Aristotle dedicates the first book of Politics to the discussion of families and argues that to study the larger political community of a city-state, we must first examine families as its constituent elements (Politics, 5). The three main domestic relationships that Aristotle defines in Politics are master-slave, husband-wife, and father-son, and they are all essentially ruler-ruled relationships, as Aristotle lists that "the free rules the slaves, the male rules the female, and the 'man rules the child'. (23). Aristotle believes that the natural inclination to govern or be governed is predetermined at birth, and the natural inequality between ruler and governed exists (7). Furthermore, Aristotle draws the analogy between domestic relations and the larger political community because both families and city-states share similar power dynamics. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle attributes different family relationships to different constitutions: “the association of a father with his children has the form of monarchy, ...., The association between husband and wife seems to be aristocratic,.. ., the association of brothers is like timocracy" (The Nicomachean Ethics, 115). While Aristotle assumes that all three domestic relationships share ruler-ruled power dynamics, examining Aristotle's logical gap in demonstrating the inherent superiority of men, gaps in his theory of the structure of souls, and his use of metaphors and parables , everything reveals that Aristotle fails to justify the power of men. superiority as natural rulers over women. This logical inconsistency in Politics invalidates the analogies between the marital relationship and aristocracy/oligarchy in Ethics, ultimately compromising Aristotle's overall analogy between families and city-states in both works. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Aristotle leaves a logical gap in his reasoning when he tries to argue that men are naturally better suited to rule than women, as he fails to provide explicit explanations for what specific nature makes men superior. After justifying the slave-master relationship by arguing that slaves are naturally better at physical labor while masters are naturally better at deliberative reasoning, Aristotle goes on to justify husband-wife and father-son relationships. Arguing that “a male, unless somehow constituted unnaturally, is naturally better suited to lead than a woman, and someone older and fully developed is naturally better suited to lead than someone younger and not fully developed” (Politics, 21). Here Aristotle arbitrarily asserts that “nature” makes males better rulers than females. However, while the words “nature” and “naturally” occur twice in the description of the marital relationship, Aristotle does not explain what specific natural characteristic of men makes them superior to women. With respect to the ambiguous statement in the marital relationship, Aristotle explicitly points out that slaves are naturally ruled because their bodies are stronger, and fathers are natural rulers because they are older and more experienced. Thus Aristotle's justification for the superior status of men over women is insufficient with respect to the other two relations. The fact that Aristotle skips the crucial step of reasoning suggests that he is unable to directly justify his assumption of natural inequality in the marital relationship. In addition to the logical gap in his reasoning, Aristotle's choice of words in thedescribing the structure of souls also reflects the existence of external forces in determining the inequality in the ability of women and men to govern, thus contradicting the assumption of natural inequality. When discussing the different structures of souls to further justify the inherent inequality between ruler and governed, Aristotle states that “the deliberative part of the soul is completely lacking in the slave; the woman has it but lacks the authority; a child has it but is incompletely developed” (23). According to Aristotle's previous arguments about nature, slaves lack the deliberative part of the soul because their body is naturally better suited to work, and the deliberative part of children is naturally underdeveloped due to their age. However, the reason why women have an incomplete deliberative part of the soul remains ambiguous, because it is unclear what “authority” refers to and why women lack this authority. “Authority” is different from “nature”, as the former is associated with rights or privileges given by the external environment such as social norms and conventions, while the latter is associated with internal characteristics with which one is born. If women need authority to exercise the deliberative part, then the incompleteness of the deliberative part of their soul should not be due to nature, but is imposed by external forces. Therefore, Aristotle is unable to attribute the different deliberative powers of male and female exclusively to nature, since his expressive choice implies the existence of external influences in the formation of the structure of souls. Furthermore, the metaphor of statesman rule in Aristotle's description of the marital relationship This relationship also conflicts with the general assumption of natural inequality, since it implies equal political status between men and women. To distinguish the husband-wife relationship from the father-son relationship, Aristotle compares the husband-wife relationship to “the rule of a statesman” and the father-son relationship to the “rule of a king” (21-22). Aristotle describes the government of the statesman thus: "men alternate in governing and being governed, because they tend by nature to be on the same level and not to differ in anything" (21). Here Aristotle refers to the Athenian democratic system in which aristocratic male citizens with similar political interests decide by random drawing who temporarily governs and represents the common interests. This analogy between the rule of men over their wives and the rule of statesmen over other citizens is problematic because the rule of the statesman presupposes equality of social status between the ruler and the rest of the citizens, while Aristotle is trying to demonstrate natural inequality between male and female. Comparing women to citizens also contradicts social conventions that existed in ancient Greece, where women were mostly not considered citizens. Furthermore, Aristotle concludes that “the male is permanently related to the female in this way” (22), which suggests that the dominant status of men is eternally fixed. However, as just defined in statesman government, citizens take turns to govern and be governed. This contradiction between the arbitrary and fixed designation of male rule and the fluid and temporary assignment of leadership in the statesman's government makes it questionable whether it is truly legitimate to assign men the role of permanent rulers. Recognizing this discrepancy in the statesman metaphor suggests that men and women are as naturally equal as statesmen and their citizens, and that the superior political status of men over women should not be permanently fixed. While theThe statesman's metaphor implies the potentially equal political status of men and women, the parable of Amasis and the footbath suggests that women and men share the same intrinsic characters and are therefore intrinsically equal. Comparing the husband's rule over his wife to the statesman's rule, Aristotle states that while the ruler is equal to other citizens, he needs to "distinguish himself in behavior, title, or rank from the governed," just like Amasis and his footbath (22 ). The parable states that Amasis, of humble origins, becomes king of Egypt. To earn the respect of the Egyptians, he transforms his golden foot bath into a statue of god to demonstrate that lower status does not mean lower nature, because the same material could be arbitrarily transformed into objects with different utilities and receive different levels of respect. Likewise, although the ruler is superior in rank, behavior, and title, he is naturally equal to other citizens, just as the nobleman's statue and the humble footbath are both made of gold. Applying this parable to the man-woman relationship, although the male rules over the woman, their natural characters are the same while they are shaped differently by social conventions and assigned unequal social statuses. Furthermore, the parable further clarifies why women do not have the authority to exercise the deliberative part of the soul: women's incomplete deliberative power is imposed by an external authority, just as gold is shaped into a humble foot bath by forces external. In both cases appearances and results are independent of intrinsic nature. Consequently, while Aristotle claims that there is a natural inequality between the ruler and the ruled in all three family relationships, this inequality is untenable in the marital relationship. Aristotle's difficulty in demonstrating the superior nature of males implies that male and female should have equal political status and intellectual capacity. Applying Aristotle's logical errors in Politics to his analogy between families and city-states leads to further contradictions, reflected primarily in his problematic mappings from the rule of man to aristocracy and from the rule of women to oligarchy in Ethics. Aristotle defines aristocracy as the rule of the best, and aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy when rulers ignore the common good and rule based on their power and wealth, no longer being the most virtuous. (The Nicomachean Ethics, 155) Therefore the main difference between aristocracy and oligarchy is the virtue and legitimacy of the rulers. Aristotle argues that the rule of men within families resembles aristocracy because "man rules according to his worth" (155). The underlying assumption here is that men naturally have more virtue and deliberative power to be good rulers, and therefore have the “worth” to rule, just like the rule of the best of the aristocracy. However, according to the previous analysis, Aristotle fails to demonstrate this assumption in the Politics, and without this assumption he is unable to conclude that the government of men is the government of the best, and therefore his analogy between the government of men and aristocracy is invalid. Likewise, the mapping from women's rule to oligarchy is also problematic given the logical fallacies in the marital relationship. To illustrate the superiority of aristocracy over oligarchy, Aristotle introduces the situation in which women rule in the home. Aristotle argues that “Sometimes, however, women rule, because they are heiresses; therefore their domination is not by virtue of excellence but due to wealth and power, as in oligarchies” (155). According to this analogy, when heiresses rule the house, the government.