The Project Gutenberg EBook of Politics, by Aristotle

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Title: Politics
A Treatise on Government

Author: Aristotle

Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6762]
Posting Date: June 5, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLITICS ***

Produced by Eric Eldred

A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT

By Aristotle

Translated From The Greek Of Aristotle By William Ellis, A.M.

London &.Toronto Published By J M Dent & Sons Ltd. &.In New York By E.
P. Dutton &. Co

First Issue Of This Edition 1912 Reprinted 1919, 1923, 1928

INTRODUCTION

The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a treatise of which
the Ethics is the first part. It looks back to the Ethics as the Ethics
looks forward to the Politics. For Aristotle did not separate, as we are
inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the moralist. In the
Ethics he has described the character necessary for the good life, but
that life is for him essentially to be lived in society, and when in the
last chapters of the Ethics he comes to the practical application of his
inquiries, that finds expression not in moral exhortations addressed to
the individual but in a description of the legislative opportunities
of the statesman. It is the legislator's task to frame a society which
shall make the good life possible. Politics for Aristotle is not a
struggle between individuals or classes for power, nor a device for
getting done such elementary tasks as the maintenance of order and
security without too great encroachments on individual liberty. The
state is "a community of well-being in families and aggregations
of families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life." The
legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim is the
good life.

In an early dialogue of Plato's, the Protagoras, Socrates asks
Protagoras why it is not as easy to find teachers of virtue as it is to
find teachers of swordsmanship, riding, or any other art. Protagoras'
answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue
is taught by the whole community. Plato and Aristotle both accept the
view of moral education i