The Political Animal

The Quote

"Man is by nature a political animal, and a man who is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either superior or inferior to man."

— Aristotle, Politics, Book I, 1253a

Original language: Greek

Historical Context

The Politics is Aristotle's major work of political philosophy, compiled from lectures delivered at the Lyceum in Athens around 350 BCE. It examines the nature of the polis (the Greek city-state), the varieties of constitutions, the conditions of citizenship, and the principles of the best regime. Book I opens with a foundational argument: that the polis is not a conventional arrangement but a natural community, the culmination of a sequence of associations that arise from human nature itself. Aristotle traces this sequence from the union of male and female (the household), to the village (an aggregate of households), and finally to the polis, which is the complete and self-sufficient community formed for the sake of living well.

The passage at 1253a comes within this argument for the naturalness of the polis. Aristotle insists that the city-state is prior in nature to the household and the individual, not in chronological order but in the sense that the whole is prior to its parts: a hand severed from the body is a hand only in name, and a person outside the polis is not fully a person. It is in this context that he pronounces the famous thesis that the human being is by nature a "political animal" (zōon politikon). The polis is the natural habitat of human flourishing because it is only within the civic community that human beings can exercise the rational and moral capacities that define their nature.

The historical setting matters. Aristotle wrote in the shadow of the independent polis, the distinctive political form of classical Greece, which was already being eclipsed by the rise of Macedon and the larger kingdoms that would succeed Alexander. The Politics reflects the assumption that the small, self-governing city of free citizens is the natural and proper arena of political life — an assumption that gives the work both its enduring power and its historical specificity. The claim that human beings are political animals is, in part, a defense of this form of life against both the contemplative withdrawal of the philosopher and the imperial cosmopolitanism that would dissolve the polis into a larger whole.

Meaning

Aristotle's statement contains two related claims. The first is the thesis that the human being is "by nature a political animal" (anthrōpos phusei politikon zōon). The Greek zōon politikon is often translated "political animal," but politikon here carries the specific sense of "pertaining to the polis." Aristotle is not saying merely that humans are social creatures who enjoy company; he is saying that human beings naturally belong to the polis, the self-governing civic community, and that their proper fulfillment is found only within it. "By nature" (phusei) marks this as a claim about what humans are, not about what they happen to do: the disposition to live in a polis is built into the human essence.

The second clause qualifies the thesis by considering the exceptional individual who is "by nature and not merely by fortune citiless" (apolis). Most people who live outside a polis do so by accident — exile, migration, or circumstance. But Aristotle imagines someone who is apolis by nature, and he judges such a person to be "either superior or inferior to man" (ē kreittōn ē cheirōn anthrōpou). The point is that the naturally citiless person is not a normal human at all. If superior, he is like a god, self-sufficient beyond the need for civic life; if inferior, he is like a beast, lacking the rational and moral capacities that civic association develops. Either way, he falls outside the human norm, for the human being, as such, is the being whose nature is fulfilled in the polis.

The force of the argument rests on Aristotle's teleological conception of nature. Each kind of thing has a natural end (telos) at which it aims, and the good for that thing consists in achieving its end. The human end, Aristotle argues, is a life of rational and virtuous activity, and this life is possible only in a community that provides the material conditions, the education, and the laws necessary for virtue. The polis is therefore not an artificial contract imposed on pre-political individuals but the natural maturation of the human impulse to associate — the form of community in which alone the human telos can be realized.

Philosophical Interpretation

The thesis that the human being is a political animal occupies a foundational place in Aristotle's practical philosophy and binds his ethics to his politics. The Nicomachean Ethics had concluded that the highest human good — eudaimonia, or flourishing — consists in activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and that the lawgiver's task is to produce citizens who are virtuous. The Politics opens by grounding this task in nature: because human beings are naturally political, the polis is the natural context of human fulfillment, and political science is the master science that orders all others toward the good life. The passage at 1253a is thus the hinge on which Aristotle's entire practical philosophy turns: ethics describes the good for the individual, but the good life is possible only within the political community that nature has designed for its realization.

The argument for the naturalness of the polis rests on Aristotle's distinctive conception of natural priority. The polis is "prior by nature" to the household and the individual because the whole is prior to the part: a part cannot function or even be understood apart from the whole to which it belongs. Aristotle illustrates with the image of the severed hand, which is a hand "in name only" once separated from the body. Likewise, an individual outside the political community cannot exercise the virtues that define a fully human life — justice, friendship, and practical wisdom all require a civic context in which they can be practiced. This is why the naturally apolis individual is "either a beast or a god": the only beings that can be complete without a polis are those that either transcend human nature (the self-sufficient god) or fall below it (the brute that lacks reason altogether).

Aristotle grounds the political nature of human beings in the distinctively human capacity for speech (logos). In the immediately following passage (1253a9-18), he argues that nature makes human beings political because they alone possess logos — the capacity to articulate the advantageous, the just, and the good. Whereas other animals signal mere pleasure and pain by voice, human beings communicate about justice and injustice, and it is this shared discourse about the common good that constitutes the polis. Political community is therefore not merely a means to mutual protection or economic exchange (as later contractarian theories would hold) but the expression of the rational nature that distinguishes humans from beasts. The polis exists "for the sake of living well," not merely for survival, and its foundation is the rational dialogue about justice that only humans can conduct.

The doctrine of the political animal has exerted a profound influence on Western political thought, though it has also drawn significant criticism. Aristotle's claim that the polis is natural and prior to the individual stands in tension with the modern liberal tradition, which tends to treat the individual as prior to the state and political authority as a conventional artifact justified by consent. Social contract theorists from Hobbes to Locke explicitly rejected the Aristotelian thesis, arguing that human beings in the "state of nature" are pre-political and that the commonwealth is an artificial construction. Yet the Aristotelian insight that human beings are constitutively social — that their flourishing depends on a form of community that develops their rational and moral capacities — has persisted, finding expression in Hegel's account of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), in communitarian critiques of liberalism, and in contemporary "republican" theories that emphasize civic virtue and participation. The passage at 1253a remains the classic statement of the view that politics is not a regrettable necessity imposed on isolated individuals but the natural fulfillment of a nature that is, from the start, political through and through.

Related Concepts

• wisdom-purpose: The quote locates the purpose and fulfillment of human nature in the political community, holding that the polis is the natural arena in which the human telos of rational, virtuous activity is realized.
• wisdom-justice: Aristotle grounds the polis in the distinctively human capacity to articulate justice through speech, making political community the context in which the just life becomes possible.

Related Learning

• The Greek Philosophy page situates this concept within the tradition's core ideas.

Sources

1. Aristotle. Politics. Translated by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2017. Book I, 1253a.
2. "Aristotle's Political Theory." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/