La naturaleza para el hombre: una reflexión en torno al primer libro de la Política de Aristóteles

Abstract

According to Aristotle in his Politics, food provided by nature determines not
only how animals, but also how humans, live. However, human beings have been
created as nature’s objective; humans can control and transform nature for their own
benefit through technique, as far as nature allows them to. In the realm of knowledge and through experience, nature conditions science as
much as technique does (Metaphysics). From the political perspective, it is nature
what determines who are free and capable for civil government, and the primal
methods of association: family, village.
Aristotle’s approach on the relationship between man and nature has been
accepted for centuries, in spite of the fact that it seems out of place in our modern
world. This can be attested through approaches by authors such as José Ortega y
Gasset or Hannah Arendt, for instance.