Politics and Economics

By Aristotle

Published in 1496

Reference #0429

“Politics and Economics,” from the 1st Printing of his Opera. In Aristotle’s Politics (eight books) the good of the individual is identified with the good of the city-state. The study of human good is thus a political inquiry, as it is in Plato. Aristotle discusses different types of government, finally preferring a monarchy, an aristocracy of men of virtue, or a constitutional government of the majority. Slavery is considered natural in Aristotle’s politics, because some men are adapted by nature to be the physical instruments of others.

Called by Dante “the master of those who know,” Aristotle mastered every field of learning known to the Greeks. His influence on St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval world, through the translation of the Arabic scholar Averroes, was profound and enduring.

Politics, on the good of the state. Economics, on the good of the family. The Politics was begun as early as 357 B.C. He treats oligarchy, democracy, commonwealth, tyranny and other forms of government; revolution and preserving the state, and the right forms of the constitution. He left it unfinished but throughout his life was often revising and combining the various sections of it.

Works By Aristotle