text: Politics In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled Politics.Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community.Moreover, he considered the city to be prior in importance to the family, which in turn is prior to the individual, "for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part".He famously stated that "man is by nature a political animal" and argued that humanity's defining factor among others in the animal kingdom is its rationality.Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others.Aristotle's conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner.The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is quite different from Aristotle's understanding.Although he was aware of the existence and potential of larger empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city (polis) which functions as a political "community" or "partnership" (koinōnia).The aim of the city is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at least some citizens the possibility to live a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished from modern approaches, beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences".