Aristotle, Politics Book 1, Chapters 3-13

Question Why does Aristotle think that man is “more” of a political animal than bees or other “gregarious animals”?

Answer Animals have only voice, which only indicates pleasure and pain. Humans have the “gift” of speech or reason.

Answer Animals have only voice, which only indicates pleasure and pain. Humans have the “gift” of speech or reason. Because they have speech or reason, humans have a sense of the useful and the harmful, the just and unjust, and good and evil. It is the “association of living beings who have this sense” which makes a family and a city. So animals may live in a group, but not a community like humans.

Problem for this class Aristotle argues that there are natural rulers, and people who by nature must be ruled. In each case: master and slave, husband and wife, father and child. This is the more general point, which can be derived from his discussion of slavery and the subjugation of women.

Who has the right to rule (for Aristotle)? In Chapter 5, Aristotle asks if slavery is contrary to nature. He says that slavery is not, because it is not only necessary but expedient that some people should rule and that others should be ruled. But how can we tell?

Who has the right to rule (for Aristotle)? But how can we tell? A human has a soul and a body, and the soul is supposed to rule over the body (1254b5-10). A ruler has possession of reason. Thus (1254b20): A slave, Aristotle argues, is he who “by nature” apprehends (aisthesis) the rational principle but does not possess it.

Women are free and yet… In the case of women, Aristotle runs into more problems, for he acknowledges that woman are free persons (but not quite citizens). The slave has no deliberative faculty, and the child’s is immature (which the child will grow out of). (1260a13-15). Women have reason but “without authority”, although Aristotle cannot explain why (unless he resorts to reproductive differences like he did at the start).

Aristotle’s contradiction If both a ruler and one who is ruled must have virtue, why should one always rule, and another always obey? It can’t be a difference in degree, but in kind. 1259b36-38. And yet: “with the moral virtues…all should partake of them, but only in such manner and degree as is required by each for the fulfillment of his duty” (1260a15). Where Aristotle claims a difference in kind, he only gives proof of a difference of degree.