The state: man is by nature a political animal (zoon politikon) — language, morality and reason mature only in the polis; the state exists by nature and is prior to the individual (as the whole is prior to the part): not a contract but the completion of human association (household → village → polis). The state's end is not mere life but the good life.
Law before the ruler: "law is reason free from passion" — Aristotle's preference for the rule oflaw over even the best man (the second-best, perfected): collective wisdom, stability, impartiality; even the best ruler needs law as a trainer's regimen. The ancestral contribution to constitutionalism (echoing Plato's Laws, refining it).
Classification of government (the six-fold — the exam's core): by who rules (one / few / many) crossed with whose good is served:
| Number | True form (common good) | Perverted form (rulers' good) |
|---|---|---|
| One | Monarchy/Kingship | Tyranny |
| Few | Aristocracy (rule of the best) | Oligarchy (rule of the rich) |
| Many | Polity (the mixed many) | Democracy (Aristotle's term for mob rule of the poor) |
Note: "democracy" is the perverted form in his vocabulary — a fact examiners love; the good form of the many he calls polity, a mixed constitution blending oligarchic and democratic elements (with a large middle class as ballast — his material precondition of stability). This six-fold map organises political classification to this day (Nepal's debates: loktantra as the good-many form).
Citizenship: the citizen is one who shares in the judicial functions and in office (politics III) — "a juror and a member of the ecclesia" citizenship as participation in ruling and beingruled in turn, not mere residence or legal protection. Aristotle's exclusions (women, slaves,
labourers — the artisan too "vulgar" to be leisured) are the modern critique's target; his core definition — the citizen as office-sharer — survives in the electorate and jury of every republic.