Aristotle, in the opening two passages of Book One of his Politics, presents his theory for how cities form. He argues that cities are natural entities, and are related to humans as beehives are to bees. His theory observes that humans are not self-sufficient as individuals. Baby humans are not born as miniature versions of adults like the so-called precocial animals. We have faculties that don’t develop until later in life, and require parents and social systems to nurture us. The purpose of the city is to ensure the proper development of such faculties.

One of these faculties is speech. Speech, according to Aristotle, is the critically important aspect that distinguishes humans from the other animals. Many animals have a voice that allows them to express pleasure and pain. Humans, however, have a finer control over the lips, teeth, and voice box. We are able to articulate finer distinctions like good and bad, and derive more abstract ideas like just and unjust. Individuals cannot become fully human without developing their ability to articulate and reason with words. It’s for this reason that Aristotle has called humans the “rational animal.”

Aristotle proposes that the state is a necessary entity to develop our human faculties. In addition to the rational animal, Aristotle calls humans the “political animal”, because without a well-governed social order, humans could not properly develop the speech and thinking abilities that define us.

When Aristotle refers to the “state” in his politics, he is referring to a particular kind of city that is self-sufficient and well governed. This is a different view of the term from our modern usage in which the state refers to a large geography of multiple cities and villages being governed by some central body (such as a nation-state like the United States).

Aristotle’s concern over the state—or the city—is to understand the constitutions that make up the styles of governance of different states. His aim is to scientifically determine what state is the most ideal for human life. He opens the Politics by stating that all good states exist for the good of its members, and for Aristotle, the ideal state will help all its citizens be the most rational versions of themselves they can become.

“But he who is unable to live in society,” says Aristotle, “or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.” The purpose of the city, or state, is to temper its inhabitants. On the one hand, man would simply become no better than an animal without proper cognitive and emotional development. On the other, he becomes the “most unholy and the most savage of animals” with his faculties unchecked.

At the core of every society there is a basic unit called a family or a kin group. This is the first group that the individual is born into. It exists to meet the daily needs of its members. A village or colony forms when “several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs.” Human life moves out of the cyclical search for daily necessities and into a linear trajectory aimed at “happiness”–or the Good Life–when villages become more complex and self-sufficient.

The city forms itself, according to Aristotle, through the union of two mutually interdependent relationships. The first is the male-female relation. This relation begins for the reproduction of the species, but sometimes forms the household from which the state grows. The second relation is the master and slave relation. I focus exclusively on this relation in my next commentary; there is a lot to unpack. For now, I will mention that Aristotle makes a complex, and often contradictory, distinction between two types of men. The masters have a vision for what is good and his subjects have the manpower and practical skills to build the city that benefits both parties.

Another purpose of the city is to bring these people together for their mutual benefit. Aristotle makes an analogy between the state and the body. The citizens are like hands, limbs, eyes, etc. Individually, each is important to the proper functioning of the state, but the state could survive if anyone was missing. If the state disappeared, however, individuals could not live up to their highest potential in the same way hands and eyes would be functionless outside the body.

Experts consider the Politics as a companion volume to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. He writes in the introduction to the latter work that his inquiry into ethics falls under the banner of political science. The highest good in his ethics–called eudaimonia: “human flourishing; happiness”–is the same for one man as it is for the whole city. He interweaves the idea that what is good for one private individual is negotiated between them and the other citizens of a state on what is most virtuous and just, and these shared conceptions hold together the state.

In turn, the particularities of the state shape what is considered just and virtuous for its citizens. Of all the sciences, political science legislates what sciences and arts are practiced in the city, and defines what ultimate end these sciences are aimed at.

My interest in doing commentaries on the Politics stems from my concern over the size and anonymity of our amorphous Democratic societies. I believe this form of state is too massive and anonymous to effectively tend to the cognitive and emotional needs of citizens. Furthermore, I think the conception of freedom, in American discourse specifically, is poorly articulated. This is especially true for the emergence of a far-Left discourse in American politics. Although this party attacks the right’s narrow conception of negative liberty, which leaves economically alienated groups to their own devices in the name of “freedom and responsibility”, many extreme leftists commit the same rhetoric in the linguistic and cultural spheres.

Individual persons cannot originate their own identity. There is an anarchic tendency on the Left to let people radically define their own identity lest they infringe upon everyone’s personal freedom. Being so naive about freedom in this way will lead to the disordered souls of individuals who become increasingly alienated by a lack of a common community.

The amorphous nature of massive democracies ties unrelated people together by meaningless, too abstract conceptions of what is good, and fails to provide individuals with a healthy and coherent individual identity. I turn to Aristotle to put forward the argument that humans live better lives in smaller groups in which they have direct, personal contact with others who will help them develop their faculties and personal identity.