Those working through the text of Politics have at their disposal three comprehensive commentaries: Newman 1887-1902; Schutrumpf 1991-2005, which is recent and is especially good on the vast number of Aristotle’s intertextual references to Plato’s dialogues; and Simpson 1998, which consists of syllogistic reconstructions of the arguments of each chapter written in the spirit, and sometimes under the tutelage, of Thomas Aquinas (who himself wrote an incomplete commentary on Politics in the high Middle Ages that has now appeared in English (Regan 2007)). Another commentary that may be usefully consulted is Susemihl and Hicks 1984. Barker 1946 sometimes shows up on reading lists. It is not entirely trustworthy either as a translation or a commentary.
The student will find various volumes of the compact Clarendon (Oxford) translations and commentaries helpful. Although Saunders’s frequent confessions of incomprehension are distracting, Saunders 1995 summarizes the definitional and theoretical problems of the first two books of Politics. In reading these arguments it becomes clear that one cannot understand Aristotle’s view about the polis unless one understands his account of the household (oikos). Brendan Nagle has written an informative book on the subject (see Nagle 2006). Nagle argues for a tighter fit between Aristotle’s political theory and Greek political reality than has been customary. The Clarendon series also offers David Keyt and Richard Robinson’s translation of and commentary on Politics 3-4 (Keyt and Robinson 1995) and Keyt’s translation and commentary on Politics 5-6 (Keyt 1999). Keyt 1999 deals with the principles of justice and political realism. The same topics are at the heart ofF. Miller 1995. In his Clarendon translation and commentary on Politics 7-8 (1997), Richard Kraut deals intensively with the tension between the active and philosophical lives, as he does in Kraut 2002. See also Natali 2001.
Scholarly articles on the most interesting and persistent problems in Aristotle’s Politics can be found in Keyt and Miller 1991 and in Patzig 1990.
Treatments of Aristotle’s ethical treatises are numerous. Those most helpful in the present context take seriously the relation between ethics and politics. Among these are Cooper 1975; Broadie 1991; and Garver 2006.
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