History of Western Philosophy, Russel: Ch-21 Aristotle's Politics

8/8/2016
- Aristotle politics is interesting and important.
- interesting because common prejudices of educated Greek n his time
- important as a source of many principles which remained influential in middle ages.
- state - highest kind of community aims at highest good.
- in order of time 'family' comes first build on relationship of man and woman, master and slave.
- several families ->village -> state
- trade inferior - improper use of commodity
- usury most hated - since deal with only money.
- critical of Plato's Utopia and communism.
- three types of good government
  1. monarchy
  2. aristocracy
  3. constitutional gov.
3 types of bad government
  1. tyranny
  2. oligarchy
  3. democracy
- monarchy better than aristocracy better than polity
- tyranny worser than oligarchy worser than democracy.
 - since government (actual) are bad, so democracy is better.
- 3 things need to prevent revolution.
  1. Gov propaganda in education
  2. respect for law
  3. justice in law and administration.
- how large a state should be - no clear answer
- the day of cultured gentleman is past.