Aristotle's Ethics, and the Politics Books I & II

with the short summary of the Nicomachean ethics to start because to understand the politics you need to have the understanding of what he thinks about ethics because in Aristotle and also for Plato and just sort of philosophers in this period there was they didn't have conceptions of one political philosophy that was distinct from an ethical philosophy that was distinct from philosophy of law it all tied together because they believed that politics was about ethics and such and then that's the the color code of what I'm gonna discuss okay let's get started so book one of the Nicomachean ethics he basically says everything is thought to aim at some good the chief good is the end to which everything aims and so knowledge of this good would seem to be the concern of the most authoritative science the highest master science and this is the science of politics so therefore the aim of political science is necessarily also some good the good of a city is more noble and godlike than the good of an individual again so he's please putting politics at the prime at the top of his ethical Theory most people agree that good is called eudaimonia or being happy so this this translation translate this word to mean happiness but it also means to live an act well and human flourishing so it's not directly happiness but for the purposes of this translation and this summary we're just going to call the good Udo mania as happiness however these people disagree about what happiness is so the masses think it's pleasure wealth or honor while philosophers believe there must be a good beyond these things which makes all the good things good like an ultimate good if you will so there is difference between arguments from first principles and arguments to to first principles this is a reference to Plato and his of the forms where he says that there's a formal first principle of everything so we must begin from things known by us therefore anyone who is going to understand this study of what of what is noble ie politics must have been brought up well so what our sources are saying is that the ethics is a study of virtue for people who are already virtuous it's a journey of self understanding it's not to teach people who aren't virtuous how to be virtuous because they won't understand because they lack that virtue which is an important point there are three prominent types of life the life of enjoyment the life of politics and the life of contemplation the masses choose the life of enjoyment which is fit for cattle and because it has pleasure as its end whereas sophisticated people see happiness as honor because this is the end of political life nonetheless honor is too shallow an object for inquiry because it depends more on those who honor than on those being honored so again you can't determine virtually by owner because it's it's an external thing you could consider virtue as the end of political life but even virtue lacks something because we can possess it even when asleep or suffering and and so that's not the end it's not it's not happiness you could consider wealth but it's not the good way of seeking because it's only useful for getting something else therefore you know the good that we want to find to define that's that's the purpose he's trying to define the good and that is the end good the depth to which everything aims including political life including individual life and so it has to be an end in itself therefore wealth can't be good the good because it is only good in achieving something else so it can't be the thing that we strive for ultimately our souls it would be a good idea to examine the notion of the universal so admits that this will be difficult because those who introduced the forms of friends so at this point he's basically critiquing the platonic study of the forms he said that there is no universal good with a quote there is therefore no common good answering to a single form the good is spoken of in many sentence in many senses substance quantity quality relation time place and therefore things should be called good in two senses things good in themselves and things good for the sake of things good in themselves the could the good appears to vary between different actions and skills in medicine it is health in military science it is victory so therefore in every action and rational choice the end is the good since it is for the sake of the end that everything everyone does everything else however there can be several ends and so several goods but the chief good is something complete which is eudaimonia we always choose it for itself and not for the sake of something else so the point here is that he's not saying that there is only one good and then everything else is a sort of diminution of that that's that he's critiquing what he interprets as Plato's way of saying that his view is that there are two types of good things that are good for themselves and things that are good for the sake of those things and that means there are several types of good in and meaning like dependent on the the thing that we're talking about so as he said in medicine the good is health but then there must be something ultimate about this and that is eudaimonia happiness so the complete good is thought to be self sufficient this term is applied not to a person on their own but a person living in a community since a human being is by nature a social being this is a famous phrase that he actually repeats in the politics so we'll talk more about it then so we take what is self sufficient to be that which on its own makes life worthy of choice happiness is worth choosing and therefore you Damania is the chief good because it is both complete and self-sufficient however we really want to be more specific and this may be achieved if we grasp the characteristic activity of a human being because in the same way the good are you doing well of a flute player lies in its characteristic activity are you playing the fruit look at the flute not fruit sorry the same is true of humans and here's where we see you die mania meaning human flourishing doctors happiness a flute player is flourishing when it plays the flute well and so a human is flourishing when it is a human it does being a human well so we need to find out what the characteristic activity of a human is and it's not living or growth because this is an activity that's shared with plants and other animals and so what remains is a life concerned in some way with action of the element that possesses reason and reason rationality is a central element of this definition of what it is to be a human so he introduces what is called the function argument the difference between a lyre player and a good liar player is an addition to their characteristic activity ie a lyre player plays the lie the liar whereas a good liar player plays it well therefore the characteristic activity of a good person is to carry out the activity well when accomplished in accordance with the appropriate virtue the human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue and if there are several virtues in accordance with the best and most complete and this is how he defines the human good and and what diff makes us good and how we act that good so goods are classified into three groups external goods goods of the soul and goods of the body Goods of the soul are the most especially good and eudaimonia is in this category then he asks the question is happiness acquired by learning and habituation or is it god-given or by chance if anything is given to the gods but given by the gods to men then it is reasonably sari reasonable but happiness is god-given especially because it is the best thing in the human world happiness requires complete virtue and a complete life and here we can see a distinct correlation between eudaimonia and virtue which is again central to the Aristotelian theory should we then call nobody happy while they are alive and instead wait to see the end and as in because in order to be happy you need to complete virtue to complete life you would that would imply that you have to wait until someone's dead to determine whether or not their life was complete but our sort of says no because there is nothing more permanent in the sphere of human activity than activity in accordance with virtue and therefore the happy person will be happy throughout their life because they will spend all or most of their time engaged in action and contemplation in accordance with virtue and he will bear changes in fortune nobly and there will always be virtuous regardless of changing circumstances as virtue is so central it should be studied further as this will aid the understanding of happiness besides the true politician is thought to have taken special pains over this since he wants to make citizens good and obedient to the laws he highlights the lawgivers of the Cretans and spartans this is important because the the legislature and the role of laws in habituating virtue is central to Aristotle's conception of politics so again we can see the inter woven nature of the ethical and the political theory the purpose of the law is to make virtuous citizens so human virtue is of the soul not the body politicians must have some understanding of the soul if you also later adds that the happy person can only live such a life if adequately furnished with external goods so this means that while we require virtue to be happy that isn't all its own enough because we also need wealth in order to live to have food it mean doesn't have to be high sort of real big wealth but you need some sort of money you need some sort of shelter you need food so he is accepting that while he sentences ideas on virtue there must be some external goods to book2 he goes on to discuss virtue virtue then is of two kinds that of the intellect and that of character virtue of intellect is a result of teaching whereas virtue of character is a result of habituation none of the virtues of character arise in us naturally because nothing natural can be made to act differently by habituation and so therefore nature gives us the capacity to acquire virtues this is his virtue theory but completion comes through habituation therefore we become virtuous by making virtuous actions it is also through our actions that we can become unjust so like states arise from like activities and thus it is the role of the legislature to make the citizens good by habituating their virtues states like this for example at virtues are naturally corrupted by deficiency or excess for example too much food and drink and too little food and drink can ruin someone's health similarly the person who fears everything becomes cowardly well here is another comes rash we assume then that virtue will be the sort of state to do the best actions in connection with pleasures pleasures and pain and vice the contrary therefore the whole concern of political sciences pleasures and pains virtues the states of the soul not feelings or capacities feelings can be experienced in excesses due under fishin sea as is just said but to have them at the right time about the right things towards the right people for the right end and in the right way is the mean and the best and this is the business of virtue so this the idea of the mean is very central to this concept of virtue I said if you if you fear something too much you're cowardly if you don't fear it enough you're sort of rash so the virtue of bravery for example is in the mean the middle between those two extremes and that is what our source was saying for everything every virtue is a mean between an excess and a deficiency so the definition of virtue is a state involving rational choice consisting in a mean relative to us and determined by reason in book 2 chapter 7 he discusses the mean for a variety of specific feelings and actions and and he decides that both access and efficiency are vices it is hard to be good because it is hard to find this mean in between the excess and deficiency we're just get forward to book 5 now as I said this it's a brief summary of the ethics before we get on to the politics so in this book key because it is justice and injustice everyone means by justice the same kind of state that which disposes people to act justly justice is complete virtue not without qualification but in relation to another person so it is often how the justice is the greatest virtue but in fact justice is virtue they only differ in that justice is in relation to others while virtue is an unqualified state so again justice is a mean but it's it's it's how you act towards other people and but other than this this relation to other one another it's the same thing as virtue and what is unjust can be divided into you what is unlawful and what is unfair well what is just can be divided into what is lawful and what is fair what is just in this sense then is what is proportionate this is another way of saying the mean there is another type of Justice which is a rectifier II no that's wrong Bret rectification there we go which is inequality in transactions the law does not consider who is good person and who is a bad person it just treats the party as equals and considers the transaction or specific injustice and again what is equal is still a mean and then book 5 chapter 5 got this reciprocity and I'm kind of skimming through the bits that aren't as necessary for the understanding of the theory so apologies if you wanted a more in-depth analysis and then he moves on to discuss specifically political justice which is the same thing as justice but found among people in associations and then the rule of law political justice is governed by law and that is why it is not a person that we allow to rule but rather law because a person does so in his interests and becomes a tyrant this is interesting because he actually talks about how he very rarely talks about this root of law elsewhere so we kind of assumed that when he's talking about the best form of Constitution and sort of virtually monarchy as such there is a consistent idea that law is ruling and but he's not not really explicit in that political justice has two parts natural and legal and there is a difference between an unjust act and what is unjust and and this is significant when it comes to voluntary or involuntary actions so if someone acts unjustly involuntarily then he is not unjust it's just his action that is unjust whereas if the action is voluntary then he is unjust and so this links to the concept of rational choice and it's kind of like how we treat man's torture and murder today is it's the intention or the voluntary action that that defines the sort of scale of the crime okay book six so we said earlier that the soul is divided into a part with reason and a part without now we must divide the part with reason into one side that contemplates those things whose first principles could not be otherwise and another who contemplates those things whose first principles can the first is the scientific part and the second to the calculated part the three things in the soul controlling action in truth our perception intellect and desire and the characteristic activity of each of these parts relates to intellect is truth and there are five ways in which the soul arrives truth skill scientific practical wisdom wisdom and intellect now we're gonna skip right to the end book 10 and this is sort of the big precursor to the politics so now he moves on to a discussion of pleasure which is something closely associated with humans some say that pleasure is good such as Eudoxus who argued that pleasure is good because all things rational not aim towards it and some say it is bad so Plato said that the life of pleasure is more worthy of choice with the addition of intelligence which means pleasure itself is not good because the good cannot become more worthy of choice by anything being added to it good is determinant whereas pleasure is indeterminate because it admits of degrees he can ACLU's therefore that pleasure is not the good pleasure is not a process so finally he's going to offer an outline of happiness as it is the end of human affairs again this is this concept of eudaimonia happiness is not a state but rather in the class of activities it is an activity were thing of worthy of choice in itself as it is self sufficient if happiness is activity in accordance with virtue it is reasonable to expect that this is in accordance with the highest virtue and this will be the virtue of the best element which is intellect and so the activity of this element is the life of contemplation he says for this is the highest activity intellect being the highest element in us and it's objects are the highest objects of knowledge again this is interesting so he he's saying that happiness is the good but happiness is an activity and so it's actually an activity of the best element and that is intellect and so actually that life of contemplation the contempt urges life is the best life that we can lead is the most the most happy the most human flourishing that we can we can get to but again you still need these external goods in order to achieve this the constant contemplative life is the most continuous has pleasure mixed in with it as the most pleasant of activities in accordance with virtue is agreed to be that in accordance with the wisdom and is self-sufficient although a wise person requires the necessities of life he requires nothing else the just man needs associates in an object of his just actions and so will a temperate and courageous person they always need someone else or something else in which to act whereas the wise person can contemplate even when he is by himself so therefore happiness depends on leisure and and the ability to have time and space to think for human being therefore the life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasant cleanse dust since this more than anything else constitutes humanity and so this life will also be the happiest another reason why the contemplative life contemplative activity is the happiest is that it's the most like the gods so the gods activity which is superior in blessedness will be contemplative and therefore the human activity most akin to this is the most conducive to happiness no other animals have a share in happiness because they have no share in contemplation and this is why humans are at the top of this sort of animal food chain but because the happy person is human he would also need to external prosperity for human nature is not self-sufficient for contemplation and so the body must be provided for however it shouldn't be in excess he also says that private individuals seem to do good actions no less indeed more than those in positions of power and this is a very significant line implies the political participation is not essential for eudaimonia despite his famous political animal line so a lot of people as you'll see in in a couple of slides say that when when our source says man is by nature a political animal they argue that this means that humans naturally have to engage in politics and some people even say that this is a an advocacy of democracy but in reality it is not that I'll discuss what the political animal bit means later but here he's saying that those in positions of power don't necessarily do things or achieve the happiness it's that doesn't mean they can't but it's not the power that the involvement in running of the state is not necessary to achieve this good and so private private individuals actually can do good more than those in positions of power at least that's our still has experience so far and then he returns to the importance of laws in aiding virtue laws law does have compulsive power he says it is in the city of Sparta alone or almost alone that led the legislature seems to have been careful about people's are bringing in pursuits and he concludes the ethics by saying that it is now time to turn to the question of politics and legislation to see which political system is best how each must be arranged and what laws and habits it should employ and this sort of final passage seems to pave the way for the politics which is what we will now come on - ok book 1 every city is a form of Association and all associations come into being for the sake of some good the most sovereign Association pursues the same the most and this is the policy he presents a teleological view of politics and so it's best to begin study at the beginning and see the growth or development of political associations so at the very start there's a union of male and female for reproduction this is a natural impulse and as we'll see Aristotelian political theory places significant emphasis on nature and what is natural after the reproduction and the union of male and female there must necessarily be a union of the naturally ruling element with the element which is naturally ruled for the preservation of both and this is a master and a natural slave again we must take this in the context of ancient Athens slavery was commonplace it was not considered an evil so this discussion to Aristotle he's basically talking about the household which as we see the first result of these elementary associations is the household which satisfies daily recurrent needs and - to Aristotle and all his contemporaries the household was man woman slave and then the children that the man and woman produce that is the household and so he's talking about the sort of primary unions in this obviously nowadays that's not how we view things but for him there's male a female union and then natural natural ruler and natural slave Union and that makes up the household or or course the next Association is the village which is formed of multiple households and satisfies more than daily recurrent needs and then the final and perfect Association is the city or polis this is formed from a number of villages and here the height of self-sufficiency is reached the city exists for the sake of a good life and exists by nature from these considerations it is evident that man is by nature a political animal so as I said there is significant debate about what this means some including classical scholarship took this is recommending democracy however there is a more convincing argument from layer which is that man can fully realize his nature only within a political society that promotes human happiness so political could also be into the word political can be translated as social and so the most convincing interpretation of this sentence is that our social is saying that naturally men form these associations and it is natural for human beings to unite into a city it is not saying that it is natural for human beings to engage in politics I mean but you could argue that it is if you want to but the sort of most convincing evidence at least in my view is that it means more sort of social he says a man without a city at once plunges into a passion of war again suggesting that this is about whether or not you're involved in a city man is more political than bees or other coup Gary's animals because nature makes nothing in vain and man alone has the Faculty of speech and a percept of good and evil and just and unjust in Aristotle's history of animals which is more of a biological treatise he uses political to describe creatures which as a group have an activity in common so this is why he refers to bees as being political they all sort of working towards one goal and function they can't survive on their own they function within the hive and and that's kind of the the idea he has about humans as well the city exists prior in order of nature to the family and individual what Aristotle means here is not that the policy existed before the individual but the man is not fully human without a city so all things derive their essential character from their function and their capacity and this cannot be known without the whole with us see that the city exists by nature and that it is prior to the individual man when perfected is the best of animals but if he be isolated from law and justice he is the worst of all again so this is sort of an idea that humans achieved their good only when they're in this in the city oh he says he must turn to household management as every city is composed of households and there are three relationships within this the master/slave the marital and the parental the slave in this conception is viewed as an animate article of property so now we get to the sort of infamous and most offensive element of Aristotelian theory at least to the modern eye and that is natural slavery so he says the relation of ruler and ruled is one of those things which are not only necessary but also beneficial in animate beings the soul rules the body this this relationship between the soul and the body is natural and beneficial to the body and the same principle applies to the relationship between man and other animals and male to female therefore all men who differ from others as much as the body differs from the soul and natural slaves someone is thus a slave by nature if he is capable of becoming the property of another lecture also erect s-- a physical difference between the bodies of freemen and those of slaves so it's it's supposedly obvious to see who's a natural slave and who's a natural master it is this clear that just as some are by nature free so others are by nature slaves and for these latter the condition of slavery is both beneficial and just however there is also legal slavery which is different from natural slavery and it can only be justified by convention so it's not based on nature and so Aristotle here this is a little nuance to his argument he's saying that he admits that he's not too concerned with the frequent of just injustice of conventional slavery and [Music] he's criticizing the slavery of his day not because it's unjust what no it is unjust but not because slavery objectively is unjust but he's arguing that the slavery of his day is just legal and it's not determined by nature so that he is he sort of believes that there are some people who are slaves that aren't naturally slaves they are actually naturally masters and so this is an injustice because they are put in a position that they shouldn't be but the concept of slavery in itself is to our Stossel not and not an injustice is actually the epitome of justice so this is a sort of distinction between what is actually happening and what is should be happening but in in his conception slavery it's ok however he's not he's not critiquing he's not saying that um although he doesn't like the conventional slavery the legal slavery that it existed at the moment because he believes it isn't representative of natural slaves and natural masters he's not really sort of trying to launch an attack on it or stop it the purpose of this passage is actually to distinguish political rule over naturally equal citizens which we will come to discuss later from the ruler master over slaves so really he's trying to distinguish between different types of rule rather than to launch an attack on contemporary society okay so he this shows that the rule of the master and that of the Statesman are different one kind of rule is exercised over those who are naturally free ie the rule of the Statesman whereas the other is over natural slaves the rule over exercised over our household is that of a monarch so then book one's chapter book one chapters 8 to 11 discusses household management and the art of property acquisition I don't we gonna talk about that because it's not central I'm sure some will disagree but you know whatever so the head of the household Ruth rules over his wife like a statesman ruining over fellow citizens and he rules over his children like a monarch over subjects is the goodness of the naturally ruled and the natural rulers the same both classes share in goodness but it's a different kind of goodness and then he asked the question why did the female and the slave differ the slave is entirely without the Faculty of deliberation the female indeed possesses it but in a form which relaxed Authority and children also possess it but only in an immature form so again it's a very patriarchal view of society but essentially an adult man he was a natural master has the full Faculty of deliberation and rationality natural slaves don't like they're completely that that's why they're saves they like this faculty women have it but not to the same degree as men hence why men should rule over women and children developing it as they grow so they are also ruled by adult men and that is the hierarchy of the of the household in our statute emelian theory so the theme the central theme of book 1 is contrasting the household in the city commentators Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas argued that the aim of this discussion was to establish the superiority of public communal existence over the privates household concerns with material necessities and comforts and so on this interpretation our social ways is presenting the household just distinguishing it from political rule and sort of saying that yes the household is good you want to keep that but the priority should always be this sort of public political this sort of the relationship of the city the household is just a small element of that a historian Newell agrees but he argues that it's also this this chapter is also seeking to ask where the household forms of rule can be applied to whole cities hence the problem of monarchy which we come on to later ok politics book 2 the purpose of this study is to consider the best form of political Association therefore we must consider both real constitutions and theoretical ones so he begins with the discussion of the Constitution sellout in Plato's Republic he criticizes Socrates idea that the greatest possible unity in a city is the supreme good yet it is obvious that a city which goes on becoming more and more of a unit will eventually cease to be a city at all a city by its nature is some sort of plurality so according to Aristotle as the city becomes more and more of a unit it actually becomes a household and then an individual and therefore this is a destruction of the city so you want just a difference and distinction between people and he's arguing that the hierarchy of labour inflated ideal City is actually similar to that of the Oikos household a policy is composed of a number of people and different kinds of people the stability of the city depends on reciprocal equality this must be the case among free and equal citizens and put emphasis on the free and equal so they cannot all simultaneously they must therefore each hold office for a year this is our social sort of idea of rotational rule although it would be better for the same people to be rulers wherever possible this isn't possible because of the natural equality of all citizens justice therefore requires participation of all of the naturally equal people in office and so this is the best system however it is really important to emphasize this is only the best system when all of the citizens are naturally equal there is a difference if there is a you know inequality within them so what is what is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care even in Plato system it isn't it is possible that some citizens might guess who their family is and so if you haven't read Plato's Republic really quick summary or watch my video of it because this will make more sense if you know what Plato was talking about yeah so invader system offenses such as homicide assault slander a much worse if committed against the family because they breach natural piety as well as temporal law these offenses would be more common if nobody knew who their family was ie in in Plato's Republic and therefore the punishments would be inappropriate how the in common women and children will be better in the farming class than the ruling class because the spirit of friendship is less likely to exist in this sort of community and therefore they're less likely to revolt another problem is that children born of the working class would be like how would the children born of the working class be transferred to the Guardian class and vice versa so now they must consider the best property there are many difficulties in the system under which ownership is private and used is common a system under which ownership is private and uses common gives more pleasure and encourages goodness more communism cannot remedy the evils which really spring from the defects of human nature and is based on a false conception of unity it neglects the true unity which comes from education Plato's community of property leaves the position of the lower class obscure and his attached system of government is to absolute depriving the ruling class of any happiness book till chapter 6 criticizes plato's laws and postulates to larger territory fails to properly consider foreign relationships he doesn't sufficiently define property rights and doesn't a proper provision for a balance between property and population the system of government is sort of constitutional government but is unbalanced then chapter 7 he discusses the proposal of phyleus of Chalcedon who proposed the equalization of property inland this would involve regulation of the population and determination of the exact standard on which equality was to be achieved equality actually matters more in the moral educational sphere than in the material the amount of distribution of property in a city are affected by considerations of both foreign and domestic policy so the prime requested criticism is that it places too much emphasis or material factors he then talks about the theoretical Constitution proposed by HIPAA hippodamus of miletus who's a town planner hippodamus advocated triads three social classes three divisions of territory and three sorts of law our social is very critical of this he says that the tradition has some claims and the value of law-abiding habit may be greater than that of legal reforms he now moves on to the discussion of real constitutions it's generally agreed that leisure freedom from the necessity of labor should be available in a well-ordered City however he uses the example of serfs of Thessaly revolting against the revolting against the thessalians or the helots against the spartans to conclude that the best mode of organization for system of serfdom has yet to be discovered in Sparta the indulgence permitted to women is damaging both to the purpose of the Constitution and to the happiness of the city but extreme but he's basically saying that women were educated in the similar way to men and there is less a less specific role of women in Sparta than in Athens they're not house bound they're less constrained and he's arguing that this is sort of damaging the city should be considered as divided almost equally into male and female portions populations in Constitution where the position of women is poorly regulated one half of the citizen body is left untouched by the laws so while the Spartan legislature aimed a who's called life urges aimed to make all citizens Hardy he failed in regards to women whose lives are full of license and luxury the inevitable result is the sort of Constitution in this sort of Constitution is the worship of wealth he attributes this feminine license to the long military campaigns in which most of the Spartan male population was absent and you know women didn't have men around today according to our structural sort of gained a sense of superiority which was unwarranted and and they got lazy and such he also says that women owned too much property about two-fifths of the country in Sparta belongs to women because of the number of Eris's and the practice of giving dowry there's also deficiencies in the way the Spartan effort is organized evils are drawn from the masses and so could often be very poor men who are susceptible to bribery the Constitution has effectively transformed from an aristocracy to a democracy at this point he also criticizes the council of elders for giving inferior training to councillors and a childish method of appointment a hwhile spartan legislation aims to foster goodness in war there's it doesn't sort of do any other goodness the Cretan Constitution is similar to that of Sparta but in many ways it's less polished the Cretan system of Cohen males is superior to the Spartan but Crete in Cosmo here this sort of equivalent of the Spartan ethos are inferior they share the defect of being appointed without proper qualification but they do not present the same constitutional advantage as the ephors crete has become a constitution made up of Confederations of Nobles which are prone to feuds and factions is only saved from the evil effects of his Constitution by its geographical isolation then talks about the constitution of Carthage it's generally thought of as good it's quite similar to the Spartan as well as the Cretan but is well ordered and has very little factionalism its Constitution is generally based on the principle of aristocracy but it deviates from that partly towards democracy and partly to oligarchy the primary defect of the Carthaginian Constitution attaches too much importance to wealth and is in it so Carthage is effectively a moneyed oligarchy in Aristotle's be and another defect is the habit of pluralism he then briefly looks at the legislators like like urges and so long like I just was for Sparta and Solon was for Athens they established both laws and constitutions so low enough Athens has been praised but he acted actually ruined the oligarchy element of Athens which was the Council of air a I spelled that wrong is actually a rare pages so the R in the e should be swapped over by making popular law courts and so Aristotle if you hadn't already worked out is pretty critical of democracy he likes the oligarchy elements and he says that Solon

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Keywords: Aristotle, Ethics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Political theory, Political thought, natural slavery, Classics, History, Book 1, Book 2

Id: zRsBk5HV9hk

Length: 43min 31sec (2611 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2019