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Unit 3: Aristotle’s Life and His Conception of Human Nature and State

could be educated in virtue to achieve their own happiness and excellence, in congruence with Notes
common good. Once this was attained, citizens could be habituated through laws and political life
to follow the virtuous path, resulting in a well-ordered public arena. The individual’s social
nature and the implied “political” content resulted in virtuous public behaviour necessary for the
pursuit of private happiness. For Aristotle, private life was a necessary, though not a sufficient,
condition for enjoying a full human existence.
Aristotle pointed out that individuals could cultivate reasoned speech and moral choice with a
view to achieving their full potential. The absence of these qualities would mean that human
beings were worse off than animals.
According to Aristotle, animals are social or individualistic; individualistic animals like the big
cats live together, but that is confined only to their pride consisting of the male, the female and
their cubs. Social animals, though not applicable to all gregarious ones, have a single common
activity that unites them and that is the reason why human beings orbit towards the state. Rights
of citizenship enable the use of one’s unique human faculties through participation in the common
life of the community. The desire for human company, a basic and universal human need, is so
deeply entrenched that even saints and monks who otherwise renounce normal society and human
relationships, form their own communities:
What effectively distinguishes the citizen from all others is his participation in
Judgement and Authority, that is, holding office, legal, political, administrative ....
There are different kinds of citizens, but... a citizen in the fullest sense is one who has
a share in the privileges of rule ... a share both in ruling and in being ruled with a view
to a life that is in accordance with goodness.

Aristotle characterized human beings as essentially social, he had in mind those
animals which live and work together as a community, like ants, bees, cranes,
elephants and wasps.

In the opening passages of Book III, Aristotle examined three topics: the nature of a state; citizenship;
and the virtues of a good person and a good citizen. The state was an association of persons for the
sake of securing the best moral life. The quality of life within a state would depend on those who
constitute it and the end they wished to pursue. Accordingly, the end of the state depended on
who could be its members, and how they wished to lead a life that was individually satisfying. In
order to answer these questions satisfactorily, Aristotle defined a constitution not just as a form of
government or a set of norms, but as a way of life, for that determined the moral character of a
state. A state existed as long as its form of government endured, and any change in its constitution
signified a change in its way of life too. Only within an Ideal State was a good person and a good
citizen identical. In Aristotle’s thought, “law, constitution, state, form of government all tend to
coalesce, since from a moral point of view they are all equally relative to the purpose which causes
the association to exist”.
Arendt looked upon Plato and Aristotle as espousing a distinct sense of public life within the polis.
Political activity for them assumed importance only after the satisfaction of human needs, both
procreative and economic. Division of labour arose not so much out of need as from a desire to live
well. It was for this reason that they regarded the polis as the highest and the most comprehensive
form of human association. It aimed at the highest good, for the driving force behind every
community was a notion of good. It represented a partnership based on justice and friendship or
general solidarity. It is interesting that similar sentiments on the state were expressed by Burke.
The polis was natural, and hence prior to the individual, not in the chronological, but in the

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