aristotle Essay

By looking at the readings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, there are a few distinctions between how the modern thinkers viewed politics versus the way the ancient thinkers believed politics should be. There are many topics both modern and ancient thinkers discuss in their writings, such as the purpose of politics, the science of politics, human nature, as well as the ideal regime. By doing so, these thinkers’ views on political topics such as these illuminate how they thought politics should work and who should be able to participate in the activity of politics.

Swiss-French writer Benjamin Constant and ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle offer conflicting viewpoints concerning the merits and possibilities of ancient Greek democracy. Aristotle’s political theory attempts to justify his city-state’s political structure by providing a model of the common good, or Chief Aim, his end goal for Athenian democracy. He believed Athenians could reach the Chief Aim as a society by individually learning to be virtuous and then instilling laws and morals based on these ideals. In his lecture, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns, Constant highlights that the individual liberties protected in a modern representative democracy are much more important than the political liberties that one was given in antiquity. Constant illustrates that while some ideas of ancient Greek democracy are precious, Aristotle’s political theory is not an obtainable reality and it was beneficial that modern democracies transitioned to a system that protects individual liberty.

Wolff (1970) defines a state as a group of persons who have the right to exercise supreme authority within a territory, over a population. He proposes In the Defense of Anarchism, men are autonomous, as higher degrees of autonomy is achieved, a man will resist the claim that states have authority over him. This illustrates the puzzle of Political obligation and can be explained through the appeal to consent.

Martin Diamond and James Madison would agree with David Truman’s take on interest groups in government affairs. Martin Diamond believed that “to be scientific political science should focus on facts and not value” (Presentation: Human Nature, Politics, and Groups). This evidence proves that Martin would support Truman’s take on interest groups, because Martin is implying that as long as the interest groups are so called “balancing” government by their existence, then they should be accepted, despite if they lack values and moral integrity. Martin follows Aristotle’s belief that “man is a political animal” (Presentation: Human Nature, Politics, and Groups). This information provides evidence that if Martin accepts Aristotle’s belief that “man

Privacy. What do you think the average American would say if you told them they have no Constitutional Right to Privacy, as privacy is never mentioned anywhere in the Constitution? That the information they share over the World Wide Web has little if any protection by or from the government. Of course our government is hard at work to modernize the form of weeding out the unsanitary to which some cenacles might call censorship. But the main question still stands, do we have a right to privacy and is the government violating our natural freedoms, or do we need someone to monitor the actions of our society to keep order. The question is as old as government; to what extent should the government influence our lives. When you

This definition can be extended to a definition of politics. Indeed, the idea that “human values” and the “search for orienting theories” (lines 4 and 5) are entangled is clearly expressed. The vision of man that is given suggests that society should promote his innate capacities and put them at the chore of political decisions. “Participation in decision-making” (line19) conjures up the idea of a Participatory Democracy, which was a major theme for elements of the American Left in the 1960’s. This implies a more important influence of the people in the decisions of their society.

It caught my attention me when Camus mentioned becoming a slave of our liberty. He prefaced how even though we believe we are living a life of liberty and choices;

When I think about a political community, I usually associate it with elections, politicians, and advertisements that bad mouth candidates from the different political parties. Politicians try to persuade citizens to vote for them by making promises that they may never fulfill. But a political community is more than that. A comparison of Aristotle and John Locke’s nature and purpose of a political community has given me a new insight. I learned that, even though the political community is responsible to provide security, its main purpose is aimed for the highest good of all its citizens, which is virtue and happiness.

Politics may have been the tool by which man creates good, but politics does not mean the same thing as living a political life. Aristotle claimed that those who engaged in a political life do so out of vanity in order to gain personal honor. Because this only serves to inflate a single person's ego, this is considered to be an empty and vain course of action. Two other ways of life that Aristotle believed were

In the selections from Politics, Aristotle introduces and develops an idea of political life that varies distinctly from that introduced by the selections from the Bible and Saint Augustine’s The City of God. Aristotle’s focus on political life is more on the functions of government and the individuals who make up said government, while the Bible and Saint Augustine imply that political life has less to do with the actual functions of government and the individuals who make it up, and more to do with faith and love amongst the members of the community. Though there are usually considerable differences between fields of thought in philosophy and religion, Aristotle, Saint Augustine and the Bible share some similarities in their description

The relationship between free choice and moral politicians in the eye’s of Kant is such that, in order to have long lasting peace in the world it is required that people with authority to make choices for their states that do not just benefit them as an individual in the short run, but the state as a whole in the long run. Thus the coining of the phrase, moral politicians. This idea of moral politicians is tied closely to that of Kant’s theory of perpetual peace. In this theory there are three parts that must hold: all states have a republican constitution, a federation of states, and cosmopolitan law.

In "The Politics", Aristotle would have us believe that man by nature is a political animal. In other words, Aristotle seems to feel that the most natural thing for men to do is to come together in some form of political association. He then contends that this political association is essential to the pursuit of the good life. Finally he attempts to distinguish what forms of political association are most suitable to the pursuit of this good life. In formulating a critique of "The Politics", we shall first examine his claims as to what is natural to man and whether the criterion of the natural is sufficient to demonstrate virtue. We shall then examine what it is about political association that

EG Arts. 35-47 state that the state is responsible for elimination of economic and social obstacles that hinder freedom and equality of citizens and holds them from participation in political, economic and social life of the country

While living in a state, the individuals expect and expect rightly that they ought to be given their essential necessities of life by the state and the government. In the advanced idea of state, securing the essential rights of the individuals and giving them the necessities to carry on with a superior life are considered as the fundamental elements of a state. (Sherzai, 2013)

Not everyone will agree with Aristotle's political theory, but it is essential to understand the principals that underline the new political theories. Aristotle's politics is one of the most influential books of political philosophy. His main ideology consists in that a man is by nature a political animal because he can reason and communicate with others, therefore, has the potential to alter or change his living conditions for better because he can recognize the difference from right or wrong. Aristotle is proposing that a man with reason has to base his approach towards politics on the fundamental concept of good for human beings. However, based on the evaluation of modern politics, we can conclude that the idea of politics aiming at