In the preceding chapters Aristotle has given really very little detail about absolute kingship, either the kind of man he needs to be, or the circumstances in which absolutism is a good thing. This makes it impossible to say with certainty whether he had Alexander the Great in mind or not. On the whole it seems unlikely: see V. Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford, 1938), ch. 3, but cf. H. Kelsen, ‘Aristotle and Hellenic-Macedonian policy’, in Articles on Aristotle II (see Select Bibliographies). At least we can say that there is no mention of great conquests as a necessary qualification for monarchy.
The chapter is by way of a tail-piece to the book and looks forward to the discussions of Book VII. It makes a single and valuable point about the education which produces the ideal monarch: that it will be virtually identical to that of the ‘sound’ man who is a citizen of the best state. It is this person, somehow writ large, who seems to be the absolutely virtuous absolute king Aristotle envisages.
1288b32 But since we say that there are three right constitutions,1 and that of these the best must be of necessity that which is managed by the best men (and that may mean one man alone, or one entire family,2 or a populace outstanding in virtue, some able to rule, others to be ruled, with a view to the most desirable life), and since further it was shown in the initial discussions3 that in the best state it is bound to be the case that the virtue of a man and of a citizen are identical, then it follows clearly that the method and means one would employ to establish a state under an aristocracy or king, and those by which a sound man is produced, are the same, so that the education and morals4 that make a man sound, and those that will make him fit to play the part of a statesman or of a king, are also more or less identical.
1288b2 Now that these matters have been settled we must next endeavour to describe how the best constitution naturally comes about and how it is naturally established.
The promise to examine the best constitution is redeemed in Books VII and VIII (hence it was for a time customary for editors to renumber these two books and print them after Book III). In the Books IV–VI the emphasis is however not on the absolutely best constitution but on the most serviceable kind for actual use. To this the name ‘polity’ is given, as in III vii. There is a general cohesiveness about Books IV, V and VI (see, in the Reviser’s Introduction, ‘The Contents and Structure of the Politics’), and in the second chapter of Book IV Aristotle gives a partial table of contents. But when it comes down to detail there is much disarray.