ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
December 15th 2008 07:01
ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
Aristotle's Politics really is a very strange book.
Yes its one of the great Western Classics you should read in whole at least once a decade or every summer if you're politician but ... it has moments of excellent practical advice based on a knowledge of history side by side with ideologies that are wacko by modern standards.
(By wacko I mean sexist racist and class biased to the point where you find yourself asking how often did this man actually TALK to rather than AT women or servants or the LOWER classes?)
The section on monarchy and tyranny and kingship is superb but his ideas about music and education and who should be a citizen will seem very strange and right wing to modern readers. I think the Romans found them odd too! Very few Latin or Greek writers of the imperial era refer to Aristotle's Politics. Perhaps they found his observations and descriptions of monarchy disturbingly truthful.
Read it for yourself but not just to understand the contest of all those quotes you see in Ancient History text books. It's genuinely thought provoking!
I read it in the Penguin translation / edition of 1981 revised by T.J. Saunders from the first edition of 1962 by T.A. Sinclair. There are other editions available. Enjoy!
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