The Politics of Aristotle

The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a treatise of which the Ethics is the first. It looks back to the Ethics as the Ethics looks forward to the Politics, as Aristotle did not separate 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. The state is "a community of well-being in families and aggregations of families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life" and the legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim is the good life.