ARISTOTLE - Polítics

Aristotle

Politics

Original Title:

Πολιτικά,Politiká

First Edition

Contents

INTRODUCTION

BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

BOOK FOUR

BOOK FIVE

BOOK SIX

BOOK SEVEN

BOOK EIGHT

INTRODUCTION

Plato and Aristotle in the School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio (1509)

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a philosopher, polymath, and scientist born in the city of Stagira, in northern Ancient Greece. Alongside Plato, he is considered the father of Western philosophy. His ideas have exerted enormous influence on the intellectual history of the West for over two millennia.

He was a disciple of Plato and other thinkers, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus, during the twenty years he spent at the Academy in Athens. Shortly after Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens to become the teacher of Alexander the Great in the Kingdom of Macedonia for nearly 5 years. In the last stage of his life, he founded the Lyceum in Athens, where he taught until a year before his death.

Aristotle wrote about 200 works, of which only those collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum have been preserved (none of them intended for publication), covering a vast array of topics including logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, rhetoric, physics, astronomy, and biology. Aristotle transformed many, if not all, of the areas of knowledge he addressed. He is recognized as the founding father of logic and biology, as while there were previous reflections and writings on both subjects, it is in Aristotle's work where the first systematic investigations are found. Aristotle has also been called the father of political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, critique, individualism, teleology, and meteorology.

Contrary to Platonism, Aristotle developed a philosophy in which experience is the source of knowledge. According to his hylomorphic theory, every sensible entity is a substance composed of matter, which constitutes things, and form, which organizes matter, the latter being its essence. Every substance tends towards a final cause directed by its nature (teleology). According to the philosopher, the human being is a rational animal constituted by body and soul, whose ultimate end is intellectual activity through the exercise of reason, a virtue (areté) inherent to the soul, thus achieving happiness (eudaemonia). Ethical virtues, which are formed through habit, are the mean between two extremes or vices. Humans naturally live in community, thus forming States (polis) in order to preserve the happiness of their citizens. He also defended the value of rhetoric, poetic art, and the superiority of the Greek male.

Among many other contributions, Aristotle formulated the theory of spontaneous generation, the principle of non-contradiction, and the notions of category, substance, unmoved mover, actuality, and potentiality. Some of his ideas, which were innovative for the philosophy of his time, are now part of the common sense of many people. He influenced Islamic thought during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian scholasticism. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.

First Years

Aristotle was born in 384 or 383 BC, during the first year of Olympiad XCIX, in the city of Stagira, present-day Stavros (which is why he is nicknamed the Stagirite), not far from Mount Athos, on the Chalcidice peninsula, then part of the Kingdom of Macedonia (current region of Macedonia in Greece). His father, Nicomachus, belonged to the corporation of the Asclepiads, meaning he practiced medicine and was a physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia, a fact that explains his relationship with the Macedonian royal court, which would have a significant influence on his life. His mother, Phaestis, was from Chalcis and was also connected to the Asclepiads.

During the reign of King Archelaus I of Macedonia, as his father was the physician to King Amyntas III of Macedonia, both resided in Pella, and Aristotle could not stay long in that place, as his parents died when he was still very young, and he probably moved to Atarneus. In 367 BC, when Aristotle was 17 years old, his father died, and he was taken care of by his guardian Proxenus of Atarneus, who sent him to Athens, then an important intellectual center of the Greek world, to study at Plato's Academy. He remained there for twenty years.

Period at the academy

To complete Aristotle's education, Proxenus sent him to Athens to enroll him in the Academy, as his and Plato's fame had already spread throughout the Greek world.

Aristotle met Plato when he was 17 years old and remained at the Academy from 367 or 366 BC to 347 or 346 BC, coinciding with the moment when Plato made his second trip to Sicily. Because Aristotle attended the Academy during its period of greatest splendor, he was able to develop properly. Eudoxus exerted the first decisive influence on Aristotle, as he was able to influence the requirement to save the phenomena, which is to say, find a principle that explained the facts while preserving their genuine mode of presentation. Plato himself called him the reader due to his desire to educate himself through writings rather than orally (as was done at the Academy).

Because Eudoxus's philosophical ideas differed from Platonic philosophy and led to aporias, Aristotle ignored them, but he did associate with Speusippus, Philip of Opus, Erastus, and Coriscus. Both Speusippus and Philip of Opus were heads of the Academy, Heraclides Ponticus directed it when Plato made his third trip to Sicily, Philip published the work Laws, and Erastus and Coriscus associated their names with Aristotle. During this youthful period, he wrote several dialogues and the Protrepticus, a popular exhortation to philosophy addressed to the general public. None of these works have been preserved.

Aristotle probably participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, writing about them: Experience is learning.

Formation of his philosophy

After Plato's death in 347 BC, Aristotle left Athens. Traditional history records that Aristotle left due to his disappointment that the direction of the Academy passed to Plato's nephew, Speusippus, although this is unlikely, as a Macedonian could not inherit Athenian property. It is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato's death.

Aristotle moved to Atarneus and Assos, in Asia Minor, where he lived for approximately three years under the protection of his friend and former Academy companion, Hermias, who was the governor of the city. When Hermias was murdered, Aristotle moved to the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, where he stayed for two years. There, he continued his research with Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos, focusing on zoology and marine biology. Additionally, he married Pythias of Assos, Hermias's niece, with whom he had a daughter of the same name.

Alexander the Great and the Lyceum

Alexander the Great and Aristotle. The philosopher was his intellectual mentor and instilled his knowledge in him during his adolescent years for more than two years. It is considered that these teachings were decisive elements for the objectives that Alexander set for himself. His nephew, Callisthenes, who was his biographer, accompanied him in the campaign against Persia. The letters between Alexander and Aristotle were recorded in the book by Pseudo Callisthenes, The Life and Deeds of Alexander of Macedonia.

In 343 BC, King Philip II of Macedonia summoned Aristotle to tutor his 13-year-old son, who would later become known as Alexander the Great, in the town of Mieza. Aristotle then traveled to Pella, then the capital of the Macedonian empire, and taught Alexander for at least two years until he began his military career. During Aristotle's time at the Macedonian court, he also gave lessons to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.

In 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum (named after being located within an enclosure dedicated to the god Apollo Lyceus).

Unlike the Academy, the Lyceum was not a private school, and many of the classes were public and free. Throughout his life, Aristotle amassed a vast library and a number of followers and researchers, known as the 'peripatetics,' named for their habit of discussing while walking. Most of Aristotle's surviving works are from this period. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. The surviving works are in the form of treaties and were not intended, for the most part, for publication.

During this period, his wife, Pythias, died, and Aristotle began a new relationship with Herpyllis, believed to be, like him, a native of Stagira. Although some suppose she was nothing more than his slave, others deduce from Aristotle's last wishes that she was a free woman and probably his wife at the time of his death. In any case, they had offspring together, including a son, Nicomachus, whom Aristotle named as his father and to whom he dedicated his Nicomachean Ethics.

Although little is known of his physical appearance, Aristotle was described as bald, with short legs, small eyes, stuttering, elegant in dress, and based on his own opinions, lacking ascetic habits. He was a practical man and a careful observer. Of lofty mind and good heart, dedicated to his loved ones, and fair to his rivals. Diogenes Laertius declared that he had a tendency to mockery and cites some expressions that testify to his quick wit.

Death

When Alexander died in 323 BC, Athens likely became an uncomfortable place for the Macedonians, especially for those with Aristotle's connections. It is said that he declared that he saw no reason to let Athens sin twice against philosophy (clear allusion to the condemnation of Socrates). Aristotle left Athens and settled in Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where he strangely died the following year at the age of 61 or 62, in 322 BC, from a disease of the digestive organs. His will was preserved by Diogenes Laertius.

In May 2016, during the international congress Aristotle, 2,400 years held at the University of Thessaloniki, Konstantinos Sismanidis, director of the excavations in the city of Stagira, announced the conclusions of his team of archaeologists about a building discovered in 1996 and now re-examined in the light of two manuscripts that refer to the later transfer of the philosopher's ashes, in a bronze urn, to his hometown. According to them, the building, found inside a later Byzantine fortress, can be nothing but Aristotle's mausoleum, although they clarified that we have no evidence, but very strong indications that approach certainty.

Thought

Aristotle's thought encompasses virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle did philosophy in a broad sense, which he would also describe as science. The use of the term science has a different meaning than that covered by the term scientific method. He distinguishes three types of philosophies, sciences, or knowledge: practical knowledge, which includes ethics and politics; productive knowledge, meaning the study of the arts, including poetics; and theoretical knowledge, purely contemplative as it does not intervene in the object of study, which encompasses physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. Logic and rhetoric do not constitute substantive knowledge for Aristotle.

About Politics

Politics or The Politics, in Latin, is one of Aristotle's most important works.

At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle expresses that the investigation into ethics leads to politics, and therefore the two works are often considered parts of a broader treatise. At the end of the works, Aristotle suggests that politics is a way to maintain society ordered with norms and rules. The title literally means things concerning the polis.

For Aristotle, Politics was not a study of ideal states in abstract form but rather an examination of how ideals, laws, customs, and properties interrelate in real cases. However, Politics is the main work where his political doctrines are found. The library of the Lyceum contained a collection of 158 constitutions, both from Greek and foreign states. Aristotle himself wrote the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, a work that was lost until 1890 when it was recovered. Historians have found in this text very valuable data to reconstruct some phases of Athenian history.

Aristotle's political philosophy is based on five principles:

The principle of teleology: Nature has an end; therefore, humans have a function (a task) to assume.

The principle of perfection: the ultimate good or happiness (eudaimonia) of the human being consists in perfection, in the full realization of their natural function, which he sees as the movement of the soul granted to reason.

The principle of community: The most perfect community is the City-State. Indeed, being neither too large nor too small, it corresponds to human nature and allows for a good life.

The principle of government: The existence and well-being of any system require the presence of a governing element.

The principle of the rule of reason: Like Plato, Aristotle believes that the non-rational part of man should be governed by the rational part.

POLITICS BY ARISTOTLE

BOOK ONE

SECTION 1

Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects. For example, the ruler over a few is called a master; over more, the manager of a household; over a still larger number, a statesman or king, as if there were no difference between a great household and a small state. The distinction which is made between the king and the statesman is as follows: When the government is personal, the ruler is a king; when, according to the rules of the political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn, then he is called a statesman.

But all this is a mistake; for governments differ in kind, as will be evident to anyone who considers the matter according to the method which has hitherto guided us. As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether any scientific result can be attained about each one of them.

SECTION 2

He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them. In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves), and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved. For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest. Now nature has distinguished between the female and the slave.

For she is not niggardly, like the smith who fashions the Delphian knife for many uses; she makes each thing for a single use, and every instrument is best made when intended for one and not for many uses. But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say, It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians; as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one.

Out of these two relationships between man and woman, master and slave, the first thing to arise is the family, and Hesiod is right when he says,

First house and wife and an ox for the plough,

for the ox is the poor man's slave. The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas 'companions of the cupboard,' and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions of the manger.' But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be suckled 'with the same milk.' And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came together, as the barbarians still are. Every family is ruled by the eldest, and therefore in the colonies of the family the kingly form of government prevailed because they were of the same blood. As Homer says:

Each one gives law to his children and to his wives.

For they lived dispersedly, as was the manner in ancient times. Wherefore men say that the Gods have a king, because they themselves either are or were in ancient times under the rule of a king. For they imagine, not only the forms of the Gods, but their ways of life to be like their own.

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the Tribeless, lawless, heartless one, whom Homer denounces -- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.

Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends.

Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

SECTION 3

Seeing then that the state is made up of households, before speaking of the state we must speak of the management of the household. The parts of household management correspond to the persons who compose the household, and a complete household consists of slaves and freemen. Now we should begin by examining everything in its fewest possible elements; and the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. We have therefore to consider what each of these three relations is and ought to be: I mean the relation of master and servant, the marriage relation (the conjunction of man and wife has no name of its own), and thirdly, the procreative relation (this also has no proper name). And there is another element of a household, the so-called art of getting wealth, which, according to some, is identical with household management, according to others, a principal part of it; the nature of this art will also have to be considered by us.

Let us first speak of master and slave, looking to the needs of practical life and also seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present. For some are of opinion that the rule of a master is a science, and that the management of a household, and the mastership of slaves, and the political and royal rule, as I was saying at the outset, are all the same. Others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is therefore unjust.

SECTION 4

Property is a part of the household, and the art of acquiring property is a part of the art of managing the household; for no man can live well, or indeed live at all, unless he be provided with necessaries. And as in the arts which have a definite sphere the workers must have their own proper instruments for the accomplishment of their work, so it is in the management of a household. Now instruments are of various sorts; some are living, others lifeless; in the rudder, the pilot of a ship has a lifeless, in the look-out man, a living instrument; for in the arts the servant is a kind of instrument. Thus, too, a possession is an instrument for maintaining life. And so, in the arrangement of the family, a slave is a living possession, and property a number of such instruments; and the servant is himself an instrument which takes precedence of all other instruments. For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

Here, however, another distinction must be drawn; the instruments commonly so called are instruments of production, whilst a possession is an instrument of action. The shuttle, for example, is not only of use; but something else is made by it, whereas of a garment or of a bed there is only the use. Further, as production and action are different in kind, and both require instruments, the instruments which they employ must likewise differ in kind. But life is action and not production, and therefore the slave is the minister of action. Again, a possession is spoken of as a part is spoken of; for the part is not only a part of something else, but wholly belongs to it; and this is also true of a possession.

The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.

SECTION 5

But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

And there are many kinds both of rulers and subjects (and that rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects -- for example, to rule over men is better than to rule over wild beasts; for the work is better which is executed by better workmen, and where one man rules and another is ruled, they may be said to have a work); for in all things which form a composite whole and which are made up of parts, whether continuous