The far-reaching divide on the authenticity, intentions, and the compositional arrangement of Aristotle’s Politics is quite understandable. In the all-encompassing system Aristotle was building, the Politics was supposed to be the crown of it all. The Nicomachean Ethics is to find its ultimate fulfilment in the Politics since politics, as Aristotle asserts, is the noblest place where human eudemonia can be found. The apparent inconsistencies and seemingly infra dig arguments found in the Politics, however, have raised several questions. In an apparent move to rescue Aristotle, some experts have advanced interpretive alternatives to the work.

Theories abound on what one could make of the body of works titled Politics. As Carnes Lord explains: “the specific difficulties posed by the text of the Politics continue to be regarded by many as convincing evidence of a lack of unity and coherence in the work as a whole, and in its basic argument” (459-60). For instance, Lord summarizes the position of Werner Jaeger, an Aristotle scholar, thus “the Politics is essentially an amalgam of two separate treatises or collections of treatises written at widely separated intervals and embodying very different approaches to the study of political phenomenon” (460). Internal evidence within the work informs the general suspicions scholars hold about the integral status of the work. Scholars have pointed out inconsistencies with the endings of a sizeable portion of the books of the work, as well as transitioning clauses that do not seem to belong where they are found. The discovery that some of Aristotle’s works were only intended by him as educational treatises and not for popular consumption has also split scholarly views on the matter.