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This chapter concludes the discussion of the problems in Aristotle's Politics by pointing to five themes that run through the treatise as ever-deepening ways of understanding how people are political animals. Each theme is a different way of exploring the complex interrelations between ethics and politics, between living well and living together. These five themes are also ways of connecting Aristotle's political problems to our own. It has been argued that there is a crucial shift in modernity from war to commerce, and a contemporary alternative to political animals could be citizens as holders of rights protected by the state so that they can live private lives. If people are political animals, then Aristotelian politics is more comprehensive than modern politics. The thesis that people are political animals, elaborated in the Politics, stands as a challenge to contemporary ways of thinking and living.

Marleen S. Barr’s “Hillary Orbits an Alternative Universe Earth: Interpreting the USA Network’s Political Animals as Science Fiction” concludes the section with an exploration of Sigourney Weaver’s character, Secretary of State Elaine Barrish Hammond, as a fantasy figure. Weaver resonates contextually through the science fictional heroines she portrayed in Aliens and Avatar while her character in Political Animals (2012) echoes the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Through such parallels, argues Barr, the series exemplifies a power fantasy, recasting Clinton as an alternative history superhero.

This chapter explores the most notorious feature of the Politics, the endorsement of slavery. This is an important feature of Aristotle's treatise since the issues raised by slavery cut deep into his way of thinking and help us understand what he means by saying that people are political animals. In Book I, Aristotle defends the naturalness of slavery and couples it with an analogous denigration of women. Worse, in Book VII, he provides a racial interpretation to slavery as he locates those suited to be slaves in Asia, as opposed to Europeans too wild to be domesticated and to the Greeks whose ideal psyches make them natural masters. This is a dismal example of a great mind unable to escape the prejudices of his time, and of philosophy enlisted as rationalization in the service of a hidden political agenda.

This chapter locates ‘listening’ in contemporary democratic theory by looking at the rise of ‘sensory’ democracy and of non-ideal democratic theorizing. The somewhat pessimistic tenor of some recent democratic theory is rejected in favour of the argument that listening can renew democratic theory and practice. The relationship between listening and power is discussed, with listening regarded as an active rather than a passive sense. Jeffrey Green’s idea of ‘candour’ as a regulative idea is critically discussed and the idea of ‘dialogic democracy’ is introduced. Finally, a ‘species-based’ reason for why listening as concept and practice has been so studiously ignored by political theorists is offered. Aristotle’s claim that ‘man’ is a political animal, and that what makes him political is his capacity for speech, has had an enduring influence on how we conceive the currency of political intercourse. Listening changes the nature of this currency and therefore our understanding of politics itself.