Aristotle was simply too versatile of a scholar for us to go into all of his theories right now, so we’re just going to focus on one main area: politics. Aristotle wrote a lot about politics and ethics because to him, politics and ethics were inseparable. So, before we can talk about politics, we need to discuss Aristotle’s views on ethics.
According to Aristotle, ethics should be defined by discovering your primary purpose. The basic idea is that all things have a purpose, or a reason for existence. For example, a knife is made to cut things. Aristotle called this primary purpose, or reason for existence, the telos.
So, if a knife is made to cut things, what are humans made for? According to Aristotle, the human telos is ration. Being rational, insightful, and logical is something unique to humans, and therefore is our primary purpose. So, actions that embrace your rational self are virtuous and decisions based on ration are moral.
That’s the basic idea behind Aristotle’s philosophy on ethics. Now, remember how I said that to Aristotle, politics and ethics were inseparable? Well, in order for humans to be able to strive towards perfection, we need to have an environment that nurtures our rational self. That’s where politics come in. The point of politics is to foster virtue in citizens and allow them to develop their rational selves.
Basically, politics are like the tool that sharpens a knife – it allows it to fulfill its purpose. This means that having a moral government is necessary in order to have moral citizens. We don’t often think of a government as a purely moral institution, but that’s what it was to Aristotle. So, if your people are immoral, it is because the government is not using its power to encourage moral virtues and rational citizens. This gives the state, or the government, a major moral responsibility to foster education, arts, philosophy, science, religion, and other things that inspire virtuous, rational existence.