e 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 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.
In the time of St. Augustine, syncretism was the impetus to harmonize pagan works from Aristotle and Plato with church doctrine, and a number of important scholars en
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