Politics (Focus Philosophical Library)

ARISTOTLE

POLITICS

Translation, and Glossary Joe Sachs

with an Introductory Essay by Lijun Gu

Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company Focus Publishing: An Imprint of Hackett Publishing Company Indianapolis/Cambridge

Aristotle Politics: Translation, Introduction, and Glossary ? 2012 Joe Sachs Previously published by Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company Focus Publishing: An Imprint of Hackett Publishing Company PO Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 Cover drawing by Cindy Zawalich, based on a sketch by Robert Abbott envisioning Aristotle's description in Book VII, Chapter 12. ISBN: 978-1-58510-594-6 Also available in paperback (ISBN 978-1-58510-376-8). All rights reserved. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Aristotle. [Politics. English] Aristotle Politics : translation, introduction, and glossary / Joe Sachs.

p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-58510-376-8 1. Political science--Early works to 1800. I. Sachs, Joe, 1946- II. Title. III. Title: Politics. JC71.A41S28 2012 320.01'1--dc23

2012014290 Last updated June 2012

Contents

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE INTRODUCTION ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS (BOOK TITLES ADDED BY TRANSLATOR)

Book I The natural basis of the city Book II Previous opinions about the best city Book III Citizenship and political rule Book IV The spectrum of democratic and oligarchic forms of government Book V Factions and changes of government Book VI . How democracies and oligarchies can be made more effective and enduring Book VII Characteristics of the best city Book VIII. Education of citizens GLOSSARY SUMMARY OF CONTENTS INDEX

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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

It is now more than twenty years since this series of translations of works of Aristotle began, and the scope of that project has grown far beyond anything that was originally envisioned. I once told someone that I had no intention of translating the Nicomachean Ethics; I had accomplished my purpose, I thought then, by showing that Aristotle's principal theoretical works--the Physics, the Metaphysics, and On the Soul-- could be read without any of the Latin-based jargon that centuries of tradition had imposed upon them. After I had in fact added the Nicomachean Ethics to the list, I told someone else that was the last work of Aristotle I would translate. I was always telling the truth as I saw it at the time, but, as Aristotle has said, human things are variable and cannot be known with complete precision. The publication of the present work may be seen, at the moment anyway, as completing a series of translations of Aristotle's principal works on human life--the Ethics, Poetics, Rhetoric, and Politics. In one case after another, I was persuaded, or persuaded myself, that I had something to contribute to the understanding and appreciation of these books. The close study involved in translating them has continually revealed more to me of connections among them. And in the case of the Politics, a book that many people have devoted their lives to studying while my own primary interests have led me elsewhere, one argument that was finally persuasive was simply that I ought not to leave this one conspicuous gap in a group of Aristotle's major writings.

Getting a handle on any of Aristotle's inquiries is a challenging task. My own experience with them is that they usually begin to come together when one finds a direction of dialectical motion. Typically, Aristotle's arguments move from starting points that are widely believed, by ordinary people or by those who have studied previous thinkers, and arrive at conclusions that leave those initial opinions behind. Readers who praise Aristotle as the philosopher of common sense often do not notice that his reasoning can end up in some uncommon places, and other readers who admire him only as a master logician fail to see that he always has more respect for the complex ways of the world we perceive than for the logical arrangements anyone might seek to fit them into. The common claim that he writes "treatises" cannot be sustained by anyone who has allowed himself to be taken on the whole ride that any of these inquiries contains. But each of those rides takes its own course, and the Politics is an especially confusing ride to take. Aristotle always lets his subject matter determine his approach, and we in turn need to let each of his books teach us how it needs to be read. The parts of the Politics do not display a motion from beginnings to conclusions, but seem instead to build up a whole that remains everywhere in balance.

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