Michael: What if the point of government wasn't to fix potholes or manage the economy, but to make you a better person? Not just safer, or richer, but morally better. That's the 2,400-year-old idea we're tackling today, and it might just change how you see everything. Kevin: Hold on, the government's job is to make me a better person? So the DMV is supposed to be a temple of virtue? I must have missed the memo, Michael. The last time I was there, the only virtue I learned was extreme, soul-crushing patience. Michael: (Laughs) I think even Aristotle would give you a pass on the DMV. But his core idea is that profound. We're diving into one of the most foundational texts of Western civilization today: Politics by Aristotle. Kevin: And it's wild to think he wrote this as a resident alien in Athens. He had no voting rights, he was an outsider looking in, which probably gave him this unique, almost clinical perspective on what makes a state tick, or what makes it fall apart. Michael: Exactly. That outsider view is key, because it allowed him to step back and ask the most fundamental question of all: what is a state even for? And his answer wasn't about power, or wealth, or security. It was about something much, much bigger.

Michael: He starts by observing how human societies form. It begins with the family, the basic unit for survival and daily needs. Families then group together into a village to achieve a bit more—safety, basic trade. But for Aristotle, the final and highest form of community is the polis, the city-state. Kevin: Okay, so family, village, city. That seems like a pretty standard progression. What makes the city so special in his eyes? Michael: Because the city, the polis, is the first community that's large enough and complex enough to aim for more than just survival. Its purpose isn't just to help you live, but to help you live well. He says every community is established for some good, but the state, being the highest community, aims at the highest good. Kevin: The highest good. That sounds incredibly lofty. What does that actually mean in practice? Are we talking about spiritual enlightenment? Perfect happiness? Michael: For Aristotle, it meant creating an environment where citizens could achieve eudaimonia. It's often translated as 'happiness', but it's much deeper than that. Think of it as 'human flourishing' or 'living a virtuous life to the fullest.' It’s about becoming the best version of yourself. And this is where he drops that famous, and often misunderstood, line: "Man is by nature a political animal." Kevin: Right, I've heard that. But politics is so divisive. Most people I know try to avoid it. It seems to bring out the worst in us, not the best. Are people who hate politics somehow less human to Aristotle? Michael: That's the perfect question, because it gets at the heart of the modern misunderstanding. When Aristotle said 'political,' he didn't mean 'Democrat versus Republican.' He meant 'of the polis,' or 'of the community.' He argues that what separates us from other animals, like bees or ants that are also social, is our capacity for speech and reason. We don't just make noises; we can discuss, debate, and form a shared understanding of what is just and unjust, good and evil. Kevin: Ah, so being a 'political animal' is really about being a 'justice-seeking animal' or a 'moral-reasoning animal' that lives in a community. It’s our ability to build a society based on shared values, not just instinct. Michael: Precisely. A person who exists outside a community, he says, is either a beast or a god. Because to be fully human is to live with others and engage in this shared project of figuring out how to live well together. The state, for him, is the ultimate arena for that project. Its laws, its culture, its institutions—they should all be designed to cultivate virtue in its citizens. Kevin: That's a powerful idea. But it also feels a little... paternalistic? Like the government is my life coach. And it brings up a huge, glaring question. Who gets to be a citizen in this flourishing community? Because in Aristotle's Athens, it certainly wasn't everyone. Michael: You're right to bring that up. It's the giant, unavoidable asterisk on his entire philosophy. For Aristotle, the category of 'citizen' was extremely narrow. It excluded women, slaves, and manual laborers. He believed, reflecting the prejudices of his time, that these groups lacked the rational capacity or the leisure time necessary for political participation. Kevin: So he's building this beautiful theory of human flourishing that only applies to a small, elite group of property-owning men. That's a tough pill to swallow. How do we even engage with his ideas when the foundation is so exclusionary? Michael: It's a critical challenge, and we can't ignore it. We have to acknowledge that his views on slavery and women are morally indefensible by modern standards. But many scholars argue we can still find immense value by separating his core principles from their flawed application. The principle that a society should aim for the moral flourishing of its members is a powerful one. Our challenge is to ask: how can we apply that principle to a truly universal and inclusive definition of citizenship? Kevin: So we can take the engine of his philosophy—the idea of a state geared towards virtue—and put it into a modern vehicle, one that's built for everyone, not just a select few. Michael: That's a great way to put it. We can see his work as a starting point, a set of first principles. And the most important one is that the purpose of our shared life is not just to get by, but to get better. And that leads directly to his next question: if that's the goal, what kind of government, what kind of economic system, actually gets you there?

Michael: So, if the state is a project for human flourishing, Aristotle, the pragmatist, immediately starts looking at what works and what doesn't. He analyzes different constitutions—monarchies, aristocracies, democracies. But he’s less interested in the labels and more interested in a simple question: who is this government for? Kevin: Right, he has his true forms and their perversions. A king ruling for the common good is a monarchy. A king ruling for his own benefit is a tyranny. An aristocracy of the best ruling for the common good is great, but an oligarchy of the rich ruling for themselves is a perversion. Michael: Exactly. And the same goes for democracy. A constitutional government where the many rule for the common good is a 'polity.' But when the masses rule purely in their own self-interest, ignoring the law and the rights of the minority, it becomes what he calls 'democracy,' but what we might call mob rule. His big fear was the instability of extremes. Kevin: So he's looking for a 'Goldilocks' government. Not too much power in the hands of one, not too much in the hands of the wealthy few, and not too much in the hands of the poor masses. Michael: Precisely. And he finds his answer in the middle class. He argues that a state with a large, stable middle class is the most secure and best-governed. They aren't arrogant like the super-rich, nor are they envious and desperate like the very poor. They are the most likely to be governed by reason. A strong middle class is the bedrock of his ideal, practical state—the 'polity.' Kevin: That feels incredibly modern. The idea that a healthy democracy depends on a thriving middle class is a constant theme in politics today. Michael: It's a direct line from Aristotle. But he also knew that the middle class could be destroyed. And he identified a key poison that he believed corroded both the citizen's soul and the state's stability: a specific kind of wealth-getting. Kevin: This is where it gets really interesting. He makes a distinction between two types of wealth, right? Michael: Yes. He calls them 'natural' and 'unnatural' wealth-getting. Natural wealth-getting is part of household management. It's about acquiring the things your family needs to live a good life: food, shelter, clothing. It's about farming, fishing, or making useful things. This kind of wealth has a natural limit—you only need so much food or so many shoes. Kevin: Okay, that makes sense. It's wealth for the purpose of living. What's 'unnatural' wealth? Michael: Unnatural wealth-getting is the pursuit of money for its own sake. Its goal is unlimited accumulation. He points to things like retail trade, where you buy something just to sell it at a higher price, and especially usury—making money from money itself. He says this kind of activity has no limit, and it detaches economic life from its true purpose, which is to support the good life. To illustrate this, he tells a fantastic story about the philosopher Thales. Kevin: Oh, I love a good story. Lay it on me. Michael: So, Thales of Miletus was a brilliant philosopher, but he was poor. People constantly mocked him, saying, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" They used his poverty as proof that philosophy was useless. Thales got tired of this and decided to prove a point. Using his knowledge of astronomy, he predicted that the next year's olive harvest would be enormous. Kevin: He was doing agricultural forecasting in ancient Greece. That's impressive. Michael: Absolutely. So, while it was still winter and no one was thinking about it, he took the little money he had and put down deposits on all the olive presses in his region, Miletus and Chios. He got them for a ridiculously low price because there was no demand. Kevin: He basically bought up options on all the means of production. This sounds suspiciously like modern finance. Michael: It's exactly that. When harvest time came, the prediction was correct. It was a bumper crop. Suddenly, everyone needed an olive press at the same time, and they discovered that Thales had a monopoly on every single one. He then rented them out at whatever price he pleased and made a massive fortune. Kevin: That is an epic way to shut down your critics. So what was Aristotle's take on this? Was he celebrating Thales's genius? Michael: Not at all. He uses it as a cautionary tale. He says Thales proved that philosophers could easily be rich if they wanted to, but that their ambitions lie elsewhere. But the method Thales used—creating a monopoly to extract profit—is a perfect example of unnatural wealth-getting. It didn't create more olives; it just manipulated a market for pure financial gain. Kevin: Wow. So he saw monopoly not just as an economic problem, but as a moral one. It's a form of wealth that's detached from real value. Michael: Exactly. And he tells another, even starker story. There was a merchant in Sicily who was given a large sum of money for safekeeping. He used that money to buy up all the iron from the mines, creating another monopoly. When traders came to buy iron, he was the only seller. He didn't even have to raise the price that much, but he doubled his money. Kevin: A 200% return. Wall Street would be proud. What happened to him? Michael: The ruler of the city, the tyrant Dionysius, found out. He wasn't angry that the man got rich. He was furious that the man had discovered a way of making money that was "harmful to the interests of his government." Dionysius let the merchant keep his profits but banished him from the city on the spot. Kevin: That's incredible. The ruler saw a purely financial scheme, a monopoly, as a direct threat to the stability of the state itself. That's a way of thinking that has almost completely vanished. Michael: It's a profound shift in perspective. For Aristotle, and for Dionysius in this story, the economy is a subset of the social and political order. It must serve the common good. An economic activity that allows for unlimited, extractive accumulation of wealth in the hands of one person at the expense of the community is, by definition, a threat to the polis. It creates the very inequality and corruption that destroys the middle class and destabilizes the entire system.

Michael: And that really brings all of Aristotle's ideas into a single, coherent picture. You can't separate the ethics from the politics, or the politics from the economics. They are all intertwined in this single project of building a flourishing society. Kevin: It’s a complete system. You start with the goal: the 'good life' for citizens. To get there, you need a stable government, which for him was a 'polity' balanced by a strong middle class. But to have a strong middle class, you need to prevent the extremes of wealth and poverty, which means you have to be deeply suspicious of economic activities that are purely about unlimited profit. Michael: Precisely. It's not an argument against wealth. It's an argument about the purpose of wealth. Wealth should be a tool that serves the good life of the community. When wealth becomes the goal itself—when you have people creating complex financial instruments or monopolies that don't produce real value but just accumulate money—that's when the system becomes, in his view, 'unnatural' and starts to decay. Kevin: It’s a 2,400-year-old diagnosis for what we now call financialization or extreme inequality. He saw how a system focused on pure profit could hollow out the social fabric. It's a warning that when the pursuit of money is divorced from the well-being of the community, the community itself is at risk. Michael: He saw that this insatiable desire is what fuels the conflict between the rich and the poor, the very conflict that leads to revolution and the collapse of constitutions. He’s providing a political and ethical framework for economic life that is radically different from our own. Kevin: It really makes you wonder, what would Aristotle say if he saw our global economy today? What activities would he call 'natural' household management, and what would he label as 'unnatural' and a danger to the state? It's a fascinating and slightly uncomfortable lens to look through. Michael: It is. And it’s a question worth asking. We’d love to hear what you think. What parts of our modern economy feel 'unnatural' in the Aristotelian sense? Let us know. We're always curious to hear your take. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.