The Politics

Aristotle's philosophy stresses biology, instead of mathematics like Plato. He believed the world was made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has built-in patterns of development, which help it grow toward becoming a fully developed individual of its kind. Political science is the practical science par excellence. It is the architectonic science, Aristotle argues, concerned with the human good, or happiness, generally, and therefore the one that orders all other sciences, such as medicine or farming. God is absolute self-consciousness. In determining the content of divine thought, Aristotle uses a form of argumentation known in metaphysics as the doctrine of metaphysical perfection. God is conceived as a perfect being, and Aristotle simply carries the doctrine of God's perfection to its logical conclusion.