he good life. Every state exists by nature, just as the earlier associations are by nature. The state thus belongs to the class of objects which exist by nature. This further indicates that man is a political animal.
For Aristotle, we begin with a capacity for goodness of character and for producing the good in society, but what happens next determines how effective this will be. This means that the capacity must be developed. Again, Aristotle sees certain good in nature and in the elements of nature placed within us but also feels that education and social learning determine how that capacity will be used and developed in life. Political science offers a means of analyzing the good and how to achieve it. The state is a necessary control on the human being, and A
...