Editor’s note: The following essay appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Eikon.
Aristotle identified the fundamental political unit differently than would most people today. While we tend to look to the individual as the source of our politics, Aristotle began with the procreative pair, the man and the woman. Without the man and the woman together, a political community has no ability to project itself into the future. In his Politics, Aristotle (referred to by Aquinas simply as “the philosopher”) draws out the way the family develops into an extended family, then a village, a city, and so on. One might consider that the word “king” contains “kin” within it. The king is the chief of the kin. The state, composed of several villages, represents a kind of final community.[1] (Considering society as a kind of grand structure built on a foundation of families might lead one to experience a bit of unease when we consider the weak ties that characterize many…
