"It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition"
About this Quote
Private property, Aristotle argues, is a feature, not a bug - but only if a society can prevent ownership from curdling into selfishness. The line is doing two things at once: conceding a practical reality about human motivation while refusing to grant it moral primacy. People take better care of what is “theirs”; they work harder when effort and reward connect. Aristotle isn’t sentimental about that. He’s managerial.
The twist is the second clause, where the real politics begins: “the use of it common.” He’s sketching a social bargain that feels startlingly contemporary. Keep incentives and clear titles, but orient the culture so wealth behaves like a public instrument. Not confiscation, not communal ownership - something closer to a civic ethic of stewardship, where the prosperous are expected to act as custodians of shared flourishing.
That’s why the “special business of the legislator” isn’t simply to write rules. It’s to manufacture character. Aristotle’s subtext is that markets and laws alone won’t produce a stable polis; you need habits, education, honor and shame, institutions that train citizens to experience generosity as normal rather than heroic. This is classical virtue politics: governing by shaping what people admire.
Context matters: Aristotle is writing in a world of city-states, tight social interdependence, and constant risk of factional conflict between rich and poor. His proposal reads like a preventative measure against class war: allow property to remain private to avoid resentment and neglect, but make its social meaning public to avoid oligarchy. The legislator’s job is to turn “mine” into “ours” without pretending “mine” can be abolished.
The twist is the second clause, where the real politics begins: “the use of it common.” He’s sketching a social bargain that feels startlingly contemporary. Keep incentives and clear titles, but orient the culture so wealth behaves like a public instrument. Not confiscation, not communal ownership - something closer to a civic ethic of stewardship, where the prosperous are expected to act as custodians of shared flourishing.
That’s why the “special business of the legislator” isn’t simply to write rules. It’s to manufacture character. Aristotle’s subtext is that markets and laws alone won’t produce a stable polis; you need habits, education, honor and shame, institutions that train citizens to experience generosity as normal rather than heroic. This is classical virtue politics: governing by shaping what people admire.
Context matters: Aristotle is writing in a world of city-states, tight social interdependence, and constant risk of factional conflict between rich and poor. His proposal reads like a preventative measure against class war: allow property to remain private to avoid resentment and neglect, but make its social meaning public to avoid oligarchy. The legislator’s job is to turn “mine” into “ours” without pretending “mine” can be abolished.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Aristotle, Politics, Book II, ch. 5 — passage as rendered in the Benjamin Jowett translation: "It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition." |
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