Politics (Aristotle)
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Aristotle's Politics (Greek Πολιτικά) is a work of political philosophy. It begins where the Nicomachean Ethics ends, and the two are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise dealing with the "philosophy of human affairs." Its title literally means "the things concerning the polis."
Contents |
[edit] Composition
The literary character of the Politics is subject to some dispute, growing out of the textual difficulties that attended the loss of Aristotle's works. Book III ends with a sentence that is repeated almost verbatim at the start of Book VII, while the intervening Books IV-VI seem to have a very different flavor from the rest; Book IV seems to refer several times back to the discussion of the best regime contained in Books VII-VIII.[1] Some editors have therefore inserted Books VII-VIII after Book III. At the same time, however, references to the "discourses on politics" that occur in the Nicomachean Ethics suggest that the treatise as a whole ought to conclude with the discussion of education that occurs in Book VIII of the Politics[citation needed].
Werner Jaeger suggested that the Politics actually represents the conflation of two, distinct treatises.[2] The first (Books I-III, VI-VIII) would represent a less mature work from when Aristotle had not yet fully broken from Plato, and consequently show a greater emphasis on the best regime. The second (Books IV-VI) would be more empirically minded, and thus belong to a later stage of development.
Carnes Lord has argued against the sufficiency of this view, however, noting the numerous cross-references between Jaeger's supposedly separate works and questioning the difference in tone that Jaeger saw between them. For example, Book IV explicitly notes the utility of examining actual regimes (Jaeger's "empirical" focus) in determining the best regime (Jaeger's "Platonic" focus). Instead, Lord suggests that the Politics is indeed a finished treatise, and that Books VII and VIII do belong in between Books III and IV; he attributes their current ordering to a merely mechanical transcription error.[3].
A third possibility is that Aristotle intended to reorganize the already-completed Politics, but died before he was able to do so. The initial treatise would have had Books VII-VIII in between Books III and IV, but that later compilers altered the ordering based on an intended revision suggested by the Nicomachean Ethics. This theory would require that our version of the Nicomachean Ethics be later in date than our version of the Politics.[citation needed]
[edit] Overview
[edit] Book I
- Origin of state
- Slavery
- Household economics
- Natural and unnatural modes of acquiring goods
[edit] Book II
[edit] Book III
- Who is a citizen?
- Classification of constitutions
- In Book 3, Chapters 6-7, Aristotle establishes a famous classification of six types of rule divided on the one hand between those that are 'good' and those that are 'corrupt', and on the other, between the different number of rulers that make up the decision-making authority, namely, the one, the few, and the many. The good types include monarchy, aristocracy and polity, while the corrupt types include tyranny, oligarchy and democracy or 'mob rule'. Good government rules in the common interest while corrupt government rules in the interest of those who rule.
- Just distribution of political power
- Types of monarchies
[edit] Book IV
- Tasks of political theory
- Why are there many types of constitutions?
- Types of democracies
- Types of oligarchies
- Polity as the optimal constitution
- Government offices
[edit] Book V
- Constitutional change
- Revolutions in different types of constitutions and ways to preserve constitutions
- Instability of tyrannies
[edit] Book VI
- Democratic constitutions
- Oligarchic constitutions
[edit] Book VII
- Best state and best life
- Ideal state. Its population, territory, position etc.
- Citizens of the ideal state
- Marriage and children
[edit] Book VIII
- Education in the ideal state
[edit] Aristotle's classification
After studying a number of real and theoretical city-state's constitutions, Aristotle classified them according to various criteria. On one side stand the true (or good) constitutions, which are considered such because they aim for the common good, and on the other side the perverted (or deviant) ones, considered such because they aim for the well being of only a part of the city. The constitutions are then sorted according to the "number" of those who participate to the magistracies: one, a few, or many. Aristotle's six-fold classification is slightly different from the one found in The Statesman by Plato. The diagram illustrates Aristotle's classification.
[edit] Notes
[edit] Sources
- Jaeger, Werner (1923). Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung. Berlin. Trans. Richard Robinson as Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development, Oxford 1948.
- Lord, Carnes (1984). Introduction to The Politics, by Aristotle. Trans. Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Landman, Todd (2003). Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics. An Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-27270-X.
[edit] External links
- trans. by Harris Rackham
- Australian copy trans. by Benjamin Jowett
- HTML at constitution.org trans. by Benjamin Jowett
- PDF at McMaster trans. by Benjamin Jowett
- Aristotle's Political Theory at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Politics full text by Project Gutenberg
