IX. Politics

Aristotle's politics is the coronation of his moral teaching. If the end of man is his moral perfection, he needs the aid of his fellow creatures in order to attain conservation and perfection. Hence the definition of man as a political animal, who is ordained by nature to the polis, the state.

This natural tendency to live with his fellow men first brings about the organization of an imperfect society, the family, which chronologically and historically precedes the state as the parts precede the whole.

According to Aristotle, and contrary to Plato, the family is natural to man, and private property is necessary for the family. The family is composed of four elements:

children wife goods slaves

The head of the family, naturally, takes care of the direction of all. He must guide the children and women by reason of their imperfection. He must bring forth profit from his goods, and in order to make his property productive he needs inanimate and animate instruments. The latter would be his slaves.

The low opinion in which Grecians held manual labor induced Aristotle to admit slavery. Thus Aristotle divides man into two classes: free and slave. The first are given to the liberal arts; and the second, to whom all liberal education is closed, take charge of manual labor.

Aristotle, as well as Plato, considers the state an ethico-spiritual institution.

The duty of the state is to provide citizens with such material goods as the individual and collective defense and security, the possibility of self-development, which would not be otherwise available. But above all it is to direct men to the attainment of happiness through virtue.

The state must above all educate; Aristotle criticizes the Spartan state and the "Republic" of Plato which, instead of being concerned with the bettering of citizens through their peaceful and scientific education, were preoccupied with wars of conquest.

Education, for Aristotle, is the harmonious development of all the activities of man -- first, his spiritual activities, and subordinately to them, the material and physical ones; first, knowledge, in which virtue consists, and then gymnastic exercises.

With a greater historical sense than Plato, Aristotle does not describe an ideal form of the state in his "Politics." He distinguishes three principal types of state:

monarchical government, which is government by one person -- the character and power of monarchical government consist in its unity, and its degeneracy results in tyranny; aristocratic government, which is government by a few -- its character and power consist in the qualities of the persons who govern, and these should be the best, and their degeneracy results in oligarchy; and polyarchical government, which is government by many -- its character and power lie in liberty, and its degeneracy results in demagogy.

All these forms of government are good according to the ages, conditions, and needs of the people, provided the end of the state be attained, happiness through virtue.

Aristotle's preference seems to be for a form of intellectual democratic government, which would be what in his moral teaching he calls the just mean.