The final sentence of Book I stated the main topic of Book II, a consideration of ideal states. The book contains also an account of some actual states which Aristotle considers to be good.
This essay in the comparative study of political institutions has a long tradition behind it. From the very earliest stages of Greek thought as we know it there was sustained controversy about what constituted good and bad government (see for instance Hesiod, Works and Days, and Herodotus III 80 ff.). But the debate was for the most part piecemeal and partisan; and although Aristotle has his prejudices, and axes to grind, his approach is by Greek standards systematic and detached. Like most of his extant work, it is also rather donnish in tone – and indeed in the opening paragraph of this chapter he seems to feel the need to apologize for a certain academic ‘pernicketiness’.
Aristotle starts from the point he had made at the beginning of Book I, that the state is an association. Now an association implies sharing of some kind; so the fundamental question seems to be, how far should sharing go in a state? This question prompts him to think of some of the most radical and celebrated proposals for shared life and property, those of Plato’s Republic.
1260b27 We have undertaken to discuss that form of association which is the state,1 and to ask which of all such associations would be best if we were in a position to live exactly as we would like. So we must look at the other constitutions too, for example those that are in use in states that have the reputation of being governed by good laws, or any others that have been sketched by writers and appear to be good. Our purpose is partly to see what in them is right and useful and what is not; but we also wish to make it clear that if we keep looking for something different from what we find there, we do not do so out of a desire to be clever: we have embarked on this investigation simply because in fact none of these existing constitutions2 is satisfactory.
1260b36 We must begin at the natural starting point of this inquiry. In a state, either all the citizens share all things, or they share none, or they share some but not others. It is clearly impossible that they should have no share in anything; at the very least, a constitution being a form of association, they must share in the territory, the single territory of a single state, of which single state the citizens are sharers.3 The question then becomes twofold: if a city is to be run well, is it better that all the citizens should share in all things capable of being shared, or only in some of them and not in others? It is certainly quite possible for citizens to go shares with each other in children, in wives, and in pieces of property, as in the Republic of Plato. For in that work Socrates says that children, wives, and property ought to be held in common.4 We ask, therefore, is it better to do as we now do, or should we adopt the law proposed in the Republic;?)