To What Extent Did Aristotle's Good Form Of Regime

While Plato evaluates regimes by their leaders and whether or not they are worthy, Aristotle offers a slightly different approach. Aristotle’s classification of regimes is based upon the question of whether they seek to serve self-interest or the benefit of the community. Aristotle uses this question to divide regime types into three that seek to benefit the community, his good forms and three that seek to serve a rulers’ self-interest, his bad forms. Aristotle’s good forms of regime are kingship, aristocracy and polity while his bad forms of regime are tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. Aristotle describes kingship as the good form of tyranny as they’re each ruled by one man but the goals of those in power are drastically different. Kings are …show more content…
He is unjust and unlawful and possesses traits from both democracy and oligarchy. From oligarchy, the tyrannical leader is very rich and as I will show soon, in Aristotle’s democracy, the special members of society who don’t fit in with the majority face expulsion. Aristotle also compares what he calls polity with democracy. Aristotle refers to polity as a system that institutes a mix of Aristocracy, oligarchy and democracy which has many rulers. From aristocracy, the regime has virtue, from an oligarchy, the regime has wealth and from democracy, the people have freedom. Comparatively, democracy operates with freedom as its basic premise. Aristotle argues that a democracy where all citizens are farmers would operate the best, because their desires would be limited and their interest in political life would be limited. Lastly, Aristotle compares the forms of regimes that operate under the guidance of a small number of people. His good form is an aristocracy while his bad form is an oligarchy. His version of an aristocracy is very similar to Plato’s and thus his teachings here are rather