Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. (Politics Book1, 1252a1 ff.: the very start of the Politics: this seems to be Aristotle's opinion, but he soon launches into endoxic discussion)

Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, household, and master are the same, and they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects. For example, the ruler over a few is called a master; over more, the manager of a household; over a still larger number, a statesman or king, as if there were not differences between a great household and a small state.
The distinction which is made between the king and the statesman is as follows: When the government is personal, the ruler is a king; when, according to the rules of political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn, then he is called a statesman. But all this is a mistake, as will be evident to anyone who considers the matter according to the method which has hitherto guided us. As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether any scientific result can be attained about each of them. (Politics Book1, 1252a9ff.)

He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them. In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of choice, but because in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves), and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved. For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest. (Politics Book1, 1252a25ff.) ... the ox is the poor man's slave ... what each thing is when it is fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family ...

When several villages are united in a single complete community to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity. (Politics Book1, 1252b28ff.)

Further, a state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except homonymously, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their function and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they are homonymous. The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to a whole. (Politics Book1, 1253a19)

Richard Kraut on Politics Book1

Kraut's Aristotle Chapter 7

Aristotle knows there were not always states: they GREW. Families became large households, which gathered to make villages, which gathered to make states. They did to live, but they stayed so to live well.

That development is inevitable (antennae about 'historicism' should be going up: when someone claims inevitability, it can be an appeal to 'nature' etc. that has built into it its own conclusion but masquerades as an argument that reaches its conclusion via entirely reasonable acceptable premises that you too should accept).

Aristotle thinks that the state is a particular phase of a cycle which "starts" with primitive conditions of bare survival, peaks in the creation of the state, and meets its demise eventually, only to start again.

The state is the high point, because it is the only phase in which humans and human society can develop their full natural potential, their virtues.

The GROWTH of a thing indicates that it has a nature for Aristotle. He does not think a city has a soul, but he does think it grows, because it arises from a feature of our psychology, which is that we are social animals and a feature of our existence, which is that we are not self-sufficient for our own bare needs. Thus the city is a result of empirically verifiable aspects of humans.

The city-state is the best stage, not because it is the last stage, but because only in it can humans fully develop. Our desire to live is natural, and so is our desire to live well, to be excellent. When once we secure the means to live, we naturally want to be happy, to live well.

But cities are artefacts, made by humans: how can they be natural and "grow?" Aren't they built? Kraut says, P. 245, "there is no incompatibility in saying that something owes its existence both to a process of growth and to human beings." Consider domesticated species. Cities come from proto-cities, the villages, which come from proto-villages, the family units, etc. Thus they are different from the sort of artefact that is made each time "anew." A pot does not become a pot from being a cup.

Aristotle is here arguing against people like Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. He held that the life according to nature is not affected by any social influences, that civic laws are not natural, and cities are not either.

Aristotle is also arguing against the idea that what is natural is always the same.

Natural cannot mean "free from rational influence or habit," because our very urge to rationally control things is itself not the product of reason or habit. We just are rational and want to exercise our rationality: it is part of our nature.

Cities and laws are the results of growth, which means they are natural (physis="growth").

Nature for Aristotle refers to that which has within itself the origin of change, motion, and stability. Cities do so, for they grow from smaller social organizations.

Humans are naturally social, i.e. they avoid solitude by and large. Hence that is one meaning of "political animal." That is the primary impulse that leads to the formation of societal organizations, starting with the male/female dyad for reproduction (EN 1162a17: there he says that the household is prior to and more necessary than the city). We have an inner drive to form couples, AND it is good for us. The intensity of our drive to do so is higher than the political drive, narrowly defined (see next paragraph).

One does wonder, what with the wonderful things that can happen with trans, surrogacy, adoption, ivf, etc. whether we can 'update' Aristotle such that while female+male sex is not essential and central to this argument, the point still holds: that starting with some sort of adult parental situation, people tend to make households and groups and villages and towns and cities, etc. We also might wonder about Aristotle's 'natural slave': can we update his thoughts on that too?

But "political" animal has a narrower meaning: it refers to the desire to live in a certain sort of community, the one that will allow us to pursue our highest good. That is the state. Only free men are political in this way.

Bees are political in that the drive which makes them organise into social units is the same one/relevantly similar to the one that leads humans to form the polis. They are not fully political, but because their drive is of the same kind as that which is in us, they can be called political.

Being political means more than just passively using what the city/community has on offer. One also wants to be active and participate in the political scene.

7.3 What does Aristotle mean by saying that the city is prior by nature to the household and to each of us (Politics Book1, 1253a19)? Particularly, doesn't he contradict what we see him saying a while ago in the Nicomachean Ethics, that the household is prior to the city?

Kraut thinks that in order to find what Aristotle means, we have to make use of all the things he says at and around 1253a19. He ultimately argues that the city is prior in the sense that the good of the city is a more important and honorable good than that of the household, the village, the couple, or the individual. A good citizen will consider the good of the city first, and then the smaller units, until he gets to his own good. That is the PRIORITY list for the good citizen, and that is what Aristotle means by prior. A truly virtuous person's thinking and deliberation will be structured as follows: consult the interest of the state first, then the next largest unit, then the next largest, until she gets to herself. She will shape her life so that she can consult the communal good first, and so that her own good does not conflict, or conflicts as little as possible with, the communal good.

There are other senses of prior: viz. that used in the Nicomachean Ethics in the statement above. A couple answers that come to Bailly's mind: while the good of the city is prior to that of the individual in a way, one can also ask what is the good of the city good for? If the answer is individuals, then we have a sort of circle: it need not be vicious. It may be that the good of the whole community trumps my own individual good, because the good of the community is foundational for my own individual good: without it, I cannot be good and so as an individual I will sacrifice for the community good in order to promote the possibility of everyone's good.

If there is conflict between the good of the individual and that of the state, the state's good ought to win. That does not mean that that should happen in every social organization of a certain size: Aristotle is not blind to the fact that some "states" are mistaken about the good. They are administered not for the communal good, but for the good of a certain individual or element within them. In that case, a conflict between those in charge and an individual may not be a conflict between the communal good and the individual's good.

Aristotle is operating from general principles here: the good of ANY whole has priority over that of one of its parts.

If an individual human be separated from the polis, she does not necessarily die, as a separated hand does, but she cannot fulfill her highest function any longer, that is, she cannot be virtuously active to her full potential in the absence of the city. In that sense, the analogy with a hand is right: a severed hand cannot fulfill its function, and the fact that it is dead is rather beside the point.

Some individual humans can become too powerful for the good of the state, and so Aristotle approves of ostracism, although he acknowledges its great potential for abuse.(1284b).

Aristotle also thinks that individuals are "of the state," which gets translated as "belong to the state." The point is that an individual is not free to decide to act in their own interests against the communal interest: the individual is bound to consult the interests of the state. That turns out to be in the ultimate interest of the individual. The good of the individual consists in the good she does for the community, just as the good of a hand consists in the good it does for the body.

As to the unity of the body politic, Aristotle rejects Plato's efforts at unity via holding partners and property in common. He thinks that there will of necessity be diversity and unity, and unity is not to be pursued in every area.

Based on Taylor as well as Kraut Chapter 8 and my own thoughts

I think Aristotle is simply insufficiently aware of the difference between his actual society and the actual societies around him and 'reality' (his 'science' and 'nature') and his theoretically constructed societies (how things should be or could be if science and nature developed perfectly without hindrance). He does not notice how culturally blindered he himself is. That is the root of why he speaks of natural slaves and inferior women: he has confused the cultural/societal moment he himself is in with reality and baked them into his view of reality and hence into his view of how things can or should be.

He knew there was a problem:

A question may indeed be raised, whether there is any excellence at all in a slave beyond those of an instrument and of a servant--whether he can have the excellences of temperance, courage, justice, and the like; or whether slaves possess only bodily services. And, whichever way we answer the question, a difficulty arises; for, if they have excellence, in what will they differ from freemen? On the other hand, since they are men and share in rational principle, it seems absurd to say that they have no excellence. A similar question may be raised about women and children... Politics 1259b20

He 'solved' it as follows (note that he knows there are people who claim that men and women have the same excellence! there were also abolitionists in his time):

Clearly then, excellence of character belongs to all of them; but the temperance of a man and a woman, or the courage of a man and a woman, are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying. Politics 1260a20

Slaves by nature. We will never get over being astounded and outraged at Aristotle, not least because he has been so influential, but it is worth rationally asking some questions. Why did Aristotle think there were slaves by nature? Who are they? and other things.

First, Taylor also talks about slavery, as do many Aristotle scholars who work with the Politics. He has roughly the following to say in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle.

Aristotle's attempts to justify slavery are perhaps the most notorious parts of his political philosophy. He uses two analogies: tools and draught animals. He felt that slaves need masters for their own good and masters need slaves for their own good. It is not clear why a slave needs a master. On the tool analogy, the tool needs someone to keep it sharp and functional. But that is for the tool's good only insofar as a tool's good coincides with that of its user, the master. A tool's whole definition is in terms of the user and the user's benefit, not its own benefit. Tools are parasitic things. The slave's own good, qua human, is not at all served by being a slave. Aristotle also tries to claim that there are people who are simply incapable of deliberation. But if there are, why is it better for them to be slaves: draught animals are not better off as animals because they slave away for their masters, are they? How is it in the interest of the ox to be yoked to a plough?

It is just implausible that there are or were as many defective people to serve as slaves as Aristotle's actual society held as slaves: that is surely also true of the more theoretical societies he considers. W

hat is more, it is implausible that even people who have significant challenges being autonomous should serve and be owned as 'slaves' for their own good.

There is an argument that by being enslaved, they make a contribution to the common good that they would not otherwise make, and so they are benefited by being made to do benefit. That amounts to the claim that the interest of the slave is wholly, or significantly, determined by the interest of the master. That seems like Aristotle's actual claim.

Aristotle suggests that there is an identity of interest, and so there is a sort of friendship between slave and master. But if there is to be friendship, the slave must be human, not subhuman, and there are no full humans who are fit to be slaves according to Aristotle. He does not seem to notice that he has invented a new species or subspecies: the subhuman human.

To be clear: I think Aristotle was not only wrong about slavery, but he should have known it!
It is important to get clear about these things, because they are far from simply past sins of humanity. The same issues and arguments come up in different guises here and there.

He knew about the concept of abolition, and he knew enough to question the very institution of slavery (see beginning of Politics 5), so he has little defense that his culture never even let the concept occur to him (1353b20). He even thinks that those who say that slavery is unjust tout court are right in a way (1255a4-5).

He thinks that some people by nature should be ruled by other people.

He thinks that others by their nature should be rulers.

He thinks that the form of rule should be slavery.

He thinks that slavery is mutually beneficial to the ruled and the ruler.

He thinks that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with slavery.

Kraut, P. 278: "Why did he not see what is obvious to us today? The answer I wish to give is that his justification of slavery rested to some degree on the limited empirical evidence available to him, and the false premises on which he relied were not ones that could easily have been refuted by his contemporaries. Although nothing could be further from my agenda than to defend slavery, I believe that Aristotle's framework for thinking about this subject was internally consistent and even contained a limited amount of explanatory power. It was a coherent way of looking at the social world that could not, at that time, have easily been undermined by armchair theorizing." I disagree with this assessment.

Look at 1254b2ff.:
At all events we may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule. And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful. The same holds good of animals in relation to men; for tame animals have a better nature than wild and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for they are then preserved.

The thing which slaves lacked is the ability to reason as normal humans (1254b22). The slave shares in reason in that he can see it but he does not have it (ibid.). There are two parts in the soul, at least: the part that has reason, and the part that can listen to reason, but need not. No other animals have either of those two parts. So slaves are rational but only in a limited way.

The slave lacks the bouleutic function, the faculty of deliberation about ends. The slave may deliberate about means. 1260a Kraut thinks Aristotle means that the slave cannot have the intellectual excellence of a craftsperson nor the ability to deliberate about the good life.

Foreigners:
Aristotle saw the political institutions of the non-Greek peoples around Greece, and saw that they were either primitive politically and in terms of crafts, or subservient and ruled by tyrants. He thought that was due to the climate (does he himself theorize this or is he simply taking it from some authority?), which created conditions for rationality. That is so obviously wrong: what of the children of Persians and Europeans who were born in Greece. They should have been able to change. What of the Greeks at an earlier stage in the cycle that lead to the state? Were they Slaves?

One thing that should be said is that when you think about it, Aristotle's idea of slavery had a severe mismatch with the slaves of his own time, many of whom were either 1) highly skilled in intellectual ways or 2) slaves by happenstance of war or birth: there was no evaluation of individuals to assess their capabilities.
In a way, what Aristotle seems to be talking about is more akin to the need many people feel to find a trusted, more experienced and wiser person to help them negotiate life than it is to slavery. If we think about it, many religions require submission to god and submission to leaders, and that is perhaps cast as being a servant, but not as slavery.
I think what we are dealing with is someone who simply doesn't/can't really look at the reality of slavery in his time.
It is akin to the issue that we have with the 'democracy' of Ancient Greece: it is very easy to dismiss it as simply a plutocratic patriarchy. It is a plutocratic patriarchy, but the ideals it espouses are not: they actually lead to the expansion of privileges and also to the dismantling of the plutocracy and the patriarchy more than they reinforce it. Is that dissimilar to the situation of US citizens who read "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." and then proceed to treat people unequally and deprive them of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Whether it is lip-service, cognitive dissonance, or just flat out hypocrisy, the fact that people spout these ideals and claim to live by them is useful as a way to hold people to account, and also as a guide forward for how to improve society. Aristotle clearly espoused principles and claims that would have/should have led him to question his claims about slaves and women and foreigners: they are the Aristotle worth cherishing. The other side of him, that justified injustice, is worth studying.