Aristocracy

Historical course of the concept of aristocracy

Often resulting from the Feudality, the aristocracy often evolved to the Monarchie or the Autocratie. It can sometimes combine with a kind of Démocratie (example of the Republic of Venice with a doge elected and to the limited capacities or Poland whose King was elected by the Nobility - 10 % of the population - and whose capacities were in the Diète.

Greek antiquity

Aristocracy, of the Greek aristokratia is subdivided in nobs (: excel, the best, more bavre) and kratos , capacity. By this only word, it is the design of a political regime and an social organization which takes shape. The exercise of the responsibilities, decision making and the impulse given return to the beings of excellence in the field considered. For the direction of a nation, qualities first of these aristocrats were defined in the proclamation Révolution droitist written by Michel-Georges Micberth and François Richard: “(…) a fast and complete apprehension of a situation, an immediate capacity to make a decision, a very vast knowledge of the things and beings, and a moral rigor which is put up perfectly with the plays of imagination”

These honest citizens, as Plato summarized it, assert themselves in fact like ready to direct the city to carry out it towards beneficial horizons. The author of the Dialogs reports in one of them the reflection from abroad, approved without reserve by Socrate the young person: “(…) supposes again that a man, in his state of ordinary person, is enough advised to give councils to the monarch of some country, will not say us that the adviser has into clean the knowledge which that should have acquired which exerts the power? ” The selection of best is clean aristocratic system.

Like an incarnation of the advised adviser imagined by the foreigner in his socratic reflection, Aristote states with powerful the Alexandre, of which he was the tutor, qualities of a regent of empire: “Such a man must be higher and perfect not only in valiancy and justice and various virtues but still by the power and military equipment so that it can contain the people and push it to listen to the law. ”

Aristote thus indicates to the ambitious king Macedonia the manner of being and of approaching the direction of an empire so that “in the cities always the moralities reign and that the defects are banished by it”. Even if the aristocratism more preaches the collegial structure in the exercise of the capacity, the concepts developed by the disciple of Plato make a share essential with the fundamental value of the individual.

Admittedly the legitimacy conferred to the men in load of the destiny of people is more powerful by this method of selection, but the exercise of the capacity is a source of good more duties than of rights. The function of leader must at every moment haunt that which accepted it. This catch of responsibilities must imply all its life and cannot limit itself to the simple parade which the prestige of the function would allow. To be an aristocrat, with the direction first, is with the antipodes facility to exist, Carpe diem praised since the Antiquité.

Roman antiquity

Under monarchy and the Republic

The evolution of the aristocracy of the ancient Rome can be followed over one period of more than thousand years. In its oldest form, Foundation of Rome until the beginning of the Republic, the Patriciens form the Roman aristocratic class. Being presented in the form of descendants of the companions of Romulus, they only have crowned capacities, like taking the Augures or reaching priesthoods. Members of the Roman Sénat, then only eligible with the magistratures at the first centuries of the Roman République, they monopolize a capacity that dispute to them the plebeian during

The plebeian ones obtain little by little the civic and religious equality, and richest of them reach the magistratures and the Senate. At the 3rd century and with, the Roman aristocracy is not thus only founded any more on the ascent, but on the land richness (one needs a fortune of at least 400.000 Sesterce S to be eligible with the first magistratures) and the electoral success (Cursus honorum) which opens the admission with the senate. The plebeian big families, patricians or, reach the Consul At from generation to generation, constituting the senatorial Ordre. periodic censuses (every five years) see the renewal of this aristocracy, by admission following electoral successes or exclusions for dépravée control or crime.

In same time is constituted another class, the knights, enriched by the Mediterranean trade, banking, subcontracting by the Roman State of the collection of the taxes (Publicain S). Without that their being prohibited, the knights seldom reach the magistratures, except for some brilliant exceptions (Marius, Cicéron). The ambitious ones which tries to impose their capacity at the end of the Roman Republic with will support the knights against the preserving senators.

Under the Roman Empire

At the end of the first century, Octave is essential, and organizes the Roman aristocracy in two levels: the senatorial Order and the equestrian Order of less row, with each one their obligations and their prerogatives. The periodic censuses, carried out now by the emperor, hold up to date and control the manpower of these two kinds.

The Roman conquest sought the agreement with the local elites of the people or the states which passed under the domination or the protectorate of Rome. The old aristocracy of the conquered provinces generally thus remained in place: kinglets of the East, large Jewish priests, bouleutes of the Hellenic cities, chiefs of tribes, etc Another aristocracy developed in the Roman provinces, on the model of the Roman Republic: the magistrates elected in the Municipe S entered at the end of their annual mandate the Curia of their city, are equivalent local of the Roman Senate, from where them name of décurion.

With the apogee of the Roman Empire, the Roman aristocracy forms the following pyramid:

at the top the senatorial Order, with its 900 senators, more and more of provincial origin
the equestrian Order, estimated at approximately 5.000 or 6.000 members
the Order décurional, estimated at approximately 400.000 members, Italian and provincial for a population estimated between 50 and 80 million inhabitants, including approximately 4 to 5 million Roman citizens with.

These orders are not closed, it is possible to rise one with the other, and for an ordinary citizen to return in one of these kinds, for little that it has fortune and the ambition of it.

At the end of the empire, under the Dominat, the difference between senators and knights were erased, do everything part of the aristocracy of the Honestiores .

Early middle ages

Under the ancient Rome, the capacity had an autonomous existence, the imperium which did without one magistrate to the other, then from one emperor to another. The individuals faithful to a capacity, soldiers, administrators of the provinces, lent oath to this permanent capacity whose holder was only one provisional agent.

This continuity is blamed at the Middle Ages, since the warriors lend oath to a person, them king . If this one disappears, the oath is null and void; what is at the origin of a instability of the capacity.

Contrary to an ideology which would let believe a tribal unit, the Germanic Peuples are at the beginning of the Great invasions of the 5th century a confederation of mélées tribes who choose a chief of column . At the time of their sedentarisation, they are brought to to legislate so that social cohesion between people of the territories and army of combatants can be carried out. Between the warriors and the king a dominant Aristocratie is formed whose titles are variable according to the people (example: dux and gastalds for the Lombards). This intermediate caste in formation, gathered around the chief of federate people and with the Roman Empire of Occident by her title of dux , rank military in the Roman administration giving him functions of provincial governor as long as the Empire exists, constitutes the embryo of the medieval nobility, the Vassaux being bound by the liege Hommage.

The titles forward then by their significance, of rex , dux and others (Graf, jarls, khans, lords of the war) towards the medieval meanings of the King S, Duc S, Count S and Marquis and the installation of their heredity.

Old mode

The nobility of the Société of Old Mode prolongs the feudal Régime and adds new rites to him, in particular the arts of court, which sacrilize the difference with the Tiers state.

Since the French revolution

The Republic, it, puts the rights to the pediment of its Déclaration , and cannot integrate this design of the policy. The doctrinary ones are then given the responsability to abuse the term of aristocrat, until the perversion of the original direction.

A restrictive reading (and récupératrice ) of Montesquieu, in its work Of the spirit of the laws published in 1748, could open the way with the aristocrat-noble semantic bringing together. With book III chapter IV heading “Of the principle of the aristocracy”, it judges this type of political organization thus: “The aristocratic government has, by itself, a certain force which the democracy does not have. The noble ones form there a body which, by its prerogative and for its private interest, represses the people (…). ”

Actually, the author of the Lettres Persians describes here a possible deviance as for any political system. He returns well quickly in this same chapter to the essential principle around whose the aristocratic capacities must be built: “Moderation is thus the heart of these governments. I not hear that which is founded on the virtue, that which comes from a cowardice and an idleness of the heart. ”

A little more than forty years before the revolutionary bursting, Montesquieu still joined, in an ultimate fidelity with the ancient direction, the definition given by Aristote of the aristocracy: “(…) government of a small number of men (…) either because the authority is between the hands of more people of good ( sic ), or because they use about it for the largest good of the State and all the members of the company. ”

The galvaudage of the term aristocrat is diffused and systematized at the end of the 18th century. It consists in indicating, like does it Beaumarchais from the pejorative point of view, the partisans of the nobility, then, at the time of the revolutionary actions, the followers of the old mode. Thus a modest cobbler of Valréas, nostalgic of the royalty, it is treated of nob, whereas the Lameth brothers, noble of stock, but elected appointed of left to the constituent Assembly, are cherished like exemplary citizens.

The confusion of the terms and the approximation of the concepts, carried by the dash of an ideological revival, determine the “patriots” in the progressive assimilation of the aristocracy to the hereditary nobility. In the Nuit of August 4th, 1789 the nobility is abolished and the noble word is quite naturally replaced by aristocrat. Ten days later, the ton of confusion is given with a Libelle entitled the discovery of the plot of the aristocrats . In the same register, the citizens entonnent the refrain of That will go, “the aristocrats with the lantern! ” like exorcizing Great fear summer 1789.

This linguistic deviance will be confirmed at the 19th century. The aristocrat is distinguished then by a substantial pageantry: titrate, particle, ground and castle. At the end of the day, the method of qualification retained with exact is opposed that in progress in antiquity: one does not measure any more the intrinsic value of the man, one weighs up his tinsels.

The depreciation of these concepts (aristocrat, aristocracy), still of topicality nowadays, leads the middle finger to vir to see only one folk disuse there, without any philosophical interest, and even less political. The mode in place, that it is censitaire, oligarchical, plutocratic, democratic or, like today, republican with enarchic tendency , seems to cultivate this historical deformation so that, especially, the aristocratic idea cannot seem a better system of government.

See too

Paul Bénichou, " Morals of large the siècle"
Micberth, Revolution droitist , proclamation. ED. Jupilles, 1980.
Vilfredo Pareto in " stages of the sociological thought " , Raymond Aron
Vladimir Volkoff, " Why I would be rather aristocrate"
Loïc Decrauze, libertarian Aristocracy at Léautaud and Micberth, Lorisse, Paris, 1996.

Oligarchy | elite | Nobility | libertarian Aristocrat

External bond

the State and aristocracies in France, in England, and Scotland of XIIe - XVIIe century by Philippe Contaminates.

Simple: Aristocracy

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