"The object proposed or the complete development of a thing is its
highest good; but independence which is first attained in the
State is a complete development or the highest good and is
therefore natural." "For as the State was formed to make life
possible, so it exists to make life good."
"Thus we see that the State is a natural institution, that man is
naturally a political animal and that one who is not a citizen of
any State, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not
accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of
human civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the
backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless man,' so
bitterly described by Homer, is a case in point, for he is
naturally a citizen of no state and a lover of war."[70]
Nor does Aristotle stop here. With a profound insight into the relation
of man to society, and the dependence of the individual upon the social
body, a relation which modern social psychology has worked out in
greater detail, Aristotle asserts that the State is not merely the goal
of the individual's development, but the source of his life.
"Again, in the order of nature the State is prior to the household
or individual. For the whole must needs be prior to its part. For
instance, if you take away the body which is the whole, there will
not remain any such thing as a hand or foot, unless we use the
same word in a different sense, as when we speak of a stone hand
as a hand. For a hand separated from the body will be a disabled
hand; whereas it is the faculty or function of a thing which makes
it what it is, and therefore when things lose their function or
faculty, it is not correct to call them the same things, but
rather homonymous, i.e., different things having the same name.
We see, then, the State is a natural institution, and also that it
is prior to the individual. For if the individual as a separate
unit is not independent, he must be a part and must bear the same
relation to the State as the other parts to their wholes; and one
who is incapable of association with others or is independent and
has no need of such association, is no member of a State; in other
words, he is either a brute or a God."[71]
And, moreover, when we look into the nature of the individual, we do not
find him a being devoid of the sympathies and qualities which find their
natural expression not only in the State, but in various social and
friendly relations. There is "an impulse toward the life in common"
([Greek: philia]) which expresses itself in friendship, but which is
also so essential to that recognition of others called justice that we
may say "it is the most just of all just things." There is also a unity
of disposition and purpose ([Greek: omonoia]) which may be called
"political friendship."[72]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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