Aristotle's Politics

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2008

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important works of political philosophy ever written - Aristotle’s ‘Politics’. Looking out across the city states of 4th century Greece Aristotle asked what made a society good and developed a language of ‘oligarchies’, ‘democracies’ and ‘monarchies’ that we still use today. Having witnessed his home town of Stagira destroyed by Philip of Macedon, Aristotle tried to establish a way of preserving a good society in dangerous times. How should it be governed and who should be allowed to live in it? Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas and Niccolo Machiavelli, to name but a few, have all asked the same questions and come up with wildly differing answers.Aristotle’s conclusions range across the role of wealth and the law, across men, women and slaves, education and leisure. They are far reaching, influential and, at times, deeply unpalatable. But they are also answers to questions that have not and will not go away. With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick; Paul Cartledge, AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge and Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Cambridge.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast.
0:02.2	For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.
0:07.1	UK forward slash Radio 4.
0:09.4	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.1	Hello, what makes a good society? How should the program. political animals. These are old questions. Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacquesneus,
0:25.2	and Nicola Macievelli are just a few who have asked them. But they all have one thing
0:29.8	in common and that's a book by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It's called Politics, a
0:34.3	two and a half thousand year old collection of notes that have cast a long shadow
0:38.0	in political philosophy. In the politics Aristotle tried to establish why human
0:42.3	beings live together and how best they should do so.
0:45.0	With me to discuss Aristotle's ideas and his influence are Paul Cartledge, A.G Leventis, Professor of Greek Culture, the University of Cambridge, and Jehobs Associate Professor of Philosophy
0:55.0	at Warwick University and Annabel Brett Senior Lecture in History at the University of Cambridge.
1:00.6	And Jeobs, the first thing Aristotle tries to establish is why human beings live together at all.
1:07.0	Can you explain his answer?
1:09.0	Yes, he says that man is naturally a political animal, and by that he doesn't mean that we are
1:15.8	geared by nature to go around putting political leaflets through doors he means
1:21.6	that if we're going to flourish if we're going to flourish, if we're going to prosper, we need to actualise
1:26.8	our naturally and distinctively human faculties, particularly our intellectual and moral faculties, but especially our moral faculties,
1:35.5	cannot be actualised outside the social context of a polis.
1:40.2	So when he says that man, and the Greek word in fact means human
1:43.8	humans are naturally political animals he means that we're the kind of animal
1:47.8	naturally designed to live together in a policy in a community and that's exactly in a community.
	...

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