John Vespasian explains that Aristotle’s views on politics and governance can be summed up in a few sentences: depending on the number of rulers (one, a few, everybody), political systems for the common good can be classified into monarchies, aristocracies, and polities. When rulers abuse their power, those three systems shall be named tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. In order to prevent abuse of power, Aristotle advised to distribute power amongst the monarch, the aristocracy, and the people. The two paragraphs above summarise the very best Ancient Greek ideas in the area of politics and governance. Those ideas have exerted influence on Western civilisation for hundreds of years. Still today, they continue to shape our views on how to govern society. Aristotle’s ideas have undergone attacks from many fronts, but before presenting those attacks, it is important to mention that Aristotle’s ideas constitute an elaboration of the criticisms raised by his predecessors. Here is the link to the original article: https://johnvespasian.com/critics-of-aristotles-views-on-politics-and-governance/

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