Abstract

This study attempts to detail Aristotle's answer in the Politics to the question, "what is the best regime?" Its thesis is that this inquiry necessarily entails raising the question of the best way of life for a human being and that there prove to be but two serious alternatives, those based on reason or science on the one hand and those based ultimately on divine guidance or prophecy on the other. Moreover, Aristotle's rational science of politics, insofar as it includes and even culminates in a critique of divine law, implies that man by his own lights is capable of discerning and leading the best way of life. In order for Aristotle's science of the best regime to be free of dogmatism or to be truly scientific, however, it must take seriously the non- or supra-rational claims to know what the best life is, and this requires that there be some concern truly common to both the citizen of the divine city and the scientist. The concern for justice is that common ground, and the analysis of it in Book III of the Politics means to supply to the critique of the would-be best regimes in Book II a satisfactory basis. This analysis is in harmony with Aristotle's argument in Book VII according to which a political life that most closely imitates the philosophic life is the best for all in common or collectively, for this proves to mean that not the performance of virtuous deeds but the enjoyment of "leisure" properly understood is the end of the best city. And yet this highest end of the city is different from and inferior to philosophy, the highest activity simply and available only to the individual as such. The results of this difficulty, and the attempt to cope with them, are detailed in Aristotle's description of his own best regime, above all in the necessity of a "cathartic" musical education and in the introduction of what one may call providential gods