Politics A Treatise on Government

This Point Blank Classics edition includes the full original text as well as an easy to use interactive table of contents.

Aristotle's Politics is a work of political philosophy. The end of the Nicomachean Ethics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the "philosophy of human affairs." The title of the Politics literally means "the things concerning the polis."

In it Aristotle discusses the city (polis) or "political community" as opposed to other types of communities and partnerships such as the household and village. He also examined various views concerning the best regime.

After studying a number of real and theoretical city-state's constitutions, Aristotle classified them according to various criteria. On one side stand the true (or good) constitutions, which are considered such because they aim for the common good, and on the other side the perverted (or deviant) ones, considered such because they aim for the well-being of only a part of the city. The constitutions are then sorted according to the "number" of those who participate to the magistracies: one, a few, or many. Aristotle's six fold classification is slightly different from the one found in The Statesman by Plato.