Encyclopedia of Philosophy: POLITICS (the system of aristotle)

When we turn from the Ethics to their sequel, the Politics, we come down to earth with a bump. ‘Man is a political animal’ we are told: humans are creatures of flesh and blood, rubbing shoulders with each other in cities and communities. The most primitive communities are families of men and women, masters and slaves; these combine into a more elaborate community, more developed but no less natural, the state (polis). A state is a society of humans sharing in a common perception of what is good and evil, just and unjust: its purpose is to provide a good and happy life for its citizens. The ideal state should have no more than a hundred thousand citizens, small enough for them all to know one another and to take their share in judicial and political office. It is all very different from the Empire of Alexander.  In the Politics as in the Ethics Aristotle thought of himself as correcting the extravagances of the Republic. Thus as in Aristotle’s ethical system there was no Idea of the Good, so there are no philosopher kings in his political world. He defends private property and attacks the proposals to abolish the family and give women an equal share of government. The root of Plato’s error, he thinks, lies in trying to make the state too uniform. The diversity of different kinds of citizen is essential to a state, and life in a city should not be like life in a barracks.