Who is the intended audience of Aristotle's Politics?

Question

Also, what was the purpose of this document?

Why did Aristotle feel the need to write this?

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Answer 1

Influential among scholars who offer a more aristocratic interpretation of Aristotle's political philosophy is Leo Strauss. Aristotle justifies political inequality, according to Strauss, by an appeal to the natural inequalities among human beings and ultimately to the inequality pervading nature as a whole, such as the soul's natural rule of the body and the mind's natural rule within the soul. Consistent with his view of natural inequality, Aristotle addresses his political works to aristocrats or "gentlemen." Such men, Strauss argues, have experienced the moral training necessary to receive Aristotle's political teaching: since the proper ends of politics, the just and the noble, "come to sight only to the morally good man . . . , the well-bred man," he writes, Aristotle's political science is addressed only to such men. Carnes Lord agrees that Aristotle's political works are addressed at least primarily to gentlemen, observing that Aristotle does so in order to improve political practice, for he speaks "above all . . . [to] men of this class who are also statesmen and legislators."