POLI SCI 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Politeia, Oligarchy, Aristocracy
28 Sep 2016
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Lecture 2: aristotle and the search for the best regime (9/26) A good democracy is a polity because it aims at the bene t of the poor and rich while a democracy is ruled by many (poor citizens) and therefore only bene ts the poor. For they are like rule of a master, whereas a city-state is a community of free people. (the politics, 1279a 15-20) Evidently, then, a city-state is not a sharing of a common location, and does not exist for the purpose of preventing mutual wrongdoing and exchanging goods. It is quite evident that the city-state must be concerned with virtue. For otherwise the community becomes an alliance in which the allies live far apart, and law becomes an agreement, a guarantor of just behavior toward one another, as the sophist. Lycophron said, but not such as to make the citizens good and just. (the politics,
