Aristotle Says That the State Is Natural. What Does He Mean?
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“Human beings have an impulse to live with others rather than in isolation” .
Aristotle argued that the development of the polis was natural and similar to the development and growth of biological organisms.
Sophists on the other hand, considered that men were simply in pursuit of their own pleasure even if it conflicted with other mens drive to the same goal. Thus, as the state limited mans actions it was argued that it was not natural.
The first step in the natural development of communities was the household. Its main purpose was to satisfy the most basic requirements for existence and consisted of two parts: the free (the male and the female) and the slave (or alternatively the ox in poorer families). The household came together driven by two major biological differences. Firstly, the difference in sex between male and female that allowed them to reproduce and continue their following and secondly, the difference between the role of the ruler and the ruled as in the case of the master-slave. Furthermore, it was the males function to educate to virtue everyone in the household and to rule it. However, these small households were not able to guarantee an easy life from a material point of view by themselves.
Thus, the village was formed out of a collection of households to be able to give to man more than what he needed for his day-to-day life. This included more resources and possibly a small surplus. All this was made possible by the division of labour as each member in a village could focus on a specific task instead of having to assume several as would happen in the household.
The final step in this chain was the polis – literally translated this means Ðcity, although it is interpreted as Ðstate in most cases nowadays. This community had the advantage of being large enough to be self sufficient, this having been the impetus to its creation, and small enough to be governed efficiently. The city also permitted a richer and more complex life and this size also allowed it to provide at least some members of the community with a good life. Aristotle assumes that “the natural is necessarily best and the best necessarily natural” thus, as the polis is natural for men, the polis is also best for them, as it is the only way man can have a good life.
Here we can find one of the first criticisms against Aristotles work. As he considered many Greek values to be universal, he also considered that only some were able to achieve a good life and even his conception of a good life was slightly different from the current view. For Aristotle a happy man would be one that dedicated his time to “the intellectual virtue most relevant to human happiness” , namely wisdom (sofia), and therefore to the contemplation of eternal truths. Greeks also considered the good of the state to be superior to the good of the individual, a view not shared by all cultures.
Another reason for the existence of the city was to defend the community against enemies, as in a greater community resources could be pooled more easily and some members could dedicate themselves entirely to specific functions such as defence. Although the initial task of the polis might have been to satisfy the material needs, man quickly found that the states institutions had advantages in themselves, creating as Mulgan says “new and unforeseen activities which alter their original raison dДЄtre” .
The city is considered by Aristotle as being prior to the household and the individual. He arrives at this conclusion because the city is mans ultimate goal, being the only way he could satisfy all his needs, needs which are innate to him, and thus natural. If his needs are natural, then the city, being the ultimate goal of these needs must also be natural. If the first communities, household and village are considered to be natural and this process of evolution also natural, then the city must be the nature of the first communities.
“Households and individual human beings are to the city as part to whole” . If a man is separated from his state, he loses his purpose, as demonstrated in Politics by the example of a hand detached from the body . Although the hand is still a hand in the physical sense, as it does not fulfil a hands function, it loses its denomination and is just like any other object. A city-less individual is either a God, because he is completely self-sufficient and does not require the city to satisfy his needs, or