Politics

The Politics is the natural companion to the Nicomachean Ethics: where the Ethics asks what makes an individual life flourish, the Politics asks what kind of city makes the flourishing of its citizens possible. The book is the most sustained treatment of political philosophy in the ancient world — eight books that work through the household, the polis, citizenship, the comparative analysis of constitutions, the causes of political stability and revolution, and the education appropriate to a free people.

The famous opening proposition — that man is by nature a political animal — sets the frame. Aristotle treats political life not as a regrettable necessity but as the natural arena in which the human good is achieved.