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Aristotle, like Plato, wants to show how his ethical conclusions imply further consequences about the proper aims of a political community, and about its appropriate form of government.

He criticizes Plato for wanting the ideal state to be more unified than a state should be; Plato models the unity of the state on the unity of a single organism, and Aristotle thinks this is entirely the wrong model. He rejects Plato's abolition of private property, complaining that Plato removes the sort of discretion and freedom that is necessary for friendship and generosity: how can I benefit my friends, or be generous to the right causes, if I have no resources at my disposal? Plato makes an equally grave mistake when he concentrates power and political initiative in a small class of philosopher-rulers; Aristotle answers that all the citizens should share in political initiative.

These criticisms reflect a more general ethical demand on political life, arising from Aristotle's claims about friendship. In his view, co-operative activity is a part of a person's own good, not a disagreeable obligation that he must undertake to avoid unwelcome consequences. The state is therefore not just a necessity or a convenience; it is also an area for active co-operation. Even a proof that philosopher-rulers would be more efficient than any other regime would not, in Aristotle's view, show that philosophers should rule and other citizens should have no share in ruling; for to deprive them of a share in government is to deprive them of part of their good.

Aristotle, therefore, is much friendlier than Plato is to democracy, in both the Greek and the modern sense. He holds other views, however, that are strongly anti-democratic, in so far as they deny any share in political activity to people without a fairly high level of wealth and property. None of the citizens of his ideal state should be manual labourers, or engaged in trade or finance; these tasks should be assigned to non-citizens, and the most menial of them to slaves. Aristotle admits that slavery is unjust if it is the result of conquest; but he thinks there are 'natural slaves', who lack the developed rational capacities of a normal human being; and for a natural slave, he holds, slavery is not only excusable, but even beneficial to the slave himself. Unlike Plato, Aristotle assumes that women must in principle be excluded from a share in political activity, because of presumed natural differences. In general, he believes that the natural differences between human beings are sharp enough to make the restriction of political activity both expedient and just.

These anti-democratic views are consistent with the pro-democratic criticisms of Plato; indeed, they rest on the very same ethical principles. Aristotle believes that the state should promote the good of its citizens, and that political activity is a part of their good. He infers that people who are incapable of political activity should not be citizens, and that the happiness of citizens requires the labour of others to produce the necessities of life, leaving the citizens free for political activity.

To prove Aristotle wrong we must either deny that political activity is a part of a person's good or deny that menial labour (manual, industrial, commercial) precludes the right sort of political activity. He argues quite plausibly that people's predominant occupation in life is liable to affect their moral and political outlook; but we may well doubt whether the solution he adopts is the only reasonable inference to draw from these facts.

Aristotle seems to identify happiness exclusively with pure intellectual activity--the contemplation of scientific and philosophical truths, apart from any attempt to apply them to practice. Plato is sometimes attracted by this view of a person's good, and suggests that the philosopher will be wholly absorbed in the contemplation of Forms. Though Aristotle does not believe in Platonic Forms, he seems to share Plato's contemplative ideal.

Two features of contemplation seem to give Aristotle his reasons for thinking it is a plausible candidate for happiness. First, it is the highest fulfilment of our nature as rational beings; it is the sort of rational activity that we share with the gods, who are rational beings with no need to apply reason to practice. Second, it is the most self-contained activity, since, unlike other alleged components of happiness, it is not vulnerable to the sorts of external misfortune that might deprive a virtuous person of the opportunity to exercise his virtues.

Aristotle does not believe, however, that these features of contemplation justify us in identifying it with happiness. He agrees that if we were pure intellects with no other desires and no bodies, contemplation would be the whole of our good (as it is for an immortal soul, as Plato conceives it in the Phaedo). Still, we are not in fact merely intellects; and so Aristotle recognizes that the good must be the good of the whole human being. In his considered view, contemplation is the highest and best part of our good, but not the whole of it.

The same points apply to claims about self-sufficiency. We have good reason to prefer, other things being equal, a good that is invulnerable to external circumstances over one that is vulnerable to them. But in this case other things do not seem to be equal. Aristotle has argued that happiness must be complete, and for this reason he argues that neither virtue alone nor pleasure alone can be happiness. He should not, then, agree that contemplation is happiness just because it is invulnerable and self-contained. For contemplation is not the complete good; we can think of other goods (e.g. virtue and honour) that could be added to it to make a better good than contemplation alone.

This dispute about happiness raises a question about self-sufficiency. Aristotle defines a self-sufficient good as one that 'all by itself makes life choice-worthy and lacking in nothing'; and since he assumes that a life lacks nothing only if it has a complete range of rational activities, he infers that a self-sufficient life includes the good of a community. On the other hand, if we think a life lacks nothing as soon as it has everything we want in it, then self-sufficiency requires much less. We might decide that the rational person should prefer a more self-contained life, more independent of external circumstances; and in that case the contemplative life seems a better candidate for happiness.

The prominence of contemplation in some of Aristotle's remarks about happiness shows that the other-directed, social conception of happiness is not the only one that might seem attractive. If we emphasize rational activity and independence of externals, we reach the non-social, other-worldly conception of happiness that sometimes appeals to both Plato and Aristotle. It becomes important to decide whether Aristotle has assigned the right relative weight to completeness on the one hand, and to rationality and independence on the other, in his account of happiness. . .

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