Symbiosis: The Connection Between Aristotle’s Political Science and His Ethics

From this perspective, it might seem as though Aristotle takes a very top-down approach to political science. He proposes a certain political structure, one which seems to almost guarantee success if it is followed. We see that for him the character of law varies directly according to the type of political system it acts within: “For the baseness or excellence, and justice or injustice, or laws depends on, and matches, the character of political systems… And if this is so, then, clearly, the laws corresponding to the correct systems will necessarily be just, and those corresponding to deviant systems not just.” For the citizens under these laws, too, the character of the political system is just as important: “…those who have the best political system in their circumstances will characteristically be best-off, if nothing unexpected happens.”

However, to see Aristotle’s structural prescriptions for the political community in this top-down sense is to miss an important point: the political community just is a collection of individuals, not some controlling element separate from the citizens themselves. To Aristotle, a law does not rule; laws are made by rulers, and rulers rule with laws. It is the human element, not the legal, which is central to Aristotle’s thinking. The community, also, is not a separate entity from the individuals within it. Indeed, the good for individuals and for cities is the same because “people… constitute a city”. When we view the political community in this sense, there is no system acting upon individuals, but only individuals acting within a system.

Given the centrality of the citizen over the system in Aristotle’s thinking, we see that the character of any Aristotelian political community hinges in an important sense upon individuals themselves. This is especially evident for legislative governments, since the individuals in these systems are also the rulers. Because of the importance of each individual’s character to the community as a whole, Aristotle’s political science is deeply concerned with ensuring that these individuals are of the correct character. Indeed, in order for Aristotle’s political prescriptions to apply to any citizen, this individual must have a suitable character: “anyone whose good habits have prepared him decently will listen to [the legislators]”. To Aristotle, these habits must be instilled in citizens through education, provided by parents and by the state, through law. He provides the case of Sparta as an example of such a city whose legislators are involved in the education process, and implies that – at least in this limited respect – other cities should learn from Sparta’s example.

Thus, not only are good habits, instilled through state-provided education, necessary for the best individual to lead a studious and therefore happy life, but so too are they necessary for the survival of the political community in its non-deviant form. Simultaneously, the best political community ensures the education of its citizens in such a way that they may form and retain these all-important habits. In this way, the link Aristotle sees between political science and ethics is a fundamentally practical one: the two disciplines are symbiotic in their pursuit of the activity of happiness.