Key Arguments

• Zoon politikon opposed to household association and paired with zoon logon echon: "Aristotle’s definition of man as was not only unrelated and even opposed to the natural association experienced in household life; it can be fully understood only if one adds his second famous definition of man as a (“a living being capable of speech”)."
• Latin mistranslation criticized: "The Latin translation of this term into rests on no less fundamental a misunderstanding than the term “social animal.”"
• Aristotle was not defining man in general nor naming the highest capacity: "Aristotle meant neither to define man in general nor to indicate man’s highest capacity, which to him was not , that is, not speech or reason, but , the capacity of contemplation"
• Contemplation’s content cannot be expressed in speech: "whose chief characteristic is that its content cannot be rendered in speech."

Source Quotes

In Greek self-understanding, to force people by violence, to command rather than persuade, were prepolitical ways to deal with people characteristic of life outside the , of home and family life, where the household head ruled with uncontested, despotic powers, or of life in the barbarian empires of Asia, whose despotism was frequently likened to the organization of the household. Aristotle’s definition of man as was not only unrelated and even opposed to the natural association experienced in household life; it can be fully understood only if one adds his second famous definition of man as a (“a living being capable of speech”). The Latin translation of this term into rests on no less fundamental a misunderstanding than the term “social animal.”

Aristotle’s definition of man as was not only unrelated and even opposed to the natural association experienced in household life; it can be fully understood only if one adds his second famous definition of man as a (“a living being capable of speech”). The Latin translation of this term into rests on no less fundamental a misunderstanding than the term “social animal.” Aristotle meant neither to define man in general nor to indicate man’s highest capacity, which to him was not , that is, not speech or reason, but , the capacity of contemplation, whose chief characteristic is that its content cannot be rendered in speech.

The Latin translation of this term into rests on no less fundamental a misunderstanding than the term “social animal.” Aristotle meant neither to define man in general nor to indicate man’s highest capacity, which to him was not , that is, not speech or reason, but , the capacity of contemplation, whose chief characteristic is that its content cannot be rendered in speech. In his two most famous definitions, Aristotle only formulated the current opinion of the about man and the political way of life, and according to this opinion, everybody outside the —slaves and barbarians—was , deprived, of course, not of the faculty of speech, but of a way of life in which speech and only speech made sense and where the central concern of all citizens was to talk with each other.

Key Concepts

• Aristotle’s definition of man as was not only unrelated and even opposed to the natural association experienced in household life
• a (“a living being capable of speech”).
• The Latin translation of this term into rests on no less fundamental a misunderstanding than the term “social animal.”
• which to him was not , that is, not speech or reason, but , the capacity of contemplation,
• whose chief characteristic is that its content cannot be rendered in speech.

Context

4 MAN: A SOCIAL OR A POLITICAL ANIMAL — rectifying traditional misunderstandings of Aristotle’s political anthropology.