Orexis and the City in Aristotle’s Political Thought

Abstract

The essay aims to investigate the roots of the political hermeneutics of the term orexis in the way Aristotle uses it from the biological and anthropological subjects, up to the sociological and narrative ones with respect to the individual-city relationship. A theory of desire as anthropological perfection based on a conception of a democratic and dynamic City, in the terminological context of the Greek polis. The article develops in this area a comparison with two concepts: the Platonic eros understood as lack, and the dimension of the individual sociality in Aristotle interpreted as fullness.