Dalla zoe al bios. Normalizzazione antropologica e naturalizzazione delle gerarchie sociali in Aristotele

Abstract

This paper will show how the normalization of the forms of life that governs the political anthropology of Aristotle leads to a naturalization of the social hierarchies typical of the polis of his time. Toward this end, the first part of this paper highlights how in the Politics, the realization of the rational-political nature of Man implies the necessary declension of life (zoe) toward the living well (eu zen) of the polis. Subsequently, the paper will focus on how this living well, which characterizes the political form of life (bios politikos), relates to the condition of autarkeia, conceived by Aristotle not so much in the sense of economic and material or juridical and political selfsufficiency, but rather as the teleological realization of human nature. Finally, we will show that in the Nicomachean Ethics the Stagirite conceives of the nexus between the autarkeia and happiness and the living well as an ontological prerogative exclusive to the good man (spoudaios), thereby justifying his anthropological and moral superiority over other naturally subaltern forms of life.