Political Anthropological Foundations within Aristotle’s Regime Science

This paper addresses the fundamental political anthropological assumption underlying and shaping Aristotle’s regime science. I hope to show how assumptions about the natural sociability of human beings, the intersection of human nature (biologically and socially understood), and the aggregated construction of the human political habitat through discrete structures underlie Aristotle’s understanding of how and why human beings use the political community to achieve their optimal condition for their existence. And to show how Aristotle’s political, anthropological assumptions offer a critique of the anthropological assumptions that drive much of not only modern political thought, but also contemporary political science.