None of the current crop of politicians seem able to solve our state of permacrisis. Maybe Ancient Greece can show us the way forward, suggests Mark Vernon

Politics has grown more turbulent recently, with the winds of disturbance and change showing no signs of abating. The instability can be overstated, of course, and fear has become common currency across the media. It’s easy to forget that back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, we checked under the car chassis for IRA bombs before hopping inside to get to school. Nonetheless, we live in troubling times and I wonder if there is an idler response.

One might be to pause for a moment, take a step back and ask a fundamental question afresh: what is politics for? After all, if the causes of today’s vicissitudes are related to an inability of politicians to stop crises, then this is a moment to take stock of the basics. Are we asking the best things of them? Do they have deeper wells to draw from than the short-termism that focuses on putting out fires and hoping not to fan flames?

The same was asked by the Ancient Greek philosophers. While Athens is remembered by us in a golden light as the birthplace of democracy, living in the city-state during the fifth and fourth centuries was usually distressing. Famine, war, plague and tyrants were norms. Democracy emerged, collapsed, reappeared and tottered again within single lifetimes.

Aristotle found himself in the thick of it. Not once but twice he fled into exile for fear of his life, the mob having been stirred up against him by the charismatic orator and champion of people-power, Demosthenes. In happier seasons he had been positively loved by the crowds. For example, they once awarded him a gong for services to the Pythian Games. This festival was second only to the Olympic Games, so that was high praise indeed. Only, the reason historians know about this honour is because the plaque that records it was found at the bottom of a well in Delphi. The thanks had been hurled down the shaft when Aristotle had fallen out of favour.

But the uncertain, changeable nature of politics provided Aristotle with a first thought on the basics. The politician is a craftsman, Aristotle proposed. Like a stonemason, who must work with the idiosyncrasies of the rock in his hands to produce the object desired, so the politician must know how to work with the particularities of the moment to produce what is good for society. Where the mason has an eye, the politician must have wisdom. Where the mason has a chisel, the politician has carefully constructed laws. Where the mason has a goal, the politician has principles.

And further: where the mason has a purpose – the beautification of the temple, say – the politician must have a reason to exist as well. Which brings us back to the question of why we have them: what is politics for?

Aristotle’s fourfold understanding of causes came to his aid. By “cause” he did not mean what the modern physicist implies: if you apply this force, that effect will follow. Rather, Aristotle’s notion of a cause was less mechanical and more organic. A cause is like a link in a chain, which contributes to holding the chain together. This implies that to understand a cause, you have to understand the bigger picture as well as specific details.

Consider how Aristotle would have accounted for a stonemason’s sculpture. Four causes must be held in a productive relationship, he would have said. First is the material cause, the stone out of which the sculpture is made. Second is the formal cause, or the shape of the sculpture that the mason aims to make. Third is the efficient cause, which is the skill and art of the stonemason. Fourth is the final cause, which is the reason the stonemason is labouring at all.

The politician must view their task in a similarly multidimensional light. The material cause is the people and infrastructure out of which the city-state is composed. The formal cause is the constitution that the politician aims to uphold because it describes the shape of the polis, be that a monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. The efficient cause is its ruler or rulers, which is to say the politicians themselves. The final cause is the vision embraced by the community as a whole of the life it seeks, which Aristotle advised should be discerned as that way of life which brings the greatest good. In other words, Aristotle’s view is thoroughly moral, not because he was a finger-wagging moralist but because he reckoned that without such ideals, the city-state will fall apart.

His analysis can shape our stepping back and reflecting. The people, or material cause, and the constitution, or formal cause, are probably not bones of contention. Modern democracies, unlike Ancient Athens, have settled these matters: every citizen is a member of the community; and the constitution, while on occasion being adjusted, is safeguarded by elected representatives who can be turfed out every four or five years – or on occasion, every four or five weeks. But when it comes to the efficient and final causes, Aristotle would feel our political rationale falls short.

We have rulers, of course. But are the politicians we need capable of the craft that politics requires? The ex-politician and star of The Rest Is Politics podcast, Rory Stewart, is not alone in complaining that skilled individuals today are routinely put off going into politics because of the personal abuse they will suffer, the lack of thanks they will receive, and the unstable career they must embrace. Better to become a business leader or to seek a profession where your value will be recognised and you are more likely to value your working life.

Then, there is the final cause. This invites us to ask the big question that is implicit in politics but rarely directly addressed. What is the vision we have of our life together? What are its goals and purpose? Consumption or progress or freedom are not enough, Aristotle would advise, because those things are means to others ends, not ends in themselves. Why do we want to consume? Where is the progress headed? What is freedom for?

It seems to me that these are questions we can ask. What values guide us? What hope do we aim to realise? Aristotle’s own answer was that politics serves the human desire to enjoy not just earthly existence but know something of divine life. I’m inclined to agree, though I know that such a notion is nowadays contentious. But having the conversation should be better than getting lost in a state of fear, blame and despair. Given that we do live in a permacrisis, why not turn to the big questions?

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