NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF STUDY AND RESEARCH IN LAW

RESEARCH PAPER ON:

ARISTOTLE’S CONCEPT OF HUMAN NATURE AND STATE: THE

POLITICS

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Dr. NARENDRA NAROTTAM AVINASH KUMAR
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ROLL NUMBER: 987
(POLITICAL SCIENCE) SEMESTER: II

1|Page
ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to understand the various facets of Aristotle's concept of human nature and
the state with reference to his work in the Politics. It seeks to shed light upon Aristotle's attempt
to providing a bridge between these two ideas of human nature. Further, this is the ideal state,
so Aristotle is abstracting from what he considers to be nonideal features of the real world. This
paper comes to ask itself the fundamental question regarding what is Aristotle's considered
view of the distinction between citizens and others in his state?

HYPOTHESIS OF HUMAN NATURE: THE SOUL AS A SET OF FACULTIES, INCLUDING

RATIONALITY

Plato was a dualist who accepted that we are made out of two substances, a material body, and
insignificant brain.1 Aristotle dismisses this. As a researcher, Aristotle perceived that living
things incorporate plants just as human and non-human creatures. Each extraordinary thing at
that point has an alternate structure or structure.2 This is its conventional reason in his language.
Accordingly, a few things have a more extravagant or more intricate structure than different
things.

Along these lines the type of something doesn't exist freely; it's anything but a substance in
itself. Or maybe it is the particular example or structure or type of a thing which characterizes
how it exists and capacities.3 Thus, for Aristotle it looks bad to discuss a spirit or brain without
a body, for the quintessence of an individual is inserted and interwoven with their issue. You
can't remove it from the body.4

The main special case is that divine scholarly working may happen without a body. However,
it is difficult to perceive how this could be the situation. For instance, regardless of whether
PCs think without bodies their idea despite everything relies upon material segments.5 An

1
SLOTERDIJK, P., DUNLAP, T., & DAVIS, C. (2013). PLATO. In Philosophical Temperaments: From Plato
to Foucault (pp. 1-13). NEW YORK: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/slot15372.5
2
NATALI, C. (2013). INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL OF ARISTOTLE. In HUTCHINSON
D. (Ed.), Aristotle: His Life and School (pp. 96-119). PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton University Press. doi:
10.2307/j.ctt32bbww.7
3
CAVELL, S. (2004). ARISTOTLE. In Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life (pp.
352-372). CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS; LONDON, ENGLAND: Harvard University Press. Retrieved
August 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1c84cw9.23
4
ZEITLIN, I. (1997). Aristotle. In Rulers and Ruled: An Introduction to Classical Political Theory (pp. 30-53).
Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press. doi:10.3138/9781442679498.5
5
Struck, P. (2016). Aristotle on Foresight through Dreams. In Divination and Human Nature: A Cognitive History
of Intuition in Classical Antiquity (pp. 91-170). PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton University Press.
doi:10.2307/j.ctt1q1xs0v.6

2|Page
incorporeal idea is reasonably risky, albeit numerous Christians and Islamists who followed
Aristotle invited the chance. Concerning customary epitomized people, Aristotle's significant
qualification is between their reasonable segment and their feelings and wants. He likewise
recognized hypothetical and down to earth thinking.

Aristotle additionally held that people are social and political animals who have exercises
regular to all.6 He likewise imagined that we can just arrive at our full advancement in social
orders. Anyway, he doesn't imagine that ladies are sane animals, and his comments are very
defaming toward them. Maybe to top it all off, Aristotle pushed a teaching of common
servitude—the possibility that some are normally slaves.7 He thinks this is the status of non-
Greek savages. In any case, we ought not dismiss the remainder of Aristotle's idea since he was
a misanthrope, supremacist, and settler.

IDEAL AND DIAGNOSIS

Instead of diagnosing an imperfection in human instinct and proposing a cure, Aristotle gives
us a record of the end, reason or significance of life and how one may accomplish it. As opposed
to offer a supernatural record of salvation, he offers one for this world—one progressively
much the same as Confucianism or Buddhism.8

Aristotle starts by inquiring as to whether there is one thing at which all activity points; if there
is one thing all activity looks for the good of its own. Aristotle says that eudaimonia is that
thing. Eudaimonia is differently interpreted as satisfaction, thriving, prosperity, living
admirably, satisfaction, or flawlessness. In his own words "the human great ends up being
action in the spirit [mind] as per greatness." as it were, easy street is action that includes
objectivity and epitomizing greatness over a whole lifetime.9

6
Orhan, Ö. (2014). Aristotle: Phusis, Praxis, and the Good. In BARRY J. (Author) & Cannavò P. & Lane J. (Eds.),
Engaging Nature: Environmentalism and the Political Theory Canon (pp. 45-64). Cambridge, Massachusetts;
London, England: The MIT Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1287j06.7
7
NATALI, C. (2013). INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF THE SCHOOL OF ARISTOTLE. In HUTCHINSON
D. (Ed.), Aristotle: His Life and School (pp. 72-95). PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton University Press.
doi:10.2307/j.ctt32bbww.6
8
DUNHAM, J. (1947). ARISTOTLE. In The Religion of Philosophers (pp. 40-71). Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv4v2xzj.6
9
Del Soldato, E. (2020). If Aristotle Were Alive, or the Paradoxes of Authority. In Early Modern Aristotle: On
the Making and Unmaking of Authority (pp. 109-149). PHILADELPHIA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
doi:10.2307/j.ctv11vc934.9

3|Page
Anything, even lifeless things, can work magnificently. A decent pen or a decent canine
capacity as they should. People have the two strengths of insight—hypothetical and pragmatic
explanation—and strengths of character—ethics like reasonable shrewdness, recognizing what
to do, in actuality, circumstances by having gained as a matter of fact, just as balance, boldness,
and equity. When all is said in done, he presents these temperances as "the mean between the
boundaries." An existence of righteousness is the perfect for human life.10

As opposed to the condition of prudence stand brutishness; disagreeableness and absence of

restraint which it to not do the great, albeit one may need and know it. In contrast to Socrates,
who thought information was adequate for prudence and Plato, who perceived internal clash,
Aristotle perceived how shortcoming of will infers that KSV is bogus. 11 Realizing the great
doesn't mean one will do it.

CONCLUSION

It merits focusing on that regardless of whether Aristotle were entirely clear as far as he could
tell, and arranged to acknowledge that it is insignificant possibility which disfranchises the
dominant part in his optimal express. Outside merchandise have a limit set to their commitment
to satisfaction, a cut-off framed by righteous utilization of them, while there is no such breaking
point to the commitment made by prudence; to attribute joy to outer products as opposed to
their high-minded use resembles crediting the greatness of a presentation to the instrument
instead of the per former. In these books of the Politics we discover, more especially than in
the moral works, the language of temperance as the utilization of outside merchandise, with
outside products assuming the job of devices and material for goodness to utilize, a method of
talking which was to get predominant in later moral speculations.12 Hence Aristotle's rejection
of political rights in his optimal state finds no defence in his thoughts regarding human instinct,
yet additionally sits sick with his thoughts, particularly in these two books, about the extension

10
Chung, P. (2012). Interpretation and Ethics of Virtue: Aristotle Revisited. In the Hermeneutical Self and an
Ethical Difference: Intercivilizational Engagement (pp. 77-84). Cambridge: James Clarke & Co.
doi:10.2307/j.ctt1cgf16n.12
11
MAIENSCHEIN, J., & MACCORD, K. (2017). CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE. In
SHELLEY M. (Author) & GUSTON D., FINN E., ROBERT J., ESCHRICH J., & DRAGO M. (Eds.),
Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (pp. 215-222). CAMBRIDGE,
MASSACHUSETTS; LONDON, ENGLAND: The MIT Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1pk3jfp.13
12
Barnes, J. (1971). Aristotle's Concept of Mind. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 72, new series, 101-
114. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/4544819

4|Page
and intensity of chance as to happiness.13 These backings, I think, the proposal that there is an
issue of treachery here which Aristotle never decisively faces.14 His stickler support of the best
state doesn't accomplish as much as he might suspect it does; that many neglect to accomplish
the joy that all look for, on account of an absence of outside products and openings, is attributed
to "some possibility or nature" by a scholar who sees that it must be either, yet for whom neither
offers an acceptable answer that will spare the best state from relying upon a principal foul
play.

13
Postiglione, E. (2019). The Concept of το καλόν from Western Greece to Aristotle. In Reid H. & Leyh T. (Eds.),
Looking at Beauty to Kalon in Western Greece: Selected Essays from the 2018 Symposium on the Heritage of
Western Greece (pp. 175-188). Sioux City, Iowa USA: Parnassos Press – Fonte Aretusa. Retrieved August 1,
2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxpn5.16
14
COHEN, M. (2008). Aristotle and the Hierarchy of Nature. In Political Philosophy: From Plato to Mao (pp. 47-
66). London: Pluto Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183q69h.8

5|Page