In Politics, Aristotle famously declared that humans are political animals, a seemingly inescapable truth. We live in groups; we survive by virtue of interaction with other humans. But politics is born, Aristotle argued, not because we live in herds but instead because we use sophisticated communication and form partnerships that rely on our highly developed sense of justice and fairness.
The depth of any innate tendency toward politics is unclear. In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau posited a natural human condition free of societal encumbrance. He also, however, said that we savages willingly traded this boundless freedom for the lasting security of a polity. …
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