Project Gutenberg #6762
Politics: A Treatise on Government
Aristotle
350 BCEAristotle's treatise on constitutions and civic life, prepared introduction plus book-and-chapter sections from Project Gutenberg plaintext.
Project Gutenberg #6762 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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AI Summary
Chapter 48 — Book IV, Chapter IV Central question What is democracy really? Main argument Aristotle rejects simplistic definitions of democracy as mere rule by the people. He instead distinguishes democracy by how...
the right of determining on
their conduct lies in the people, who gladly receive their complaints as
the means of destroying all their offices.
Any one, therefore, may with great justice blame such a government as
being a democracy, and not a free state; for where the government is
not in the laws, then there is no free state, for the law ought to be
supreme over all things; and particular incidents which arise should be
determined by the magistrates or the state. If, therefore, a
democracy is to be reckoned a free state, it is evident that any such
establishment which centres all power in the votes of the people cannot,
properly speaking, be a democracy: for their decrees cannot be general
in their extent. Thus, then, we may describe the several species of
democracies.