Page 48 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Sukanya Das, Lovely Professional University
Western Political Thought Amandeep Singh, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 4: Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
4.1 Aristotle Philosophy
4.2 Household (Slaves, Women and Property)
4.3 Theory of Revolution
4.4 Summary
4.5 Key-Words
4.6 Review Questions
4.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit students will be able to:
• Understand Aristotle’s philosophy
• Explain Classification of States
• Discuss Theory of Revolution
Introduction

Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of
philosophical fields, including political theory. Although the surviving works of Aristotle probably
represent only a fragment of the whole, they include his investigations of an amazing range of
subjects, from logic, philosophy, and ethics to physics, biology, psychology, politics, and rhetoric.
Aristotle appears to have thought through his views as he wrote, returning to significant issues at
different stages of his own development. The result is less a consistent system of thought than a
complex record of Aristotle’s thinking about many significant issues.
The aim of Aristotle’s logical treatises (known collectively as the Organon was to develop a
universal method of reasoning by means of which it would be possible to learn everything there
is to know about reality. Thus, the Categories proposes a scheme for the description of particular
things in terms of their properties, states, and activities. On interpretation, Prior Analytics, and
Posterior Analytics examine the nature of deductive inference, outlining the system of syllogistic
reasoning from true propositions that later came to be the logical works, the Physics contributes to
the universal method by distinguishing among the four causes which may be used to explain
everything, with special concern for why things are the way they are and the apparent role of
chance in the operation of the world. In other treatises, Aristotle applied this method, with its
characteristics emphasis on teleological explanation, to astronomical and biological explorations
of the natural world.
In Metaphysics Aristotle tried to justify the entire enterprise by grounding it all in an abstract
study of being qua being. Although Aristotle rejected the Platonic theory of forms, he defended
his own vision of ultimate reality, including the eternal existence of substance. On the Soul uses
the notion of a hylomorphic composite to provide a detailed account of the functions exhibited by
living things–vegetable, animal, and human–and explains the use of sensation and reason to

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