Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics in Relation to His Natural Science

• In Event: Politics, Science, and the Art of Interpretation

Abstract

It is almost universally accepted that Aristotle’s “philosophy about the human things” found in the Ethics and its sequel the Politics are part of his “practical science,” which is a different genus from his “theoretical science” (including natural science) and can be adequately studied more or less independently. Consequently, most political theorists have minimal familiarity with his corpus beyond the Ethics and Politics. My paper argues that Aristotle’s philosophy about the human things must ultimately be understood in relation to his entire philosophic enterprise. It is not only far more entangled with his theoretical science, and especially his natural science, than is usually recognized, but according to the principles of his natural science, it seems that it should be the peak and culmination of natural science as a whole. In a most important respect it is: the chief question of natural science is the end of natural beings, and the guiding question of the philosophy about the human things is the end of the human being. And yet the relation of the Ethics and Politics to natural science is deeply ambiguous. The paper explains this entanglement with natural science as well as the deeply puzzling reasons that Aristotle’s anthropology cannot fully fall under natural science. By the central measure of Aristotle’s natural science, human beings are the most complete of the works of nature. But human beings are also unusually incomplete by nature owing chiefly to the intellect and habit, which lie beyond and potentially contrary to nature.

Author

• J. Judd Owen, Emory University