Aristotle believes that every art and inquiry is aimed at some good, that everything has as its goal some good. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies political science as the discipline 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 (Wheelwright 157-159).
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 familia...