The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Part II – the marginalization of Aristotle’s politeia in modern political thought

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Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. This article continues the presentation of Aristotle’s treatment of politeia (initiated in ‘The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science’, in this journal) as the concept allowing us to understand the nature and workings of human political community in a way that lets us see how the fundamentally social nature of human beings manifests itself. I look at how Aristotle’s politeia became marginalized as a useful means to understand the shape and direction of human community. While the state has become the new frame for the human political community, the concept of the state rests on the fundamental a-social assumptions of early modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc., whose model of how the state emerges denies the fundamental social character of man and instead insists that political action consists merely of the rational calculations of willing agents for common utility and society. In doing so the model renders politics and political actions as merely another form of economics.