Political theory of Aristotle
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- .Turning from the Ethics treatises to their sequel, the Politics, the reader is brought down to earth. “Man is a political animal,” Aristotle observes; human beings are creatures of flesh and blood, rubbing shoulders with each other in cities and communities.
- Like his work in zoology, Aristotle’s political studies combine observation and theory. He and his students documented the constitutions of 158 states—one of which, The Constitution of Athens, has survived on papyrus.
- The aim of the Politics, Aristotle says, is to investigate, on the basis of the constitutions collected, what makes for good government and what makes for bad government and to identify the factors favourable or unfavourable to the preservation of a constitution.
- , aiming at the highest of goods. The most primitive communities are families of men and women, masters and slaves.
- Families combine to make a village, and several villages combine to make a state, which is the first self-sufficient community.
- The state is no less natural than the family; this is proved by the fact that human beings have the power of speech, the purpose of which is “to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.” The foundation of the state was the greatest of benefactions, because only within a state can human beings fulfill their potential.
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