The politics of Aristotle’s work is one of the classic works that is influential in current political thought. This book examines various issues regarding how humans as political beings can be organized in a government. Aristotle in this book offers an ideal State / city (policy), in which according to him humans must associate in order to achieve the nature and purpose of the human being, and the policy is present as the fulfillment and realization of human goals.
The family is the first association and then develops into a village and ends in the state / city (policy), meaning that the policy is a species association. According to him all associations exist for good, people do all actions with the intention of something that he considers good. The city must be able to realize the nature and purpose of the human being, to realize it the city must have a constitution that can benefit the entire city community.
In formulating the concept of his constitution, Aristotle was moderate to get an ideal constitution. In presenting the concept of constitution, he criticized several constitutional models that existed in ancient Greece at that time. According to him, if the city uses a constitution in the form of a monarchy, the form of the monarchy will diverge into tyranny, if the constitution takes the form of aristocracy it will reach the oligarchy, thus the condition of occupying a public office is the size of property.
Aristotle also put a skeptic attitude to the democratic constitutional model, according to him if the majority of people (demos) occupy government positions (in this case the lower classes), and did not include minorities (upper classes), the policy to be taken is a policy based on people’s decrees, thus cannot fulfill the public interest.
For this reason, he wants a constitution aimed at the best life, and prioritizes the public interest of the group. He offered what he called the constitutional state (polity) as the most ideal and most applicable constitution.
Constitutional state according to him is the unification of all class elements in the city for the purpose of the public good. Fulfillment of public office can be filled by anyone with a predetermined time period. According to him there will be no harmonization if only some elements of society can govern, for that constitutional state is the best according to him.
A good constitution is a constitution that can bind all groups, and a good constitution is a constitution in the public interest. A distorted constitution can affect people’s lives in a way that is distorted. Apart from the constitution, Aristotle paid a little more attention to democracy. According to him democracy can only be applied if the population in the city is people who are born free, because the basic principle of democracy is freedom and freedom.
Democracy is not just a government based on numbers, but the government is run by a social class according to him. Such a government, according to him, contains elements of external conflict, the oligarchists are clearly ruled out when using this model, the effort that must be done is to unite these two classes of society as an effort to construct democracy. An appropriate constitution must be sought when constructing democracy for the sake of harmonization.
In this book Aristotle discusses many questions, “Politics” by Aristotle also includes education as a good effort in the city. Not to forget he also offers an ideal idea of marital relations in order to maintain and preserve the sovereignty of a city. These two elements are very important as the good of the city.
Apart from all his theories, Aristotle was a philosopher who was very influential for the development of science. But many have criticized it. Strengths or weaknesses are common, times also affect the relevance of a theory. But one thing is certain from Aristotle, his theory of associations became a weapon for observing the development of the current age.
Obviously it would be contradictory if you look at current reality by linking the associated theory. Associations demand that humans relate for the purpose of shared happiness, whereas at the moment one’s character tends to be individualistic, whether it’s because of liberalism? I don’t know.
