Aristotle on Man as a Political Animal: Politics Quote

The Quote

"Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state is either a bad man or above humanity."

— Aristotle, Politics, Book I, Chapter 2 (1253a)

Context

Aristotle wrote the Politics in the fourth century BCE, following his extensive empirical study of the constitutions of 158 Greek city-states. The work is a systematic investigation of political life, examining the nature of the state, the varieties of constitutions, and the conditions of good governance. The passage quoted here appears in the opening book, where Aristotle establishes the foundations of his political philosophy.

Aristotle's argument begins with the observation that human beings are unique among animals in possessing the capacity for speech (logos). While other animals can communicate pleasure and pain through vocal sounds, humans can use speech to discuss what is just and unjust, good and evil, beneficial and harmful. This capacity for reasoned discourse about justice is the basis of political life. The family and the village arise from natural human needs for reproduction and daily survival, but the polis arises from a higher need: the need for a just and good life.

The phrase "political animal" (zōon politikon) is Aristotle's response to two competing views of the state. Against the Sophists, who argued that the state is a mere convention or artificial agreement, Aristotle insists that the state is natural. Against the individualists, who argued that human beings are essentially self-sufficient, Aristotle insists that humans are fundamentally social beings who can only flourish in community.

Philosophical Meaning

Aristotle's claim that "man is by nature a political animal" is both a descriptive thesis about human nature and a normative thesis about the good life. The descriptive thesis is that human beings are naturally social: we are born into families, we form communities, we depend on others for our survival and development. The person who is completely independent of others — who has no need of society — is either a beast (subhuman) or a god (superhuman). For normal human beings, life in community is not a choice but a necessity.

The normative thesis is more profound. Aristotle argues that the polis is not merely necessary for survival but essential for flourishing. The purpose of the polis is not simply to enable people to live but to enable them to live well — to live a life of virtue, reason, and justice. The polis is a "partnership in living well," as Aristotle puts it later in the Politics. It provides the institutions, laws, and educational practices that enable human beings to develop their rational and moral capacities to the fullest extent.

This has important implications for understanding the relationship between the individual and the state. Aristotle's view is neither the modern liberal view, which sees the state as a necessary evil that must be limited to protect individual rights, nor the modern totalitarian view, which sees the individual as a mere instrument of the state. For Aristotle, the individual and the state are mutually constitutive: the individual can only become fully human through participation in the political community, and the political community can only be healthy if its citizens are virtuous. The good person and the good citizen are not identical, but they are deeply connected.

Modern Relevance

Aristotle's conception of human beings as political animals has been enormously influential, but it has also been challenged by the dominant traditions of modern political thought. The social contract tradition — from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to Rawls — has tended to see the state as a human creation, a product of agreement among individuals who are naturally independent. The liberal tradition has emphasized the priority of individual rights over the claims of the political community. The modern state, in many ways, is more like a "commercial partnership" (in Burke's phrase) than an Aristotelian polis.

Yet Aristotle's insight that human beings are fundamentally social and political creatures has been revived by contemporary communitarian thinkers, who argue that liberal individualism has gone too far in its neglect of the social dimensions of human life. Thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Charles Taylor have drawn on Aristotle to argue that the self is not a "free-floating" individual but a person embedded in communities, traditions, and shared practices. The good life, they argue, cannot be defined in purely individual terms; it must be understood in relation to the goods of the community.

The challenge for contemporary political thought is to find a way of recognizing the social and political nature of human beings without sacrificing the liberal commitment to individual freedom and equal rights. Aristotle's Politics remains a vital resource for this project, not because it provides ready-made answers but because it poses the fundamental questions: What is the purpose of political life? What does it mean to live well together? And what kind of political institutions enable human beings to flourish?

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Aristotle." Comprehensive overview of Aristotle's life, works, and influence.
2. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Authoritative English translation.
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999). Aristotle's ethical works, which provide the moral framework for his political philosophy.
4. Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy," in Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglass (New York: Routledge, 1990). Contemporary retrieval of Aristotelian political thought.