essay on aristotle and plato

Aristotle vs. Plato

Aristotle and Plato were philosophers in ancient Greece who critically studied matters of ethics, science, politics, and more. Though many more of Plato's works survived the centuries, Aristotle's contributions have arguably been more influential, particularly when it comes to science and logical reasoning. While both philosophers' works are considered less theoretically valuable in modern times , they continue to have great historical value.

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Influence of aristotle vs. plato.

Plato influenced Aristotle, just as Socrates influenced Plato. But each man's influence moved in different areas after their deaths. Plato became the primary Greek philosopher based on his ties to Socrates and Aristotle and the presence of his works, which were used until his academy closed in 529 A.D.; his works were then copied throughout Europe. For centuries, classical education assigned Plato's works as required reading, and The Republic was the premier work on political theory until the 19th century, admired not only for its views, but also for its elegant prose.

Aristotle and his works became the basis for the both religion and science, especially through the Middle Ages. In religion, Aristotelian ethics were the basis for St. Thomas Aquinas ' works that forged Christian thought on free will and the role of virtue. Aristotle's scientific observations were considered the last word in knowledge until about the 16th century, when Renaissance thought challenged and eventually replaced much of it. Even so, Aristotle's empirical approach based on observation, hypothesis and direct experience (experimentation) is at least part of the basis for scientific activity in nearly every field of study.

The Works of Aristotle and Plato

Whereas most of Plato's works have survived through the centuries, roughly 80% of what Aristotle wrote has been lost. He is said to have written almost 200 treatises on an array of subjects, but only 31 have survived. Some of his other works are referenced or alluded to by contemporary scholars, but the original material is gone.

What remains of Aristotle's works are primarily lecture notes and teaching aids, draft-level material that lacks the polish of "finished" publications. Even so, these works influenced philosophy, ethics , biology, physics, astronomy, medicine, politics, and religion for many centuries. His most important works, copied hundreds of times by hand throughout ancient and medieval times, were titled: Physics ; De Anima ( On the Soul ); Metaphysics ; Politics ; and Poetics . These and several other treatises were collected in what was called the Corpus Aristotelicum and often served as the basis for hundreds of private and teaching libraries up to the 19th century.

Plato's works can be roughly divided into three periods. His early period featured much of what is known about Socrates, with Plato taking the role of the dutiful student who keeps his tutor's ideas alive. Most of these works are written in the form of dialogues, using the Socratic Method (asking questions to explore concepts and knowledge) as the basis for teaching. Plato's The Apology , where he discusses the trial of execution and his teacher, is included in this period.

Plato's second or middle period is comprised of works where he explores morality and virtue in individuals and society. He presents lengthy discussions on justice, wisdom, courage, as well as the duality of power and responsibility. Plato's most famous work, The Republic , which was his vision of a utopian society, was written during this period.

The third period of Plato's writings mainly discusses the role of arts, along with morality and ethics. Plato challenges himself and his ideas in this period , exploring his own conclusions with self-debate. The end result is his philosophy of idealism, wherein the truest essence of things occurs in thought, not reality. In The Theory of Forms and other works, Plato states that only ideas are constant, that the world perceived by senses is deceptive and changeable.

Differences in Contributions

In philosophy.

Plato believed that concepts had a universal form, an ideal form, which leads to his idealistic philosophy. Aristotle believed that universal forms were not necessarily attached to each object or concept, and that each instance of an object or a concept had to be analyzed on its own. This viewpoint leads to Aristotelian Empiricism. For Plato, thought experiments and reasoning would be enough to "prove" a concept or establish the qualities of an object, but Aristotle dismissed this in favor of direct observation and experience.

In logic, Plato was more inclined to use inductive reasoning , whereas Aristotle used deductive reasoning . The syllogism , a basic unit of logic (if A = B, and B = C, then A = C), was developed by Aristotle.

Both Aristotle and Plato believed thoughts were superior to the senses. However, whereas Plato believed the senses could fool a person, Aristotle stated that the senses were needed in order to properly determine reality.

An example of this difference is the allegory of the cave , created by Plato. To him, the world was like a cave, and a person would only see shadows cast from the outside light, so the only reality would be thoughts. To the Aristotelian method, the obvious solution is to walk out of the cave and experience what is casting light and shadows directly, rather than relying solely on indirect or internal experiences.

The link between Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is most obvious when it comes to their views on ethics. Plato was Socratic in his belief that knowledge is virtue, in and of itself. This means that to know the good is to do the good, i.e., that knowing the right thing to do will lead to one automatically doing the right thing; this implied that virtue could be taught by teaching someone right from wrong, good from evil. Aristotle stated that knowing what was right was not enough, that one had to choose to act in the proper manner—in essence, to create the habit of doing good. This definition placed Aristotelian ethics on a practical plane, rather than the theoretical one espoused by Socrates and Plato.

For Socrates and Plato, wisdom is the basic virtue and with it, one can unify all virtues into a whole. Aristotle believed that wisdom was virtuous, but that achieving virtue was neither automatic nor did it grant any unification (acquiring) of other virtues. To Aristotle, wisdom was a goal achieved only after effort, and unless a person chose to think and act wisely, other virtues would remain out of reach.

Socrates believed that happiness could be achieved without virtue, but that this happiness was base and animalistic. Plato stated that virtue was sufficient for happiness, that there was no such thing as "moral luck" to grant rewards. Aristotle believed that virtue was necessary for happiness, but insufficient by itself, needing adequate social constructs to help a virtuous person feel satisfaction and contentment. It is worth noting that Greek views on these issues were more attuned to Aristotle's views than either to Plato's or Socrates' during their lifetimes.

Plato's contributions to science, as that of most other Greek philosophers, were dwarfed by Aristotle's. Plato did write about mathematics, geometry, and physics, but his work was more exploratory in concept than actually applicable. Some of his writings touch on biology and astronomy, but few of his efforts truly expanded the body of knowledge at the time.

On the other hand, Aristotle, among a few others , is considered to be one of the first true scientists. He created an early version of the scientific method to observe the universe and draw conclusions based on his observations. Though his method has been modified over time, the general process remains the same. He contributed new concepts in math, physics and geometry, though much of his work was basically extensions or explanations of emerging ideas rather than insights. His observations in zoology and botany led him to classify all types of life, an effort that reigned as the basic biology system for centuries. Even though Aristotle's classification system has been replaced, much of his method remains in use in modern nomenclature. His astronomical treatises argued for stars separate from the sun, but remained geocentric, an idea that would take Copernicus would later overthrow.

In other fields of study, such as medicine and geology, Aristotle brought new ideas and observations, and though many of his ideas were later discarded, they served to open lines of inquiry for others to explore.

In Political Theory

Plato felt that the individual should subsume his or her interests to that of society in order to achieve a perfect from of government. His Republic described a utopian society where each of the three classes (philosophers, warriors, and workers) had its role, and governance was kept in the hands of those deemed best qualified for that responsibility, those of the "Philosopher Rulers." The tone and viewpoint is that of an elite taking care of the less capable, but unlike the Spartan oligarchy that Plato fought against, the Republic would follow a more philosophical and less martial path.

Aristotle saw the basic political unit as the city ( polis ), which took precedence over the family, which in turn took precedence over the individual. Aristotle said that man was a political animal by nature and thus could not avoid the challenges of politics. In his view, politics functions more as an organism than as a machine, and the role of the polis was not justice or economic stability, but to create a space where its people could live a good life and perform beautiful acts. Although eschewing a utopian solution or large-scale constructs (such as nations or empires), Aristotle moved beyond political theory to become the first political scientist, observing political processes in order to formulate improvements.

Modern Appraisal of Aristotle and Plato

Though Plato and Aristotle have become directly linked to philosophy and the height of Greek culture, their works are studied less now, and much of what they stated has been either discarded or set aside in favor of new information and theories. For an example of theory espoused by Aristotle and Plato that is no longer considered valid, watch the video below regarding Plato and Aristotle's opinions on slavery.

To many historians and scientists, Aristotle was an obstacle to scientific progress because his works were deemed so complete that no one challenged them. The adherence to using Aristotle as "the final word" on many subjects curtailed true observation and experimentation, a fault that lies not with Aristotle, but with the use of his works.

Among Islamic scholars, Aristotle is "the First Teacher," and many of his recovered works may have been lost if not for Arabic translations of the original Greek treatises. It may be that Plato and Aristotle are now more starting points on analytical paths than endpoints; however, many continue to read their works even today.

Personal Backgrounds of Aristotle and Plato

Plato was born around 424 B.C. His father was Ariston , descended from kings in Athens and Messenia, and his mother, Perictione, was related to the great Greek statesman, Solon. Plato was given the name Aristocles, a family name, and adopted Plato (meaning "broad" and "strong") later when he was a wrestler. As was typical of upper middle-class families of the time, Plato was educated by tutors, exploring a wide range of topics centered largely on philosophy, what would now be called ethics.

He became a student of Socrates, but his studies with the Greek master were interrupted by the Peloponnesian War , which pit Athens against Sparta . Plato fought as a soldier between 409 and 404 B.C. He left Athens when the city was defeated and its democracy was replaced by a Spartan oligarchy. He considered returning to Athens to pursue a career in politics when the oligarchy was overthrown, but the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. changed his mind.

For over 12 years, Plato traveled throughout the Mediterranean region and Egypt studying mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and religion. In about 385 B.C., Plato founded his academy, which is often suggested to have been the first university in history. He would preside over it until his death around 348 B.C.

Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose," was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira, a town in northern Greece. His father was Nicomachus , the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. Tutored privately as all aristocratic children were, Aristotle trained first in medicine. Considered to be a brilliant student, in 367 B.C. he was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato. He stayed at Plato's Academy until about 347 B.C.

Although his time at the academy was productive, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings and may have challenged the Master openly. When Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the academy, so he left to pursue his own studies. After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent time traveling and studying in Asia Minor (what is now Turkey) and its islands.

At the request of Philip of Macedon , he returned to Macedonia in 338 B.C. to tutor Alexander the Great , and two other future kings, Ptolemy and Cassander . Aristotle took full charge of Alexander's education and is considered to be the source of Alexander's push to conquer Eastern empires. After Alexander conquered Athens, Aristotle returned to that city and set up a school of his own, known as the Lyceum. It spawned what was called the "Peripatetic School," for their habit of walking around as part of their lectures and discussions. When Alexander died, Athens took arms and overthrew its Macedonian conquerors. Because of his close ties to Macedonia, Aristotle's situation became dangerous. Seeking to avoid the same fate as Socrates, Aristotle emigrated to the island of Euboea . He died there in 322 B.C.

• Plato - Biography.com
• Aristotle - University of Berkeley
• Wikipedia: Aristotle
• Wikipedia: Plato

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Comments: Aristotle vs Plato

Anonymous comments (2).

February 6, 2014, 2:04pm realy explored — 82.✗.✗.66

August 19, 2013, 5:54pm The reference to Plato's 2nd letter, concerning Plato's dialogues representing a "Socrates cleansed and beautified" or "beautified and rejuvenated" (somce translations say "modernized") is not at 341c, but, rather, 314c. Kevin — 174.✗.✗.61

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A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Plato & Aristotle: ancient philosophical influences

OCR Philosophy

Introduction

Heraclitus was an ancient Greek Philosopher who thought that the world we experience is in a state of constant change which he called ‘flux’. He famously said that a person never steps in the same river twice, since both the river and the person change. Plato interpreted Heraclitus as presenting a challenge to the possibility of gaining knowledge. If everything we experience is constantly changing then we can’t have knowledge since as soon as we know something it has changed.

Both Plato and Aristotle are, in very different ways, attempting to respond to this issue raised by Heraclitus.

Plato thinks that the consequence of Heraclitus’ challenge is that true eternal unchanging knowledge cannot be gained empirically, i.e. from a posteriori observation. Plato concludes that we must give up on the attempt to gain knowledge through experience and look to a priori reason alone.

Aristotle thinks that we can understand the causal mechanism responsible for change and thereby gain true knowledge from experience.

Plato’s rationalism: theory of forms & the cave

Since we cannot gain true unchanging knowledge from the everchanging world we experience, Plato thought that we must not be experiencing the world correctly. Our minds are trapped in a state of ignorance, which is why we experience imperfect, transient and everchanging things in the world of appearance. The true reality must be perfect, eternal and unchanging. Plato calls it the world of forms. True knowledge can only be gained from the world of forms.

In the world of appearances everything we experience is a ‘particular’. Particulars are the objects of everyday experience. They are imperfect representations of the form they partake in from which they gain characteristics. When I look at a tree, I am really looking at the perfect, eternal and immutable form of treeness, but because of my ignorance I see a particular tree which is transient and mutable, it will decay and change into something else as it is in a state of flux. If we see a beautiful painting, we are really looking at the form of beauty but as our minds are trapped in a state of ignorance our perception is faulty and so we perceive merely a particular imperfectly beautiful thing.

The tree gets what little shadowy treeness it has by ‘partaking’ in the form of treeness. It’s like looking at an object in a broken mirror and perceiving a visually distorted version of it. In the case of Plato’s form however, we are perceiving the forms through the broken lens of our ignorant minds.

We get knowledge of the world of forms through a priori reason, not a posteriori empirical sense experience, which reveals merely a vague shadow of the real world (of forms).

Plato illustrates this theory with his allegory of the cave.

Plato asks us to imagine some prisoners (us) in a cave (our reality) who cannot move due to being chained (our minds in a state of ignorance) .

They can only look in one direction at a wall on which appear shadows (the objects we experience) of real objects moving behind the prisoners that they cannot see. Those shadows are all the prisoners have ever known, and so they develop a language to talk about them as if they were real. One day a prisoner escapes (a Philosopher), is temporarily blinded by the sun (form of the Good), and then sees the real world (world of forms). He returns to the cave to explain the truth to the other prisoners, but they cannot understand him.

Experience involves mere shadows of the real and that is why it cannot give us knowledge. Only a priori reasoning involving understanding of the forms can give us knowledge.

Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s rationalism & theory of forms

A common reaction to Plato’s theory of forms is that it lacks empirical evidence.

However, Plato would respond that it’s good his theory has no evidence because evidence cannot be trusted as it is merely shadows of the real world of forms that only a priori reason can discover.

To better criticise Plato requires showing that he is wrong to reject evidence. One way of doing that is by showing how empiricism succeeds, by showing that knowledge can successfully be derived from experience

Plato’s theory lacks empirical validity. Aristotle thought that Plato’s theory of forms was an unnecessary hypothesis , because it has no explanatory power regarding our experience. Plato’s forms are unchanging, but therefore cannot explain the change we experience in the world. Aristotle concluded that the forms are “nonsense, and even if they do exist, they are wholly irrelevant”. Plato’s theory of forms lack empirical validity. This is like an early version of Ockham’s razor and is a general principle in empiricist epistemology, that we should not believe explanations that are unnecessarily complicated, such as a world of forms, when we have a simpler theory that works.

Aristotle’s rejection of Plato depends on the success of his empirical theory of the four causes, or at least on the success of the empirical method. It’s only if empiricism is valid that we can discount Plato’s theory as lacking empirical validity. Aristotle creates an empirical theory called the four causes aimed at gaining knowledge from experience.

The form of the Good & the hierarchy of forms

The form of the good is illustrated by Plato in the cave analogy by the sun, in that it both illuminates and allows us to see the world of the forms, and yet also nourishes and is responsible for all the existence of life and all the other forms. This makes it is the highest form.

Understanding the form of the good makes it impossible for you to do wrong and so Plato says a philosopher with that understanding should rule as a ‘philosopher king’.

Below the form of the good are the higher forms like justice and beauty. They are aspects of goodness; they have goodness in them and is their source.

Below higher forms are lower forms, or forms of phenomena that we experience. For example the form of treeness or catness.

Below that are the actual material objects that we then experience images of. The particular trees or cats that are instantiations (examples) of the lower forms.

Criticism of the form of the good. Aristotle disagrees with Plato’s idea that the cause of immorality is ignorance of the good. Aristotle claims that cultivating virtue is a requirement to do good. Merely knowing what is good is not enough to make yourself morally perfect. We could add evidence to Aristotle’s point, that arguably nowhere in human history has a morally perfect person ever existed.

Plato is either being extremely overly optimistic, or he is just inventing ideas that would justify the type of society he wants, which is philosophers being the rulers. Nietzsche called Plato’s form of the good a ‘dangerous error’ and said that philosophers often invent ideas that suit their emotional prejudices, such as desire for power. They then pretend to have figured out their views through logic and reason.

Furthermore, Aristotle thinks the idea of one unified form of the good doesn’t fit with our experience. It’s simple to see how all the instances of tall things could have a single essence of ‘tallness’, but it’s harder to see how that would work for goodness since different instances of goodness are so radically different. For example, the good in military strategy is how to efficiently kill people, whereas the good in medicine is how to keep people alive Aristotle takes this to mean that there cannot be one unified form of ‘goodness’.

The third man argument

This is a criticism of Plato’s theory of forms. Plato claims that if there is a group of things which share characteristics, like a group of trees, then the explanation is that they must all be partaking in a form of treeness. However, Aristotle argues that we then have a new group of things which share characteristics, the trees and the form of treeness, which according to Plato’s logic must therefore have a form in which they partake, yet that simply creates a new group of things which share characteristics which require another form and so on ad infinitum (forever – an infinite regress). This seems to undermine the idea of the forms that there is a particular single form of a quality that explains the multiple particular instances of that quality we experience in the world of appearances.

Plato responds that forms cannot partake of anything but themselves. Since things share characteristics by partaking in a form, yet forms themselves cannot partake in another form, it follows that forms cannot share characteristics with particulars.

The third man argument thus rests on a misunderstanding of the relationship between forms and particulars. The particulars partake in a form because they are imperfect copies of it, but the forms themselves cannot then be grouped with the particulars since they are what the particulars really are. It makes no sense to group some things together with what they really are since that’s not really a group.

Plato therefore successfully counters the third man argument by blocking the attempted first grouping of a form with particulars and thus showing how an infinite regress does not occur.

Plato’s argument from recollection

The argument from recollection is one of Plato’s arguments for the existence of the world of forms and also the existence of the soul.

Plato points out that we somehow do have knowledge of perfect, eternal and unchanging concepts. These include concepts like perfect beauty and justice. We also have perfect mathematical concepts and geometric concepts such as the idea of a perfect circle or two sticks being perfectly ‘equal’ in length. We have never experienced perfect beauty, justice or a perfect circle. So, we must have gained this knowledge a priori. In The Meno Plato tells the story of how Socrates proved that an uneducated slave boy could be prompted by a series of questions and some shapes drawn in the sand to figure out how to solve a geometry question. The slave boy must therefore have been born with geometric concepts.

Plato then seeks to explain how we could have been born with these concepts. His answer is that we must have somehow gained these concepts before we were born. It follows that there must be a part of us (our soul) which existed in a realm where there were perfect forms. In the world of forms there are perfect mathematical forms and perfect forms like the form of beauty and the form of justice.

We are born with a dim recollection of the forms because our soul apprehends them before becoming trapped in this world of appearances. Anamnesis is the process of re-remembering these forms through a posteriori sense experience.

Plato concluded that the source of knowledge must therefore be a priori, making him a rationalist

The consequence is that there must be a world of perfect and unchanging (immutable) forms, which he called the World of Forms. It is not a distant or other world – it is the true reality. What we see (the world of particulars/appearances) is not the true reality. Everything we experience is a vague shadow of what it really is; a perfect form.

P1. We have a concept of perfect justice and beauty and perfect mathematical concepts. P2. We have never experienced perfect instances of such things. C1. So, our knowledge of perfect concepts must be innate. C2. Therefore there must be a world of forms and we must have a soul which gained perfect concepts from it before we were born.

Justice and beauty are subjective. We could deny P1 by arguing that beauty and morality are subjective; in the eye of the beholder. They seem like matters of opinion, not fact. It seems to be culture that determines and conditions what a person finds beautiful or just and as a result, views on what is beautiful or just change over time and differ cross-culturally. So, everyone has a different concept of perfect beauty or justice which makes it not objectively perfect.

Maths is not subjective. Perfect Plato’s examples of perfect circles and the idea of lines that are perfect equal can get around this issue, however. It is much harder to argue that mathematics is subjective.

Hume responds that we can actually create the idea of perfection in our minds even if we have never experienced it. We have take our concept of ‘imperfect’ and simply concieve of its negation: ‘not imperfect’ to gain the concept of ‘perfect’.

Furthermore we could add to Hume’s point that mathematical knowledge could come from experience. The slave boy may not have had any mathematical training, but he had seen shapes of objects in his life – thereby gaining concepts of shape and geometry from experience. This gave him a basic conceptual understanding that Socrates’ questioning brought out and clarified.

Finally, even if Plato was correct that we were born with perfect concepts, it doesn’t mean a soul and world of forms is the only or even best explanation. Evolution could have programmed us to have a sense of morality, beauty and the evolution of intelligence could explain being born with mathematical ability.

Aristotle’s empiricist teleology

The four causes.

Even though the world we experience is in a state of flux, we can gain knowledge about it if we analyse and understand the causal process which explains the change that occurs. If an empirical theory like Aristotle’s theory of the four causes is successful, then Plato’s theory is wrong because Plato thought we could not gain knowledge from experience.

Actuality is the way something is in its current state. Potentiality is the way actual things could become given certain conditions. If certain conditions are met, it will change to its potentiality and that will become its actuality. For example, a seed has the potential to become a tree but only if certain conditions are met will that potential become actual. To go from cause to an effect something must change by going through 4 causes. A thing changes towards its telos – the final end towards which something is directed due to its nature.

• Material cause: what a thing is made of. E.g. the material cause of a chair is whatever it is made from, such as wood or plastic.
• Formal cause: what the essence or defining characteristic of a thing is. E.g. the formal cause of a chair is its shape.
• Efficient cause: what brings the being into existence. E.g. the efficient cause of a chair is whoever made it.
• Final cause – telos (purpose): the end goal of a thing. The final state which a thing is disposed towards by its nature. E.g. the final cause of a chair is to be sat on.

Aristotle thought that all change in the universe can be explained by these four causes, thereby allowing a posteriori knowledge to make sense of the flux. Example of a chair. The change of a piece of wood into a chair involves the four causes.

Aristotle does not reject the idea of form itself, but only the separation of form from things. On Aristotle’s view, a thing’s form or formal cause is its essence; its defining quality that makes it what it is. This also led Aristotle to reject Plato’s mind-body dualism, since the form of a human (rational thought) cannot be separated from their body.

Aristotle went on to argue that the final cause of the universe must be a prime mover.

Purpose is unscientific.  Francis Bacon (17 th century), called the father of empiricism, was instrumental in influencing the development of modern science. He criticised Aristotle, claiming that final causation (telos/purpose) has no place in empirical science but is a metaphysical issue, since purpose is a divine matter.

Modern science goes even further than Bacon in its rejection of formal and final causation. A deterministic universe operating by the laws of physics seems to be completely without purpose. All supposed telos of an object can be reduced to non-teleological concepts regarding the material structure of an object. This suggests there is no basis for grounding telos in God as Christians like Aquinas did, or in grounding it as a required explanation of change like Aristotle did. Modern science can explain the change and apparent purpose in the world without telos.

For example, Aristotle would regard the telos of a seed as growing into a tree/bush. However, we now understand the seed’s ability to do that as resulting from its material structure, not some notion of a telos.

McGrath points out that modern Christian philosophers (e.g. Swinburne & Polkinghorne) have argued that science is limited and cannot answer all questions. It can tell us the what but not the why . Science can tell us what the universe is like, but it cannot tell us why it is this way, nor why it exists. It cannot answer questions about purpose and therefore cannot be used to disregard the existence of purpose.

Dawkins responds that the ‘why’ question is valid regarding scientific explanation, but when we ask ‘why’ about purpose it becomes ‘a silly question’. Just because a question can be phrased using the English language, that doesn’t make it valid. Dawkins makes an analogy: ‘what is the color of jealousy?’ That question is assuming that jealousy has a color. Dawkins seems to be claiming that questions of purpose also assume that existence or human life has a purpose over and above scientific explanation, but there’s no evidence for that.

Dawkins accepts there may be limits to science and that where the laws of physics came from may be one of them. However he points out that scientists may one day actually solve that problem, but if they don’t, that doesn’t justify a non-scientific explanation of purpose.

At the very least, the current scientific understanding of the universe works without the need for any kind of telos. A century after Bacon, Laplace wrote a book on the workings of the universe, claiming to have ‘no need’ of the hypothesis that there is a God. More recently, Stephen Hawking made the same claim.

Sartre’s critique of telos

Sartre argued that there was no objective telos/purpose because “existence precedes essence” meaning humans exist before they have a defined purpose and so have to subjectively define their purpose for themselves. Sartre’s argument was a psychological one, that people cling to fabricated notions of objective purpose like religion or Aristotle’s ‘final cause/telos’ because they are afraid of not having a purpose, more specifically they are scared of the intensity of the freedom that comes from having to create their own purpose which Sartre thought led to feelings of abandonment (by God/objective reality), anguish (over the weight of being completely responsible for your actions) and despair (over our inability to act exactly as we’d like due to the constraints of the world). It’s much easier to believe in objective purpose than face that existential angst.

Defence against Sartre: As Sartre’s argument is psychological, he does not provide metaphysical grounds for rejecting telos and so is arguably committing the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is assuming that the way in which someone comes up with a theory is relevant to whether it is true or false. Just because people have a psychological need to believe in objective purpose, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

However, this criticism of Sartre is unsuccessful because it is a misunderstanding of his argument. Sartre’s starting premise is that there is nothing in our experience of our own mind which suggests we have a telos. All that we experience is ‘radical freedom’ – a sense that every choice we make is completely up to us because there is nothing in our experience like God or telos which could influence or guide that choice. So Sartre is using a kind of a posteriori approach like Aristotle but coming to a different conclusion.

Aristotle on form and his understanding of the soul

Form means essence, which is a thing’s defining characteristic. For a chair, its defining characteristic would be its shape, a shape that can be sat on. However, the essence of a human is not merely its shape. Aristotle claimed the defining feature of a human being is the ability to reason. Aristotle claimed that the soul was the formal cause of the body.

Formal causation is unscientific. F. Bacon was called the father of empiricism for establishing the modern scientific method. He claimed that formal causation is a metaphysical matter that was beyond empiricial study. He gave the illustration of the ‘whiteness’ of snow and explained how science could investigate how snow results from air and water, but this only tells us about its efficient cause, not its colour, the form of ‘whiteness’, which is beyond scientific investigation. So Bacon thought that form existed, but Aristotle was wrong to think science could study it it.

Modern science goes much further than Bacon in its rejection of formal causation, arguing that we have no reason to think it exists at all. The idea that colour is a ‘formal cause’ of an object is now much better understood to be a matter of the activity of particles like atoms and photons, which can be fully explained through efficient and material causation. So what Aristotle thought of as ‘form’ actually reduces to material and efficient causation.

For Aristotle, the form of a human is a rational soul, but most neuroscientists would claim that rationality reduces to material brain structure and its physical processes. So again, what Aristotle thought of as ‘form’, actually reduces to material structure. There appears to be no room left in modern science for formal or final causation.

Science cannot currently explain how consciousness or reason reduces to material brain processes, however. The brain is so complicated and while some of it is understood a bit, processes like reason and consciousness have not even begun to be understood. So modern science cannot yet justifiably dismiss Aristotelian soul & form as the explanation of reason.

However, there is scientific evidence at least linking the brain to reason, since if the brain is damaged then reason and other mental faculties can be damaged too. Since there is so much about the brain we don’t understand, it’s more reasonable to think that mental faculties like reason are reducible to the material causation of brain processes in a way we don’t yet understand, rather than requiring some other type of physical explanation such as Aristotelian form since there is no evidence for that.

Aristotle’s theory of the Prime Mover

Aristotle’s argument for the prime mover resulted from applying the four causes to the universe. The Material cause of the universe is determined by the constituent elements of matter and the ether (the space between matter). The Formal cause of the universe is in the essential nature of things, such as the nature of stars to rotate.

The Efficient cause in the universe. Aristotle had a geocentric view of the universe; that the earth was in the centre of it. He thought the movement of the stars moves the ether which moves the rotation of the planets which maintains changes in the planet’s atmosphere, which maintains the processes of change on the earth.

Aristotle observed that if an object is moved, it keeps moving and then stops. He concluded that objects which are moved simply run out of movement after a while and return to what he thought must be the natural state of objects: at rest. He therefore thought that motion (the world of flux) requires explanation. It was this view which led to his inference of the existence of a prime mover of the universe

Aristotle then questions what maintains the motion of the stars, inferring that there must be something moving them which itself must be unmoved. The cause of the motion of the stars and thereby all movement on earth must itself be unmoved, or its movement would require merely another mover. There cannot be an infinite chain of motion as that would never get started.

This prime mover must therefore have been unmoved and therefore cannot change. It is therefore pure actuality. So, it cannot be material since it seems all material things are subject to change. It must be a mind, but arguably it cannot be thinking about anything happening outside itself since such things are subject to change and its thoughts would change if their object changed. So it must be eternally contemplating itself.

The prime mover is that unmoved mover and the final cause of the universe. It is not the efficient cause of the universe, since Aristotle believed the universe was eternal. The Prime Mover is responsible for the everlasting motion and change of the universe. Since it cannot be moved, it cannot change and is thus pure actuality.

The way the prime mover sustains the change in the world must therefore be due to some sort of attraction of the things in this world to it. Things in our universe are attracted to the prime mover in a sort of orbit. That is how the prime mover sustains the pattern of change from actuality to potentiality in our universe. Things move towards their telos (purpose).

Newton challenged Aristotle’s belief that an object which is moved will simply stop moving by itself. Newton claimed instead that when moved, an object will move until met by an equal and opposite reaction. The problem with observing this is that on earth, the strong gravity and effect of friction amounts to an equal and opposite reaction on the movement of an object which causes it to stop. It doesn’t just stop by itself due to rest being its natural state, as Aristotle thought. This means that Aristotle’s inference that the constant motion in the universe must be maintained by something like a prime mover is false.

Newton’s ideas are most clearly illustrated in the example of a vacuum – space. In outer space where there is less gravity and friction, pushing an object in a certain direction will cause it to move in that direction potentially forever, unless it happens to hit another object or is pulled off course by the gravity of something like a planet.

Aristotle only believed in empirical observation, not empirical experiment. For two thousand years people believed Aristotle, until Newton. Aristotle’s views on formal & final causation and the prime mover are considered completely wrong by modern science, as are Plato’s views, so arguably neither are better?

Defence of Aristotle’s a posteriori method: However, while Aristotle was not truly scientific in the modern sense, nonetheless he believed in empirical observation which created the epistemological method which would lead to modern scientific methods and the resulting fuller picture of reality we have today. In fact it was Aristotle’s a posteriori approach involving empirical observation that led to Newton’s discoveries. So Newton only disproved Aristotle’s claims about reality, he did not disprove Aristotle’s a posteriori approach to understanding reality, in fact Newton used a developed form of that himself.

Extra credit:

Plato’s one over many argument.

This is an argument for the world of forms. Plato points out that we can conceptually divide the world up into categories like tree, table, beauty, justice, etc. We can only categorize things if we can recognize that they share something in common. The fact that we can recognize that all trees (for example) share something in common, shows that there must be an abstract quality of treeness. Since no particular tree is identical to this abstract quality, it must exist separately. Plato doesn’t see how we could recognize a tree unless we already have in our mind a perfect abstract ideal of a tree; an idea of ‘treeness’, with which we can recognize a particular tree due to it being an imperfect representation of treeness. Since the world of appearances is in flux, how is it that we manage to recognize different things through categorisation? Since the river we step into the second time is no longer the same river as the first, it seems impossible to think of the world in an orderly categorized way if all we have to go on is a world of flux. Yet, we do, and therefore we must be born with the concepts of treeness, beauty, etc. So, Plato concludes we must have a dim recollection of the forms of which the particulars in the world of appearances share some dim shadow-like characteristics by which we are able to recognize and categorize them.

Aristotle’s response to Plato’s One Over Many argument. Aristotle does not object to the idea of form itself, but only to the separation of form from things, which Plato’s one over many argument and theory of forms does. On Aristotle’s view, a thing’s form is its essence; its defining quality that makes it what it is. For example, form of a tree would be the quality essential to being a tree. The essential quality of treeness that a tree has cannot possibly be separated from a tree, otherwise it would not be a tree. So, there is no basis for thinking that the form of ‘treeness’ is a separate entity in another realm.

Wittgenstein’s Criticism of the One Over Many argument. Wittgenstein argued that there is no precisely definable form or abstract ideal of a category. He gave an example of a family picture. There are similarities between the members of the family, but it would be absurd to suggest that recognition of that required understanding of or the existence of perfect abstracted form of that family or that there even is such a thing as an abstracted form of that family. Instead, Wittgenstein argued we recognize someone as a member of a family due to their family resemblances . Similarly, we recognize a member of a category as such due to its family resemblances to other things in that category. The world is not a set of definable categories which the human mind can perfectly divide up. It’s not clear where the boundary between tree and bush are for example, in some species. Humans divide the world linguistically and conceptually in a disorganised haphazard way when it is useful for us within our social context, not according to objective categories of reality. The categories are determined by social convention, not objective reality. Categories are not metaphysical, they are conceptual schemes mapped onto a human experience of the world for the purpose of performing a specific function or use. As such, they have indeterminate boundaries and are subject to revision. What someone decides to call a tree might depend on the use for which the category ‘tree’ has in their social environment. There is no perfect form of ‘treeness’.

Quick links

Year 12 philosophy topics: Plato & Aristotle. Soul, Mind & Body. Design/Teleological argument. Cosmological argument. Ontological argument. Religious experience. Problem of evil.

Year 13 philosophy topics:   Nature & Attributes of God. Religious language. 20th Century philosophy of language.

OCR Ethics OCR Christianity OCR essay structure OCR list of possible exam questions

Virtues of Thought: Essays on Plato and Aristotle

Lee david perlman , massachusetts institute of technology. [email protected].

This is a collection of complex and intriguing essays on Aristotle and Plato. The range of subjects is broad, and includes a number of pieces on Aristotle’s treatment of knowledge, some essays on nous , perception and consciousness, works on love, beauty and justice in Plato, and others. Kosman’s approach is precise and also expansive. He has a nice way of using small interesting puzzles about Aristotle’s thought as hidden passageways into exploration of the deepest Aristotelian concepts. He is very careful in considering language, context of obscure statements and all scholarly concerns. But he also allows himself to roam around the periphery of his subjects, almost always bringing us back to the center at the end. This occasionally leads to a feeling that one is tumbling from one concern to another without being able to see clearly where the essay is heading, and at least once or twice Kosman concludes an essay with a paragraph I wish he had put on the front end. But these are barely complaints; the richness of each essay is tied to the latitude he gives himself, and I found every essay elucidating, enriching and provocative.

Though the collection is organized chronologically, with no attempt to group the essays topically, such an organization might have been productive. I read through the essays twice, first in the order presented, and then grouping them topically, and found much instructional complementarity in the latter.

I will follow one such thread in this review, to give the reader a sense of Kosman’s approach. A number of essays address questions in Aristotle concerning the nature of epistêmê , and the related concepts, nous , apodeixis and epagôgê . Kosman begins this exploration in the opening essay of the book, “Understanding, Explanation, and Insight in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics ”, with the unusual translation of the word apodeixis as ‘explanation.’ The importance of this is that even Aristotle’s works on logic should not be regarded simply as laying out rules for proper inference, but Aristotle here, as elsewhere, always has ti esti? questions in sight. Kosman claims that both Analytics are governed by a single interest: the nature of explanatory science (86). We are by nature drawn not just to learn how things happen, but what they are. Kosman quotes Aristotle: “what something is and why it is are the same” ( Post. An. 90a15). But Kosman understands this in an interesting way: cause, he says must not be understood as something separate from the entity, but the search for a cause is the search for an understanding of the entity “under that description that reveals some of its kath’ auto predicates.” To explain something, then, is by nature to understand what it is, and to know what something is we must know why it must be what it is; that is, we must know its cause.

To explain means to find a “description K of some entity that is L, which description reveals the cause of that entity being L” (9). Thus, a syllogism can be seen not simply as a proof that something is the case, but as an exploration of why it is the case. For instance (my example): Jack is a bachelor. Jack is also Caucasian, 5′ 9″ and a philatelist. No syllogism can be drawn from these descriptions. But if we notice that Jack is a Catholic priest, then we might have a syllogism, and we have one precisely because we have discovered the aspect of who Jack is that, viewed as a genus, accounts for his bachelorhood. As Kosman says in a later essay: “the first essential task of scientific explanation will be the noetic task of correctly describing particulars” (90).

As cause and essence turn out to be mutually entailing, like concave and convex, so does the connection between epagôgê and apodeixis. These are usually thought of as separate, complementary processes. Epagôgê is seen as the function of nous , or the process by which we discover the universal major premise of a syllogism, and apodeixis is thought of as a technical procedure by which we draw inferences about particulars from the universals that epagôgê has discovered. Kosman argues first that nous is not a mysterious act of ‘seeing’ principles (19) which is a distinct way of coming to know, complementary to the dependent apodeixis . In fact, “the way in which we come to . . . recognize principles as principles, just is the act of explaining.” Nous is to epagôgê as epistêmê is to apodeixis . But further, epagôgê is not a radically different process from apodeixis , but rather (if I understand Kosman correctly) the ‘concave’ perspective of the process of explanation that reveals principles, in their employment, as principles. The ‘convex’ perspective is apodeixis , which draws from principles to complete an explanation, showing a necessary connection between a cause (the explanandum viewed through the specific characteristic that accounts for this aspect of its being) and the phenomenon under investigation.

This investigation of the nature of explanation continues in another essay, “Necessity and Explanation in Aristotle’s Analytics .” Here the animating puzzle is that Aristotle seems to claim wrongly that mixed syllogisms with a necessary major premise and an assertoric minor premise produce necessary conclusions. This leads Kosman to consider more deeply the role that necessity plays in explanation. The problem begins to dissolve when we shift from a more post- Cartesian understanding that necessity is primarily of value in giving certainty to our conclusions, to an Aristotelian quest for explanation: if the cause does not necessitate the consequence, then it does not explain the consequence. The Aristotelian quest is not for certainty, but rather for understanding. This is a very interesting and useful line of inquiry, deftly explored. Kosman applies it to Aristotle’s mixed modal syllogism problem by claiming that syllogisms of mixed modality represent the first step in the process of explanation, the step of revealing the universal “by making clear the particular.” If I discover a piece of blue plastic with straight edges, measure its interior angles to discover that they are equal to two right angles, and then ask why that is so, my answer will come with the recognition that the shape is a triangle, and it is necessarily true of the triangle that its interior angles sum to two right angles. I have ‘made clear the particular.’ But blue plastic does not necessarily come in the shape of a triangle, so I have also created a mixed modal syllogism: (a) All the interior angles of all triangles necessarily sum to two right angles; (b) this happens to be a triangle; (c) therefore the interior angles of this necessarily sum to two right angles. Subsequent logicians (starting with Theophrastus) would deny that the necessity in the major premise alone can convey necessity to the conclusion. If this just happens to be a triangle, then it just happens to have interior angles that sum to two right angles. Kosman argues, I think, that this may be true of necessity as a guarantor of certainty, but if we are more interested in necessity as the sine qua non of explanation, then the syllogism helps us to identify the universal that should be read through this particular if we are to understand its possession of this characteristic: “having two right angles belongs necessarily to this figure qua triangle ” (90). Again, it is through processes such as these that we perform the ‘noetic task’ of discovering the appropriate universal in the particular, and through this kind of apprehension of particulars that we begin to understand the universal. Of course, truly to explain something, Kosman argues, both premises must be necessary. Drawing on my previous example, if Jack just happens to be a priest, then we haven’t fully explained why he is a bachelor. If, however, it was somehow necessary for Jack to be a priest—if for instance Jack needed to be a priest to be fully Jack—then we have understood the cause in a way that reveals the ti esti? of the phenomenon.

But Kosman has a larger point in this. Aristotle resists the obvious pull to surrender to contingency in the mixed modal syllogism precisely because he wants to “deny that the world of the necessary is anything other than the world of the contingent understood properly . . . [H]e wants, in other words, to resist a Platonist separation of contingency from necessity” (91). It is of course not necessary that this piece of blue plastic be shaped as a triangle, nor that we focus on that aspect of it. But for Aristotle, the goal of explanation is to connect the proper necessity to the relevant contingent fact about a particular—e.g. it is not by virtue of its blueness that its angles sum to two right angles, but by virtue of its triangularity. This is what Kosman calls the ‘noetic task’ that is performed in the mixed modal syllogism with a necessary major and contingent minor premise.

In “Saving the Phenomena” Kosman uses the question of whether Aristotle is a scientific realist or instrumentalist to further investigate the nature of explanation. Kosman attacks the question by investigating what Aristotle means by prior and better known têi phusei . He finds both the ‘logical’ and the ‘ontological’ interpretations lacking in their capacity to ground Aristotle’s conception of adequate explanation. His critique of the ontological interpretation, as far as I could understand it, seems weak. But finding both ways of thinking about principles inadequate, Kosman concludes that Aristotle is both a realist and an instrumentalist. The principles he seeks are neither simply ontologically prior nor mere creatures of logic. This adds one more piece to Kosman’s understanding of Aristotelian explanation: we have only explained something if we have fit the syllogism “into the entire explanatory body of a science.” We cannot understand logical entailment “in terms of an individual, isolated piece of explanatory reasoning” (148). This seems to lean towards the instrumentalist view, resembling modern assertions that all explanation is at best the creation of a cognate model of natural phenomena. But the deeper point for Kosman, I think, is that Aristotelian explanation is not a bottom-up architectonic structure. Just as nous is not a separate faculty from epistêmê , and epagôgê is not a process entirely separate from apodeixis , in the Aristotelian conception we are always going back towards universal principles and forward towards inferential application to particulars at the same time. It is in that spirit that the idea of an explanatory nexus is perhaps a more appropriate way of thinking of Aristotle’s analytics.

Kosman’s overturning of the usual architectonic understanding of Aristotle’s search for principles has even stronger explanatory power in considering the interactive role of character and deliberation in the Nicomachean Ethics (last essay: “Aristotle on the Virtues of Thought”). He applies to ethical thinking the claim that “understanding principles comes not from our thinking directly about them,” but through trying to employ them in the process of explanation. By doing so he derives a nifty resolution of a seeming contradiction in Aristotle’s thought, that Aristotle both claims that reason shapes desire, and denies that we can deliberate about ends. In Kosman’s analogue to the understanding of principles in Posterior Analytics , reason shapes desire in ethical action not because we think through proper ends and then desire dutifully falls in line, but rather because, in deliberating on what to do in this concrete instance, we clarify the principles that underlie our desires, and desire can refine and reshape itself in light of that clarification.

I have not done justice to the richness and interconnectedness of these investigations into explanation, and I admit that Kosman’s complex and sometimes elliptical style leaves me uncertain that I have fully understood him. But contemplating his arguments was extraordinarily productive for me. The other essays display the same level of intricacy and insight. This collection not only demands reading by serious students of Plato and Aristotle, but re-reading interspersed with contemplation.

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Essays on Plato and Aristotle

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J. L. Ackrill's work on Plato and Aristotle has had a considerable influence upon ancient philosophical studies in the late twentieth century. In his writings the rigour and clarity of contemporary analytic philosophy are brought to bear upon ancient thought; in many cases he has provided the first analytic treatment of a key issue. Gathered now in this volume are the best of Ackrill's essays on the two greatest philosophers of antiquity. With philosophical acuity and philological expertise he examines a wide range of texts and topics--from ethics and logic to epistemology and metaphysics--which continue to be in the focus of debate.

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Aristotle’s Political Theory

Aristotle (b. 384–d. 322 BCE), was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist. Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, and his father was a court physician to the king of Macedon. As a young man he studied in Plato’s Academy in Athens. After Plato’s death he left Athens to conduct philosophical and biological research in Asia Minor and Lesbos, and he was then invited by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his young son, Alexander the Great. Soon after Alexander succeeded his father, consolidated the conquest of the Greek city-states, and launched the invasion of the Persian Empire. Aristotle returned as a resident alien to Athens, and was a close friend of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy. At this time (335–323 BCE) he wrote, or at least worked on, some of his major treatises, including the Politics . When Alexander died suddenly, Aristotle had to flee from Athens because of his Macedonian connections, and he died soon after. Aristotle’s life seems to have influenced his political thought in various ways: his interest in biology seems to be reflected in the naturalism of his politics; his interest in comparative politics and his qualified sympathies for democracy as well as monarchy may have been encouraged by his travels and experience of diverse political systems; he reacts critically to his teacher Plato, while borrowing extensively, from Plato’s Republic , Statesman , and Laws ; and his own Politics is intended to guide rulers and statesmen, reflecting the high political circles in which he moved.

Supplement: Characteristics and Problems of Aristotle’s Politics

Supplement: Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Politics

Supplement: Political Naturalism

4. Study of Specific Constitutions

5. aristotle and modern politics, glossary of aristotelian terms, a. greek text of aristotle’s politics, b. english translations of aristotle’s politics, c. anthologies, d. single-authored commentaries and overviews, e. studies of particular topics, other internet resources, related entries, 1. political science in general.

The modern word ‘political’ derives from the Greek politikos , ‘of, or pertaining to, the polis’. (The Greek term polis will be translated here as ‘city-state’. It is also commonly translated as ‘city’ or simply anglicized as ‘polis’. City-states like Athens and Sparta were relatively small and cohesive units, in which political, religious, and cultural concerns were intertwined. The extent of their similarity to modern nation-states is controversial.) Aristotle’s word for ‘politics’ is politikê , which is short for politikê epistêmê or ‘political science’. It belongs to one of the three main branches of science, which Aristotle distinguishes by their ends or objects. Contemplative science (including physics and metaphysics) is concerned with truth or knowledge for its own sake; practical science with good action; and productive science with making useful or beautiful objects ( Top . VI.6.145a14–16, Met . VI.1.1025b24, XI.7.1064a16–19, EN VI.2.1139a26–8). Politics is a practical science, since it is concerned with the noble action or happiness of the citizens (although it resembles a productive science in that it seeks to create, preserve, and reform political systems). Aristotle thus understands politics as a normative or prescriptive discipline rather than as a purely empirical or descriptive inquiry.

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle describes his subject matter as ‘political science’, which he characterizes as the most authoritative science. It prescribes which sciences are to be studied in the city-state, and the others — such as military science, household management, and rhetoric — fall under its authority. Since it governs the other practical sciences, their ends serve as means to its end, which is nothing less than the human good. “Even if the end is the same for an individual and for a city-state, that of the city-state seems at any rate greater and more complete to attain and preserve. For although it is worthy to attain it for only an individual, it is nobler and more divine to do so for a nation or city-state” ( EN I.2.1094b7–10). The two ethical works (the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics ) explain the principles that form the foundations for the Politics : that happiness is the highest human good, that happiness is the activity of moral virtue defined in terms of the mean, and that justice or the common advantage is the political good. Aristotle’s political science thus encompasses the two fields which modern philosophers distinguish as ethics and political philosophy. (See the entry on Aristotle’s ethics .) Political philosophy in the narrow sense is roughly speaking the subject of his treatise called the Politics . For a further discussion of this topic, see the following supplementary document:

2. Aristotle’s View of Politics

Political science studies the tasks of the politician or statesman ( politikos ), in much the way that medical science concerns the work of the physician (see Politics IV.1). It is, in fact, the body of knowledge that such practitioners, if truly expert, will also wield in pursuing their tasks. The most important task for the politician is, in the role of lawgiver ( nomothetês ), to frame the appropriate constitution for the city-state. This involves enduring laws, customs, and institutions (including a system of moral education) for the citizens. Once the constitution is in place, the politician needs to take the appropriate measures to maintain it, to introduce reforms when he finds them necessary, and to prevent developments which might subvert the political system. This is the province of legislative science, which Aristotle regards as more important than politics as exercised in everyday political activity such as the passing of decrees (see EN VI.8).

Aristotle frequently compares the politician to a craftsman. The analogy is imprecise because politics, in the strict sense of legislative science, is a form of practical knowledge, while a craft like architecture or medicine is a form of productive knowledge. However, the comparison is valid to the extent that the politician produces, operates, maintains a legal system according to universal principles ( EN VI.8 and X.9). In order to appreciate this analogy it is helpful to observe that Aristotle explains the production of an artifact such as a drinking cup in terms of four causes: the material, formal, efficient, and final causes ( Phys . II.3 and Met . A.2). For example, clay (material cause) is molded into a roughly cylindrical shape closed at one end (formal cause) by a potter (efficient or moving cause) so that it can contain a beverage (final cause). (For discussion of the four causes see the entry on Aristotle’s physics .)

One can also explain the existence of the city-state in terms of the four causes. It is a kind of community ( koinônia ), that is, a collection of parts having some functions and interests in common ( Pol . II.1.1261a18, III.1.1275b20). Hence, it is made up of parts, which Aristotle describes in various ways in different contexts: as households, or economic classes (e.g., the rich and the poor), or demes (i.e., local political units). But, ultimately, the city-state is composed of individual citizens (see III.1.1274a38–41), who, along with natural resources, are the “material” or “equipment” out of which the city-state is fashioned (see VII.14.1325b38–41).

The formal cause of the city-state is its constitution ( politeia ). Aristotle defines the constitution as “a certain ordering of the inhabitants of the city-state” (III.1.1274b32–41). He also speaks of the constitution of a community as “the form of the compound” and argues that whether the community is the same over time depends on whether it has the same constitution (III.3.1276b1–11). The constitution is not a written document, but an immanent organizing principle, analogous to the soul of an organism. Hence, the constitution is also “the way of life” of the citizens (IV.11.1295a40–b1, VII.8.1328b1–2). Here the citizens are that minority of the resident population who possess full political rights (III.1.1275b17–20).

The existence of the city-state also requires an efficient cause, namely, its ruler. On Aristotle’s view, a community of any sort can possess order only if it has a ruling element or authority. This ruling principle is defined by the constitution, which sets criteria for political offices, particularly the sovereign office (III.6.1278b8–10; cf. IV.1.1289a15–18). However, on a deeper level, there must be an efficient cause to explain why a city-state acquires its constitution in the first place. Aristotle states that “the person who first established [the city-state] is the cause of very great benefits” (I.2.1253a30–1). This person was evidently the lawgiver ( nomothetês ), someone like Solon of Athens or Lycurgus of Sparta, who founded the constitution. Aristotle compares the lawgiver, or the politician more generally, to a craftsman ( dêmiourgos ) like a weaver or shipbuilder, who fashions material into a finished product (II.12.1273b32–3, VII.4.1325b40–1365a5).

The notion of final cause dominates Aristotle’s Politics from the opening lines:

Since we see that every city-state is a sort of community and that every community is established for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what they believe to be good), it is clear that every community aims at some good, and the community which has the most authority of all and includes all the others aims highest, that is, at the good with the most authority. This is what is called the city-state or political community. [I.1.1252a1–7]

Soon after, he states that the city-state comes into being for the sake of life but exists for the sake of the good life (2.1252b29–30). The theme that the good life or happiness is the proper end of the city-state recurs throughout the Politics (III.6.1278b17–24, 9.1280b39; VII.2.1325a7–10).

To sum up, the city-state is a hylomorphic (i.e., matter-form) compound of a particular population (i.e., citizen-body) in a given territory (material cause) and a constitution (formal cause). The constitution itself is fashioned by the lawgiver and is governed by politicians, who are like craftsmen (efficient cause), and the constitution defines the aim of the city-state (final cause, IV.1.1289a17–18). Aristotle’s hylomorphic analysis has important practical implications for him: just as a craftsman should not try to impose a form on materials for which it is unsuited (e.g. to build a house out of sand), the legislator should not lay down or change laws which are contrary to the nature of the citizens. Aristotle accordingly rejects utopian schemes such as the proposal in Plato’s Republic that children and property should belong to all the citizens in common. For this runs afoul of the fact that “people give most attention to their own property, less to what is communal, or only as much as falls to them to give attention” ( Pol. II.3.1261b33–5). Aristotle is also wary of casual political innovation, because it can have the deleterious side-effect of undermining the citizens’ habit of obeying the law (II.8.1269a13–24). For a further discussion of the theoretical foundations of Aristotle’s politics, see the following supplementary document:

It is in these terms, then, that Aristotle understands the fundamental normative problem of politics: What constitutional form should the lawgiver establish and preserve in what material for the sake of what end?

3. General Theory of Constitutions and Citizenship

Aristotle states, “The politician and lawgiver is wholly occupied with the city-state, and the constitution is a certain way of organizing those who inhabit the city-state” (III.1.1274b36–8). His general theory of constitutions is set forth in Politics III. He begins with a definition of the citizen ( politês ), since the city-state is by nature a collective entity, a multitude of citizens. Citizens are distinguished from other inhabitants, such as resident aliens and slaves; and even children and seniors are not unqualified citizens (nor are most ordinary workers). After further analysis he defines the citizen as a person who has the right ( exousia ) to participate in deliberative or judicial office (1275b18–21). In Athens, for example, citizens had the right to attend the assembly, the council, and other bodies, or to sit on juries. The Athenian system differed from a modern representative democracy in that the citizens were more directly involved in governing. Although full citizenship tended to be restricted in the Greek city-states (with women, slaves, foreigners, and some others excluded), the citizens were more deeply enfranchised than in modern representative democracies because they were more directly involved in governing. This is reflected in Aristotle’s definition of the citizen (without qualification). Further, he defines the city-state (in the unqualified sense) as a multitude of such citizens which is adequate for a self-sufficient life (1275b20–21).

Aristotle defines the constitution ( politeia ) as a way of organizing the offices of the city-state, particularly the sovereign office (III.6.1278b8–10; cf. IV.1.1289a15–18). The constitution thus defines the governing body, which takes different forms: for example, in a democracy it is the people, and in an oligarchy it is a select few (the wealthy or well born). Before attempting to distinguish and evaluate various constitutions Aristotle considers two questions. First, why does a city-state come into being? He recalls the thesis, defended in Politics I.2, that human beings are by nature political animals, who naturally want to live together. For a further discussion of this topic, see the following supplementary document:

Aristotle then adds, “The common advantage also brings them together insofar as they each attain the noble life. This is above all the end for all both in common and separately” (III.6.1278b19–24). Second, what are the different forms of rule by which one individual or group can rule over another? Aristotle distinguishes several types of rule, based on the nature of the soul of the ruler and of the subject. He first considers despotic rule, which is exemplified in the master-slave relationship. Aristotle thinks that this form of rule is justified in the case of natural slaves who (he asserts without evidence) lack a deliberative faculty and thus need a natural master to direct them (I.13.1260a12; slavery is defended at length in Politics I.4–8). Although a natural slave allegedly benefits from having a master, despotic rule is still primarily for the sake of the master and only incidentally for the slave (III.6.1278b32–7). (Aristotle provides no argument for this: if some persons are congenitally incapable of governing themselves, why should they not be ruled primarily for their own sakes?) He next considers paternal and marital rule, which he also views as defensible: “the male is by nature more capable of leadership than the female, unless he is constituted in some way contrary to nature, and the elder and perfect [is by nature more capable of leadership] than the younger and imperfect” (I.12.1259a39–b4).

Aristotle is persuasive when he argues that children need adult supervision because their rationality is “imperfect” ( ateles ) or immature. But he is unconvincing to modern readers when he alleges (without substantiation) that, although women have a deliberative faculty, it is “without authority” ( akuron ), so that females require male supervision (I.13.1260a13–14). (Aristotle’s arguments about slaves and women appear so weak that some commentators take them to be ironic. However, what is obvious to a modern reader need not have been so to an ancient Greek, so that it is not necessary to suppose Aristotle’s discussion is disingenuous.) It is noteworthy, however, that paternal and marital rule are properly practiced for the sake of the ruled (for the sake of the child and of the wife respectively), just as arts like medicine or gymnastics are practiced for the sake of the patient (III.6.1278b37–1279a1). In this respect they resemble political rule, which is the form of rule appropriate when the ruler and the subject have equal and similar rational capacities. This is exemplified by naturally equal citizens who take turns at ruling for one another’s advantage (1279a8–13). This sets the stage for the fundamental claim of Aristotle’s constitutional theory: “constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers are deviant and unjust, because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons” (1279a17–21).

The distinction between correct and deviant constitutions is combined with the observation that the government may consist of one person, a few, or a multitude. Hence, there are six possible constitutional forms ( Politics III.7):

This six-fold classification (which is doubtless adapted from Plato’s Statesman 302c–d) sets the stage for Aristotle’s inquiry into the best constitution, although it is modified in various ways throughout the Politics . For example, he observes that the dominant class in oligarchy (literally rule of the oligoi , i.e., few) is typically the wealthy, whereas in democracy (literally rule of the dêmos , i.e., people) it is the poor, so that these economic classes should be included in the definition of these forms (see Politics III.8, IV.4, and VI.2 for alternative accounts). Also, polity is later characterized as a kind of “mixed” constitution typified by rule of the “middle” group of citizens, a moderately wealthy class between the rich and poor ( Politics IV.11).

Aristotle’s constitutional theory is based on his theory of justice, which is expounded in Nicomachean Ethics book V. Aristotle distinguishes two different but related senses of “justice” — universal and particular — both of which play an important role in his constitutional theory. Firstly, in the universal sense “justice” means “lawfulness” and is concerned with the common advantage and happiness of the political community ( NE V.1.1129b11–19, cf. Pol. III.12.1282b16–17). The conception of universal justice undergirds the distinction between correct (just) and deviant (unjust) constitutions. But what exactly the “common advantage” ( koinê sumpheron ) entails is a matter of scholarly controversy. Some passages imply that justice involves the advantage of all the citizens; for example, every citizen of the best constitution has a just claim to private property and to an education ( Pol. VII.9.1329a23–4, 13.1332a32–8). But Aristotle also allows that it might be “in a way” just to ostracize powerful citizens even when they have not been convicted of any crimes (III.13.1284b15–20). Whether Aristotle understands the common advantage as safeguarding the interests of each and every citizen has a bearing on whether and to what extent he anticipates what moderns would understand as a theory of individual rights. (See Fred Miller and Richard Kraut for differing interpretations.)

Secondly, in the particular sense “justice” means “equality” or “fairness”, and this includes distributive justice, according to which different individuals have just claims to shares of some common asset such as property. Aristotle analyzes arguments for and against the different constitutions as different applications of the principle of distributive justice (III.9.1280a7–22). Everyone agrees, he says, that justice involves treating equal persons equally, and treating unequal persons unequally, but they do not agree on the standard by which individuals are deemed to be equally (or unequally) meritorious or deserving. He assumes his own analysis of distributive justice set forth in Nicomachean Ethics V.3: Justice requires that benefits be distributed to individuals in proportion to their merit or desert. The oligarchs mistakenly think that those who are superior in wealth should also have superior political rights, whereas the democrats hold that those who are equal in free birth should also have equal political rights. Both of these conceptions of political justice are mistaken in Aristotle’s view, because they assume a false conception of the ultimate end of the city-state. The city-state is neither a business enterprise to maximize wealth (as the oligarchs suppose) nor an association to promote liberty and equality (as the democrats maintain). Instead, Aristotle argues, “the good life is the end of the city-state,” that is, a life consisting of noble actions (1280b39–1281a4). Hence, the correct conception of justice is aristocratic, assigning political rights to those who make a full contribution to the political community, that is, to those with virtue as well as property and freedom (1281a4–8). This is what Aristotle understands by an “aristocratic” constitution: literally, the rule of the aristoi , i.e., best persons. Aristotle explores the implications of this argument in the remainder of Politics III, considering the rival claims of the rule of law and the rule of a supremely virtuous individual. Here absolute kingship is a limiting case of aristocracy. Again, in books VII-VIII, Aristotle describes the ideal constitution in which the citizens are fully virtuous.

Although justice is in Aristotle’s view the foremost political virtue ( Pol . III.9.1283a38–40), the other great social virtue, friendship, should not be overlooked, because the two virtues work hand in hand to secure every sort of association ( EN VIII.9.1159b26–7). Justice enables the citizens of a city-state to share peacefully in the benefits and burdens of cooperation, while friendship holds them together and prevents them from breaking up into warring factions (cf. Pol . II.4.1262b7–9). Friends are expected to treat each other justly, but friendship goes beyond justice because it is a complex mutual bond in which individuals choose the good for others and trust that others are choosing the good for them (cf. EE VII.2.1236a14–15, b2–3; EN VIII.2.1155b34–3.1156a10). Because choosing the good for one another is essential to friendship and there are three different ways in which something can be called ‘good’ for a human being—virtuous (i.e., good without qualification), useful, or pleasant—there are three types of friendship: hedonistic, utilitarian, and virtuous. Political (or civic) friendship is a species of utilitarian friendship, and it is the most important form of utilitarian friendship because the polis is the greatest community. Opposed to political friendship is enmity, which leads to faction or civil war ( stasis ) or even to political revolution and the breakup of the polis, as discussed in Book V of the Politics. Aristotle offers general accounts of political or civic friendship as part of his general theory of friendship in EE VII.10 and EN VIII.9–12.

The purpose of political science is to guide “the good lawgiver and the true politician” (IV.1.1288b27). Like any complete science or craft, it must study a range of issues concerning its subject matter. For example, gymnastics (physical education) studies what sort of training is best or adapted to the body that is naturally the best, what sort of training is best for most bodies, and what capacity is appropriate for someone who does not want the condition or knowledge appropriate for athletic contests. Political science studies a comparable range of constitutions (1288b21–35): first, the constitution which is best without qualification, i.e., “most according to our prayers with no external impediment”; second, the constitution that is best under the circumstances “for it is probably impossible for many persons to attain the best constitution”; third, the constitution which serves the aim a given population happens to have, i.e., the one that is best “based on a hypothesis”: “for [the political scientist] ought to be able to study a given constitution, both how it might originally come to be, and, when it has come to be, in what manner it might be preserved for the longest time; I mean, for example, if a particular city happens neither to be governed by the best constitution, nor to be equipped even with necessary things, nor to be the [best] possible under existing circumstances, but to be a baser sort.” Hence, Aristotelian political science is not confined to the ideal system, but also investigates the second-best constitution or even inferior political systems, because this may be the closest approximation to full political justice which the lawgiver can attain under the circumstances.

Regarding the constitution that is ideal or “according to prayer,” Aristotle criticizes the views of his predecessors in the Politics and then offers a rather sketchy blueprint of his own in Politics VII–VIII. Although his own political views were influenced by his teacher Plato, Aristotle is highly critical of the ideal constitution set forth in Plato’s Republic on the grounds that it overvalues political unity, it embraces a system of communism that is impractical and inimical to human nature, and it neglects the happiness of the individual citizens ( Politics II.1–5). In contrast, in Aristotle’s “best constitution,” each and every citizen will possess moral virtue and the equipment to carry it out in practice, and thereby attain a life of excellence and complete happiness (see VII.13.1332a32–8). All of the citizens will hold political office and possess private property because “one should call the city-state happy not by looking at a part of it but at all the citizens.” (VII.9.1329a22–3). Moreover, there will be a common system of education for all the citizens, because they share the same end ( Pol . VIII.1).

If (as is the case with most existing city-states) the population lacks the capacities and resources for complete happiness, however, the lawgiver must be content with fashioning a suitable constitution ( Politics IV.11). The second-best system typically takes the form of a polity (in which citizens possess an inferior, more common grade of virtue) or mixed constitution (combining features of democracy, oligarchy, and, where possible, aristocracy, so that no group of citizens is in a position to abuse its rights). Aristotle argues that for city-states that fall short of the ideal, the best constitution is one controlled by a numerous middle class which stands between the rich and the poor. For those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation find it “easiest to obey the rule of reason” ( Politics IV.11.1295b4–6). They are accordingly less apt than the rich or poor to act unjustly toward their fellow citizens. A constitution based on the middle class is the mean between the extremes of oligarchy (rule by the rich) and democracy (rule by the poor). “That the middle [constitution] is best is evident, for it is the freest from faction: where the middle class is numerous, there least occur factions and divisions among citizens” (IV.11.1296a7–9). The middle constitution is therefore both more stable and more just than oligarchy and democracy.

Although Aristotle classifies democracy as a deviant constitution (albeit the best of a bad lot), he argues that a case might be made for popular rule in Politics III.11, a discussion which has attracted the attention of modern democratic theorists. The central claim is that the many may turn out to be better than the virtuous few when they come together, even though the many may be inferior when considered individually. For if each individual has a portion of virtue and practical wisdom, they may pool these moral assets and turn out to be better rulers than even a very wise individual. This argument seems to anticipate treatments of “the wisdom of the multitude” such as Condorcet’s “jury theorem.” In recent years, this particular chapter has been widely discussed in connection with topics such as democratic deliberation and public reason.

In addition, the political scientist must attend to existing constitutions even when they are bad. Aristotle notes that “to reform a constitution is no less a task [of politics] than it is to establish one from the beginning,” and in this way “the politician should also help existing constitutions” (IV.1.1289a1–7). The political scientist should also be cognizant of forces of political change which can undermine an existing regime. Aristotle criticizes his predecessors for excessive utopianism and neglect of the practical duties of a political theorist. However, he is no Machiavellian. The best constitution still serves as a regulative ideal by which to evaluate existing systems.

These topics occupy the remainder of the Politics . Books IV–VI are concerned with the existing constitutions: that is, the three deviant constitutions, as well as polity or the “mixed” constitution, which are the best attainable under most circumstances (IV.2.1289a26–38). The mixed constitution has been of special interest to scholars because it looks like a forerunner of modern republican regimes. The whole of book V investigates the causes and prevention of revolution or political change ( metabolê ) and civil war or faction ( stasis ). Books VII–VIII are devoted to the ideal constitution. As might be expected, Aristotle’s attempt to carry out this program involves many difficulties, and scholars disagree about how the two series of books (IV–VI and VII–VIII) are related to each other: for example, which were written first, which were intended to be read first, and whether they are ultimately consistent with each other. Most importantly, when Aristotle offers practical political prescriptions in Books IV–VI, is he guided by the best constitution as a regulative ideal, or is he simply abandoning political idealism and practicing a form of Realpolitik?For a further discussion of this topic, see the following supplementary document:

Aristotle has continued to influence thinkers up to the present throughout the political spectrum, including conservatives (such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin), communitarians (such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel), liberals (such as William Galston and Martha C. Nussbaum), libertarians (such as Tibor R. Machan, Douglas B. Rasmussen, and Douglas J. Den Uyl), and democratic theorists (such as Jill Frank and Gerald M. Mara).

It is not surprising that such diverse political persuasions can lay claim to Aristotle as a source. For his method often leads to divergent interpretations. When he deals with a difficult problem, he is inclined to consider opposing arguments in a careful and nuanced manner, and he is often willing to concede that there is truth on each side. For example, though he is critical of democracy, in one passage he allows that the case for rule by the many based on the superior wisdom of the multitude “perhaps also involves some truth” ( Pol. III.11.1281a39–42). Again, he sometimes applies his own principles in a questionable manner, for example, when he reasons that because associations should be governed in a rational manner, the household should be run by the husband rather than by the wife, whose rational capacity “lacks authority” (I.13.1260a13). Modern commentators sympathetic with Aristotle’s general approach often contend that in this case he applies his own principles incorrectly–leaving open the question of how they should be applied. Further, the way he applies his principles may have seemed reasonable in his socio-political context–for example, that the citizen of a polity (normally the best attainable constitution) must be a hoplite soldier (cf. III.7,1297b4)–but it may be debatable how these might apply within a modern democratic nation-state.

The problem of extrapolating to modern political affairs can be illustrated more fully in connection with Aristotle’s discussion of legal change in Politics II.8. He first lays out the argument for making the laws changeable. It has been beneficial in the case of medicine, for example, for it to progress from traditional ways to improved forms of treatment. An existing law may be a vestige of a primitive barbaric practice. For instance, Aristotle mentions a law in Cyme that allows an accuser to produce a number of his own relatives as witnesses to prove that a defendant is guilty of murder. “So,” Aristotle concludes, “it is evident from the foregoing that some laws should sometimes be changed. But to those who look at the matter from a different angle, caution would seem to be required” (1269a12–14). Since the law gets its force from the citizens’ habit of obedience, great care should be exercised in making any change in it. It may sometimes be better to leave defective laws in place rather than encouraging lawlessness by changing the laws too frequently. Moreover, there are the problems of how the laws are to be changed and who is to change them. Although Aristotle offers valuable insights, he breaks off the discussion of this topic and never takes it up elsewhere. We might sum up his view as follows: When it comes to changing the laws, observe the mean: don’t be too bound by traditional laws, but on the other hand don’t be overeager in altering them. It is obvious that this precept, reasonable as it is, leaves considerable room for disagreement among contemporary “neo-Aristotelian” theorists. For example, should the laws be changed to allow self-described transsexual persons to use sexually segregated restrooms? Conservatives and liberals might agree with Aristotle’s general stricture regarding legal change but differ widely on how to apply it in a particular case.

Most scholars of Aristotle advisedly make no attempt to show that he is aligned with any contemporary ideology. Rather, insofar as they find him relevant to our times, it is because he offers a remarkable synthesis of idealism and pragmatism unfolding in deep and thought-provoking discussions of perennial concerns of political philosophy: the role of human nature in politics, the relation of the individual to the state, the place of morality in politics, the theory of political justice, the rule of law, the analysis and evaluation of constitutions, the relevance of ideals to practical politics, the causes and cures of political change and revolution, and the importance of a morally educated citizenry.

• action: praxis
• citizen: politês
• city-state: polis (also ‘city’ or ‘state’)
• community: koinônia
• constitution: politeia (also ‘regime’)
• faction: stasis (also ‘civil war’)
• free: eleutheros
• friendship: philia
• good: agathos
• happiness: eudaimonia
• happy: eudaimôn
• justice: dikaiosunê
• lawgiver: nomothetês
• master: despotês
• nature: phusis
• noble: kalon (also ‘beautiful’ or ‘fine’)
• people ( dêmos )
• political: politikos (of, or pertaining to, the polis )
• political science: politikê epistêmê
• politician: politikos (also ‘statesman’)
• practical: praktikos
• practical wisdom: phronêsis
• revolution: metabolê (also ‘change’)
• right: exousia (also ‘liberty’)
• ruler: archôn
• self-sufficient: autarkês
• sovereign: kurios
• virtue: aretê (also ‘excellence’)
• without qualification: haplôs (also ‘absolute’)
• without authority: akuron

Note on Citations . Passages in Aristotle are cited as follows: title of treatise (italics), book (Roman numeral), chapter (Arabic numeral), line reference. Line references are keyed to the 1831 edition of Immanuel Bekker which had two columns (“a” and “b”) on each page. Politics is abbreviated as Pol. and Nicomachean Ethics as NE . In this article, “ Pol . I.2.1252b27”, for example, refers to Politics book I, chapter 2, page 1252, column b, line 27. Most translations include the Bekker page number with column letter in the margin followed by every fifth line number.

Passages in Plato are cited in a similar fashion, except the line references are to the Stephanus edition of 1578 in which pages were divided into five parts (“a” through “e”).

Caveat on Bibliography. Although fairly extensive, this bibliography represents only a fraction of the secondary literature in English. However, the items cited here contain many references to other valuable scholarly work in other languages as well as in English.

• Dreizehnter, Alois, Aristoteles’ Politik , Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1970 [generally the most reliable critical edition].
• Ross, W. D., Aristotelis Politica , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957.
• Barker, Ernest, revised by Richard Stalley, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Jowett, Benjamin, revised in The Complete Works of Aristotle (The Revised Oxford Translation), Jonathan Barnes (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, vol. II, pp. 1986–2129.
• Lord, Carnes, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, revised edition.
• Rackham, H., Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1932.
• Reeve, C. D. C., Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2017 (new translation).
• Simpson, Peter L. P., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• Sinclair, T. A., revised by Trevor J. Saunders, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.

The Clarendon Aristotle Series (Oxford University Press) includes translation and commentary of the Politics in four volumes:

• Trevor J. Saunders, Politics I–II (1995).
• Richard Robinson with a supplementary essay by David Keyt, Politics III–IV (1995).
• David Keyt, Politics V–VI (1999).
• Richard Kraut, Politics VII–VIII (1997).
• Also of interest is the Constitution of Athens , an account of the history and workings of the Athenian democracy. Although it was formerly ascribed to Aristotle, it is now thought by most scholars to have been written by one of his pupils, perhaps at his direction toward the end of Aristotle’s life. A reliable translation with introduction and notes is by P. J. Rhodes, Aristotle: The Athenian Constitution . Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
• Barnes, Jonathan, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle (Volume 2: Ethics and Politics), London: Duckworth, 1977.
• Boudouris, K. J. (ed.), Aristotelian Political Philosophy, 2 volumes, Athens: Kardamitsa Publishing Co., 1995.
• Deslauriers, Marguerite, and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Höffe, Otfried (ed.), Aristoteles Politik , Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001.
• Keyt, David, and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
• Kraut, Richard, and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
• Lockwood, Thornton, and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Lord, Carnes, and David O’Connor (eds.), Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
• Patzig, Günther (ed.), Aristoteles’ Politik: Akten des XI. Symposium Aristotelicum , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990.
• Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics , translated by Richard J. Regan, Indianapolis Publishing Co.: Hackett, 2007.
• Barker, Ernest, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle , London: Methuen, 1906; reprinted, New York: Russell & Russell, 1959.
• Bodéüs, Richard, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle’s Ethics , Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
• Brill, Sara, Aristotle on the Concept of the Shared Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Hansen, Mogens Herman, Reflections on Aristotle’s Politics , Copenhagen: Tusculaneum Press, 2013.
• Keyt, David, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017.
• Kontos, Pavlos, Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason: Spectators, Legislators, Hopes, and Evils , Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2021.
• Kraut, Richard, Aristotle: Political Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Mulgan, Richard G., Aristotle’s Political Theory , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Newman, W. L., The Politics of Aristotle , 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1887–1902; reprinted Salem, NH: Ayer, 1985.
• Nichols, Mary, Citizens and Statesmen: A Study of Aristotle’s Politics , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
• Pangle, Lorraine Smith, Reason and Character: The Moral Foundations of Aristotelian Political Philosophy , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
• Pellegrin, Pierre, Endangered Excellent: On the Political Philosophy of Aristotle , translated by Anthony Preus, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2020.
• Riesbeck, David J., Aristotle on Political Community , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Roberts, Jean, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Politics , London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
• Schütrumpf, Eckart, Aristoteles: Politik , 4 vols. Berlin and Darmstadt: Akademie Verlag, 1999–2005.
• Simpson, Peter, A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle , Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
• Strauss, Leo, “On Aristotle’s Politics,” in The City and Man , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 13–49.
• Susemihl, Franz, and R. D. Hicks, The Politics of Aristotle , London: Macmillan, 1894. [Includes books I–III and VII–VIII renumbered as IV–V.]
• Trott, Adriel M., Aristotle on the Nature of Community , New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Veogelin, Eric, Order and History (Vol. III: Plato and Aristotle ), Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
• Yack, Bernard, The Problems of a Political Animal: Community, Justice, and Conflict in Aristotelian Political Thought , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

1. Biographical and Textual Studies

• Barker, Ernest, “The Life of Aristotle and the Composition and Structure of the Politics ,” Classical Review , 45 (1931), 162–72.
• Jaeger, Werner, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948.
• Kelsen, Hans, “Aristotle and the Hellenic-Macedonian Policy,” in Jonathan Barnes et al. (eds.), Articles on Aristotle (Volume 2: Ethics and Politics), London: Duckworth, 1977, pp. 170–94.
• Lord, Carnes, “The Character and Composition of Aristotle’s Politics ,” Political Theory , 9 (1981), 459–78.

2. Methodology and Foundations of Aristotle’s Political Theory

• Adkins, A. W. H., “The Connection between Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics ,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 75–93.
• Cherry, Kevin M., Plato, Aristotle and the Purpose of Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Depew, David J., “The Ethics of Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Ryan K. Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 399–418.
• Frank Jill, “On Logos and Politics in Aristotle,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 9–26.
• Frede, Dorothea, “The Political Character of Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 14–37.
• Gerson, Lloyd, “On the Scientific Character of Aristotle’s Politics,” in K. I. Boudouris, K. I. (ed.), Aristotelian Political Philosophy, Athens: Kardamitsa Publishing Co., 1995, vol. I, pp. 35–50.
• Irwin, Terence H., “Moral Science and Political Theory in Aristotle,” History of Political Thought , 6 (1985), pp. 150–68.
• Kahn, Charles H., “The Normative Structure of Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Günther Patzig (ed.) Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 369–84.
• Kamtekar, Rachana, “The Relationship between Aristotle’s Ethical and Political Discourses ( NE X 9),” in Ronald Polansky (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 370–82.
• Keyt, David, “Aristotle’s Political Philosophy,” in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, 165–95.
• Lockwood, Thornton, “ Politics II: Political Critique, Political Theorizing, Political Innovation,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 64–83.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “The Unity of Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics,” in David Konstan and David Sider (eds.), Philoderma: Essays in Greek and Roman Philosophy in Honor of Phillip Mitsis (Siracusa: Parnassos Press, 2022), pp. 215–43.
• Ober, Joshua, “Aristotle’s Political Sociology: Class, Status, and Order in the Politics ,” in Carnes Lord and David O’Connor (eds.), Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
• Pellegrin, Pierre, “On the ‘Platonic’ Part of Aristotle’s Politics ,” in William Wians (ed.) Aristotle’s Philosophical Development , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, pp. 347–59.
• –––, “Is Politics a Natural Science?” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 27–45.
• –––, “Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Christopher Shields (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 558–85.
• Peonids, F., “The Relation between the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics Revisited,” History of Political Thought 22 (2001): 1–12.
• Rowe, Christopher J., “Aims and Methods in Aristotle’s Politics ,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 57–74.
• Salkever, Stephen G., “Aristotle’s Social Science,” Political Theory , 9 (1981), pp. 479–508; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 27–64.
• –––, Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• Santas, Gerasimos X.,“The Relation between Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics,” in K. I. Boudouris, K. I. (ed.), Aristotelian Political Philosophy, Athens: Kardamitsa Publishing Co., 1995, vol. I, pp. 160–76.
• Smith, Nicholas D. and Robert Mayhew, “Aristotle on What the Political Scientist Needs to Know,” in K. I. Boudouris (ed.) Aristotelian Political Philosophy , Athens: International Center for Greek Philosophy and Culture, 1995, vol. I, pp. 189–98.
• Vander Waerdt, Paul A., “The Political Intention of Aristotle’s Moral Philosophy,” Ancient Philosophy 5 (1985), 77–89.
• –––, “The Plan and Intention of Aristotle’s Ethical and Political Writings,” Illinois Classical Studies 16 (1991), 231–53.

3. Political Naturalism

• Ambler, Wayne, “Aristotle’s Understanding of the Naturalness of the City,” Review of Politics , 47 (1985), 163–85.
• Annas, Julia, “Aristotle on Human Nature and Political Virtue,” The Review of Metaphysics , 49 (1996), 731–54.
• Berryman, Sylvia, Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2919, esp. Ch. 3 “Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics. ”
• Chan, Joseph, “Does Aristotle’s Political Theory Rest on a Blunder?” History of Political Thought , 13 (1992), 189–202.
• Chappell, Timothy, “‘Naturalism’ in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy,” in Ryan K. Balot (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 382–98.
• Cherry, K. and E. A. Goerner, “Does Aristotle’s Polis Exist ‘By Nature’?” History of Political Thought , 27 (2006), 563–85.
• Cooper, John M., “Political Animals and Civic Friendship,” in Günther Patzig (ed.), Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 220–41; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 65–89.
• DePew, David J., “Humans and Other Political Animals in Aristotle’s Historia Animalium ,” Phronesis , 40 (1995), 156–76.
• –––, “Political Animals and the Genealogy of the Polis : Aristotle’s Politics and Plato’s Statesman ,” in Geert Keil and Nora Kreft (eds.), Aristotle’s Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 238–57.
• Everson, Stephen, “Aristotle on the Foundations of the State,” Political Studies , 36 (1988), 89–101.
• Karbowski, Joseph, “Political Animals and Human Nature in Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Geert Keil and Nora Kreft (eds.), Aristotle’s Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 221–37.
• Keyt, David, “The Meaning of BIOS in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics ,” Ancient Philosophy , 9 (1989), 15–21; reprinted in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, 101–9.
• –––, “Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle’s Politics ,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 118–41; reprinted in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, 111–38.
• Kullmann, Wolfgang, “Man as a Political Animal in Aristotle,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 94–117.
• Lloyd, Geoffrey, “Aristotle on the Natural Sociability, Skills and Intelligence of Animals,” in Verity Harte and Melissa Lane (eds.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 277–94.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “Aristotle: Naturalism,” in Christopher J. Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 321–43.
• Mulgan, Richard, “Aristotle’s Doctrine that Man is a Political Animal,” Hermes , 102 (1974), 438–45.
• Reeve, C. D. C., “The Naturalness of the Polis in Aristotle,” in Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 512–25.
• Roberts, Jean, “Political Animals in the Nicomachean Ethics ,” Phronesis , 34 (1989), 185–202.

4. Household: Women, Children, and Slaves

• Booth, William James, “Politics and the Household: A Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics Book One,” History of Political Thought , 2 (1981), 203–26.
• Brunt, P. A., “Aristotle and Slavery,” in Studies in Greek History and Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 434–88.
• Chambliss, J. J., “Aristotle’s Conception of Children and the Poliscraft,” Educational Studies , 13 (1982), 33–43.
• Cole, Eve Browning, “Women, Slaves, and ‘Love of Toil’ in Aristotle’s Moral Psychology,” in Bat-Ami Bar On (ed.), Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle , Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, pp. 127–44.
• Deslauriers, Marguerite, “The Virtues of Women and Slaves,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy , 25 (2003), 213–31.
• –––, “Political Rule Over Women in Politics ,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 46–63.
• Fortenbaugh, W. W., “Aristotle on Slaves and Women,” in Jonathan Barnes et al. (eds.), Articles on Aristotle , vol. 2, Ethics and Politics. London: Duckworth, 1977, pp. 135–9.
• Frank, Jill, “Citizens, Slaves, and Foreigners: Aristotle on Human Nature,” American Political Science Review , 98 (2004), 91–104.
• Freeland, Cynthia, Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle , University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998.
• Garnsey, Peter, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Lindsay, Thomas K., “Was Aristotle Racist, Sexist, and Anti-Democratic?: A Review Essay,” Review of Politics 56 (1994), 127–51.
• Lockwood, Thornton, “Justice in Aristotle’s Household and City,” Polis , 20 (2003), 1–21.
• –––, “Is Natural Slavery Beneficial?” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 45 (2007), 207–21.
• Mayhew, Robert, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology: Reason or Rationalization , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
• Modrak, Deborah, “Aristotle: Women, Deliberation, and Nature,” in Bat-Ami Bar On (ed.), Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle , Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, pp. 207–21.
• Mulgan, Robert G., “Aristotle and the Political Role of Women,” History of Political Thought , 15 (1994), 179–202.
• Nagle, D. Brendan, The Household as the Foundation of Aristotle’s Polis , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Pellegrin, Pierre, “Natural Slavery,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 92–116.
• Saxenhouse, Arlene W., “Family, Polity, and Unity: Aristotle on Socrates’ Community of Wives,” Polity , 15 (1982), 202–19.
• Schofield, Malcolm, “Ideology and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Theory of Slavery,” in Günther Patzig (ed.) Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 1–27; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 91–119.
• Senack, Christine M., “Aristotle on the Woman’s Soul,” in Bat-Ami Bar On (ed.), Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle , Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, pp. 223–36.
• Simpson, Peter, “Aristotle’s Criticism of Socrates’ Communism of Wives and Children,” Apeiron , 24 (1991), 99–114.
• Smith, Nicholas D., “Plato and Aristotle on the Nature of Women,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 21 (1983), 467–78.
• –––, “Aristotle’s Theory of Natural Slavery,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 142–55.
• Spelman, E. V., “Aristotle and the Politicization of the Soul,” in Sandra Harding and M. B. Hintikka (eds) Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science , Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983, pp. 17–30.
• –––, “Who’s Who in the Polis,” in Bat-Ami Bar On (ed.), Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and Aristotle , Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, pp. 99–125.
• Stauffer, Dana J., “Aristotle’s Account of the Subjection of Women,” Journal of Politics , 70 (2008), 929–41.

5. Political Economy

• Ambler, Wayne H., “Aristotle on Acquisition,” Canadian Journal of Political Science , 17 (1984), 487–502.
• Crespo, Ricardo F., A Re-assessment of Aristotle ’ s Economic Thought . London: Routledge, 2014.
• Dobbs, Darrell, “Aristotle’s Anticommunism,” American Journal of Political Science , 29 (1985), 29–46.
• Finley, M. I., “Aristotle and Economic Analysis,” in Jonathan Barnes et al. (eds.), Articles on Aristotle , vol. 2, Ethics and Politics. London: Duckworth, 1977, pp. 140–58.
• Gallagher, Robert L., Aristotle’s Critique of Political Economy with a Contemporary Application. London: Routledge, 2018.
• Hadreas, Peter, “Aristotle on the Vices and Virtue of Wealth,” Journal of Business Ethics, 39 (2002), 361–76.
• Hartman, Edwin M., “Virtue, Profit, and the Separation Thesis: An Aristotelian View,” Journal of Business Ethics ,99 (2011), 5–17.
• –––, Virtue in Business: Conversations with Aristotle . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Inamura, Kazutaka, “The Role of Reciprocity in Aristotle’s Theory of Political Economy,” History of Political Thought , 32 (2011), 565–87.
• Irwin, Terence H., “Aristotle’s Defense of Private Property,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.). A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 200–25.
• Judson, Lindsay, “Aristotle on Fair Exchange,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy , 15 (1997), 147–75.
• Keyt, David, “Aristotle and the Joy of Working,” in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, pp. 223–39.
• Mathie, William,“Property in the Political Science of Aristotle,” in Anthony Parel & Thomas Flanagan(eds.), Theories of Property: Aristotle to the Present . Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1979, pp. 12–35.
• Mayhew, Robert, “Aristotle on Property,” The Review of Metaphysics , 46 (1993), 802–31.
• McNeill, D., “Alternative Interpretations of Aristotle on Exchange and Reciprocity,” Public Affairs Quarterly , 4 (1990), 55–68.
• Mei, Todd S., “The Preeminence of Use: Reevaluating the Relation between Use and Exchange in Aristotle’s Economic Thought,” American Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (2009), 523–48.
• Meikle, Scott, “Aristotle on Money” Phronesis 39 (1994), 26–44.
• –––, Aristotle’s Economic Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Miller, Fred D. Jr., “Property Rights in Aristotle,” in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 121–44.
• –––, “Was Aristotle the First Economist?” Apeiron , 31 (1998), 387–98.
• –––, “Aristotle and Business: Friend or Foe?” in Eugene Heath and Byron Kaldis (eds.), Wealth, Commerce and Philosophy: Foundational Thinkers and Business Ethics , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017, pp. 31–52.
• Morris, Tom, If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business , New York: Henry Holt, 1997.
• Nielsen, Karen Margrethe, “Economy and Private Property,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 67–91.
• Solomon, Robert C., “Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly , 2 (1992), 317–39.
• –––, “Aristotle, Ethics, and Business Organizations,” Organization Studies, 25 (2004), 1021–43.

6. Political Justice and Injustice

• Brunschwig, Jacques, “The Aristotelian Theory of Equity,” in Michael Frede and Gisela Striker (eds.), Rationality in Greek Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 115–55.
• Marguerite Deslauriers, “Political Unity and Inequality,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 117–43.
• Georgiadis, Constantine, “Equitable and Equity in Aristotle,” in Spiro Panagiotou (ed.), Justice, Law and Method in Plato and Aristotle , Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1987, pp. 159–72.
• Keyt, David, “Aristotle’s Theory of Distributive Justice,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 238–78.
• –––, “The Good Man and the Upright Citizen in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics ,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 220–40. Reprinted in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, 197–221.
• –––, “Nature and Justice,” in David Keyt, Nature and Justice: Studies in the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle , Leuven: Peeters, 2017, pp. 1–19.
• Lockwood, Thornton, “Polity, Political Justice, and Political Mixing,” History of Political Thought , 27 (2006), 207–22.
• Morrison, Donald, “The Common Good,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 176–98.
• Nussbaum, Martha C., “Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,” in Günther Patzig (ed.), Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 153–87.
• Roberts, Jean, “Justice and the Polis,” in Christopher J. Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 344–65.
• Rosler, Andrés, “Civic Virtue: Citizenship, Ostracism, and War,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 144–75.
• Saxonhouse, Arlene W., “Aristotle on the Corruption of Regimes: Resentment and Justice,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 184–203.
• Schütrumpf, Eckart, “Little to Do With Justice: Aristotle on Distributing Political Power,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 163–83.
• Young, Charles M., “Aristotle on Justice,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 27 (1988), 233–49.
• Zingano, Marco, “Natural, Ethical, and Political Justice,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 199–222.

7. Political Friendship and Enmity

• Hatzistavrou, Antony, “Faction,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 301–23.
• Irrera, Elena, “Between Advantage and Virtue: Aristotle’s Theory of Political Friendship,” History of Political Thought , 26 (2005), 565–85.
• Jang, Misung, “Aristotle’s Political Friendship as Solidarity,” in Liesbeth Huppes-Cluysenaer, & Nuno M.S. Coelho (eds.), Aristotle on Emotions in Law and Politics, Dordrecht: Springer, 2018. pp. 417–33.
• Kalimtzis, Kostas, Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease: An Inquiry into Stasis , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000.
• Kreft, Nora, “Aristotle on Friendship and Being Human,” in Geert Keil and Nora Kreft (eds.), Aristotle’s Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 182–99.
• Kronman, Anthony, “Aristotle’s Idea of Political Fraternity,” American Journal of Jurisprudence , 24 (1979),114–138.
• Leontsini, Eleni, “The Motive of Society: Aristotle on Civic Friendship, Justice, and Concord,” Res Publica , 19 (2013), 21–35.
• Ludwig, Paul W., Rediscovering Political Friendship: Aristotle’s Theory and Modern Identity, Community, and Equality , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “Aristotle on Deviant Constitutions,” in K. I. Boudouris, K. I. (ed.), Aristotelian Political Philosophy, Athens: Kardamitsa Publishing Co., 1995, vol. II, pp. 105–15.
• Mulgan, Richard, “The Role of Friendship in Aristotle’s Political Theory,” in Preston King, and Heather Devere (eds.), The Challenge to Friendship in M odernity , London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 15–32.
• Schofield, Malcolm, “Political Friendship and the Ideology of Reciprocity,” in Saving the City , London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 82–99.
• Schwarzenbach, Sibyl, “On Civic Friendship,” Ethics , 107 (1996), 97–128.
• Skultety, Steven C.,. “Defining Aristotle’s Conception of Stasis in the Politics ,” Phronesis 54 (2009), 346–70.
• –––, Conflict in Aristotle ’ s Political Philosophy , Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2019.
• Sosa, Javier Echeñique & Jose Antonio Errázuriz Besa, “Aristotle on Personal Enmity,” Ancient Philosophy , 62 (2022), 215–31.
• Ward, Ann, “Friendship and politics in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ,” European Journal of Political Theory , 10 (2011), 443–62.
• Weed, Ronald, Aristotle on Stasis: A Psychology of Political Conflict , Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2007.
• Yack, Bernard, “Community and Conflict in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy,” Review of Politics , 47 (1985), 92–112.
• –––, “Natural Right and Aristotle’s Understanding of Justice,” Political Theory , 18 (1990), 216–37.

8. Citizenship, Civic Obligation, and Political Rights

• Allan, D. J., “Individual and State in the Ethics and Politics ,” Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique IX, La ‘Politique’ d’Aristote , Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1964, pp. 53–95.
• Barnes, Jonathan, “Aristotle and Political Liberty,” in Günther Patzig (ed.), Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 249–63; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 185–201.
• Collins, Susan D., Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Frede, Dorothea, “Citizenship in Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 167–84.
• Horn, Christoph, “Law, Governance, and Political Obligation,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 223–46.
• Irwin, Terence H., “The Good of Political Activity,” in Günther Patzig (ed.), Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, pp. 73–98.
• Kraut, Richard, “Are There Natural Rights in Aristotle?” The Review of Metaphysics , 49 (1996), 755–74.
• Lane, Melissa, “Claims to Rule: The Case of the Mutlitude,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 247–74.
• Long, Roderick T., “Aristotle’s Conception of Freedom,” The Review of Metaphysics , 49 (1996), 775–802; reprinted in Richard O. Brooks and James Bernard Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 384–410.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “Aristotle and the Origins of Natural Rights,” The Review of Metaphysics , 49 (1996), 873–907.
• –––, “Aristotle’s Theory of Political Rights,” in Richard O. Brooks and James Bernard Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 309–50.
• Morrison, Donald, “Aristotle’s Definition of Citizenship: A Problem and Some Solutions,” History of Philosophy Quarterly , 16 (1999), 143–65.
• Mulgan, Robert G., “Aristotle and the Value of Political Participation,” Political Theory , 18 (1990), 195–215.
• Roberts, Jean, “Excellences of the Citizen and of the Individual,” in Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 555–65.
• Samaras, Thanassis, “Aristotle and the Question of Citizenship,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 123–41.
• Schofield, Malcolm, “Sharing in the Constitution,” The Review of Metaphysics , 49 (1996), 831–58; reprinted in Richard O. Brooks and James Bernard Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 353–80.
• Zuckert, Catherine H., “Aristotle on the Limits and Satisfactions of Political Life,” Interpretation , 11 (1983), 185–206.

9. Constitutional Theory

• Balot, Ryan, “The ‘Mixed Regime’ In Aristotle’s Politics ,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 103–22.
• Bates, Clifford A., Aristotle’s “Best Regime”: Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law , Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.
• Bobonich, Christopher, “Aristotle, Decision Making, and the Many,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 142–62.
• Cherry, Kevin M., “The Problem of Polity: Political Participation in Aristotle’s Best Regime,” Journal of Politics , 71 (2009), 406–21.
• Coby, Patrick, “Aristotle’s Three Cities and the Problem of Faction,” Journal of Politics , 50 (1988), 896–919.
• Destrée, Pierre, “Aristotle on Improving Imperfect Cities,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 204–23.
• Dietz, Mary G., “Between Polis and Empire: Aristotle’s Politics ,” American Political Science Review 106 (2012), 275–93.
• Garsten, Bryan, “Deliberating and Acting Together,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 324–49.
• Huxley, G., “On Aristotle’s Best State,” in Paul Cartledge and F. D. Harvey (eds.), Crux: Essays Presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix , London: Duckworth, 1985, pp. 139–49.
• Johnson, Curtis N., Aristotle’s Theory of the State , New York: Macmillan, 1990.
• Keyt, David, “Aristotle and Anarchism,” Reason Papers , 18 (1993), 133–52; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety. Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 203–22.
• Kraut, Richard, “Aristotle’s Critique of False Utopias,” in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Aristoteles Politik , Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001, pp. 59–73.
• Lintott, Andrew, “Aristotle and Democracy,” The Classical Quarterly (New Series), 42 (1992), 114–28.
• Mayhew, Robert, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Republic , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
• –––, “Rulers and Ruled,” in Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 526–39.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “Aristotle on the Ideal Constitution,” in Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 540–54.
• –––, “The Rule of Reason,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 38–66.
• Mulgan, Richard, “Aristotle’s Analysis of Oligarchy and Democracy,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 307–22.
• –––, “Constitutions and the Purpose of the State,” in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Aristoteles Politik , Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001, pp. 93–106.
• Mulhern, J. J., “ Politeia in Greek Literature, Inscriptions, and in Aristotle’s Politics : Reflections on Translation and Interpretation,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 84–102.
• Murray, O., “Polis and Politeia in Aristotle,” in Mogens Herman Hansen (ed.), The Ancient Greek City-State , Copenhagen: Muksgaard, 1993, pp. 197–210.
• Ober, Joshua, “Aristotle’s Natural Democracy,” in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 223–43.
• –––, “Democracy’s Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgment,” American Political Science Review , 107 (2013), 104–22.
• –––, “Nature, History, and Aristotle’s Best Possible Regime,” in Thornton Lockwood and Thanassis Samaras (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 224–43.
• Polansky, Ronald, “Aristotle on Political Change,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 322–45.
• Rosler, Andres, Political Authority and Obligation in Aristotle , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Rowe, C. J., “Reality and Utopia,” Elenchos , 10 (1989), 317–36.
• –––, “Aristotelian Constitutions,” in Christopher J. Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 366–89.
• Strauss, Barry, “On Aristotle’s Critique of Athenian Democracy,” in Carnes Lord and David O’Connor (eds.), Essays on the Foundations of Aristotelian Political Science , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 212–33.
• Vander Waert, Paul A., “Kingship and Philosophy in Aristotle’s Best Regime,” Phronesis , 30 (1985), 249–73.
• Waldron, Jeremy, “The Wisdom of the Multitude: Some Reflections on Book 3, Chapter 11 of Aristotle’s Politics ,” Political Theory , 20 (1992), 613–41; reprinted in Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 145–65.
• Wilson, James L., “Deliberation, Democracy, and the Rule of Reason in Aristotle’s Politics ,” American Political Science Review , 105 (2011), 259–74.

10. Education

• Burnyeat, Myles F., “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,” in Amelie O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 69–92.
• Curren, Randall R., Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
• Depew, David J., “Politics, Music, and Contemplation in Aristotle’s Ideal State,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 346–80.
• Destrée, Pierre, “Education, Leisure, and Politics,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 301–23.
• Frede, Dorothea, “The Deficiency of Human Nature: The Task of a ‘Philosophy of Human Nature’,” in Geert Keil and Nora Kreft (eds.), Aristotle’s Anthropology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 258–74.
• Jimenez, Marta, Aristotle on Shame and Learning to Be Good , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
• Kraut, Richard, “Aristotle on Method and Moral Education,” in Jyl Gentzler (ed.), Method in Ancient Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 171–90.
• –––, “Aristotle on Becoming Good: Habituation, Reflection, and Perception,” in Christopher Shields (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 529–57.
• Lord, Carnes, Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
• Lynch, John Patrick, Aristotle’s School , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
• Muzio, G. D., “Aristotle on Improving One’s Character,” Phronesis , 45 (2000), 205–19.
• Reeve, C. D. C,  “Aristotelian Education,” in A. O. Rorty (ed.), Philosophers on Education , London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 51–65.
• Stalley, Richard, “Education and the State,” in Georgios Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A Companion to Aristotle , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 566–76.
• Brooks, Richard O. and James B. Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.
• Burns, Tony, “Aristotle and Natural Law,” History of Political Thought , 19 (1998), 142–66.
• Duke, George, Aristotle and Law: The Politics of Nomos , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gordley, James R., “Tort Law in the Aristotelian Tradition,” in Salvador Rus Rufino (ed.), Aristoteles: El Pensamiento Politico y Juridico . León & Seville: University of León & University of Seville, 1999, pp. 71–97.
• Hamburger, Max, Morals and Law: The Growth of Aristotle’s Legal Theory , New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.
• Huppes-Cluysenaer, Liesbeth & Nuno M..S. Coelho (eds.), Aristotle on Emotions in Law and Politics , Dordrecht: Springer, 2018.
• Miller, Eugene, “Prudence and the Rule of Law,” American Journal of Jurisprudence , 24 (1979), 181–206.
• Miller, Fred D., Jr., “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Law,” in Fred D. Miller, Jr. and Carrie-Ann Biondi (eds.), A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics [vol. 6 of A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence , ed. Enrico Pattaro]. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007, pp.79–110.
• Schroeder, Donald N., “Aristotle on Law,” Polis , 4 (1981), 17–31; reprinted in Richard O. Brooks and James Bernard Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 37–51.
• Wormuth, F. D., “Aristotle on Law,” in M. R. Korvitz and A. E. Murphy (eds.), Essays in Political Theory Presented to G. H. Sabine,  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948, pp. 45–61.
• Zanetti, Gianfrancesco, “Problematic Aspects of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Law,” Archiv f ü r Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie , 81 (1995), 49–64.

12. Aristotle and Contemporary Politics

• Biondi, Carrie-Ann, “Aristotle on the Mixed Constitution and Its Relevance for American Political Thought,” in David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (eds.), Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 176–98.
• Frank, Jill, A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Galston, William A., Justice and the Human Good , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Garver, Eugene, Aristotle’s Politics: Living Well and Living Together , Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011.
• Goodman, Lenn E. and Robert Talise (eds.), Aristotle’s Politics Today , Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
• Kraut, Richard, “Aristotle and Rawls on the Common Good,” in Marguerite Deslauriers and Pierre Destrée (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 350–74.
• Lord, Carnes, “Aristotle and the Idea of Liberal Education,” in Josiah Ober and Charles Hedrick (eds.), Demokrateia: A Conversation of Democracy, Ancient and Modern , Princeton: Princeton University Press Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp. 271–88.
• Machan, Tibor R., “Aristotle and the Moral Status of Business,”  Journal of Value Inquiry , 38 (2004), 217–33.
• Mara, Gerald M., “The Culture of Democracy: Aristotle’s Athênaiôn Politeia as Political Theory,” in Aristide Tessitore (ed.), Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, 307–41.
• Mulgan, Robert G., “Was Aristotle an ‘Aristotelian Social Democrat’?” Ethics , 111 (2000), 79–101.
• Murphy, James Bernard, The Moral Economy of Labor: Aristotelian Themes in Economic Theory , New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
• Nussbaum, Martha C., “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson (eds.) Liberalism and the Good , London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 203–52.
• –––, “Capabilities and Human Rights,” Fordham Law Review , 66 (1997), 273–300; reprinted in Richard O. Brooks and James Bernard Murphy (eds.), Aristotle and Modern Law , Aldershot Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2003, pp. 413–40.
• –––, “Aristotle, Politics, and Human Capabilities: A Response to Anthony, Arneson, Charlesworth, and Mulgan,” Ethics , 111 (2000), 102–40.
• Pack, Spencer J., “Aristotle’s Difficult Relationship with Modern Economic Theory,” Foundations of Science , 13 (2008), 256–80.
• Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order , La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991.
• –––, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics , University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
• Schollmeier, Paul, Rewriting Contemporary Political Philosophy with Plato and Aristotle: An Essay on Eudaimonic Politics,  London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
• Salkever, Stephen S., Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• Tessitore, Aristide (ed.), Aristotle and Modern Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
• Wallach, John C., “Contemporary Aristotelianism,” Political Theory , 20 (1992), 613–41.

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Model Essay Plato and Aristotle

August 14, 2018.

‘Episteme comes from reason, not doxa.’ Discuss (34/40 Grade A)

This essay title wouldn’t appear int his form in the exam, as the technical vocabulary episteme and doxa are not in the specification H573. However it is good to practise questions which contain extra technical vocabulary to get you used to using this vocabulary. So I ahve included it here as a question to consider – an it’s a good, A grade answer. For further essays go to our Model Essays book available int he shop – all answers heavily marked by our experts to justify the grade given. PB

Plato, a Greek philosopher, believed that episteme, true knowledge, came from reason. He believed doxa came from experiencing the world, which he believed in fact gave humans the true knowledge they seek. His student, Aristotle believed doxa was the first step in gaining true knowledge as it existed in the physical world. Through Plato’s theory of the FORMs, I believe episteme comes from reason, and this is how we gain true knowledge.

This is an excellent introduction showing the different points of view on the question about the origin of knowledge. The candidate identifies that Plato favoured reason while Aristotle argued from experience. The candidate has also shown what the line of reasoning will be in this essay: the Platonic thesis. The essay should therefore argue towards that rationalist perspective and conclude likewise.

Plato’s main theory is that of the World of FORMs.   Plato states that the World of FORMs is recognisable by humans as our souls transmigrated. Before reincarnating, our souls were able to recognise the true FORMs before we forgot them in our earthly bodies. Plato describes the World of FORMs as unchangeable. This is backed up by philosopher Parmenides who says “The world is unchangeable”. Plato states we can experience the examples of the FORMs in our earthly bodies. Those who do not understand the FORMs however will say there are different types of tree. Plato condemns this type of thinking and says we in fact recognise the examples of the perfect FORM of tree-ness. In the allegory of the cave, the free prisoner symbolises the attainment of true knowledge by recognising the true FORMs when escaping the cave. The shadows watched by the other prisoners is not the true reality, however they believe this is true reality as this is what they experienced. This illustrates that Plato’s ideas of attaining true knowledge through the FORMs and not by the examples we see in the temporal world. Therefore, episteme comes from reason.

The candidate has reviewed Plato’s perspective by commenting upon his approach to FORMs, how we perceive FORMs in the temporal world and how it is reflected in Plato’s Cave allegory. Given the time constraints of an essay, only 40 minutes, it is impossible to detail everything, so the candidate must sacrifice great depth to cover all points. Here the candidate has shown an understanding of the FORMs, the cave and influences on Plato. The candidate then links back to the question by showing that this approach shows that episteme comes from reason.

Aristotle challenges Plato’s theory however by presenting the ‘Third Man’ theory. Because the FORM of ‘man’ is a man itself, surely there must be a FORM for the FORM of a man.   This challenges Plato’s theory, as it demonstrates infinite regression. Aristotle challenges his teacher further by stating that the World of FORMs cannot be proved as it relies on reincarnation. The World of FORMs is not in the temporal world meaning there is no empirical proof of it. Aristotle’s challenges show that not only is true knowledge gained by doxa, but episteme does not come from reason.

The candidate has attempted to undermine Plato by presenting the Third Man Fallacy which has been done fairly well, though some additional explanation would be better. The challenge from the evidence for reincarnation could be better emphasised. The candidate has missed the challenge that Plato’s argument implies a FORM for everything, even one-legged-pirates. This reductio ad absurdum is a good challenge to use against Plato.

However, it should be noted that Plato’s theory only applies to abstract notions such as love, justice and maths are the true FORMs, not necessarily physical object. Aristotle questions if there are FORMs for everything such as a sick dog or a three-legged cat. Plato however is supported by Pythagoras. Pythagoras’ theorem states abstract notions such as maths do not exist in the temporal world but in fact there is a perfect FORM of it in the world of FORMs. He also states that all things are static and unchanging, suggesting that the World of FORMs and the FORMs are perfect and eternal. Plato is also supported by Heraclitus who says that “You can never step in the same river twice” and the world is constantly in flux. This signifies that humans cannot experience the world the same way twice, indicating that true knowledge is eternal e.g. maths cannot come from experience. From the support of philosophers and examples, episteme comes from reason.

The candidate managed to refer back to the reductio ad absurdum challenge in the response to Aristotle’s challenge. This is a very good response identifying that Plato’s theory only works with abstraction notions rather than everyday things.

Aristotle’s approach to attaining knowledge by experience challenges Plato, however. Aristotle emphasised the value of studying the physical world and this approach is empirical. His theory of the four causes also question Plato’s theory. Aristotle believed that everything is related to having four causes. This included matter, form, their efficient cause and their final cause; telos. An example of this is a wax stamp the matter if the wax stamp is the stamp itself while the form is what it is made of. The actuality of the wax stamp is what actually, physically it is, and the potentiality is what it could become, in this case a seal for a letter. This reason illustrates that all things have a purpose and the potentiality of it is effect. Aristotle’s four causes perhaps shows that experiencing the world and observing it with and empirical approach will improve it. Therefore, episteme does in fact come from experience.

The candidate has overviewed Aristotle’s theory of causes, and given particular attention to matter and form. The wax stamp is an excellent example to use. It is always a good idea to use the scholars’ own examples. Another would be the bronze statue showing bronze matter, in the statue form, created by the sculptor with the purpose of honouring the gods. The link back to the question might have been better emphasised: that we know the world through this empirical approach rather than from the armchair.

In response to this, Aristotle’s mistakes questions if his observations are true. A better way of stating this would be ‘Aristotle’s errors in observation bring into question the reliability of empiricism as a source of knowledge.’ He stated that women are deformed and have fewer teeth than men and in this time, society as patriarchal. Aristotle also states that people who aren’t smart were born to be slaves. He believed that they are unable to control themselves and should be enslaved which we would not accept as truthful.

This should be rounded up and a mid-conclusion should be drawn, then linked back to the question as the next part of the paragraph is on a different aspect of the response to Aristotle.

Democritus, a Greek philosopher believed that if a rock was continuously cut into to, a piece would be so tiny that it could no longer be divided. He called this a-toms and believed they were eternal. A-toms in atoms however was a failure as atoms can be divided into protons, neutrons and electrons. This shows that experience just gives changing opinion and episteme comes from reason, further supported by the change in physics from Newtonian mechanics to Quantum physics.

This is an excellent challenge against Aristotle as it shows that reason established what empiricism never managed to achieve, an understanding of the theory of non-divisibles. This conclusive point should be made clear and linked back to the question.

Plato’s theory of the FORMs shows that the attainment of true knowledge does in fact comes from episteme as experiencing and observing the world can result to changing opinion. The World of FORMs illustrates that everything we experience now is primarily not the true reality and only our souls can experience the World of FORMs. Aristotle’s statement of observing the world to gain knowledge is questionable as we can “never step in the same river twice” meaning the word cannot be experienced the same way, therefore people’s knowledge may be different, therefore episteme comes from reason.

Overall: 34/40 Grade A

The candidate has shown how the reasoning and responses to the challenges of the essay have come to the point where Plato’s perspective is the more believable. The use of supporting scholars throughout have helped to draw that conclusion so it is unsurprising, though validly done, that this conclusion is drawn.

The candidate has shown a very good breadth and some good depth of knowledge. The use of additional scholars is an excellent way of showing a wider understanding of the topic and the context of the theories. Some additional depth in Plato’s theory of FORMs and Aristotle’s Causes might have been worth investing.

Further, the candidate showed a good nuanced selection of knowledge concerning additional scholars and Aristotle’s weaknesses.

The candidate challenges Plato and then responds to the challenges very well. All challenges are resolved so that the conclusion is expected, but balanced. All arguments are developed well and justified with evidence and scholarly opinion which is excellent.

The line of reasoning begins in the introduction and continues all the way through to the conclusion. This is exactly what should appear in an essay. The thesis statement in the introduction should sign-post where the essay will go and it should all come to a final conclusion validly argued and demonstrated in what has been presented.

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Plato vs. Aristotle: Political Philosophy Compare and Contrast Essay

Plato’s life and work, aristotle: his life and work, plato vs. aristotle: epistemology, cosmology, and body/soul theory, plato: political theory, aristotle theory of political science, plato and aristotle: main points of comparison.

To effectively study the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, a deep analysis of the life and ideology of both philosophers is needed to come up with a conclusive hypothesis. This is necessitated by the fact that life deals with each individual differently and the physical environment determines what an individual perceives.

These aspects combined led to Plato being regarded as a political philosopher and Aristotle being considered as a political scientist. These views are however vague, and as we shall see, both individuals were highly knowledgeable in the political field. Only an imaginary thin line differentiated their political philosophy bearing in mind both descended from the same school of thought.

Plato was a Greek philosopher born in Athens in 427BC to an aristocratic family. He was the second member of the three ancient Greeks philosophers. His father Ariston was believed to be of royal descent and he had three sons, Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Plato who was the youngest.

Plato is described as bright student who excelled in his studies and their parents endeavored to give their children the best education. After his father’s death, his mother Perictione was married to Pyrilampes, given that according to Athenian law; it was illegal for women to be independent.

Pyrilampes was a friend of Pericles, the head of the democratic faction in Athens therefore Plato was exposed to both the oligarchy and democratic political ideologies from early childhood. Pyrilampes attempted to convince him into joining oligarchic leadership but because of the disillusion he bore over the empire, Plato declined this offer and instead joined his two older brothers to become a student of a teacher named Socrates.

Socrates dedicated his life to seeking the truth and examining morality through the challenges he posed to his of pupils. This was achieved by allowing them to test then critically scrutinize their thoughts and values mostly in religion and politics. This put him at loggerheads with many powerful individuals and in a short while, he was charged with corrupting the minds of the youth in Athens.

The death of his teacher further amplified Plato’s detest for the political regimes and he came to the conclusion that politics needed genuine philosophers to rule the states and to introduce sobriety. He later founded an Academy, in a grove sacred to the demigod Academus where Aristotle enrolled as a student.

It was an institution of higher learning, which covered a wide variety of subjects including physical science, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy. Plato spent a few years travelling the Mediterranean where he studied various civilizations until 360BC when he settled back in Athens as president of the Academy and went around giving lectures to various groups until his death in 347 BC.

Aristotle was born in 384 BC to a patrician family and his father Nichomachus was a physician to the king of Macedonia. While still young, his father sent him to study in an Academy where he was taught by Plato and indoctrinated with platonic ideology.

For almost twenty years, Aristotle studied Philosophy at the Academy and eventually went on to become a teacher under Plato. As he progressed in philosophy, he often contradicted with his teacher and finally he diverged from Platonic ideas to develop his own philosophy based on deductive logic.

Soon after Plato’s death, Aristotle left Athens for Assos which is in Asia, where he married Pythias, a daughter of King Hermeas who coincidentally was a former student of Plato. He opened his own Academy that mainly focused on biological and zoological sciences and his extensive study on classification of animals into genus and species shaped the foundation on which the modern classification in biology lies.

It is while in Assos that Aristotle began tutoring Alexander, son of King Philip of Macedonia who would eventually be known as Alexander the Great. The death of King Philip in 336 BC gave Alexander a chance to become king and with the help of his father’s army, he went ahead to conquer vast territories including Greece.

The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC threw Greece into disarray since Athenians had for a long time detested Macedonian dominance. Alexander the Great’s death provides an opportunity for them to be liberated and there were several protests in Athens. Aristotle was forced to abandon Lyceum after he was accused of impiety and he fled to the island of Euboea where he died in 322 BC.

Plato put forward the theory on rationality in epistemology which suggested that knowledge is inborn or priori because the soul is only trapped in the body. He goes on to say that the soul once existed in reality and knew everything but forgot it after being trapped in the body (Plato 433a-433b).

He argued that true knowledge is not learnt but merely recalled and so to achieve this knowledge one must overcome the body which is simply a prison that gives us a false perception leading to materialistic desires. Aristotle contradicted this by suggesting that true knowledge can only be achieved through experience or Posteriori. Based on the Empiricism theory, he further argued that knowledge is universal and the difference is only in the perception of form, (Aristotle I.1.175b22).

On cosmology, Plato concentrated on mathematical patterns to demonstrate perfection of true knowledge of being. He argued that the world and cosmos were created by an intelligent superior being according to eternal forms of perfection who induced constant motion to the cosmos.

Human life by itself imitates the order presented by the creator and will be judged on how well it fit into this cosmic order (Plato 396a). Aristotle’s argument was based on biological reasoning where the essence of the universe emanated from a Thinking thought through which the universe was set in motion.

Unlike Plato who argued that nothing can be created from nothing, Aristotle argued that the universe was composed of substance that originated from nothing. The thinking thought therefore organized the cosmos by being matter itself (Aristotle II.10.122a19). Therefore, while Plato argued that a creator only created the forms present in the cosmos, Aristotle contradicted him by arguing that the creator was in the forms themselves.

The body/soul theory differed between both philosophers since Plato believed that the soul was the essence of being and that which gave life to the body.

The body could not exist without a soul and therefore both were separate entities. He further implied that the soul was immortal, and death of the body only liberated the soul allowing it to be continually reincarnated into other bodies (Plato 419c). The body, he concluded was hindrance to the soul for bodily perception was unreal and it limited the amount of knowledge the soul could express.

He then divided the soul into three categories; will, reason and appetite each of these working in harmony for a being to achieve balance and peace (Plato 317e-433d). Aristotle negated this with the argument that the body and the soul were not absolute separate entries; rather the soul was life which translated to the activity a being is involved in. The soul therefore was mortal and only existed because of the body and the only role it played was to provide fulfillment and accomplishment (Aristotle II.4.18 9c33).

Political justice

Plato in his conversations does not attempt to arrive at an adequate oral definition of justice, rather he tries to bring forth the right belief by focusing on the thing to which the word refers to. Hence, Platonic dialogs in essence try to conceptualize and critically analyze beliefs subject to justice. In the Republic, Plato attempts to define justice by expressing justice as what sets the guidelines for societal behavior and brings peace to society.

In contrast to Thrasymachus, a sophist who asserts that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger unjust rulers who make the rules (Plato 338c), Plato clearly analyses justice and goes ahead to categorize it into individual and political. He asserts that political justice is easily achieved for a city is bigger than an individual and this then reflects on individuals thus striking a balances structure of governance achieved through reason and education.

Economic justice

Plato further implies that each community in society has an exclusive set of skills that are in-born. To achieve economic justice, each skill should be exclusive and presented to the unified single society fostered by mutual interests. This greatly contradicted sophists’ approach to justice yet sophists were claimed to be the best teachers in oratory and practical skills (Plato 419b).

The Sophists were teachers of Athenian citizens who were responsible for conveying oral and physical skills for a fee. Plato differentiated sophists from Socrates based on the payment they received for teaching, unlike Socrates who did not ask for payment, nor did he teach but rather guided his pupils into the right thinking framework.

Plato described sophists as peripatetic relativists with good rhetoric proficiency who lacked morality and hence lacked the true perception of justice (Plato 543b). The Sophists neglected philosophy and ethics and instead tutored on art of persuasion, perpetuating eloquent arguments through speech.

Plato uses The Ring of Gyges to portray how flawed human beings are in their belief of justice. He states that any person with the ability to become invincible would most definitely commit injustices, for people are only just as a matter of necessity rather than virtue. Individuals only prefer to be just and obey laws because they will be rewarded, lack the will to behave criminally and are afraid of punishment (Plato, 359a).

Origin of the state

Plato had great philosophical ideology on the ideal state or government ruling a perfect society. He sought to create solutions for political and social problems he felt were prominent and consequently divided individual people into three distinct groupings which were the Productive Workers, the Protective Warriors and the Governing Rulers.

He further designated each group to the sections of the soul, with workers corresponding to appetite, warriors to will and rulers to reason. This model was supportive of philosophical kings guided by wisdom and reason, were in a better position to rule states hence tarnishing the tyranny, despotism and oligarchy forms of governance (Plato 619d). He goes ahead to conceptualize academic systems that were likely to produce philosophical kings.

Nature and symmetry of three parts of the soul and three parts of the state and correlative virtues

Plato divided the soul into three parts, the will, reason and appetite. Each of these sections had a certain role to play in the overall function of a being and was responsible for determining the interests, virtues and character of the being.

Reason according to Plato is the soul’s source of power and is responsible for taming the fleshly desires. Individuals with a heightened reasoning capacity should be selected as rulers and kings over nations or become great philosophers due to their wisdom.

The will is what aides reason in overcoming bodily desire and according to Plato, will has its foundation on human emotion(Plato 541a). Plato suggested that individuals with sufficient will over reason and appetite were adventurers and therefore belonged to the creed of warriors propelled by courage.

Appetite was associated too the body and most limiting and overpowering of all the parts of the soul. Desire seeking individuals engaged in materialistic pleasures and according to Plato, they ended up being the majority of citizens referred to as commoners. Plato went further to associate all the parts of the soul to parts of the body with reason connected to the head, will connected to the heart and appetite connected to the abdomen and sensory organs.

Allegory of the cave

Fictional dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon takes most part of the allegory of the cave in The Republic. Plato uses the allegory to show human desire relative to learning and truth and is depicted by an imaginary group of prisoners who have been chained to a wall in a cave and face a plain wall before them. There is a fire behind them and object in front of the fire casts a shadow on the wall and the prisoners take these shadows to be reality. Later, the prisoners are released only to discover the reality they perceived was not real. Plato uses the allegory to describe how philosophy liberates an individual. Human beings are occupied in achieving material things which Plato metaphorically refers to as the shadows (Plato 538e). Only by studying philosophy is one able to understand the realm of the mind and soul consequently bequeathing earthly pursuits. In the theory of forms, human beings should place greater value on ideas which are eternal and constitute of knowledge, rather than earthly achievements which are just illusions.

Simile of the divided line

Plato uses the simile of the dividing line from a geometric perspective to distinguish between the realms of knowledge and reality and is a larger part of the allegory of the cave. Plato is convinced that human beings are like prisoners in a cave, so limited in our perception that we are easily attracted to false reality.

After being liberated from the bondages of ignorance, humans will then notice the fire and puppets that have been projecting our false reality for a long time, meaning if a person makes an ignorant person knowledgeable he will then be the reality of the ignorant person. The prisoner then ventures outside and discovers the existing features in nature, but is first blinded by the sun that helps him see these things (Plato 576c).

The prisoner is the philosopher who is released from the world of becoming which is the cave, into the world of being. The fire in the cave is the physical sun, while the puppets are objects in the world, reflecting their realities as shadows upon the imprisoned philosopher. The outside sun is the senses which help the philosopher reason out true knowledge and truth.

Noble lie of men of gold, silver

In the republic, Plato gives a fictional theory on how the three classes of society came into existence and remained so. The noble lie is a tale told to the people on how the three classes are selected and allocated. Though all people are brothers and sisters, people are subtly composed of different type of metal.

Rulers are made of gold, warriors are made of silver and commoners are made of bronze (Plato 572a). Most of those born among the rulers have gold but those with silver and bronze will be allocated another class. Similarly, most of those born among commoners have bronze but some will contain gold and silver and thus be allocated a higher class. This tale was told in order to induce order and harmony into society which would otherwise be in disarray if all individuals wanted to rule.

Education and lifestyle of guardians and workers

Plato in the republic offered a simple profile of how guardians should live in order to dissuade commoners from envying power for their own pleasure.

The Guardians must live in paucity, and communally share their property. Children belonging to guardians will be raised communally with no knowledge of their birth parents. These children will be bred deliberately to produce an offspring suitable to be a guardian. Women will also be guardians and will have to go to war (Plato 544c).

Their education will simply be to determine children who are driven by desire and demoting them to commoners. Workers are to live by their pay and were to be allocated relatively comfortable stature. Their children are to be taught skill and trade for them to be in a capacity to contribute to the state.

The Myth of Er is mystic story about Er who dies in battle but raises again after being buried. He recollects his experience in the afterlife from where he has been. After death, Er finds himself in place with four openings, two in and out of the heavens and two into and out of the earth. There are judges seated between these openings who direct Er to observe as good souls are heading for the heavens and evil souls are directed below, so as to explain this to the humans back on earth.

Good souls came back to explain the marvels of the heavens whereas the bad souls came to mourn and beg for mercy. For days, Er travels together with other souls and comes to a rainbow referred to the spindle of Necessity (Plato 622b). The souls accompanying Er are then given a token that will select their next life and he is surprised to see animals choose a human life and humans choose animal life.

The souls then traveled to the Plain of Oblivion, to drink from the River of Forgetfulness and each soul forgot everything. The souls are then lifted into the night for reincarnation into their new body and life. The Myth of Er is the concluding dialogue in the republic and is aimed at illustrating the immorality of the soul as well as the reward for good and the punishment for evil.

Origin of the state & relation to family and village

Aristotle in his book politics begins by defining a citizen as a person who has a right to vie for public office. Children, seniors and foreigners thus do not qualify to be called citizens. He argues that the city-state or the polis is a collective entity composed of different of citizens.

The family unit should therefore be treated as a polis for it is composed of different individuals each subject to that family through different relations. He goes ahead to stress that in comparison, men make better leaders than women so they should assume the leadership role in the family(Aristotle III.16.125b40).

A village is a collection of families which Aristotle associates with the state as an entity to the polis. He further adds that state does not need remaking rather needs improvement of society. He however did not distinguish between state and society therefore forming no absolute merit between the two.

Nature of justice

Aristotle acknowledges that justice should be responsible for nurturing the belief that good life is subject to all in society in disregard to their social class. He gives the examples of democratic states which perceive justice as equality bestowed by free birth and oligarchic states conceive justice even in the presence of corruption and inequality in distribution of office, provided by accumulated wealth (Aristotle III.1.1275b20).

He however disagrees with these forms of justice, which he claims will eventually lead to the fall of a city-state. He therefore believes that justice does exist but in an objective manner. It involves treating all people equally and conversely, it entails unequal treatment to unequal people.

Types of government

Aristotle discerns six types of governments, each determined by the number of rulers a state has. A one-ruler state in the correct form of administration, he identifies as a kingship. A state under a few rulers under the correct conditions will form an aristocracy, but where disaccord arises, an oligarchy is formed. Aristotle also acknowledges that many rulers can form a polity, a combination of oligarchy, and aristocracy, which under deviant conditions forms a democracy (Aristotle II.1.1261a18).

How to distinguish good government from bad

Aristotle was of the view that a good government no matter how distorted was to look out for the common people’s welfare. A good government was therefore just and maintained a balance in all state offices.

This government was in a position to have a constitution and impose authority subjecting everyone to the law. He was also of the view that lawgivers should be the politicians ruling the state for they know what is just. He most favored the aristocratic form of government which pooled the various virtues of different leaders into one government (Aristotle II.1.1339a11).

A bad government according to Aristotle was one that allowed one class to wield political power. What this meant is that the state would miss out on a great leader with wisdom and high values simply because he did not belong to the ruling class. This according to Aristotle was bad governance.

Why Plato’s idea of state is impractical

Aristotle in politics greatly disagrees with Plato’s idea of state which provides the framework for creating a new state. Rather, Aristotle is of the view that the state itself should be responsible for attaining the best system of existence.

By deductive inference, Aristotle states that the perfect system of state is already in existence, and finds no reason as to why the platonic ideology should be applied to it. Thus to Aristotle, the perfect state is being lived out at present and Plato’s state is a mere solution to a non-existent problem.

Change in states and best functioning

Aristotle believed that the state was primarily responsible for its own prosperity. To achieve this, the state should have order in government and society, with each category having different sectors of distinct function. Though he was against money exchange, he was for a state that could rebuild itself through the available physical and human resources (Aristotle II.2.3261b27).

To do this, every individual in society who qualifies to be a citizen should be consulted in the running of the state, for only then can true harmony be achieved. Therefore, the best functioning state was one that allowed citizens of every class into government and every class was eligible for trade and possession of private property.

Ideal state, active & philosophical life

Aristotelian politics seeks to establish the best system that will be able to support a majority of city-states. He aims at a state that is concerned with the happiness of its citizens, where each individual will possess virtues and the knowledge and skill required to dispense justice, leading to a peaceful and happy state.

Such a state will allow citizens to hold public office trade freely and own private property and everyone will be equal as opposed to the oppressive communal state. This state will possess a common educational system for all citizens and the lawmakers will be primarily responsible for it in case the initial objectives are not achieved (Aristotle III.1.1298a21).

Role of education in relation to the state

Education according to Aristotle will provide a balance in the state since all citizens will be knowledgeable. Education should not only cover area of skill and basic knowledge, rather should instill virtues to the pupils and integrate values into society. Education is therefore a form of glue that can hold a state together cohesively, but only when taught in the right way.

Education should also provide the values needed by rulers of the state to govern effectively. It is therefore a basic necessity to incorporate education into society for growth and prosperity of the state. Philosophers and intellectuals should be bred through education if the state desires to advance its systems of governance and coexistence.

• Both philosophers agree that justice is a necessary value and should be experienced by every one in a society regardless of their social class.
• Plato and Aristotle had a basic intent to improve the society they lived in and both came up with brilliant ideas as to how the society could be enhanced.
• Plato and Aristotle also agree that the universe originated from a more powerful and intelligent entity than the normal human being. Though they both have a different opinion on the function of the entity, they acknowledge its existence.
• Plato and Aristotle are descendants of the intellectual prism housed by Socrates. Socrates taught Plato and Plato taught Aristotle. They shared the same backbone in philosophy even though their ideology may have differed.
• Both Plato and Aristotle were not content with the political governance of Athens during their time. Both tried to come up with concepts that were supposed to improve these forms of governance and consequently alter the leadership.
• Both philosophers are responsible for shaping modern civilization. Aristotle played a contributory role to modern democracy and Plato’s writings have helped shape the curricula of political institutions through his quest for truth in political philosophy.

Plato and Aristotle were both brought up in descent homes in their times. They went to the same academy and taught at this same academy. Their philosophies in regard to politics differ and both men impel a convincing argument as far as political governance is concerned.

Their views on life and death are also polarized with Plato suggesting the existence of life after death and Aristotle affirming that life ends when one dies. Though they have different opinions on a wide range of issues, they seemed to concur that society needed to be improved and the full capacity of human resource and knowledge has never been attained.

They also yearn for a balanced, peaceful and harmonized society, which compels them to come up with social models that would eventually produce the desired results. Both are highly acclaimed philosophers who formed the foundation of modern western culture and so presuming one’s work is superior to the other is a fallacy.

Aristotle. “The Politics of Aristotle”. Chapel Hill , NC: University of North Carolina Press. 1997. Print.

Plato. “The Republic of Plato”. New York: Basic Books. 1991. Print

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IvyPanda . "Plato vs. Aristotle: Political Philosophy Compare and Contrast Essay." June 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-comparative-study-of-the-political-philosophies-of-plato-and-aristotle/.

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Defining Love: a Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance

This essay about the multifaceted nature of love explores how it is interpreted and experienced through biological, philosophical, artistic, psychological, and cultural lenses. It describes love as a mix of emotions, behaviors, and beliefs essential for human connection and survival. By examining the diverse ways love influences individual behaviors and societal norms, the text illuminates its profound impact on personal development and the broader human experience.

How it works

Love defies simple definition; it is a rich tapestry woven from emotional threads that vary in intensity and color. It is a universally recognized yet deeply personal experience, influencing vast societal structures and individual emotional landscapes. This essay aims to unpack the essence of love, exploring its various meanings and the significant roles it plays across different contexts.

At its foundation, love is an amalgamation of emotions, attitudes, and actions characterized by affection, loyalty, respect, and care for another being. From a biological perspective, love serves as a fundamental mechanism for humans to form bonds and communities, enhancing survival and promoting the continuity of generations.

This evolutionary lens views love as a strategy for reproductive success and nurturing, ensuring the protection and development of offspring.

Philosophers have long debated love, considering it a vital component of ethical life and human purpose. For example, Plato elevated the concept of love in his dialogues, presenting it as a pursuit of ideal beauty and truth beyond mere physical attraction. Aristotle focused on the virtuous aspects of love seen in friendships where individuals desire good things for each other selflessly. Contemporary philosophers like Iris Murdoch regard love as an act of moral perception that allows one to see others more clearly and honestly, fostering a profound understanding and connection.

In the arts, love frequently emerges as a central theme, reflecting and shaping cultural attitudes towards relationships. Literature, film, and music explore the depths of love’s joy and anguish, its capacity to empower and to devastate. Shakespeare’s works, for instance, dissect the layers of love from youthful infatuation to the deep, enduring bonds of loyalty and companionship. Modern storytelling continues to explore these themes, reflecting current societal views and the timeless nature of love itself.

Psychologically, love is seen as critical to individual development and well-being. Theories such as attachment theory emphasize the importance of forming strong emotional bonds from early childhood, which dictate the nature of future relationships. Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love identifies three key elements—intimacy, passion, and commitment—that combine in various forms to create different types of relationships, from friendships to passionate, long-term commitments.

Cultural interpretations of love vary widely. In some societies, love is primarily viewed as a foundation for marriage and family, while in others, it is celebrated as a force that defies societal constraints. These cultural narratives shape how individuals express and experience love, influencing social norms and personal expectations.

Regardless of the perspective from which it is viewed, love profoundly affects human behavior and societal structures. It inspires acts of great kindness and can lead to profound despair. It fosters resilience and reveals vulnerabilities. Love not only enhances personal fulfillment and emotional health but also helps to define what it means to be human.

By examining love through various lenses—biological, philosophical, artistic, psychological, and cultural—we gain a deeper appreciation of this complex emotion and its impact on our lives. Love, in all its forms, shapes our identities, influences our societies, and molds our understanding of human connections.

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Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance. (2024, May 12). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/

"Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance." PapersOwl.com , 12 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/ [Accessed: 13 May. 2024]

"Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance." PapersOwl.com, May 12, 2024. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/

"Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance," PapersOwl.com , 12-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/. [Accessed: 13-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Defining Love: A Deep Dive into its Meaning and Significance . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/defining-love-a-deep-dive-into-its-meaning-and-significance/ [Accessed: 13-May-2024]

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