Cette étude est entièrement consacrée à un examen du deuxième chapitre du premier livre des "Politiques" d'Aristote. Elle vise à analyser l'affirmation aristotélicienne selon laquelle l'homme est un animal plus politique que les autres animaux politiques (Pol., I, 1, 1253a7-9). Tous les commentateurs d'Aristote expliquent cette affirmation par référence à la rationalité, ou à la moralité ou encore à la capacité langagière de l'homme. Selon l'idée soutenue dans cette étude, bien que ces traits exclusivement humains ne soient pas impertinents à la forme spécifique que prend la vie politique de l'homme, le plus haut degré de son caractère politique ne peut pas s'expliquer en fonction d'eux. Après un examen détaillés des plusieurs difficultés que l'on rencontre dans les commentaires contemporains des Politiques, 1,2, nous avons développé la thèse que selon Aristote l'homme est le plus politique des animaux politiques parce qu'il est un animal grégaire à multiple communautés. D'après Aristote, l'homme développe cette multiplicité de communautés en vue de l'autosuffisance. Pour pouvoir montrer que cette interprétation est en conformité avec une autre affirmation d'Aristote selon laquelle la polis existe en vue du bien-vivre, nous avons aussi démontré qu'il existe chez le Stagirite des éléments d'une notion de bien-vivre qui relève moins de la moralité que des conditions animales de l'homme et que c'est dans ce dernier sens que l'existence de la polis en vue du bien-vivre doit être comprise. / This dissertation is dedicated to an exclusive study of Aristotle's "Politics", I, 2. It aims at analyzing Aristotle's affirmation that human beings are more political than the other political animals (Pol., I, 1, 1253a7-9). According to the most widely shared views about Aristotle's argument here, human beings would be more political either because they are rational, or because they have a natural capacity for speech or because they are perceptive about questions of morality. According to the idea defended in this study, although these exclusively human features are not impertinent to the specific form that human beings' political life takes, human beings' higher degree of politicalness cannot be explained on the basis of them. After a detailed examination of certain difficulties and shortcomings in contemporary commentaries on Politics, l, 2, we develop the thesis that according to Aristotle, the human being is more political because it is a gregarious animal of multiple communities. For Aristotle, human beings develop this multiplicity of communities for the sake of self-sufficiency. In order to show that this thesis is in conformity with Aristotle's other main idea that the polis exists for the sake of living-well, we demonstrate that elements of a different conception of living-well, based more on human being's animality than its rnorality, are present in Aristotle’s work. Aristotle's affirmation that the polis exists for the sake of living-well must be understood in this rather zoological sense of living-well.

Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / This dissertation investigates Aristotle’s famous claim that “the human being is by nature a political animal.” This claim seems to express a basic disagreement between Aristotelian political philosophy and the contractarian political philosophy that informs modern liberalism. Aristotle asserts, contrary to Hobbes, for instance, that the political community is not a convention between naturally individual human beings but a natural entity in its own right prior to and authoritative over the individual. Yet not only are Aristotle’s reasons for supposing that we are naturally political obscure and questionable, but the meaning of Aristotle’s claim that we are naturally political is not altogether clear. For not only does Aristotle suggest that we are naturally political because the city is naturally prior to and authoritative over us, but he suggests we are political animals above all due to our distinctive faculty of reason, or speech, which, because it is the medium of the perception of advantage and justice that informs our actions, is what constitutes the city. Speech, in other words, is what brings the city to sight as the natural whole Aristotle asserts it to be. This suggests, however, that the naturalness of politics must be evaluated on the basis of such speech, which admits of clarification, and not on the basis Aristotle originally offers, which is speculation about the origins of the city. We argue that Aristotle’s dialectical examinations of despotic, political, and kingly forms of rule provide an outline of this task of clarification, which alone can permit us to evaluate the naturalness of politics. A close reading of these examinations, however, indicates that Aristotle ultimately rejects the view that the city is the natural whole it presents itself as being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

O tema do animal político como condição natural da autoridade visa compreender, ao menos em parte, a questão da autoridade em Aristóteles. Nessa perspectiva, o foco central desta discussão é o fundamento da autoridade numa potência natural, que pertence a um tipo específico de homem. O que exclui, por natureza, todos os demais da participação deste polo da relação de comando e subordinação. / The theme of the political animal as the natural condition of authority intends to comprehend, at least in some part, the matter of authority in Aristotle´s philosophy. In this perspective, the central focus of this discussion is that the basis of authority lays in a natural power that belongs only to a specific kind of men. Which excludes, by nature, for all the others the participation on this share of the relationship that is, by definition, one that assents on the command and subordination of the parts.

This thesis analyzes the concept of Friendship in Aristotle&rsquo / s Nicomachean Ethics with its main aspects. Book VIII and Book IX of the Nicomachean Ethics are devoted specifically to the concept of Friendship to explore the moral and political aspects of it. Friendship has been one of the prominent topics for moral philosophers and hence contemporary discussions lead the Nicomachean account of friendship come to the fore. Thus, the main features of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics as well as contemporary perspectives and discussions on that topic will be analyzed and explored in depth.

O tema do animal político como condição natural da autoridade visa compreender, ao menos em parte, a questão da autoridade em Aristóteles. Nessa perspectiva, o foco central desta discussão é o fundamento da autoridade numa potência natural, que pertence a um tipo específico de homem. O que exclui, por natureza, todos os demais da participação deste polo da relação de comando e subordinação. / The theme of the political animal as the natural condition of authority intends to comprehend, at least in some part, the matter of authority in Aristotle´s philosophy. In this perspective, the central focus of this discussion is that the basis of authority lays in a natural power that belongs only to a specific kind of men. Which excludes, by nature, for all the others the participation on this share of the relationship that is, by definition, one that assents on the command and subordination of the parts.