Politics: A Treatise on Government
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~100,000 words · 487 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). Politics: A Treatise on Government. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/politics-a-treatise-on-government
- MLAAristotle. Politics: A Treatise on Government. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/politics-a-treatise-on-government.
- ChicagoAristotle. Politics: A Treatise on Government. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/politics-a-treatise-on-government.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Man is a political animal: the study of the polis as the natural form of human life, the kinds of constitution, why regimes fall, and how a citizen is educated.
Context and history
Like the Ethics, which it continues, these are notes from the Lyceum lectures, around 330 BC — and the method is the same: Aristotle's school had gathered the constitutions of 158 cities to study them as a naturalist studies species. Book I contains his defence of 'natural' slavery, which this corpus flags with the corresponding warning: it must be read as what it is, the voice of the fourth century BC. Rediscovered in the thirteenth century, the work supplied the vocabulary — citizen, constitution, democracy, oligarchy — with which Europe still argues about politics.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
good. In so far as men conceive the good rightly they are united. The state represents their common agreement, force their failure to make that agreement complete. The cure, therefore, of political ills is knowledge of the good life, and the statesman is he who has such knowledge, for that alone can give men what they are always seeking. If the state is the organisation of men seeking a common good, power and political position must be given to those who can forward this end. This is the principle expressed in Aristotle's account of political justice, the principle of "tools to those who can use them." As the aim of the state is differently conceived, the qualifications for government will vary. In the ideal state power will be given to the man with most knowledge of the good; in other states to the men who are most truly capable of achieving that end which the citizens have set themselves to pursue. The justest distribution of political power is that in which there is least waste of political ability. Further, the belief that the constitution of a state is only the outward expression of the common aspirations and beliefs of its members, explains the paramount political importance which Aristotle assigns to education. It is the great instrument by which the legislator can ensure that the future citizens of his state will share those common beliefs which make the state possible. The Greeks with their small states had a far clearer apprehension than we can have of the dependence of a constitution upon the people who have to work it. Such is in brief the attitude in which Aristotle approaches political problems, but in working out its application to men and institutions as they are, Aristotle admits certain compromises which are not really consistent with it. 1. Aristotle thinks of membership of a state as community in pursuit of the good.…