Aristotle (384-322 B.C.

), Greek philosopher and scientist, who shares with

Plato and Socrates the distinction of being the most famous of ancient
philosophers. Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a
physician to the royal court. At the age of 17, he went to Athens to study at
Plato's Academy. He remained there for about 20 years, as a student and
then as a teacher. When Plato died in 347 bc, Aristotle moved to Assos, a
city in Asia Minor, where a friend of his, Hermias, was ruler. There he
counseled Hermias and married his niece and adopted daughter, Pythias.
          After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345
B.C.,  Aristotle went to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he became the
tutor of the king's young son Alexander, later known as Alexander the
Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens
and established his own school, the Lyceum.  Because much of the
discussion in his school took place while teachers and students were
walking about the Lyceum grounds, Aristotle's school came to be known as
the Peripatetic (“walking” or “strolling”) school. Upon the death of Alexander
in 323 bc, strong anti-Macedonian feeling developed in Athens, and
Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea (Évvoia) and died there the
following year.
            Aristotle, like Plato, made regular use of the dialogue in his earliest
years at the Academy, but lacking Plato's imaginative gifts, he probably
never found the form congenial. Apart from a few fragments in the works of
later writers, his dialogues have been wholly lost. Aristotle also wrote some
short technical notes, such as a dictionary of philosophic terms and a
summary of the doctrines of Pythagoras. Of these, only a few brief excerpts
have survived. Still extant, however, are Aristotle's lecture notes for
carefully outlined courses treating almost every branch of knowledge and
art. The texts on which Aristotle's reputation rests are largely based on
these lecture notes, which were collected and arranged by later editors.
           Among the texts are treatises on logic, called Organon (“instrument”),
because they provide the means by which positive knowledge is to be
attained. His works on natural science include Physics, which gives a vast
amount of information on astronomy, meteorology, plants, and animals. His
writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being, which Aristotle
called First Philosophy (Protē philosophia), were given the title Metaphysics in
the first published edition of his works (60? bc), because in that edition they
followed Physics. His treatment of the Prime Mover, or first cause, as pure
intellect, perfect in unity, immutable, and, as he said, “the thought of
thought,” is given in the Metaphysics. To his son Nicomachus he dedicated
his work on ethics, called the Nicomachean Ethics. Other essential works
include his Rhetoric, his Poetics (which survives in incomplete form), and
his Politics (also incomplete).
           One of the most distinctive of Aristotle's philosophic contributions
was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more
than one “reason” that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. Earlier
Greek thinkers had tended to assume that only one sort of cause can be
really explanatory; Aristotle proposed four. (The word Aristotle
uses, aition,  “a responsible, explanatory factor” is not synonymous with the
word cause in its modern sense.)
           These four causes are the material cause, the matter out of which a
thing is made; the efficient cause, the source of motion, generation, or
change; the formal cause, which is the species, kind, or type; and the final
cause, the goal, or full development, of an individual, or the intended
function of a construction or invention. Thus, a young lion is made up of
tissues and organs, its material cause; the efficient cause is its parents, who
generated it; the formal cause is its species, lion; and its final cause is its
built-in drive toward becoming a mature specimen. In different contexts,
while the causes are the same four, they apply analogically. Thus, the
material cause of a statue is the marble from which it was carved; the
efficient cause is the sculptor; the formal cause is the shape the sculptor
realized—Hermes, perhaps, or Aphrodite; and the final cause is its function,
to be a work of fine art.
          In each context, Aristotle insists that something can be better
understood when its causes can be stated in specific terms rather than in
general terms. Thus, it is more informative to know that a sculptor made the
statue than to know that an artist made it; and even more informative to
know that Polycleitus chiseled it rather than simply that a sculptor did
so.  Aristotle thought his causal pattern was the ideal key for organizing
knowledge. His lecture notes present impressive evidence of the power of
this scheme.
            Through the functioning of the soul, the moral and intellectual
aspects of humanity are developed. Aristotle argued that human insight in
its highest form (nous poetikos,  “active mind”) is not reducible to a
mechanical physical process. Such insight, however, presupposes an
individual “passive mind” that does not appear to transcend physical nature.
Aristotle clearly stated the relationship between human insight and the
senses in what has become a slogan of empiricism—the view that
knowledge is grounded in sense experience. “There is nothing in the
intellect,” he wrote, “that was not first in the senses.” 
            It seemed to Aristotle that the individual's freedom of choice made
an absolutely accurate analysis of human affairs impossible. “Practical
science,” then, such as politics or ethics, was called science only by courtesy
and analogy. The inherent limitations on practical science are made clear in
Aristotle's concepts of human nature and self-realization. Human nature
certainly involves, for everyone, a capacity for forming habits; but the habits
that a particular individual forms depend on that individual's culture and
repeated personal choices. All human beings want “happiness,” an active,
engaged realization of their innate capacities, but this goal can be achieved
in a multiplicity of ways.
           In his Nicomachean Ethics,  Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) describes the
happy life intended for man by nature as one lived in accordance with
virtue, an analysis of character and intelligence as they relate to
happiness.  Aristotle distinguished two kinds of “virtue,” or human
excellence: moral and intellectual. Moral virtue is an expression of character,
formed by habits reflecting repeated choices. A moral virtue is always a
mean between two less desirable extremes. Courage, for example, is a mean
between cowardice and thoughtless rashness; generosity, between
extravagance and parsimony. Intellectual virtues are not subject to this
doctrine of the mean. Aristotle argued for an elitist ethics: Full excellence
can be realized only by the mature male adult of the upper class, not by
women, or children, or barbarians (non-Greeks), or salaried “mechanics”
(manual workers) for whom, indeed, Aristotle did not want to allow voting
rights.
          In the Politics, he describes the role that politics and the political
community must play in bringing about the virtuous life in the citizenry.  It
also provides analysis of the kinds of political community that existed in his
time and shows where and how these cities fall short of the ideal
community of virtuous citizens.  Although in some ways we have clearly
moved beyond his thought (for example, his belief in the inferiority of
women and his approval of slavery in at least some circumstances), there
remains much in Aristotle’s philosophy that is valuable today.
          In particular, his views on the connection between the well-being of
the political community and that of the citizens who make it up, his belief
that citizens must actively participate in politics if they are to be happy and
virtuous, and his analysis of what causes and prevents revolution within
political communities have been a source of inspiration for many
contemporary theorists, especially those unhappy with the liberal political
philosophy promoted by thinkers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill.
            Perhaps because of the influence of his father's medical profession,
Aristotle's philosophy laid its principal stress on biology, in contrast to
Plato's emphasis on mathematics. Aristotle regarded the world as made up
of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each
individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward
proper self-realization as a specimen of its type. Growth, purpose, and
direction are thus built into nature. Although science studies general kinds,
according to Aristotle, these kinds find their existence in particular
individuals. Science and philosophy must therefore balance, not simply
choose between, the claims of empiricism (observation and sense
experience) and formalism (rational deduction).
           In Politics, many forms of human association can obviously be found;
which one is suitable depends on circumstances, such as the natural
resources, cultural traditions, industry, and literacy of each community.
Aristotle did not regard politics as a study of ideal states in some abstract
form, but rather as an examination of the way in which ideals, laws,
customs, and property interrelate in actual cases. He thus approved the
contemporary institution of slavery but tempered his acceptance by
insisting that masters should not abuse their authority, since the interests of
master and slave are the same. The Lyceum library contained a collection of
158 constitutions of the Greek and other states. Aristotle himself wrote
the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, and after being lost, this
description was rediscovered in a papyrus copy in 1890. Historians have
found the work of great value in reconstructing many phases of the history
of Athens.
 
           Aristotle's works were lost in the West after the decline of Rome.
During the 9th century AD,  Arab scholars introduced Aristotle, in Arabic
translation, to the Islamic world.   The 12th-century Spanish-Arab
philosopher Averroës is the best known of the Arabic scholars who studied
and commented on Aristotle. In the 13th century, the Latin West renewed
its interest in Aristotle's work, and Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a
philosophical foundation for Christian thought. Church officials at first
questioned Aquinas's use of Aristotle; in the early stages of its rediscovery,
Aristotle's philosophy was regarded with some suspicion, largely because his
teachings were thought to lead to a materialistic view of the world.
Nevertheless, the work of Aquinas was accepted, and the later philosophy
of scholasticism continued the philosophical tradition based on Aquinas's
adaptation of Aristotelian thought.
          The influence of Aristotle's philosophy has been pervasive; it has even
helped to shape modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the
Prime Mover as final cause played an important role in theology during the
medieval period. Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle's logic and
during the Renaissance, and even later, astronomers and poets alike
admired his concept of the universe. Zoology rested on Aristotle's work
until British scientist Charles Darwin modified the doctrine of the
changelessness of species in the 19th century. In the 20th century a new
appreciation has developed of Aristotle's method and its relevance to
education, literary criticism, the analysis of human action, and political
analysis.
             Not only the discipline of zoology, but also the world of learning as a
whole, seems to amply justify Darwin's remark that the intellectual heroes
of his own time “were mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle.”
 
1. Natural slavery is accepted while artificial slavery is condemnable.
The slaves are the helper of the house master,
man are responsible to rule in the polis because nature dictates that one should rule and the other
must be ruled as in the nature of the household when the father or the husband is the house
master helped by the wife as well as the slaves.
In book 5 of the politics, he insisted that there is natural slavery, the slave is the property but man
must treat him as a human being or as a partner in the economic activity of production
- The male by nature is superior, and the female is inferior. The one rules and the other one is
ruled.
- Nature would like to distinguish the bodies of free men and slaves. Makind the one strong for
servile labor, the other upright or useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts of
both war and peace.
There is a slave or slavery by law as well as by nature is valid. The law convention of which is
taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors, but this right many juries impeach and he
believed that it must be detested (slavery by convention must be detested)
The moment a person is born in the same class of slaves which they continue to be slaves.
Aristotle accepted this notion as they are considered as natural slaves. However the master must
treat his slaves as his friend or as his partner.
Women cannot become rulers because they are inferior.
Naturally, there are three types of relationships which are: master-slaves, husband-wives,
parents-children and they are linked with partnership.
The evolution of the state begins with the family then to the community meaning.
A citizen of the state is one who has the power to take in the deliberative or judicial
administration of the state. In other words you are a citizen if you are an official.
A state is a body of citizen sufficing for the purposes of life.
The state is a community of families or aggregation of families and well-being for the sake of a
perfect and self-sufficing life.
Such a community can be established among those who live in the same place and inter-marry.
Hence arise in cities, family connections, brotherhoods even common sacrifices, amusements
which draws men together.
The end of the state is the good life and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union
of families, and villages in a perfect, self-sufficing life by which we mean a happy and honorable
life.

Aristotle's Constitution and Forms

of Government
General Theory of Constitutions and Citizenship
          Aristotle states that “the politician and lawgiver is wholly occupied
with the city-state, and the constitution is a certain way of organizing those
who inhabit the city-state” (III.1.1274b36-8). His general theory of
constitutions is set forth in Politics III. He begins with a definition of the
citizen (politês), since the city-state is by nature a collective entity, a
multitude of citizens.
         Citizens are distinguished from other inhabitants, such as resident
aliens and slaves; and even children and seniors are not unqualified citizens
(nor are most ordinary workers). After further analysis he defines the citizen
as a person who has the right (exousia) to participate in deliberative or
judicial office (1275b18–21). In Athens, for example, citizens had the right
to attend the assembly, the council, and other bodies, or to sit on juries. The
Athenian system differed from a modern representative democracy in that
the citizens were more directly involved in governing. Although full
citizenship tended to be restricted in the Greek city-states (with women,
slaves, foreigners, and some others excluded), the citizens were more
deeply enfranchised than in modern representative democracies because
they were more directly involved in governing. This is reflected in Aristotle's
definition of the citizen (without qualification). Further, he defines the city-
state (in the unqualified sense) as a multitude of such citizens which is
adequate for a self-sufficient life (1275b20-21).
          Aristotle defines the constitution (politeia) as a way of organizing the
offices of the city-state, particularly the sovereign office (III.6.1278b8–10;
cf. IV.1.1289a15–18). He elaborates in Book IV, Chapter 1:
          A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines
what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each                           
community.
           The constitution thus defines the governing body, which takes
different forms: for example, in a democracy it is the people, and in an
oligarchy it is a select few (the wealthy or well born), in monarchy it is the
sole king, in polity a group of middle class rulers.  In Book IV, chapter 14,
Aristotle speaks of the organization of offices as pertaining to the three
branches of the government and elaborates, thus:
          There is (1)  one element which deliberates about public affairs;  secondly
(2)  that concerned with the magistracies -- the question being,                 
what they should be, over what they should exercise authority, and what should
be the mode of electing them; and thirdly (3)  that which                  has 
judicial  power.
          In our contemporary period, this first element of constitution
pertaining to how the offices are organized refers to the 3 branches of the 
government, namely:  executive (magistracies),  legislative (deliberative), 
and the judiciary composed of the highest court and the lower courts
(judicial).
          The last important element of the constitution is the end of the
community and was explained by Aristotle as “the common advantage also
brings them together insofar as they each attain the noble life. This is above
all the end for all both in common and separately” (III.6.1278b19–24).
           What then are the different forms of rule by which one individual or
group can rule over another?   Aristotle distinguishes several types of rule,
based on the nature of the soul of the ruler and of the subject. He next
considers paternal and marital rule, which he also views as defensible: “the
male is by nature more capable of leadership than the female, unless he is
constituted in some way contrary to nature, and the elder and perfect [is by
nature more capable of leadership] than the younger and imperfect”
(I.12.1259a39-b4).
            Aristotle is persuasive when he argues that children need adult
supervision because their rationality is “imperfect” (ateles) or immature. But
he is unconvincing to modern readers when he alleges (without
substantiation) that, although women have a deliberative faculty, it is
“without authority” (akuron), so that females require male supervision
(I.13.1260a13–14). (Aristotle's arguments about slaves and women appear
so weak that some commentators take them to be ironic. However, what is
obvious to a modern reader need not have been so to an ancient Greek, so
that it is not necessary to suppose that Aristotle's discussion is ironic.) It is
noteworthy, however, that paternal and marital rule are properly practiced
for the sake of the ruled (for the sake of the child and of the wife
respectively), just as arts like medicine or gymnastics are practiced for the
sake of the patient (III.6.1278b37–1279a1). In this respect they resemble
political rule, which is the form of rule appropriate when the ruler and the
subject have equal and similar rational cacapacities. This is exemplified by
naturally equal citizens who take turns at ruling for one another's advantage
(1279a8–13).
Forms of Government (according to the prevailing constitution)
          The fundamental claim of Aristotle's constitutional theory is that:
“constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just
without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the
rulers are deviant and unjust, because they involve despotic rule which is
inappropriate for a community of free persons” (1279a17–21).
          The distinction between correct and deviant constitutions is
combined with the observation that the government may consist of one
person, a few, or a multitude. Hence, there are six possible constitutional
forms (Politics III.7):
  Correct Deviant
One Ruler Kingship Tyranny
Few Rulers Aristocracy Oligarchy
Many Rulers Polity Democracy
 

          This six-fold classification sets the stage for Aristotle's inquiry into the
best constitution, although it is modified in various ways throughout
the Politics. For example, he observes that the dominant class in oligarchy
(literally rule of the oligoi, i.e., few) is typically the wealthy, whereas in
democracy (literally rule of the dêmos, i.e., people) it is the poor, so that
these economic classes should be included in the definition of these forms
(see Politics III.8, IV.4, and VI.2 for alternative accounts). Also, polity is later
characterized as a kind of “mixed” constitution typified by rule of the “middle”
group of citizens, a moderately wealthy class between the rich and poor (Politics
IV.11).
          Aristotle considers Polity as the most ideal form when he asserts that:
          xxx  the best political community is formed by the citizens of the middle
class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered, in                       
which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other
classes, or at any rate tahn either singly; for the addition                                   
of  the  middle  class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from
being dominant.  Great then is the good fortune                                             
of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for
where some possess much, and the others                                                       
nothing, there may arise democracy,  or  pure oligarchy; or tyranny may grow
out of  either extreme... xxx   
             One might be tempted to ask: What then are the qualifications of the
individuals who must hold the highest offices?    To this, Aristotle elucidates in
Book V chapter 9:
               There are three qualifications required in those who have to fill the
highest offices---(1) first of all, loyalty to the established constitution;               
(2) the greatest administrative capacity;  (3) virtue and justice of the kind proper
to each form of government. xxx In any office of                                           
trust  or stewardship, on the other hand, the opposite rule should be observed; 
for more virtue than ordinary is requiredin the                                               
holder of such an office, but the necessary knowledge is of a sort which all men
posses.