Abstract

In this essay instead of trying to deal with the dubious question whether Aristotle is a democratic or an oligarchic thinker, I try to investigate whether he has developed particular views that can be constructively engaged by modern democratic theory. I argue that we can locate a rough model of democracy in Aristotle (as well as in Isocrates) in which direct and representative democracy successfully converge and complement each other. This model is indispensable for reflecting on the nature and the future course of contemporary liberal democracy. In addition, Aristotle was the first thinker who conceived the idea that democratic procedures may be epistemically valuable and he put forward two original arguments to that effect. The first of them, the summation argument, despite its ingenuity, does not seem to work, but the second, the user argument, can still serve as a starting-point for a plausible justification of popular sovereignty.