Politiques, or Discourses of Gouernment.. . . . by Aristotle
This month’s featured text is Politiques or Discourses on gouernment. . . by Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE). Aristotle was born in Macedonia where his father was court physician to King Amyntas. When his father died, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study at Plato's Academy in Athens. Aristotle spent twenty years at the Academy and eventually diverged greatly from Plato's teaching and went to lecture on his own. At the invitation of King Philip of Macedonia, Aristotle returned to become tutor to Philip's son, Alexander (later known as Alexander the Great). When Philip died and Alexander became King, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, and his own branch of philosophical thought known as the peripatetic school (supposedly named for Aristotle's habit of walking around while he delivered lectures). He taught there for the next thirteen years until the sudden death of Alexander in 323 BCE and the subsequent overthrow of the pro-Macedonian government (and all other things perceived as Macedonian) in Athens. Aristotle then fled to Chalcis and died one year later.

Nearly fifty works are attributed to Aristotle (some of which may actually have been written by students after his death); they comprise a wide range of topics such as logic, philosophy, ethics, physics, biology, psychology, politics and rhetoric to name a few. Aristotle's ideas heavily influenced the history of Western philosophy and the thinking of the Renaissance. Politics is certainly no exception. In this treatise, Aristotle traces the origins and structure of the state and names six distinct pairs of governmental structure: monarchy and tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy, polity and democracy. In each case the former of the pair (monarchy, aristocracy, and polity) rulers are concerned with the welfare of the state; in the later case (tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy) rulers are concerned only with their own self interest. Therefore, he urged citizens toward a greater good in developing their governments. In the Middle Ages, Catholic philosophers interpreted this to mean that certain people were virtuous (aristocrats, priests, etc.) and used it to justify hierarchy and ordering of society. In the Renaissance, Thomas Hobbes, and others rejected such notions saying they lead to ideological warfare (living through religious wars may have helped shape this view). Even other political philosophers in the Renaissance like Rene Descartes and Niccolo Machiavelli in one way or another reacted to the precepts of Aristotle's Politics. In all, it was an important book that shaped much political philosophy and continues to influence thinkers to this day. During the rebirth of classical scholarship in the early modern period, Aristotle was reinterpreted from Medieval thinking, and that reinterpretation which focused on the importance of constitutional limitation of all governments helped to shape enlightenment thinking of John Locke and the writers of constitutions throughout Europe and later the United States. Whether or not Aristotle ever intended his ideas to be used in the ways that Medieval theologians, Renaissance philosophers, and Enlightenment political thinkers have done, it is certain that it has maintained and likely will maintain that influence for some time to come.

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