vations, and motivations for Aristotle derive from emotions which lead to actions. Excellence is defined in terms of a settled state determined by a mean in the sense that the individual is not given excessively to any of the motivations which lead to action and is also not insensitive to them. Instead, the individual is to be responsive to emotions to the right degree. What is right in all situations cannot be explained by a simple formula but instead is to be determined by the educated judgment of the agent in response to a wide range of possible circumstances leading to action.
Aristotle's political teaching is available to us today primarily in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle made a distinction between "theoretical" sciences, those pursued for the sake of knowledge, and "practical" sciences, or those pursued for the sake of the benefits deriving from them. Politics for Aristotle was a practical science (Strauss and Cropsey 118-119). The Ethics and the Politics are clearly linked. A.W.H. Adkins holds that the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics were intended by Aristotle to be read together and that they can be properly understood only if they are read in this fashion (Adkins 75). The most extensive treatment Aristotle offers of the scope of practical or political science is found in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics where he indicates that practical science is coextensive with both political science and prudence. Political science in this conception has three branches: ethics, or the science of character; economics, or the science of household management; and political science in its narrower and more familiar sense, the science of governing the political community:
It is of critical importance to recognize that ethics forms an integral part of political science in this broad sense, and that Aristotle's ethical writings are evidently conceived not as independent treatises but as prolegomena...