Politics

Politics

by Aristotle
Politics

Politics

by Aristotle

eBook

$0.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Intellectually stimulating work describes the ideal state and ponders how it can bring about the most desirable life for its citizens. Both heavily influenced by and critical of Plato's Republic and Laws, Politics is the distillation of a lifetime of thought and observation. The great Benjamin Jowett translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780486123370
Publisher: Dover Publications
Publication date: 07/03/2012
Series: Dover Thrift Editions: Philosophy
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 368
File size: 2 MB
Age Range: 14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher whose works spanned multiple disciplines including math, science and the arts. He spent his formative years in Athens, where he studied under Plato at his famed academy. Once an established scholar, he wrote more than 200 works detailing his views on physics, biology, logic, ethics and more. Due to his undeniable influence, particularly on Western thought, Aristotle, along with Plato and Socrates, is considered one of the great Greek philosophers.

Read an Excerpt

Book I

Chapter 1. Since we see that every city is some kind of association, and every association is organized for the sake of some good (since everything everyone does is for the sake of something seeming to be good), it is clear that all associations aim at something good, and that the one that is most sovereign and encompasses all the others aims at the most sovereign of all goods. And this is the one called the city, the political association.

Now those who assume that the same person is skilled at political rule as at kingship, household management, and mastery of slaves do not speak beautifully. (For they regard each of these as differentiated with respect to manyness or fewness but not in form—a master being over few, a household manager over more, and a political ruler or a king over still more, as if a large household were no different from a small city; as for the political ruler and the king, when one has control himself, they regard him as a king, but as a political ruler when he rules and is ruled by turns in accordance with the propositions of this sort of knowledge. These things, though, are not true.) What is being said will be clear to those who investigate it along the usual path, for just as it is necessary in other cases to divide a compound thing up into uncompounded ones (since these are the smallest parts of the whole), so too with a city, it is by examining what it is composed of that we shall also see more about these rulers, both in what respect they differ from one another and whether it is possible to get hold of anything involving art applicable to each of the things mentioned.

Table of Contents

What is the relationship of the individual to the state? What is the ideal state, and how can it bring about the most desirable life for its citizens? What sort of education should it provide? What is the purpose of amassing wealth? These are some of the questions Aristotle attempts to answer in one of the most intellectually stimulating works.
Both heavily influenced by and critical of Plato's Republic and Laws, Politics represents the distillation of a lifetime of thought and observation. "Encyclopaedic knowledge has never, before or since, gone hand in hand with a logic so masculine or with speculation so profound," says H. W. C. Davis in his introduction. Students, teachers, and scholars will welcome this inexpensive new edition of the Benjamin Jowett translation, as will all readers interested in Greek thought, political theory, and depictions of the ideal state.

Interviews


Joe Sachs’s new translation of Aristotle’s Politics is for students of philosophy, classics, political philosophy, political science, and/or great books at the college level.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews