The Primacy of Civic Life: Aristotle’s Critique of Hippodamus

Abstract

This article contributes to ongoing debates between political scientists and the burgeoning civic education reform movement over the nature and goals of political inquiry and the need for a careful analysis of political methodology. To do so, this article draws on and explicates Aristotle’s criticisms of Hippodamus to show the dangers of privileging legibility and quantifiability over the common experiences of civic life, which includes normative considerations of good and bad and right and wrong. Ultimately, we argue that Aristotle provides a model for inquiring into the nature of political life that is conscious of civic responsibility and which offers a strong justification for continued civic education reform. Along the way, we contribute to ongoing discussions about the potentially positive relationship between liberal and civic education by connecting the civic education movement to modern theorizing about virtue politics.

1. Introduction

Political Science is at a crossroads. Aside from dwindling success in effecting policy change or accurately predicting political trends (Rettig 2019; Avey and Desch 2014), the discipline is plagued by heated foundational debates (Ceasar 2011; Sayer 2011; Kleinerman and Reising 2025). Both problems can in part be traced to the same root: how the discipline shifted its manner of studying political phenomena in the wake of the behavioralist revolution, a shift that aimed to make scholarship on politics more scientific by making it value-free. As behavioralist scholars have come to dominate American political science departments, they have also become increasingly concerned with empirical studies at the expense of other methodological approaches, most especially normative, qualitative, and historically informed but theoretically grounded approaches to studying political phenomena. Or, as George Thomas puts it, an overemphasis on empirically verifiable hypotheses combined with a privileging of value-free scholarship has lead scholars “to downplay the importance of ideas” in political life and the discipline (Thomas 2011, p. 281).

What is to be done? On one hand, some behavioralists have recognized the varied problems facing the discipline and have begun to raise the alarm (Munck and Verkuilen 2002). John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt have argued that “more attention should be devoted to theory development and [behavioralist] hypothesis testing should be tied more closely to theory” (Mearsheimer and Walt 2013, p. 430). Founding members of the behavioralist school had, after all, warned that if behavioralists become too concerned with empirical pursuits then they might inadvertently reduce themselves (and the field) to irrelevance (Dahl 1961, p. 772; cf. Kuhn 2012). Other friendly critics have taken a different approach and warned that the empirical study of politics may not be as objective as it aims to be. For example, Christian Bay has argued that underneath modern methodological claims about scholarly objectivity are certain unquestioned values that are (consciously or unconsciously) held to be universally good or at least worthy of pragmatic promotion (Bay 1965, p. 44).

On the other hand, a new group of scholars have argued that the best path forward is not to merely encourage behavioralists to study theory (an approach that would still to some extent maintain the predominance and primacy of behavioralist and empirical studies). Instead, these scholars have argued for the creation of an entirely new field capable of synthesizing multiple disciplines and incorporating diverse methodologies to study political phenomena from a different and, as they argue, far more salutary point of view. This new field focuses on the study of civic thought and as Benjamin and Jenna Storey have argued it takes an interdisciplinary approach “to understand everything within the citizen’s domain of competence, which is nothing less than the whole of human life, insofar as every part of that whole may be touched by politics” (Storey and Storey 2023, p. 4). By placing the citizen (or the human being) back at the center of our political investigations, civics promises to be, in the words of Justin Dyer, an “antidote to the cynicism that reduces everything to power and to the nihilism that seeks only to subvert and tear down. Its aim is to secure a prosperous future by preserving and building upon the wisdom of the past” (Dyer 2024; see also Carrese 2024; Cooper 2024).

Though the solutions diverge between these two groups, the same concerns that have been raised by political scientists have also been echoed by proponents of the burgeoning civics movement. James Stoner, for example, argues that

Contemporary social science, aiming to establish objective laws or patterns of human behavior, suggests [that knowledge of the end and means are distinct]. In theory, the social scientist explains how the world works, which presumably allows policymakers to engineer society in accordance with their own policy values. In reality, social scientists sometimes play both roles: A scientist may aim for perfect objectivity in an analysis, then switch hats and use the supposedly neutral findings as tools for a favored cause.

(Stoner 2025, p. 85)

The issue is that contemporary political science research tends to claim neutrality and objectivity while also (perhaps unknowingly) promoting certain values, commonly in favor of democracy, liberalism, or even progressivism (compare Lake 2011 and Nau 2011). In short, rather than allowing political scientists to transcend values, the pursuit of empirical clarity has tended to obscure and blind researchers to the important and inescapable role that values play within political life and our scholarship.

There are also important parallels between the burgeoning civics movement, which aims to “cultivate the capacity for taking joint responsibility” within citizens (Storey and Storey 2023, p. 6), and James Hankins’ recent recovery of what he calls virtue politics. For Hankins, the central tenant of virtue politics is that “soulcraft is prior to statecraft” (Hankins 2019, pp. 504–6). Ryan Balot, another proponent of virtue politics, has recently argued that “classical virtue politics” should “be our chief touchstone for the exploration of virtue politics,” since it “has greater power to contribute to virtue theory today” (Balot 2022, p. 140; Balot 2009). Adam MacLeod has similarly suggested that ancient authors, most especially Aristotle, can provide helpful frameworks for thinking through the relationship between civic life and public discourse (MacLeod 2024; cf. McBrayer 2024). All of these scholars—much like the civics education movement—aim to bring considerations of virtue, habit, customs, and norms back into the heart of our political discourse, despite the fact (or, rather, precisely because) these features of political life can be discussed but not easily quantified.

In this article, we build on the work of MacLeod and other Aristotle scholars (Tessitore 2002; MacIntyre 2007; Sebell 2016; Nichols 2023; Duff 2025) by turning to another principle within the Aristotelian corpus that we believe will prove equally fruitful: the prioritization of the particulars of politics over and above the methods (quantitative or otherwise) that we necessarily employ in our studies. To borrow the language of James C. Scott, we argue that Aristotle can help us to see how the complex and often messy realities of political life cannot be forced to conform to a system of mathematical perfection simply for the sake of achieving perfect scholarly legibility or objectivity (Scott 1998, 2017). Because Aristotle illustrates that the best assessments of politics must keep the complexities and particulars of human life in focus, we argue that his treatment of mathematical perfection in the Politics can serve as a much-needed mirror for today’s scholars and a useful companion for those hoping to reform political science and bolster civic education.

At stake, however, is more than just a minor correction of a scholarly epistemological mistake. Aristotle warns that a political science that does not examine, understand, and place proper limits on its operating methodology could inadvertently wreak havoc on civic life. He thereby presents us a political science that is conscious of civic responsibility, or one that eschews schemes to achieve perfect legibility and instead privileges the realities civic life in order to promote the common good.

We begin by explicating Aristotle’s three criticisms of the ancient political philosopher Hippodamus (a thinker whom Aristotle characterizes as obsessed with applying mathematical precision to the study of politics) to explain why political science must understand itself as a distinct discipline not reducible to other disciplines such as mathematics. We then connect these criticisms of Hippodamus’ use of mathematical precision with Aristotle’s concerns about the dangers of innovation in politics. We conclude by exploring Aristotle’s warning about the un-reflective pursuit of innovation that may be engendered by an overly scientific approach to the study of politics. We argue that Aristotle helps us to see that if political experts want to help make political life better, then they must prioritize civic responsibility above their commitment to either methodological perfection or ideological advancement.

2. The First and Second Criticism: A Politics of Perfection

In the second book of Politics, Aristotle offers a consideration of the relationship between the study of politics and mathematics through the fifth century philosopher Hippodamus of Miletus. According to Aristotle, Hippodamus holds a special place in history for being the first non-practitioner political expert, meaning that he was the first to theorize about government without engaging in politics himself. In this regard Hippodamus bears a striking resemblance to many of today’s political scientists, who have little hands-on experience with politics yet inquire into the inner workings of the state—so much so that some scholars have dubbed him the forefather of political science (T. L. Pangle 2013, p. 84). And though Aristotle—who wrote with the Ancient Greek gentlemen in mind (Tessitore 1996; Salem 2010)—was never himself a practitioner of politics, he still offers several sharp criticisms of Hippodamus’ approach to studying political life.

Aristotle’s first criticism of Hippodamus is striking because it seems out of character for the ancient philosopher, so much so that some scholars have called it “unusual” (Lockwood 2015, p. 73). Aristotle goes out of his way to insult, denigrate, and make fun of Hippodamus’ personal character, despite knowing that such comments constitute an ad hominem and have no bearing on the accuracy of Hippodamus’ political expertise. Aristotle describes Hippodamus as

the son of Euryphon, of Miletus, who invented the division of cities and laid out Piraeus—and who was extraordinary in other aspects of his life through ambition, so that he seemed to some to live in a rather overdone manner, with long hair and expensive ornaments, and furthermore with cheap and warm clothing which he wore not only in the winter but also in summer weather, and who wished to be learned with regard to nature as a whole—was the first of those not engaged in politics to undertake to give an account of the best regime.

(Pol. 1267b22–29)

Scholars like Michael Davis have taken this ad hominem as an indication that Aristotle views politics as a kind of joke, or something lowly, irrational, and to be studied only ironically (Davis 1996, pp. 36–43). Others, such as Thomas Pangle, have simply argued that Aristotle’s portrait is meant to acknowledges that there “is something preposterous, morally as well as intellectually, about someone who would claim to articulate the standards for politics without himself being experienced in, or taking responsibility for, any actual politics” (T. L. Pangle 2013, p. 84), especially when that person is found to have “shoehorned political life into a framework borrowed from natural science” (p. 85).

We disagree with Davis’ reading of this passage, which presents politics as lowly. We likewise break from Pangle’s view, though we do not deny the plausibility of his interpretation. Instead, we see Aristotle’s criticism of Hippodamus’ character as a stand-in or proxy for his larger critique of all political methodologies that prioritize or uncritically borrow mathematical or scientific principles without concern for the health of a civic community. We thereby follow Peter Simpson and argue that Aristotle’s ad hominin attacks are connected to his deeper criticism of Hippodamus’ political expertise (P. Simpson 1998, p. 104). In short, we think Aristotle’s ad hominem was meant to be arresting and that it forces the reader to confront a problem at the heart of all political inquiry: the mixed, sometimes conflicting, and all too political motivations that motivate any and all inquirers to begin the study of politics in the first place.

Consider the way Aristotle’s ad hominem invites us to think about politics by studying the character of those who commonly examine political life. Aristotle describes Hippodamus as a man overly concerned with appearances and fashion, so much so that he wore his favorite set of warm clothes regardless of the season, always sported long hair, and always wore expensive jewelry. Aristotle thereby suggests that Hippodamus was a man deeply interested in or even obsessed with universality, unchangeability, orderliness, and appearance, even to the point of privileging these attributes over practical utility and his own comfort. Aristotle also suggests that Hippodamus was motivated by “ambition,” meaning that behind Hippodamus’ motivation for studying politics was a desire for distinction and not merely a concern for the truth. Most interesting, however, is the way that these personal attacks set the stage for Aristotle’s second and more substantive critique of Hippodamus’ proposed political reforms, which privilege numerical and geometrical perfection over and above practical realities.

Aristotle’s second critique hinges on an implicit suggestion that Hippodamus was a Pythagorean (Lord 2013, 42n62). Aside from the fact that Hippodamus made his name as a city planner who “divided” cities (or in the Greek, katatemnein, which implies the laying of streets in a perfect grid-like pattern), he also attempted to make all politics conform to the number three (Gorman 1995; cf. Mazza 2009; Burns 1976). His ideal regime would have divided the citizens into artisans, farmers, and soldiers (Pol. 1267b31–2), the city’s territory into sacred, public, and private (Pol. 1267b33–4), the laws into hubristic, injurious, and mortal (Pol. 1267b36–8), and even the public affairs into those that are common, those regarding foreigners, and the needs of orphans (Pol. 1268a12–13). Aristotle offers a strong criticism of each of these divisions, suggesting that the citizens of Hippodamus’ city would become “virtually slaves” of the military class (Pol. 1268a2021; but see also Dinneen 2015), that the division of land would fail to provide for the military class unless they imported foreign slaves (Pol. 1268a38–1278b4), and that the pristine angles and grid-like nature of his city planning would remove all defensible positions from the city if it were ever attacked (Pol. 1330b24–27).

Hippodamus’ insistence that political phenomena must be divided up in terms of threes indicates that he was a Pythagorean, and that his Pythagoreanism informed his political inquiry. In De Caelo, after all, Aristotle explains that “the Pythagoreans say [that] the world and all that is in it is determined by the number three, since beginning and middle and end give the number of an ‘all’, and the number they give is the triad” (Cael. 268a11; see also Atack 2015, 304n25; Vamvacas 2009, pp. 72–73). (The reason for this is because the number three is the only number equal to the sum of all the numbers that precede it, since the only numbers preceding three are one and two.) Or as Aristotle explains elsewhere, the Pythagoreans were the first to take up and promote the “mathematical things,”

and having been reared on them, they supposed that the sources of them were the sources of all things. And since number are by nature primary among these, and in them they thought they saw many similarities to the things that are and come to be, more so than in fire or earth or water—that such-and-such an attribute of numbers was justice, so-and-so is soul or intellect, another one due measure, and likewise with, one might say, everything…since then the entire nature of the other things seemed to be after the likeness of numbers, and the numbers seemed to be primary things in all nature they assumed that all the elements of numbers were the elements of all things.

(Met. 985b24–986a2)

Hence, either Hippodamus’ obsession with universality, unchangeability, appearance, and orderliness is derived from his commitment to Pythagoreanism, or his natural obsession with these qualities drew him to accept Pythagorean theory.

Either way, Aristotle’s criticism of Hippodamus is interesting because it serves as an analysis of what happens when the desire to obtain perfect and universal legibility is given more weight than the study of the particularity of politics, especially the particularity of the political opinions held by the citizenry. Put another way, Hippodamus’ theory promises a means for studying politics that is as accurate and reliable as geometry, but it does so at the expense of the real complexity of the political phenomena under examination insofar as it assumes that the only legitimate and trustworthy conclusions about politics are those that can be numerically validated or tested.

3. The Third Criticism: Innovation or Tradition?

Aristotle’s treatment of Hippodamus, however, extends further than a critique of potential epistemological mistakes. His third and most biting criticism concerns a seemingly peripheral law promoted by Hippodamus that would honor political innovators, or “those who discover something advantageous for the city” (Pol. 1268a8). Aristotle warns that no matter how beneficial such a policy may appear, laws that reward innovation ultimately threaten political stability and may even cause “changes of regime” (Pol. 1268b22–26). And though Aristotle presents this analysis of political innovation as a “different investigation” from his consideration of Hippodamus’ plan for ordering the city (Pol. 1268b27–28), he ultimately attributes both errors to the same methodological source. Though Aristotle’s investigation into political reform may initially seem like a tangent, we argue that Aristotle uses this criticism to provide a probing assessment into the ways that methodological commitments can subconsciously shape our political commitments.

According to Aristotle, unquestioned belief in the beneficial nature of progress arises from the assumption that the study of politics is no different than any other art or science. Since progress, as Aristotle explains,

has been advantageous, at any rate, in the other sciences—medicine, for example, has changed from its traditional ways, and gymnastic, and the arts and the capacities generally, so that as political expertise too is to be regarded as one of these, it is clear that the same must necessarily hold concerning [the changing of traditional laws] as well.

(Pol. 1268b33–37)

Since, as some assert, politics ought to operate in the same manner as every other science, the assumption of many political experts is that they should act as if they could discover constitutional or legal reforms that might contribute to or improve political life. The mistake, according to Aristotle, can be traced to a category error (A.Po. 75a38–39), or the assumption that the principles or truths of one field can be coopted by those investigating politics without issue.

The real problem with Hippodamus’ desire for innovation, however, is that it fails to take into account the often complex and potentially nonrational nature of political life. Or, as Mary Nichols explains it,

[For Aristotle,] laws are not obeyed simply because they are reasonable. Hippodamus’s proposal for honoring novelty suggests that politics can be reduced to reason: a change in law or custom, if reasonable, should be acceptable. He may have tried to find an outlet for the desire for honor and hence a central place for individuality within regimes, but he ignored the particularity of human life in another way… [namely,] the nonrational roots of a people’s deference to its laws.

(Nichols 1992, p. 43)

The nonrational roots for deference to law are derived, as Aristotle explains, from the fact that a “change in an art is not like change in law; for law has not strength with respect to obedience apart from habit, and this is not created except over a period of time” (Pol. 1269a20–22). Put another way, the problem is that the “essential spiritual habituation in reverence is inevitably shaken by public questioning of the justice and wisdom of existing laws, especially if that questioning promotes changes in the laws, and still more grave, change in the constitutional regime” (T. L. Pangle 2013, p. 8). Worse yet, Aristotle singles out democracies (because of their unique commitment to freedom) as the kind of regime most susceptible to decaying into lawlessness and the vice of licentiousness (Pol. 1292a5–20 and 1310a25–35; Polansky 2023).

In regard to the political expert, however, what is most striking about Aristotle’s consideration of innovation is that he links the adoption of a purely scientific approach to studying politics with a specific political attitude, and, worse yet, an attitude that he considers to be dangerous. Aristotle’s analysis of Hippodamus’ law honoring political innovation ultimately issues in a warning that the desire to understand politics with mathematical precision itself creates potentially unrecognized assumptions about the possibility of perfecting those political institutions. The quest to improve politics gives rise to the potentially dangerous consideration that the “ancient ordinances” of the city are “altogether silly” (Pol. 1268b40). And though Aristotle admits that this might be true, such an attitude obscures the fact that political examinations, insofar as they are examinations, are necessarily written in a “universal fashion,” even though politics deals with “actions” that necessarily “concern particulars” (1269a10–15). In short, the expert comes to value their improvements on the ancient laws as simply good without recognizing that the benefits derived from laws are necessarily qualified to time and place. This means that, far from allowing the political expert to rise above ideological or partisan disputes, a dogged commitment to the scientific study of politics inadvertently engenders certain partisan sympathies.

Given his criticism of Hippodamus’ promotion of innovation, Aristotle’s approach to political science might seem conservative or traditionalist, and some scholars have gone so far as to label him as such (Rogers 2023). Another group of scholars, however, has argued that Aristotle’s true aim in the Politics is to avoid “the defects while retaining the merits of” both conservative and the progressive views (P. Simpson 1998, p. 109; T. L. Pangle 2013, pp. 9–10; Bartlett 1999, p. 297). After all, Aristotle openly admits that there are strong arguments on both sides of the staged debate (Bates 2002; Burger 2008) over political innovation (1268b35–1269a5) and conservation (1269a5–15; cf. 1286a10–12). We build on these latter scholars and argue that Aristotle’s criticism of Hippodamus actually point to a more moderate, middle path that privileges neither progressive nor conservative (or neither revolutionary nor traditionalist) views. Instead of adhering to either a perfect methodology or a partisan ideology, Aristotle places the civic health of a political community as the ultimate and primary consideration—even going so far as to suggest that the norms, aims, and ordinary opinions that make up civic life must be the starting point of any inquiry into politics (L. S. Pangle 2020, pp. 4–5).

Instead of blindly supporting innovation or uncritically promoting tradition, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of habits and norms in political life, even those habits and norms that are nonrational, unquantifiable, and defy analyzable legibility in the eyes of scientifically rigorous scholars (Wells 2025, pp. 34–35). But more than that, Aristotle reminds us that our habits and our politics are, as Balot notes, inseparable from one another, meaning that a change in one can lead to a change in the other (Balot 2022, p. 147). And on this point, Aristotle’s contention applies just as much to today’s politics as it did to ancient Athens. Scholars still recognize, for example, that steady political habits are the foundation of trust in political life, the very trust that our institutions depend on for their continued operation (T. W. Simpson 2017, p. 28; T. W. Simpson 2019, pp. 422–24). Hankins even goes so far as to call these habits “a kind of preventive medicine for the body politic,” and one that may “be more necessary [to cultivate] today than it ever has been” (Hankins 2019, p. 505). Harvey Mansfield similarly notes that it is more “necessary to behavioralize the formal” than “to formalize the behavioral so as to adjust the form to the facts” (Mansfield 2020, p. 563). By striking a middle path between innovation and preservation, Aristotle presents a view of politics that encompasses the reality of civic life and the hopes of the political expert. Or, as Susan Collins argues, “Aristotle’s care in presenting the full scope of politics—its heights as well as its necessities—reflects the seriousness and greatness of political life while moderating the good citizen’s highest hopes regarding its possibilities” (Collins 2006, p. 177).

4. The Primacy of Civic Life in Aristotle’s Thought

Ultimately, the issue that Aristotle’s three criticisms of Hippodamus illuminates for us is that only certain aspects of politics—and in most cases, not even the most crucial aspects—admit mathematical precision. For Aristotle, this is because all politics depend on human choice (Nichols 1992, p. 36), which means that the primary intellectual capacity needed to understand political life is not an art or a science, but rather the intellectual virtue of prudence (Ruderman 1997; N.E. 1140b1–6). Prudence, unlike art or science, is not merely a habit of reason. For Aristotle, prudence is the conjunction of an intellectual habit along with right desire, meaning that prudence—unlike the skills of an art or the knowledge that contributes to a science—is not easily forgotten once acquired (N.E. 1140b28–30).

The difference between art and prudence is one reason why Aristotle concludes, shortly after his consideration of Hippodamus, that “it is impossible for everything [in politics and law] to be written down precisely; for it is necessary to write them in universal fashion, while actions concern particulars” (Pol. 1269a10–12). Notably, Aristotle here suggests that the very act of offering an account of particulars—regardless of whether that act be for the sake of creating a law or explaining a scholarly riddle—necessarily distorts the particulars of politics, since language lends itself to universal statements. Or, as Aristotle had said at the outset of his consideration of the human things more generally in Nicomachean Ethics,

it would certainly be desirable enough, then, if one who speaks about and on the basis of such things demonstrate the truth roughly and in outline, and if, in speaking about and on the basis of things that are for the most part so, one draw conclusions of that sort as well. For it belongs to an educated person to seek out precision in each genus to the extent that the nature of the matter allows: to accept persuasive speech from a skilled mathematician appears comparable to demanding demonstrations from a skilled rhetorician.

(N.E. 1094b20–26)

Hence, the only hope for solving this difficulty is in recognizing and abiding by the natural limits of speech and political inquiry, not in attempting to forcibly overcome them by means of a new methodology.

Importantly, however, Aristotle does not claim that inquiry into political life is pointless, as Davis suggests, nor does he think that the tools of mathematical or scientific inquiry (such as division, definition, or abstraction) are entirely useless for the study of politics. Aristotle believes that political inquiry is possible. Yet his criticism of Hippodamus highlights the need to begin any study of politics with an examination of the particulars, which includes the common opinions held about the good, the just, and the happy life within one’s political community. In short, Aristotle argues that the study of politics must prioritize political things (which includes normative claims) over and above the tools it employs. Hippodamus’ issue was that he prioritized the tools or the method over the object of his investigation, a mistake which meant that he failed to understand either.

5. Conclusions

While recognizing the need for political innovation, Aristotle’s critique of Hippodamus shows that political science must embody some amount of reverence if those citizens educated in politics are to maintain a sense of civic attachment. Put another way, if political expertise is to be useful rather than harmful, then innovation, advancement, and progress must work within the confines of civic responsibility and even prudentially privilege the opinions and habits necessary for a healthy civic life over the merely speculative systems of scholarship and theory. Such a reverential approach not only increases the likelihood that the advancements discovered by the political expert will be salutary but also ensures that the citizens will come to accept and view those advancements as their own—as an extension of their political way of life and not as something forcibly grafted onto it.

Ultimately, Aristotle’s hesitancy regarding reckless political innovation highlights an important distinction between the study of politics and the other arts and sciences. Civic responsibility and a concern for the common good, Aristotle suggests, must always remain at the center of our political considerations. And given the all-too-common criticism that modern political science has lost touch with the political phenomenon it claims to study, we think that a modest reorientation along these Aristotelian lines would prove fruitful for both the discipline and the health of our own civic life. In other words, Aristotle helps us to see the truth that the discipline of political science, as Jan Mansbridge put it, has “a mandate to help… human beings govern [themselves]” (Mansbridge 2014, p. 8).