Aristotle's famous saying: "Man is an animal of the city-state." Talk about your understanding of this sentence.

This is a famous proposition put forward by Aristotle, the founder of western political science, and is quoted as "Man is a political animal". This definition of human nature is the first and groundbreaking in the history of philosophy. He means that people must live a city-state life according to the requirements of nature, and people cannot exist independently. Only through city-state life can human nature be realized. According to him, everything created by nature has a purpose. Man's purpose is to realize the so-called three kinds of "good karma", that is, material abundance, physical health and moral goodness, among which moral goodness, that is, the goodness of the soul, is the most essential. Only when people realize the goodness of the soul can they truly distinguish themselves from animals and realize human nature. However, no isolated individual or small-scale social group can make people realize these three kinds of "good deeds", and only the polis can do this. Therefore, if people want to realize their own nature, they must become members of the polis and live the life of the polis.

Humans are naturally gregarious animals and must live together. At first, the family was formed by the combination of men and women and master and slave, and it was the basic social form established by human beings to meet the needs of daily life. Then, in order to meet the wider needs of mankind, several families joined forces to form a village community. The most natural form of village community is tribe. Finally, several rural communities united to form a city-state. At this point, social organizations have evolved into an advanced and complete state. Therefore, the polis is completely the product of natural evolution.

Aristotle believes that the polis is a "supreme and all-inclusive social group". Because people's life can be completely self-sufficient within the city-state, and people's good deeds can be completed in the city-state. Although families and village communities all aim at goodness, the purpose of the city-state is the best, which is the "good life" of citizens.

The people here mainly refer to the citizens of Greek city-states. Citizens are the main stratum of Greek society and the core force of city-state politics. (2) The city-state is a civic group, and citizens only live in civic groups, that is, the city-state is meaningful. Without the citizen group of polis, citizens are not citizens. Gentiles have no political rights and cannot participate in the political life of the polis. The political life of citizens is above everything else. (3) In the Greek World Congress with several city-states, the public image of a citizen represents his city-state, and each city-state is also very concerned about the performance of its citizens.

This is what Aristotle in ancient Greece said.

First of all, people here refer to citizens, not slaves.

People, who can be regarded as human beings in ancient Greece from the 8 th century BC to the 6 th century BC, should be male citizens who participated in the political life of the country.

City-state: refers to the citizen group, which is a national form, centering on a city and including the organizations of surrounding villages and communities.

Animals: refers to objects with nerves, feelings and actions. Man is an animal after all.

In the city-state era, slaves had no freedom of life, could not participate in political life, and were tools of speech, not as good as animals.