Politics: A Treatise on Government

About the book

Aristotle asks what distinguishes a political community and what kinds of government can serve its purposes. Beginning with relationships within the household, he moves through citizenship, competing constitutional arrangements, the distribution of offices, and the causes of political instability. His comparisons give particular attention to how wealth, numbers, and rival claims to merit affect the exercise of power. The inquiry also reaches education and the conditions of a desirable civic life. Some of its premises, especially its defences of hierarchy and slavery, require critical attention rather than acceptance as neutral description. The work's continuing interest lies in the connections it draws between institutions and the people whose habits sustain them, asking how a constitution shapes conduct while also depending on material circumstances and established relations among its citizens.

• Citizenship
• Constitutions and power
• Civic education

Why read it

For an extensive ancient inquiry into the relationship between a community's institutions, social divisions, and conception of a good life.

English translation by William Ellis