ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s Politics follows closely upon his Nicomachean Ethics. Where the Ethics describes the human good, the Politics provides a prescriptive recipe for its attainment. Political science, like ethics, is a practical science,1 dealing with fine action, and seeking ways to implement the human good. Indeed, Aristotle ends his Nicomachean Ethics by characterizing political theory as a continuation and completion of that work (EN 1181b12-23). There he recommends, in keeping with his general methodology, that the political scientist should begin by sifting through the positions of earlier thinkers and studying as many actual political systems as possible,2 so that he might determine which sorts of systems undermine or preserve cities and which sorts permit their governors to conduct politics well or poorly. The Politics does carry out these tasks, though as we currently possess it not in the order initially suggested.3 It is likely, in fact, that the work was stitched together by an editor after Aristotle’s death, though this does nothing to vitiate the worth of the material it contains, for it is genuinely Aristotelian and plainly reflects his judgments about the sorts of socio-political arrangement best suited to serve the cause of human flourishing.
