Aristotle's Biosphere

Aristotle displays a keen interest in life and living beings, but he doesn't separate the biological from the artificial, and he describes organisms as skillfully constructed phenomena that extend beyond their individual bodies. If textual evidence does not require a reading of living and nonliving as procrustean discrete classes, they are instead "contraries that admit of intermediaries." If a beaver dam, for instance, occupies an intersection between natural fact and artifact, then Aristotle may countenance a similar phenomenon in the realms of politics, art, and ethics. Aristotle's Biosphere argues that the state would satisfy Aristotle's criteria associated with both the artificial and the natural, and it also draws connections between what Aristotle calls natural virtue to virtue obtained via habituation and training.