INTRODUCTION The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which hisPolitics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject.This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy ofhuman affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science. In thetwo works taken together we have their author's whole theory of humanconduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity whichis not directed merely to knowledge or truth. The two parts of thistreatise are mutually complementary, but in a literary sense eachis independent and self-contained. The proem to the Ethics is anintroduction to the whole subject, not merely to the first part; thelast chapter of the Ethics points forward to the Politics, andsketches for that part of the treatise the order of enquiry to bepursued (an order which in the actual treatise is not adhered to).
The principle of distribution of the subject-matter between the twoworks is far from obvious, and has been much debated. Not much can begathered from their titles, which in any case were not given to them bytheir author. Nor do these titles suggest any very compact unity in theworks to which they are applied: the plural forms, which survive sooddly in English (Ethic_s_, Politic_s_), were intended to indicate thetreatment within a single work of a group of connected questions. Theunity of the first group arises from their centring round the topic ofcharacter, that of the second from their connection with the existenceand life of the city or state. We have thus to regard the Ethics asdealing with one group of problems and the Politics with a second,both falling within the wide compass of Political Science. Each of thesegroups falls into sub-groups which roughly correspond to the severalbooks in each work. The tendency to take up one by one the variousproblems which had suggested themselves in the wide field obscures boththe unity of the subject-matter and its proper articulation. But it isto be remembered that what is offered us is avowedly rather an enquirythan an exposition of hard and fast doctrine.
Nevertheless each work aims at a relative completeness, and it isimportant to observe the relation of each to the other. The distinctionis not that the one treats of Moral and the other of PoliticalPhilosophy, nor again that the one deals with the moral activity of theindividual and the other with that of the State, nor once more that theone gives us the theory of human conduct, while the other discusses itsapplication in practice, though not all of these misinterpretations areequally erroneous. The clue to the right interpretation is given byAristotle himself, where in the last chapter of the Ethics he ispaving the way for the Politics. In the Ethics he has not confinedhimself to the abstract or isolated individual, but has always thoughtof him, or we might say, in his social and political context, with agiven nature due to race and heredity and in certain surroundings.So viewing him he has studied the nature and formation of hischaracter—all that he can make himself or be made by others to be.Especially he has investigated the various admirable forms of humancharacter and the mode of their production. But all this, though itbrings more clearly before us what goodness or virtue is, and how it isto be reached, remains mere theory or talk. By itself it does notenable us to become, or to help others to become, good. For this it isnecessary to bring into play the great force of the Political Communityor State, of which the main instrument is Law. Hence arises the demandfor the necessary complement to the Ethics,
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