Aristotle's Book 1: Notes on Community and Governance

Book 1

Chapter 1

• Every city is a community, and every community is formed for the sake of some good.
• People do everything for what they believe to be good.
• All communities aim at some good, with the most authoritative community (the city or political community) aiming at the most authoritative good.
• Those who think political rule, kingly rule, household management, and mastership of slaves are the same are incorrect.
• These roles differ in the number of people ruled, not in kind.
  • Ruler of few: master.
  • Ruler of more: household manager.
  • Ruler of still more: political or kingly ruler.
• The assumption that there's no difference between a large household and a small city is false.
• A kingly ruler has charge himself, while a political ruler rules and is ruled in turn based on the precepts of science (laws).

Chapter 2

• To understand matters, examine how things develop naturally from the beginning.
• There must be a conjoining of those who cannot exist without each other:
  • Male and female: for reproduction, driven by a natural striving to leave behind another like oneself.
  • The naturally ruling and ruled: for preservation.
• The element that can foresee with the mind naturally rules, while that which uses the body is naturally ruled and is a slave; this benefits both master and slave.
• Nature does things with a single purpose, unlike smiths making a Delphic knife for multiple uses.
• Each instrument performs best when serving one task rather than many.
• Barbarians treat female and slave the same because they lack a naturally ruling element; their community of man and woman is like that of male slave and female slave.
• Poets say "it is fitting for Greeks to rule barbarians" because they assume barbarian and slave are the same by nature.
• From the communities of male/female and ruler/ruled, the household arose.
• Hesiod's verse: "first a house, and woman, and ox for ploughing" - poor persons use an ox instead of a servant.
• The household is the community constituted by nature for daily needs.
• Charondas calls household members "mess-mates," Epimenides of Crete calls them "stable-mates."
• The first community arising from multiple households for non-daily needs is the village.
• The village is an extension of the household; members are called "milk-mates" (children and children's children).
• Cities were initially under kings, and some nations still are, because those who joined together were already under kings.
• Every household is under the eldest as king, and so were the kinship-based extensions making up the village.
• Homer: "each acts as law to his children and wives" - in ancient times, people were scattered and lived this way.
• People believe the gods are under a king because they themselves are or were under kings, assimilating the gods' lives to their own.
• The complete community arising from several villages is the city.
• It reaches full self-sufficiency and exists not just for living, but for living well.
• Every city exists by nature, because the first communities also exist by nature.
• The city is the end (purpose) of these communities, and nature is an end.
• What something is (e.g., a human being, a horse, a household) when its development is complete is its nature.