Aristotle on property and family - Essay Example

Aristotle has believed that the family and its property were the parts of the and therefore, played an important role. He agreed that every single individual has the right for some privacy while should also be able to share the common goods. Aristotle uses the term 'households" instead of families to include everybody and everything: wife, husband, children, slaves, and property. The key function of the household is to satisfy the needs of the man, who is the head of the family and has the right to do anything with his property.

Wives, children and different things were perceived as property and were treated accordingly. The households are the holding units of the villages (wider communities) and villages form the state with the ultimate objective to satisfy the needs of men. The first question Aristotle tries to explain is whether or not the property of citizens should be commonly possessed. According to the theories of Socrates, there should be no private property in the ideal community. Aristotle had a different point of view on this issue.

He supposed that women and children belong to some male individuals and therefore can also be referred to as property. It is possible to imagine what will happen if all citizens would have the right to use the wives and children of each other. Aristotle has limited the sharing of property to several cases which would bring the benefits to the state. For example, he explained when the soil can be common (Lear 214-215): (1) the soil can be common and the products from it can be used for common consumption; (2) the soil can be common only if it is cultivated in common and the products are divided among the individuals for the private purposes.

Aristotle has made one important point which makes it clear that common sharing of goods will not be beneficial for the state. When people share equally all of the benefits, those who labor much will always be dissatisfied with those who labor less but receive the same reward. As Aristotle has noted, it has been always very difficult for the men to have all human relations in common. Property should be in common, as the general rule, but private from the other point. Every individual (man at the time of Aristotle) has the distinct interests and in order not to complain on one another they should be able to make progress only attending to their own business, to something that belongs only to them.

Only in this situation the state will develop and prosper. However, Aristotle adds, that the property should be private only in terms of belonging to the particular individual while the usage of this property should be common (Adler 98-99). The family is the association created by nature in order to satisfy the everyday demands of the men. This is the definition Aristotle gives to the family purpose. The family members are the property of man and therefore, the position of Aristotle whether or not the family should be private is exactly the same as with the property.

The only insignificant exclusion is the position of wife and children - even though they are the property as the other things, they are the belonging of the single man and nobody else has the right to use for any purpose. The slaves could be borrowed but still were considered to be the private property, not common.Aristotle is not always easy to understand in his position regarding the family being perceived as property. However, in reading his works it is important to distinguish between the modern cultural norms and the values of his time.

It is worth to mention, that during the life of Aristotle the women were almost equal to slaves and had no other purpose as to serve men. Therefore, his studies can be considered progressive for his time. For Aristotle the welfare of the state was prior to the family, to individual and to any type of the property. Moreover, he believed that such order of things is predetermined by nature (Cohen 35-36). His position in favor of private family and property are also driven by his desire to create the perfect state.

As it has been said, the common property ownership will cause a lot of arguments and misunderstandings in the community which can lead to the breaking up of the state. Continuous quarrels on the basis of the who is the owner and who has the right to use the particular property destroy the Aristotelian perfect system. Works CitedAdler, Mortimer. Aristotle for Everybody. Touchstone Press, 1997. Cohen, Marc, and Patricia Curd, eds. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle.

Hackett Pub Co Inc Press, 2000. Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge University Press, 1988.