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 70 — Book V, Chapter X Central question How do monarchies become corrupted, and how can they be preserved? Main argument Aristotle now applies the same logic to kingship and tyranny. He shows that...
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others. But hatred is more powerful than anger; for anger is accompanied
with grief, which prevents the entrance of reason; but hatred is free
from it. In short, whatever causes may be assigned as the destruction
of a pure oligarchy unmixed with any other government and an extreme
democracy, the same may be applied to a tyranny; for these are divided
tyrannies.
Kingdoms are seldom destroyed by any outward attack; for which reason
they are generally very stable; but they have many causes of subversion
within; of which two are the principal; one is when those who are
in power [1313a] excite a sedition, the other when they endeavour to
establish a tyranny by assuming greater power than the law gives them.
A kingdom, indeed, is not what we ever see erected in our times, but
rather monarchies and tyrannies; for a kingly government is one that
is voluntarily submitted to, and its supreme power admitted upon great
occasions: but where many are equal, and there are none in any respect
so much better than another as to be qualified for the greatness and
dignity of government over them, then these equals will not willingly
submit to be commanded; but if any one assumes the government, either by
force or fraud, this is a tyranny. To what we have already said we shall
add, the causes of revolutions in an hereditary kingdom. One of these
is, that many of those who enjoy it are naturally proper objects of
contempt only: another is, that they are insolent while their power is
not despotic; but they possess kingly honours only. Such a state is soon
destroyed; for a king exists but while the people are willing to obey,
as their submission to him is voluntary, but to a tyrant involuntary.
These and such-like are the causes of the destruction of monarchies.