person is; after all, a change in degree can be a change in kind if the degree is high enough. However, this exercise does allow one to interpret social entities like families and states as resembling individual persons to a significant degree. With this in mind, let us consider actions by social entities.

In Politics III, Aristotle raises some important questions about actions taken by states as opposed to those taken by individuals. First, he says,

The conundrum he is pointing to here is one of whether it can be said that the state acts or that the leader of a state, in this case the oligarchy or the tyrant, acts. For our purposes, whether it is the state or the oligarchy acting does not matter since both are social entities, but it is important to differentiate between a tyrant acting and a social entity like the state acting. Immediately, the idea that a social entity, a state, can act should set off our metaphysical alarms, since acting is power-language, and states as social entities ostensibly cannot bear powers.⁶ The intrigue deepens when Aristotle (1984: Politics III.3.1276a7–9) later says, ‘For a parallel question is raised respecting the state, whether a certain act is or is not an act of the state; for example, in the transition from an oligarchy or a tyranny to a democracy.’⁷ This talk of states acting or of actions being of the state abounds in the Politics, and it leads to the question of whether Aristotle thinks that states can act and bear powers. Put bluntly, does Aristotle think that states are social entities, wholes more than the sum of their individual members,⁸ and that they bear powers? Answering this requires looking at the connection between individual and joint deliberation (i.e. deliberation done by social entities as wholes). In short, joint deliberation by a state functions like individual deliberation by a single person, indicating that states as social entities can bear the active power of deliberation in the same way that individuals can bear that active power. Now, I could have used simpler examples than deliberation to show that social entities bear active powers, such as the power social entities have to wage war, enact laws, and carry out criminal justice. I use deliberation as an example because Aristotle explains how individual deliberation works in detail, and his explanation fairly clearly applies to social entities, as we will see.

Following Bryan Garsten (2013: 330–334), one can compare both kinds of deliberation by looking at individual deliberation as explored in Nicomachean Ethics and joint deliberation as born out in the Politics. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (2002: Nicomachean Ethics III.3.1112b15–18) describes deliberation in the following way: ‘When it appears that the end will come about by more than one means, people examine through which of them it will come about most easily and most beautifully.’ When one deliberates, one tries to figure out the means needed to reach the end, the end being something an agent desires, which is something the agent thinks is good for her (Aristotle 2002: Nicomachean Ethics III.3.1112b15–18). When the agent has this good in mind, she deliberates about the way to reach this object of desire. Deliberation is thus an active power with the corresponding passive power being the power to be deliberated upon, which is possessed by the object of desire. In other words, individuals use the active power of deliberation on objects of desire, making them accessible where they were not before deliberation. After one deliberates, one knows the best means to get to the object of desire. Aristotle (2002: Nicomachean Ethics III.3.1113a10–15) then says:

The agent, already motivated to act by the desire for an identified good, only needed to know the best way to get to that good, which the agent now knows via deliberation. With the means identified, the agent acts via the means to get to a desired good. In short, when an individual deliberates, that individual identifies the best means to reach a desired end. Individual deliberation involves three things then: Desiring a good, determining the many ways to get to that good, and identifying the best way to get to that good.

Like individuals, states deliberate toward desired goods, in this case goods that are in the common interest. In fact, what it means to be a city is to be directed at the common interest rather than at the interest of the rulers alone. When describing the genesis of cities, Aristotle (1984: Politics I.2.1252b27–30) argues, ‘When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.’ The state, formed from villages uniting together into a single whole, is directed at first at the sustenance of its people, but it continues to exist for the sake of the good life.⁹ So, the state is a single, unified whole defined by its pursuit of the good. These states are constituted by villages which are constituted by families. Families, Aristotle (1984: Politics I.2.1252b13–14) says, are ‘The association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants.’ Families too are a unified whole directed at a goal, in this case supplying the needs of the members of the family. When families unite with other families, they form associations, villages, which are the first societies and are similarly defined by having a joint aim to meet the needs of the members (Aristotle 1984: Politics I.2.1252b16–18). So, the state is a unified whole composed of unified wholes (i.e. villages) which are themselves composed of unified wholes (i.e. families). This idea of a state as a substance, an organic whole, with its own telos is in fact what holds together the various parts of the Politics in a cohesive, conceptual whole (Roochnik 2010: 291).

With the common good in view, a city as a social entity can deliberate (Garsten 2013: 344), doing so in the model of an individual who has a desired good in mind, determines the many ways to get to that good, and identifies the best of those ways. Even if it is an individual leader who deliberates for a state, it is the state’s actions if the leader, the head of the social entity, is properly directed at the common good. Since the state as a whole uses this power, which is not reducible to the power of individual members to deliberate, the state bears the power.

In short, deliberation functions for states like it does for individuals, revealing that states, as social entities, can bear active powers in at least one way that individuals do. When we put this conclusion together with the above observations about the connection between individuals, families, and states, the idea that social entities cannot bear active powers is thoroughly muddled. Aristotle’s account of social entities in the Politics gives a substantial quality to social entities that conflicts with the idea that social entities are merely non-substances composed of substances. In this picture, social entities seem to possess characteristics over and above their individual members, including active powers like that of deliberation. This account contradicts the orthodox interpretation of Aristotle that only substances can bear active powers and social entities, like states and families, are not substances. This non-orthodox account has the backing of contemporary social ontology from Gilbert and Jansen, to whom we now turn.

IV. Joint Commitment and Plural Subjects

Margaret Gilbert and Ludger Jansen give us a way of understanding social entities that makes sense of social entities having active powers.¹⁰ Gilbert and Jansen understand social entities as ‘we’ entities, or entities that are more than the sum of their individual members. Members of these entities talk about actions taken by the group as a whole in the form of ‘we did this’ or ‘we made this decision.’ Examples of such entities include everything from sports teams, to religious organizations, to entire nations. The members of each of these entities use ‘we’ when describing the actions of the whole group, differentiating these actions from those taken by any individual members in particular. The unifying factor that takes a group from a collection of individuals to a social whole, is ‘joint commitment.’ Gilbert (2014: 21) describes joint commitment as ‘a commitment of the will…. The wills of two or more people impose the commitment on the same two or more people – as one.’ Once these people are committed, they become a ‘plural subject’ (Gilbert 2015: 19), different from an individual subject but a cohesive whole with the ability to act on its own nonetheless.¹¹

Importantly, Gilbert (2014: 7) states, ‘this [joint] commitment is a commitment of them all. In other terms, they are the subject of this commitment’ The commitment is not of each member individually but of ‘them’, the whole plural subject. A football team that together agrees that ‘we need to win the game’ is making a statement about the team as a jointly committed plural subject, not as a mere collection of individuals, an arbitrary aggregate, to use Jansen’s term (2014: 92). Arbitrary aggregates are groups of individuals with no commitments holding them together. Jansen (2014: 98) contrasts these aggregates with plural subjects when he gives the following example: ‘Suppose there are ten people that happen to witness a car accident. The crash victim needs help to be evacuated from the car. Rescuing him is too much for a single person, but three cooperating helpers could manage to free him from his wrecked car.’ The three rescuers, in contrast to the seven bystanders, are a plural subject because they are jointly committed to saving the crash victim.

Joint commitments can bind together plural subjects much larger than three good Samaritans. In the case of an entire nation, Gilbert (2014: 351) writes:

In the case of a state, like the kind Aristotle discusses, it is this widespread readiness to join a joint commitment that creates a plural subject. One does not need every Athenian to recognize their status as citizens of Athens to correctly ascribe actions to Athens as a plural subject. In a state like this, bound together by one, or many, joint commitments, the state can have interests and ends of its own beyond those of its individual members. For instance, the state as a plural subject can be interested in building a beautiful temple even if some or most of the individual citizens do not care about this goal specifically. Bennett Helm (2008: 20), using the term ‘plural agent’ instead of plural subject, explains this helpfully:

Helm gives us insight into the group psychology of a plural subject, which has interests and desires belonging to the plural subject as a whole that motivate it and cause it to act. The plural agent engages in actions based on the joint commitments that hold it together because it as a unit cares about achieving specific ends. As Helm (2008: 33) says,

Returning to the temple building example above, an individual Athenian citizen might say that he as an individual has no specific interest in building this temple but that ‘we’ (speaking of the people of Athens as whole) have an interest in building this temple. Here, the Athenian people represent a robust plural agent that acts and feels as one plural entity beyond the sum of its individual members.

By dint of their status as plural subjects, states, families, and the like can have and exercise active powers when understood through the lens of joint commitment. Also, plural subjects can function as the efficient cause in situations where individuals would function as the efficient cause. Gilbert and Jansen, punctuated by Helm, aid us in seeing this. A plural subject, a whole social unit, can act in a way that surpasses its individual members. In this way, a plural subject, like the French mob storming the Bastille, has and uses an active power to destroy. While the individual members of the plural subject certainly have active powers of their own, the whole is more than the sum of its parts and acts as one plural subject. Returning to Jansen’s car example, each of the good Samaritans certainly exercises a myriad of active powers in the process of saving the crash victim. One individual might lift part of the car’s weight while the other two lift other parts of its weight, but only the plural subject as one uses its active power of lifting to lift the whole car. We might even say that each individual plays a part in the causal chain, but that the plural subject (e.g. the rescue team) writ large is the efficient cause.

If one imagines a state in the way Aristotle does above where a single leader, or group of leaders, makes decisions on behalf of the state, then this still counts as the plural subject acting as one cohesive unit. Jansen’s (2014: 93–94) expansion of the idea of plural subjects into institutional subjects, with rules, formal systems, and delegation of tasks captures this idea of statehood, where leaders of the institutional subject make decisions for the subject as whole. This answers the question Aristotle (1984: Politics III.10.1281a11–12) raises concerning who has the supreme power in the state. Because states most often function like institutions in a Jansenian sense, the delegation of rule to either a single supreme leader, a council of leaders, or a mass of voters will depend upon the joint commitments that form the institutional subject. Regardless of if states, families, or any other social entities mentioned by Aristotle, are institutional, or strictly plural, subjects, however, they are each held together by joint commitments and bear active powers as one cohesive unit, more than the sum of their parts.

With this framework in mind, Jansen argues that plural subjects (particularly institutional subjects) are in fact substances according to Aristotle’s criteria. Specifically, Jansen (2017: 171) refers to institutional subjects as ‘soziale Substanzen,’ or ‘social substances.’¹² He goes on to say that ‘we can explain the social aspect by stating that a substance is a social substance if and only if it owes its existence, out of metaphysical necessity, to the social interaction of several people.’ (Jansen 2017: 171). To show that these social substances are in facts substances, Jansen (2017: 171) lists some of the properties of substances according to Aristotle:

The quintessential example of a substance by this definition would be a human person. In addition to these properties, substances survive changes, such as when a person changes the color of their hair (Jansen 2017: 175–176).

While not all institutions have these properties, Jansen argues (2017: 174) that many institutions, such as the Federal Republic of Germany, do have all these properties. Such institutional subjects are the subjects of predication, do not inhere in other things (though other things inhere in them), are particulars, and have no temporal parts. They can also survive change, such as when a nation state changes its borders without ceasing to exist (2017: 176). When institutions do not have these properties, they are not substances. Altogether, for all these properties attributed to substances, Jansen argues that many institutional subjects have these properties and, consequently, are substances. Because many institutional subjects are substances, these institutional subjects can have powers. For those concerned with how we can apply Gilbert and Jansen’s contemporary approach to Aristotle’s metaphysics, Jansen’s argument about social substances directly connects the two systems, showing how jointly committed plural subjects can have active powers in Aristotle’s system. Putting these pieces together, we have an elegant model for how social entities can have active powers.

At this point, a reductionist might respond that we do not need to posit any kind of special social entities to understand collective powers. In the car rescue example, the power of lifting the car can be reduced to the individual power of one member to lift one part of the car’s weight, another member lifting another part, and so on, such that we do not need to appeal to a plural subject or any other kind of social entity to understand what is going on in this case. This objection relies on a reductionist picture of social entities. Harold Kincaid (2014: 144) defines reductionism: ‘If entities of kind S are composed of entities of kind I and their behavior is determined by the behavior of entities of kind I, then it follows that it is possible to explain what we know about S’s in terms of I’s.’ According to Kincaid, reductionists maintain that, because social entities are composed of individuals and their behavior is determined by the behavior of individuals, then everything about social entities is ultimately reducible to individuals. Social entities exist, but they offer no explanatory power in understanding cases like the car rescue scenario, the storming of the Bastille, or any other example involving group action. We can contrast reductionists with holists, like Gilbert and Jansen, who claim that social groups exist beyond the individual members and have actions and behaviors that are irreducible to the actions and behaviors of the individuals in the group (Zahle and Collin 2014: 2–3).¹³ Returning to Aristotle, a reductionist would say that states and other social entities do not bear active powers because these entities are fully reducible to individuals, so they do not have any capacities independent of their members, including bearing active powers. Thus, the reductionist’s objection: Why do we need to posit plural subjects – or institutional subjects or plural agents for that matter – if we can comprehensively explain these entities in terms of individuals?

On the contrary, I argue we understand group action apart from the action of the individuals within a group. If during the storming of the Bastille, some members of the mob were at the rear of the group and never actually entered Bastille grounds but were still part of the group storming the Bastille, we would still say the mob, as a whole, stormed the Bastille, these rear members included, even though not all of the individuals in the group did the storming. The reductionist has a few responses available. He can deny that the rear members are members of the group such that the storming of the Bastille was only done by the individuals who reached the grounds of the prison. Or he could contend that the rear members were in sufficient proximity to the rest of the group to have membership. He could also argue that the rear members were members of the group because they individually identified with the other stormers.

There are two problems with the first solution. First, when individuals act, not all parts of the individual are acting. For example, when I press the ‘S’ key on the keyboard with my finger, my foot is not involved in the process. Likewise for social entities, not all parts of the entity – not all of the members – have to be involved for the social entity to have acted as a whole. The second problem is that we treat other people in similar circumstances, like the rear members in the example, as full members of groups. A football player on a championship-winning team who has sat on the bench all season is still said to have won the championship even though he did not contribute on the field, because he is a part of the winning team. Also, legislative bodies like congress vote to pass bills even when many individual members of congress did not vote for a particular bill. In these bodies, we do not say that the members who voted ‘no’ are not a part of the group. Jansen uses another example to argue that the actions of individuals are a different type than social actions. He writes that states, as social entities, make peace with other states but that diplomats, as individuals, sign peace documents (Jansen 2017: 178). Though the individual diplomat in this scenario performs an action that initiates the state’s action, the two actions are not identical. Additionally, we still hold people morally responsible as members of a group even when they did not individually contribute to an action, such as when people participate in lynching mobs without ever laying hands on the mob’s victim themselves. Limiting group membership to those who, as individuals, participate in an action does not line up with our experience of group identity, so this reductionist response fails.

As to the second response, proximity alone does not cut it, since we would not consider a bystander who happens to walk right beside the rear members and in the same direction to be a member of the group. The third response actually plays into the holist’s hands. By identifying with the other members of the mob, the rear members identify with the group as a whole. If they identify with the group as a whole, then there is a group to identify with, and one that has characteristics not reducible to its individual members – that is, the rear members identify with the group without identifying with any of the individual members in particular. This cedes the point to the holist, so it does not work as a viable response for the reductionist.

A further point against the reductionist view is that many plural subjects, including Aristotelian states, have far more structure and organization than the mob at the Bastille. Even if the holist concedes that the mob at the Bastille is fully reducible to its individual members, this does not show that we can reduce more organized plural subjects, like states, to their individual members. To see this, think of a four-part harmony, where singers in four or more voice levels harmonize their voices. The harmony created by the singers is composed of the voices of the individual singers, but it is also a new sound. This new sound cannot exist without the individuals, but it is not merely the sum of the voices of the individual singers; it has its own sound and quality. In a similar vein, Aristotle explains in Politics III (1984: 11.1281a40–1281b10) that when groups of individuals come together, they can perform tasks that are beyond the power of any individual in the group to perform. For example, Aristotle says that a group judging music and poetry will do so better than an individual judge, because each member of the group will understand a different part of the whole better than another. Of a group like this, Aristotle says (1984: Politics III.11.1281b3–6) ‘For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a figure of their mind and disposition.’ This depiction of individuals acting jointly, though likely analogical, reinforces that groups act in ways that go beyond the sum of the individual parts.

Like harmonies and poetry criticism, a state, while it cannot exist without individual members, has its own characteristics and qualities beyond those of its members. The unity of the members of a state brings them into a social harmony that creates an identity for the city that supersedes the individual members. A reductionist picture does not capture the harmony-like nature of the state, and other similarly organized plural and institutional subjects. Instead, adopting a holist picture allows us to understand social entities in a more robust way. With that said, what are the consequences of this holist picture of plural subjects and their actions for Aristotle and his metaphysics of substances and active powers?

V. The Plural Power Problem

Clearly, Gilbert and Jansen provide a framework for understanding social entities that conflicts with Aristotle’s omission of social entities from his list of substances. Because social entities as described by Aristotle are akin to plural subjects as defined by Gilbert and Jansen, these social entities can bear active powers. When a team of contractors builds a structure, it is the team as a unit that has and has used the active power of building. When a team of medical professionals performs a surgery, they use the active power of healing as a team rather than merely as a collection of individuals. When the leaders of Athens decide to go to war against Thebes, they deliberate as members of a plural subject and not as an arbitrary aggregate. Their actions are theirs and not his and hers individually. Thus, defenders of the classical Aristotelian conception of substances and powers have to contend with the dilemma introduced at the beginning: Is Aristotle wrong to not include social entities from his list of substances, or is Aristotle wrong that only substances are the bearers of active powers?

Although one of these has to be wrong if substances can in fact have active powers, I surmise that the Aristotelian will have an easier time conceding the first horn of the dilemma. Given how Aristotle portrays social entities in the Politics, it is difficult to see states, families, or other plural subjects as sums of individuals without irreducible characteristics and powers. Aristotle’s explanation of degrees of unity between states, families, and individuals in Politics II (1984: 2.1261a16–21) combined with his description of joint action in Politics III (1984: 11.1281b3–6), where he describes a group of individuals becoming, in a manner, ‘one man’ make the leap to seeing social entities as substances less daunting than the alternative. As we discussed, Aristotle himself leaves it ambiguous whether states are substances (Roochnik 2010, 280), and he consistently uses language comparing states to substances like a cosmos (1984: Metaphysics VII.3.1325b25–30) and a person with a telos (1984: Politics I.2.1252b13–14) (Roochnik 2010: 277). These points plus the ability of states, as Aristotle describes them, to deliberate in a manner comparable to individuals show that Aristotle had a more complex and substance-like understanding of social entities compared with inanimate collections of objects.

One can accept this picture and slightly adapt the account of substances offered in the Metaphysics to solve the above dilemma. Such a revised account would put forth that social entities where members act jointly, have a joint identity, and where most members are conscious of that joint identity (e.g. states and families) are substances and can bear powers. Gilbert and Jansen’s plural and institutional subject approach can elucidate what these social entities look like and how they operate, but one could accept this revised account without accepting Gilbert and Jansen’s approach wholesale. This being said, I have aimed to show that a reasonable basis exists within the Aristotelian corpus for expanding Aristotle’s view of substances to include social entities.

Taking the other horn of the dilemma – denying that only substances can bear powers – would require comprehensively changing how we understand active powers and positing more kinds of entities that can bear powers. Presumably, nothing in the Politics calls the picture of powers and their relation to substances into question, though Aristotle uses substance-like language and analogies to different substances to describe social entities in the Politics, nowhere I have seen does he use language clearly indicating that entities other than substances can bear powers. For this reason, taking this horn of the dilemma would require a broader rereading of Aristotle with less available evidence than if one took the first horn. Therefore, accepting that social entities can bear active powers, and are therefore substances in some sense, presents the fewest challenges for the Aristotelian of the available options; better to bite the bullet than rework the entire framework.

Here, a defender of the Aristotelian picture might solve this dilemma by conceding that groups can have active powers while arguing that these group powers are based on individual powers and so not identical to individual powers. This response resembles the second horn of the dilemma, since it allows groups to have active powers of a sort without being substances, but the response appears to thread the needle between the two horns, potentially offering the Aristotelian a way out of the dilemma. This response requires that all active powers possessed by groups are reducible to individual active powers, which is a reductionist claim. As we saw with the reductionist objection above, this response does not take into account the many powers that are not reducible to the individuals in a group, including the example given of making a harmony. Consequently, this response will not solve the dilemma either.

Finally, if someone objects to this argument that defenders of Aristotle do not need to bring Aristotelian metaphysics into agreement with the one contemporary account of social ontology I have mentioned here, I would respond that they need to give a reason to prefer Aristotle’s haphazard account of social entities over the more intentionally thought out and well-defended accounts offered by philosophers like Gilbert, Jansen, and Helm. In the absence of such an apologetic endeavor, the dilemma remains.

VI. Conclusion

In conclusion, I have argued that, within Aristotle’s metaphysical system, either social entities are substances because they can have and use active powers, or Aristotle is wrong that only substances can have and use powers. Though I have conjectured about which of these options defenders of Aristotle will find more palatable, these defenders have to choose one of the options to make the system tenable. To make my argument, I began by explaining active powers, including their role in efficient causation and how traditionally only substances can have and use them. Then I put this understanding of powers and substances into conversation with Aristotle’s descriptions of social entities in the Politics, showing how Aristotle represents social entities as unified and substance-like. Building on this, I explored the ideas of joint commitment and plural subjects, which together show how social entities can have and use active powers as cohesive wholes that are more than the sum of their parts. With these pieces, I reintroduced Aristotle’s plural power problem, setting up a dilemma for defenders of Aristotle to respond to or diffuse. By addressing this dilemma, defenders of Aristotle can strengthen his metaphysics and reaffirm its relevance for contemporary metaphysics and social ontolog.

Data Accessibility Statement

No original data was used in the production of this manuscript.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.

Author Contributions

JC is the sole author of this work.