Aristotle on the Nature of Community

Adriel M. Trott. Aristotle on the Nature of Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 239. Cloth, $95.00.

This is a fresh, substantial, and engaging contribution to the ongoing Aristotle revival in political philosophy and theory. Trott's project, like that of other works in this newish tradition, is not simply to interpret Aristotle but to advance an interpretation that has practical (in Aristotle's sense) significance, one that employs Aristotle-interpretation as a starting point for calling into question key elements of the modern Western political imaginary. The book is as much a contribution to democratic theory as it is to Greek philosophy. This is not at all to say that Trott's approach to the Greek texts lacks rigor. To the contrary, she presents an interpretation of the Politics based on careful close reading of key passages informed by a thoughtful and plausible overall sense of Aristotle's apparent intention.

Trott's take on the Politics starts with her claim that we cannot understand the central assertion of the Politics-that human beings are political animals, and that the polis itself exists by nature and not by mere convention-without examining what Aristotle means by 'nature,' something he does not discuss in the Politics. But in the Physics, he...