On Political Theory Being A Big Rehash Of Plato And Aristotle

I'm at work, so I don't have time to find supporting evidence, and I don't have Plato and Aristotle memorized, but I was reading The Other McCain and came across this excerpt from Wikipedia on classical liberalism:

Friedrich Hayek identified two different traditions within classical liberalism: the "British tradition" and the "French tradition". Hayek saw the British philosophers David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke and William Paley as representative of a tradition that articulated beliefs in empiricism, the common law, and in traditions and institutions which had spontaneously evolved but were imperfectly understood. The French tradition included Rousseau, Condorcet, the Encyclopedists and the Physiocrats. This tradition believed in rationalism and the unlimited powers of reason, and sometimes showed hostility to tradition and religion. Hayek conceded that the national labels did not exactly correspond to those belonging to each tradition: Hayek saw the Frenchmen Montesquieu, Constant and Tocqueville as belonging to the "British tradition" and the British Thomas Hobbes, Godwin, Priestley, Richard Price and Thomas Paine as belonging to the "French tradition". Hayek also rejected the label "laissez faire" as originating from the French tradition and alien to the beliefs of Hume, Smith and Burke.

As far as I'm concerned the entire field known as political theory is one long disagreement with Plato's Republic, which began with Artistole's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.

Plato was primarily concerned with The Good, and Aristotle with Nature. But I would argue that this is really an argument between ought and is. It doesn't really matter whether some teleological hierarchy of Forms exists for Plato's philosophy. Sure, it's a useful construct, but it doesn't really matter. Artistole on the other hand was concerned with the Nature of things. That includes physics, biology, rhetoric, and most importantly for this discussion, Human Nature. I'd argue he was an empiricist before there were empiricists.

Anyway, that brings me to the is versus ought portion of my theory. Rather than a dichotomy, think of it more as a spectrum. Aristole was concerned with the Nature of things, which is a question of is. He then reasoned, we might say, from the bottom up. He looked at what existed, and then articulated his ideal vision of the spoudaios. Plato, on the other hand, first thought of The Good, what ought to be, and then reasoned from the top down resulting in the Philosopher King. Between the two, the spoudaios are certainly more realistic. and closer to what is.

Furthermore, I would argue that the British philosophers in classical liberalism are the intellectual heirs to Aristotle, and the French Plato's. The empiricists, by definition, try to determine what is and then move from there. The entire concept of the tradition as knowledge passed down is the statement that what is is good until proven otherwise. Only an idiot couldn't see the parallels between the French tradition, especially Rousseau, and Plato.

Now, some of you are probably thinking that FLG is unaware that Burke disparaged metaphysics and theory, and that consequently Strauss argued Burke broke from the Aristotelian tradition. Yet, FLG is obviously aware, and disagrees. There are breaks, but the similarities between the British tradition of classical liberalism and Aristotle and the French tradition and Plato are so overwhelming that these differences are overstated. FLG views each tradition as simply a further refinement of the original disagreement.

Lastly, take all of this with a grain of salt because FLG has now been told by, he thinks it's the 207th, or perhaps 208th he's lost count, grad school that he is not wanted. FLG has come up with several reasons for this. First, his work. As you can see in this post, FLG largely repeated an long-standing theory, offered no support from the texts, and then simply asserted his opinion as correct and Strauss' wrong. Second, the repeated F-bombs in the applications may be a problem. FLG can't help it. Finally, and most likely, grad schools can sense FLG's insanity a mile away. Anyway, FLG will update you his future plans as they come to him.