Human and non-human political animals: Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology” as the basis of political animality

Abstract

In one of the most famous passages of the Politics, Aristotle claims that “man is a political animal” (zoon politikòn) (Pol. I.2 1253a4). Having led to countless interpretations, this formula is still a matter of contention. In this paper, some of the main interpretive strategies will be presented and evaluated. The first section will outline three major ones: the exclusive, the inclusive, and a wider, zoological one (or what might be termed as the “common ergon” interpretation). The rest of the paper will support a biological interpretation of zoon politikòn, which places a central emphasis on Aristotle’s literal treatment (as opposed to metaphoric) of some non-human animals as political in some of his biological works as well as in the Politics. The categorisations of human and non-human political animals in History of Animals suggest a complex non-dualistic picture, which entails the possibility of some humans becoming non-political and some animals being fully political. While providing a literal biological interpretation of political animality, it will also be necessary to specify that Aristotle’s biology is a “metaphysical biology”, as MacIntyre put it (2007). It is not a modern, evolutionary kind of biology, and it is grounded in a broader metaphysical concept of nature.