Politics (Aristotle)
Politics is a work of political philosophy by Aristotle, a 4th-century BC Greek philosopher.
At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle declared that the inquiry into ethics leads into a discussion of politics. The two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatiseor perhaps connected lecturesdealing with the "philosophy of human affairs". In Aristotle's hierarchical system of philosophy he considers politics, the study of communities, to be of higher priority than ethics, which concerns individuals.
The title of Politics literally means "the things concerning the πόλις ", and is the origin of the modern English word politics. As Aristotle explains, this is understood by him to be a study of how people should best live together in communitiesthe polis being seen by him as the best and most natural community for humans.
The history of Greek city-states, their wars and intrigues and political churning, was well-documented. In addition to such documentation, Aristotle pursued a research project of collecting 158 constitutions of various city-states in order to examine them for their strong and weak points. This evidence-based, descriptive approach to the study of politics was a hallmark of Aristotle's method, and a contrast with the more idealistic from-first-principles approach of Plato, as seen for example in the Republic.
As with the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics is not a polished work as Aristotle would have written it for publication. There are various theories about the text which has come down to us. It may have been assembled from a set of shorter works on certain political themes, combined with or interlaced with his marginal notes or with the notes taken by those who attended his Lyceum lectures.
Political context
Aristotle was Macedonian. He attended Plato's Academy in Athens for about twenty years. He returned to Macedonia for a while, in part to tutor a young Alexander the Great, and then went back to Athens to found his own school, the Lycaeum. Though he spent most of his life and career in Athens, he was never an Athenian citizen, but more of a resident alien, with few political rights. Indeed, throughout his life, he was never a fully-fledged citizen of any Greek polis.Citizenship in Greek city-states was usually limited to a minority of adult males. It included more responsibilities than the more passive matter-of-fact citizenship that is typical today. And it usually assumed that those who were citizens shared common goals, a common outlook, and a mutual interest in the success of the polis.
Greece was divided politically into territories ruled by many independent city-states. These often formed alliances and sometimes centrally-governed confederations. Some developed colonies, both as ways of finding new agricultural land and as ways of giving a restive underclass something to do at some distance from the ruling class.
There is a reference in the Politics to the assassination of Philip II of Macedon, which happened in 336 BC. So we know that at least some of the work was composed after the expansion of the Macedonian kingdom under Philip II which resulted in its dominion over Athens and much of the rest of Greece, subordinating Greece's many city-states to a foreign empire.
As a Macedonian and tutor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle was well-placed to be in the good graces of the political leadership of his time, until Athens challenged Macedonian power towards the end of Aristotle's life, and he went into exile from Athens to avoid the possibility of being attacked by anti-Macedonian Athenians.
Overview
Structure
Aristotle's Politics is divided into eight books, which are each further divided into chapters. Citations of this work, as with the rest of the works of Aristotle, are often made by referring to the Bekker section numbers. Politics spans the Bekker sections 1252a to 1342b.Book I
In the first book, Aristotle discusses the city or "political community" in comparison with other types of communities and partnerships such as the household, the master/slave relationship, and the village.The highest form of community is the polis. Aristotle comes to this conclusion because he believes the public life is far more virtuous than the private and because "man is by nature a political animal". He begins with the relationship between the city and man, and then specifically discusses the household.
He takes issue with the view that political rule, kingly rule, and rule over a household or village are only different in size, but rule over slaves was a different kind of rule. He then examines in what way the city may be said to be natural. He concludes that "the state is a creation of nature":
Aristotle discusses the parts of the household, which includes slaves. He considers whether slavery can ever be just and better for the person enslaved or is always unjust and bad. He distinguishes between those who are slaves because the law says they are and those who are slaves by nature, saying the inquiry hinges on whether there are any such natural slaves.
Only someone as different from other people as the body is from the soul or beasts are from human beings would be a slave by nature, Aristotle concludes, all others being slaves solely by law or convention. Some scholars have therefore concluded that the qualifications for natural slavery preclude the existence of such a being.
Aristotle then moves to the question of property in general, arguing that the acquisition of property does not form a part of household management and criticizing those who engage in excessive chrematistics. Wealth accumulation is necessary to a point, but that does not make it a part of household management any more than it makes medicine a part of household management just because health is necessary.
He criticizes income based upon trade and upon interest, saying that those who become avaricious do so because they forget that money merely symbolizes wealth without being wealth, and that interest is "contrary to nature" because it increases by itself not through exchange.
Book I concludes with Aristotle's assertion that the proper object of household rule is the virtuous character of one's wife and children, not the management of slaves or the acquisition of property. Rule over the slaves is despotic, rule over children kingly, and rule over one's wife political. Aristotle questions whether it is sensible to speak of the "virtue" of a slave and whether the "virtues" of a wife and children are the same as those of a man. He thinks that such people have their own sort of virtues, though not the same set as those of free men, and that even to the extent that they have virtues with the same names as those of free men, they mean somewhat different things.
Book II
Book II examines various views concerning the best regime. It opens with an analysis of the regime presented in Plato's Republic. Aristotle maintains that, contrary to Plato's assertions, communal share of property between the guardians will increase rather than decrease dissensions, and sharing of wives and children will destroy natural affection. He concludes that common sense is against this arrangement for good reason, and claims that experiment shows it to be impractical. He next analyzes the regime presented in Plato's Laws. Aristotle then discusses the systems presented by two other philosophers, Phaleas of Chalcedon and Hippodamus of Miletus.After addressing regimes invented by theorists, Aristotle moves to the examination of three existing regimes that were commonly held to be well managed. These are the Spartan, Cretan, and Carthaginian. The book concludes with some observations on regimes and legislators, and on the reforms of Solon in Athens.
Book III
Aristotle considers citizenship and who counts as a citizen. He asserts that a citizen is anyone who is "entitled to participate in office, deliberative or judicial". This excludes honorary citizens, resident aliens, slaves, women, foreigners even if they have some access to the legal system through commercial treaties, boys too young for military service, or people who have been exiled or stripped of their citizenship. Aristotle is also doubtful about whether citizenship should extend to the banausos or working classes.He next considers what sort of entity a state is, whether it is a single thing, and under what circumstances it can be considered to have changed or, alternatively, to have been supplanted by a new state. He then turns to the question of how the virtues of a person qua person line up with the virtues of a person qua citizen: where they are coincident and where they may differ.
Next, Aristotle classifies varieties of constitution, in their good and bad forms.
| who rules? | good form | bad form |
| one person | monarchy | tyranny |
| few people | aristocracy | oligarchy |
| many people | polity / timocracy | democracy |
"The state is an association intended to enable its members, in their households and the kinships, to live well," says Aristotle, "its purpose is a perfect and self-sufficient life." So what is important is not so much who has the power, but whether that power is deployed skillfully toward that end. Political organizations based on equality of power, or on power distributed proportionally to wealth or nobility, are at best approximations to this. Ideally, those who contribute most to the association of people living together for the sake of noble action are entitled to a larger share of state authority. Justice means more than just conformity to constitutional norms; whatever destroys the health of society is not just, even if it was accomplished legally.
In chapter 11, Aristotle explains the wisdom of the crowd phenomenon: "t is possible that the many, no one of whom taken singly is a sound man, may yet, taken all together, be better than the few, not individually but collectively." This is one argument for letting a broad base of people engage in political decision-making even though none of them are individually particularly qualified to do so.
He argues against the idea that extraordinarily virtuous people ought to be given the reins of the state. Rather, "such men we must take not to be part of the state... there is no law that embraces men of that calibre: they are themselves law." Indeed, a wise state might be better off showing such people the door so that they do not become sources of political instability.
Finally, he returns to his division of varieties of constitution, and begins to analyze them in greater detail, beginning with varieties of monarchy/tyranny.
He also explores the idea that there is a sort of natural lifecycle of states: A state begins when it is founded by an outstanding individual, capable of conferring benefits on others, who becomes the monarch. As more people of good character emerge in the state, they begin to agitate for more political power, and an aristocracy emerges. But corruption then sets in as the aristocracy leverages their political power over the commons for economic gain. Oligarchy sets in, followed by tyranny, and then democracy, such that "one might say that it is hard to avoid having a democratic constitution."