Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Aristotle's Politics is a continuation of his Nicomachean Ethics, whose investigation of what is the supreme good for a human being he conceives as "a sort of political science", politikê tis (I.2.1094b11). At several points, the Politics looks back to the conception of the highest human good worked out in the Nicomachean Ethics, and the concluding chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics (X.9) looks forward to the Politics, culminating in a list of questions about political systems which corresponds reasonably well to the questions he addresses in the Politics, as the following chart indicates: Outline of the Politics Questions in Nicomachean Ethics X.9.1181b17-24 Book I: types of communities: the city, the household; household management Book II: critical survey of proposed and actual constitutions: Plato (Republic, Laws), Hippodamus, Sparta, Crete, Carthage, various legislators "First, then, let us try to review any sound remarks our predecessors have made on particular topics." Book III.1-13: city and citizen: definitions, good man vs. good citizen, classification of constitutions, conceptions of political justice Books III.14- IV: types of constitutions: kingship, aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, constitutional governme