ne that has as its goal the study of what is good for mankind. Ethics are actually a branch of political science, and personal ethical science is at one level while political ethical science is at a higher level of inquiry. For Aristotle, statecraft holds a primary position because it employs all the other sciences. It must therefore embrace as its aims the aims of all the others. The purpose of political science is to secure the good. This is on a higher level for the state than it is for the individual because while the securing of the good for the individual is itself a good, the securing of the good for an entire nation of people is of a higher order.
Aristotle holds that the state is a natural object and that man is by nature a political animal. Aristotle describes human beings as naturally joining together in ever larger and larger units, from pairs to them household to the village to the state:
The final association, formed of several villages, is the state. For all practical purposes the process is now complete; self-sufficiency has been reached, and while the state came about as a means of securing life itself, it continues to secure the good life.
The state is a necessary control on the human being, and Aristotle sees the state as ennobling man in a way that man in the state of nature could never achieve:
For as man is the best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice.
Based on his concept of absolute justice, Aristotle finds that there are three right forms of government--monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Each of these can also degenerate into a lesser form: monarchy into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into mob-rule. Aristotle can be considered a democratic theorist in several respects. One of his abiding concerns is with the constitution of the state and the agreement it involves between the ru...