Aristotle and Herodotus treated enmity and friendship as criteria for judging regimes
Evidence
Enmity and friendship, conceived along the lines of a certain equality, a symmetry, provided strict criteria for evaluating political regimes. According to Herodotus, for example, oligarchy “oftimes engenders bitter enmity; … violent enmity is the outcome, enmity brings faction [stasis] and faction brings bloodshed.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 385
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: An essay angle: how the ancient diagnostic that oligarchy breeds enmity maps onto modern accounts of oligarchy and political polarization.
Related
- Symmetric friendship and enmity served as ancient criteria for judging regimes (similarity 0.94)
- Ancient Greeks regarded enmity, not just friendship, as constitutive of civic order (similarity 0.83)
- Ancient Greek politics operated primarily through friendship and enmity (similarity 0.82)
- Aristotle made friendship the bond of the state and enmity its chief danger (similarity 0.81)
- Aristotle treated civic enmity as constitutive of the Greek polis (similarity 0.79)