The importance of the Priority Argument can be seen most clearly from the beginnings of Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, where Aristotle establishes the primacy of the political for the investigation of the highest human good. Evidently, this argument is meant to prove the primacy of the city for the realization of the human good. In what follows I shall call this argument the Priority Argument. In Politics I 2, Aristotle argues that the city is naturally prior to the household and the individual in a similar way as the whole body is prior to its organic parts ( Pol. Key words: political priority, political hylomorphism, phusis, nomos This interpretation should enable us to see that, just as his hylomorphism is a middle path between Presocratic materialism and Platonic dualism, Aristotle’s political hylomorphism is a middle path between two radical versions of political naturalism by Antiphon and Plato. I wish to demonstrate in this article that Aristotle’s argument for the priority of the city in Politics I 2 is supported by his conception of the ontological priority of form (and actuality) over matter (and potentiality).
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