eBook

$10.99  $14.09 Save 22% Current price is $10.99, Original price is $14.09. You Save 22%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, 'The Politics' still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle's thorough and carefully argued analysis is based on a study of over 150 city constitutions, covering a huge range of political issues in order to establish which types of constitution are best - both ideally and in particular circumstances - and how they may be maintained. Aristotle's opinions form an essential background to the thinking of philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli and Jean Bodin and both his premises and arguments raise questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780141913261
Publisher: Penguin UK
Publication date: 09/17/1981
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 512
File size: 980 KB

About the Author

Aristotle was born at Stagira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia, in 384 BC. For twenty years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato. Some time later, became the tutor of young Alexander The Great. His writings have profoundly affectedthe whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy.
T. A. Sinclair was Professor of Greek at the Queen's University of Belfast for 27 years.
Trevor J. Saunders is Professor of Greek at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.


Aristotle was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira in 384 BC, and died in 322. He studied in Plato's Academy in Athens and later became tutor to Alexander the Great, before establishing his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy. Many of them have survived, including The Nicomachean Ethics, The Politics and Poetics, among others.

Read an Excerpt

Book I

Chapter 1. Since we see that every city is some kind of association, and every association is organized for the sake of some good (since everything everyone does is for the sake of something seeming to be good), it is clear that all associations aim at something good, and that the one that is most sovereign and encompasses all the others aims at the most sovereign of all goods. And this is the one called the city, the political association.

Now those who assume that the same person is skilled at political rule as at kingship, household management, and mastery of slaves do not speak beautifully. (For they regard each of these as differentiated with respect to manyness or fewness but not in form—a master being over few, a household manager over more, and a political ruler or a king over still more, as if a large household were no different from a small city; as for the political ruler and the king, when one has control himself, they regard him as a king, but as a political ruler when he rules and is ruled by turns in accordance with the propositions of this sort of knowledge. These things, though, are not true.) What is being said will be clear to those who investigate it along the usual path, for just as it is necessary in other cases to divide a compound thing up into uncompounded ones (since these are the smallest parts of the whole), so too with a city, it is by examining what it is composed of that we shall also see more about these rulers, both in what respect they differ from one another and whether it is possible to get hold of anything involving art applicable to each of the things mentioned.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations. Translation. Commentary. Textual Note. Bibliography. Glossary. Indexes.

Interviews


Joe Sachs’s new translation of Aristotle’s Politics is for students of philosophy, classics, political philosophy, political science, and/or great books at the college level.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews