Abstract

Recently, scholars have disagreed over how to understand the telos, or goal, of citizen life in Aristotle's Politics. In Book VII, Aristotle claims that philosophy is a virtue necessary for a life of leisure. But the sketch of the educational programme that we get in Book VIII does not include philosophy; it is focused almost entirely on music. This has led some scholars to argue that a life of leisure spent appreciating music and the other arts is the telos of citizen life. This paper argues that although we do not have a programme for philosophical education in the Politics Book VIII as we have it, the telos of citizen life is philosophical activity in its narrowest sense of theoria