Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant professor of the research group of political theorizing in Iran, Research Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies

Abstract

Plato's narrative of the educational nature of Socratic political philosophy ultimately leads to the negative position towards the political way of life. On the other hand, Aristotle tries to give a narrative of Socratic political philosophy in which, in addition to emphasizing the final purpose of Socrates, i.e. defending the philosophical way of life against non-philosophical ways, one can defend the political way of life positively. In this article, we attempt to show that Aristotle's first step in this direction is necessarily to defend the political way of life as a natural way for human beings. We show here that Aristotle's claim that "man is a political being by nature" has a fundamentally ironic and rhetorical characteristic. On the other hand, it seems that this ironic and rhetorical position is a necessary part of his alternative educational plan against the Platonic one. Therefore, confronting the complexity of Aristotle's interpretation of the term "nature" is in a way the focus of our considerations in this article.

Keywords

کتابنامه
ارسطو (1389)، متافیزیک (مابعدالطبیعه)، ترجمه شرف‌الدین خراسانی، انتشارات حکمت.
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