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 15 — Book II, Chapter I Central question What is the best civil society? Main argument Aristotle shifts from the household to proposals for the best regime. He treats political design as a serious...
Since then we propose to inquire what civil society is of all others
best for those who have it in their power to live entirely as they wish,
it is necessary to examine into the polity of those states which are
allowed to be well governed; and if there should be any others which
some persons have described, and which appear properly regulated, to
note what is right and useful in them; and when we point out wherein
they have failed, let not this be imputed to an affectation of wisdom,
for it is because there are great defects in all those which are already
established, that I have been induced to undertake this work. We will
begin with that part of the subject which naturally presents itself
first to our consideration. The members of every state must of necessity
have all things in common, or some things common, and not others,
or nothing at all common. To have nothing in common is evidently
impossible, for society itself is one species of [1261a] community; and
the first thing necessary thereunto is a common place of habitation,
namely the city, which must be one, and this every citizen must have a
share in. But in a government which is to be well founded, will it be
best to admit of a community in everything which is capable thereof, or
only in some particulars, but in others not? for it is possible that the
citizens may have their wives, and children, and goods in common, as
in Plato's Commonwealth; for in that Socrates affirms that all these
particulars ought to be so. Which then shall we prefer? the custom which
is already established, or the laws which are proposed in that treatise?