“Upending a truism, Garver finds Aristotle’s Politics more practical for us than his Ethics. In a work that is at once meditative and analytical, Garver leads us to realize that our actual, as opposed to our imagined, sense of the political can, upon reflection, give us a conception of the human good as substantive, shared, flexible, and multifaceted as Aristotle’s. In his refracted light we can see, as he did, that constitutions can be made morally better than the people in them and that under some conditions political stability is a moral good. Students and scholars of ancient philosophy, political theorists, and political scientists alike will find their minds turned around by this book.”

David Depew, University of Iowa

“Aristotle’s Politics deals insightfully, even masterfully, with the core philosophical issues that lie at the heart of our being as social and political animals. Whoever reads and studies this book carefully will grow in political subtlety and intellectual maturity, adding to his or her store of understanding the wisdom of a scholar who has spent years plumbing the meaning and the message of one of the landmarks of human inquiry.”

Lenn E. Goodman, Vanderbilt University

“In this elegant book, Garver approaches Aristotle’s Politics in a deeply satisfying manner: by constantly asking tough, intelligent, and living questions, both as a way  of understanding what Aristotle was actually saying in this inherently foreign text, and as a way of connecting the Politics to political thought and action in our own very different world. All this is done with an extraordinary energy, fidelity, and intellectual honesty. An important and remarkable book.”

James Boyd White, author of Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force

“Garver’s insightful book will challenge and inform every student of Aristotle, especially those students who are also teachers. His reading of the Politics is similar to Aristotle’s reading of the human condition in its subtlety, care, and openness to puzzle and perplexity. The central theme is captured in Garver’s subtitle: in what ways do the practices of humans living together both promote and threaten the prospects for human well being? Taken together, Garver and Aristotle illuminate for our reflection problematic elements of the Politics and of the human condition we modern readers are not likely to see without their help.”

Stephen Salkever, Bryn Mawr College

“Eugene Garver has written an excellent book. He reads the Politics as a unified whole, and tries to think it through from beginning to middle to end. And he consistently does so with intelligence and sensitivity to detail.”

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“Garver’s interpretation of the Politics makes for dense reading, but his study captures the complexity of the relations among political philosophy, practical wisdom, and political action in Aristotle’s own thought. The book concludes with an epilogue that focuses on what is central to this thought: the claim that human beings are political animals. In drawing out five different senses inwhich we can understand this claim, and especially by showing how the Politics itself informs enduring political questions, Garver thinks through the ways in which philosophy can be practical without being subsumed by practical ends. Garver’s fine study is clearly the fruit of deep reflection on this very problem.”

Susan D. Collins | Review of Politics

“Garver is a skillful interpreter, and it is a privilege to take note as he ruminates on questions most commentators never think to ask. . . . Highly recommended.”

Choice

“Garver explores frequently overlooked tensions in the work and refuses to accept easy solutions, but he keeps his sights set on how reading Aristotle ‘can help us think through our own problems.’ The result is a challenging and refreshingly distinctive treatment of the Politics.”

Reason Papers