ABSTRACT
The only extended discussion of education in the Aristotelian corpus is in Book VIII of the Politics, where Aristotle advocates that schooling be publicly provided and ‘one and the same for all’ (VIII.1 1337a23). Isolated remarks about education appear in earlier books of the Politics, and a few can be found in the Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere. With enough effort, these scattered passages can be understood in relation to one another and in light of the overall plan of the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and Politics (Pol.). 1 The former concerns ethics, obviously enough, and the latter concerns ‘legislative science’ (nomothetikê), but they are closely related to each other as parts of the larger enterprise Aristotle calls ‘political science’ (hê politikê epistêmê or hê politikê; NE I.2, X.9; Adkins, 1991). As Aristotle conceives it, the general aim of political science is to determine the truth about human happiness (eudaimonia) – ‘the highest of all goods achievable by action’ (NE I.4 1095a15–20) – and to guide societies (Pol. IV.1 1288b21–89a7, III.8 1279b12–25; NE VII.11 1152b1–2) and households (NE X.9 1180a25 ff.) toward happiness. 2 A central claim about happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics is that it requires the possession and exercise of intellectual and moral virtues, and a central related feature of the Politics is its identification of education that cultivates these virtues as the primary tool of statesmanship (Pol. VIII.1). Education is as important to Aristotle’s conception of a political community as it is to Plato’s, though Aristotle would seem to have had less patience with spelling out the details.
