The Politics

What is the best form of government? What is a state for? Who should rule — and on what basis? How do we prevent tyranny without losing the order that makes society possible? Aristotle asked these questions in the fourth century BC, drew on the constitutions of one hundred and fifty-eight Greek city-states to answer them, and produced a work that has been indispensable to political thinking for two and a half thousand years.

The Politics is simultaneously the first systematic work of political science and an enduring contribution to political philosophy. Aristotle’s central insight — that human beings are by nature political animals, that we are only fully ourselves within a community, and that the state exists for the good life rather than merely for survival — remains one of the most important ideas in the history of thought.

His analyses of democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, and constitutional government; his discussion of the household and the economy; his account of the ideal state and the education proper to a good citizen: all of it remains alive and relevant. T.A. Sinclair’s translation makes it accessible to every reader. Published by Penguin Classics.