Ancient+Greece+and+Aristotle

Ancient Greece and Aristotle

Government of Ancient Greece:

Ancient Greece had 3 forms of government: Monarchy, Oligarchy and a Direct Democracy. In Athens, Greece, c itizens in the city had more rights than any other citizen. They could almost anything they wanted to. They could own property, take part in politics and the law. Most of the men in Greece were citizens, but women, slaves, and foreigners could not be. In Sparta, only rich men were citizens. Children that lived in Athens all of their lives were not citizens if their parents came from other places. Athens seems undemocratic to us because women had no voice in government. The way they ran their government is similar to how we use to run ours. Since there have been many revisions to the rights to all United States Citizens we are very different from that of Ancient Greece. Also, we got the idea of democracy from Ancient Greece but we have a different type. We use the Representative Democracy style over a Direct Democracy.

Background Information on Aristotle-

He was born in 384 B.C. Plato was the teacher of Aristotle and named him his best student. After Aristotle finished his schooling he became a teacher and taught Alexander the Great. Throughout his lifetime of teaching he created a school that focused more on biology over mathematics. Aristotle’s writings and teaching spanned a vast variety of subjects. He was a philosopher and a polymath. A polymath is a person who has an expertise in a significant number of subjects. Some of the subjects he would teach about were physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Aristotle is the man who is credited with the earliest study of formal logic.

Aristotle's Influences/Ideas of our Government:

Aristotle had the idea that each country must perform three functions. Today we call these functions the three branches of government. Legislative, Executive and Judicial were ideas from Aristotle eventually gaining way into our countries government. They were ideas of his concerning types of government and the amount of people governing each country. Although there are multiple people who take charge of our country, it’s the people who really make the decisions rather than those who run it instead. This is called a democracy which Aristotle thought of as a corrupt form of government. This refers to what Ancient Greece experienced while they were poor and attempted to take over property of the rich.

Sources- 1) “We the people” 2) "Aristotle." //UCMP - University of California Museum of Paleontology//. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2011. . 3) "Government - Politics - Ancient Greece - Discovery Channel." //Discovery Channel International//. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2011. <http://www.yourdiscovery.com

By: Nico Bartolomeo, Talia Hansen, and Maddie Pfeiffer.