The eight contributions in this volume result from three conferences held at the Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 between 2005 and 2007 on nature and household relations, nature and regime-types (politeiai), and nature and education. Three of the chapters examine Aristotle's notion of nature through consideration of his remarks about the household (specifically, the relationship between family relations and constitutions in cities, the critique of Plato's dissolution of the family, and the different senses of nature in the Politics), two are focussed on the nature of regime-types (specifically kingship and the relationship between politeia and laws) and the final three chapters are concerned with the nature of the best regime described in Politics 7–8 (specifically the discussion of thumotic peoples in 7.7, the implicit critique of Plato in the account of the material conditions of the best regime, and the place of leisure in Politics 7.14). P. Pellegrin, a major translator and scholar on Aristotle's political and biological writings, provides a preface on the tension between universality and cultural specificity in contemporary readings of the Politics.

Pellegrin's preface, ‘À la périphérie du politique’, struggles with the paradox that Aristotle – unique in antiquity according to Pellegrin – formulated a theory of the city or polis as a universal institution in which humans achieve their perfection just as that institution was historically being displaced by those of the Hellenistic age. The city is thus both uniquely Greek, but also ‘indépassable et éternelle’. Pellegrin argues that although the French school of Jean-Pierre Vernant focussed upon the peculiarly Greek aspects of the city, they failed to appreciate that on Aristotle's own terms (articulated in Pol. 7) cultural differences are ultimately environmental. But although the polis which Aristotle examines thus has at its centre a doctrine about the city and the constitution, Pellegrin spends the remainder of the preface focussed on its ‘periphery’, viz. the family, which is in some sense prior to the city, and the best state analysed in the last two books of the Politics, which although providing guidance to all constitutions, is independent of them. Although the science of constitutions has lost some of its relevance in the historical transition from polis to non-polis culture, it is the periphery – which most of the essays in the volume focus upon – which is most relevant today.

Veloso's ‘La relation entre les liens familiaux et les constitutions politiques’ examines the tensions between Politics 1.1 and Nicomachean Ethics 8.10 (and its parallel in Eudemian Ethics 7.10). The first passage contrasts family relations with political ones, but the last two argue for a similarity (homoiôma) between household relations and the politeiai of different kinds of governments. Veloso specifies the various analogies and probes the sense in which the former are models (paradeigmata) for political constitutions, drawing on exegesis both of those passages and of those throughout the Politics which draw upon the similarity between household and regime. Wilgaux's ‘De la naturalité des relations de parenté: incest et échange matrimonial dans les Politiques d'Aristote’ uses Aquinas' remarks on prohibitions about marriage between extended kin to probe Aristotle's critique of Plato's abolition of the family in Politics 2. T.'s ‘Phusis et nomos: Aristotle est-il naturaliste?’ answers the chapter's title by underscoring the diversity of Aristotle's opposition of phusis and nomos and analysing three senses of the opposition, viz. in the diversity of institutional arrangements (for instance in the case of conventional measurements), the degrees of convention in the establishment of communities (for instance in the difference between the family and political communities as natural) and the normative basis for criticising institutions (for instance in the debate about slavery). In general, T.'s piece highlights a point elucidated by all three papers on nature, which is that there is no simple answer to the question ‘is Aristotle a naturalist?’ since he uses the term in different senses in different places.

The common theme running through the two papers on regime-types (politeiai) concerns the relationship between laws and the regimes in which they are promulgated. L., ‘Nature de la royauté dans les Politiques d'Aristote’, asks if the king who rules in a monarchy is political. Aristotle famously claims that such a ruler is like a law unto himself. At the same time, L. shows that he is dependent upon other ministers in his government and ultimately subordinate to his own law. Thus he concludes that royal power is both supra-political and infra-political. Morel, ‘Le meilleur et le convenable. Loi et constitution dans la Politique d'Aristote’, takes up Aristotle's claim that laws should be designed to fit specific regime-types rather than vice versa (Pol. 1282b1–13, 1289a10–15). Morel offers a close reading of Politics 4.1.1288b10–39 to show that the reform of constitutions is not modelled on the idea of an ideal city, but rather is an adaptation or adjustment (what Aristotle characterises with his term harmottein) based on the knowledge derived from political excellence and experience of regimes in general.

The remaining three papers take up topics in Aristotle's analysis of the best regime in Politics 7. Both Lefebrve, ‘La puissance du thumos en Politiques, VII, 7’, and Bénatouïl, ‘“Choisir le labeur en vue du loisir”: une analyse de Politiques, VII, 14’, offer rich scholarly commentaries on individual chapters in Politics 7 (both pieces are also substantially longer than the other six chapters – Lefebrve's piece being over twice as long as the average length of the other chapters). In the former case, Lefebrve explores Aristotle's remarks about the differences in apparently innate character between Greek, European and Asian peoples and the juxtaposition it offers between thumotic and dianoetic elements in the soul. He focusses on the former, and argues that the key to Aristotle's account of thumos consists in the critique it offers of Plato's account in Republic 2; in effect, thumos is a disposition to like or love, and the basis of equality and friendship between citizens in the best regime. Building on previous work by P. Demont and F. Solmsen, Bénatouïl offers a detailed account of Aristotle's discussion of leisure (scholê) in Politics 7.14 to elucidate the teleological claim that one must choose war for the sake of peace, the absence of leisure for the sake of leisure and necessary actions for the sake of those which are fine (1333a35–6); the key consists in the analogical parallels, Bénatouïl argues, presented in 7.14 between ruling and being ruled as citizens, as parts of the soul, and at different stages in one's life. Roux's ‘Les conditions de la meilleure constitutions dans le livre VII des Politiques: Aristote critique de Platon’ complements the pieces by Lefebrve and Bénatouïl by arguing that the context of Politics 7 as a whole – which considers the various material conditions presupposed by the best regime – is a critique of Plato rather than a moment of Platonic idealism (a view espoused most influentially by W. Jaeger). The specification of ‘realistic’ material conditions coheres with the ‘realistic’ analyses of Politics 4–6 and complements the criticisms in Politics 2 which claimed that the unity sought in Plato's Republic is unrealisable.

On the whole, the Anglophone reader will be struck by the absence of reference to scholarship on the Politics – either in French or especially in English or German (the exceptions to this rule are the articles by Lefebrve and Bénatouïl). In the other six contributions references to the major contemporary works of scholarship, such as those by F. Miller or R. Kraut, E. Schütrumpf or O. Höffe, are rare. Although there are references to the work of Pellegrin, Aubenque or Aubonnet, even these are only occasional outside the articles by Lefebrve and Bénatouïl. The result is on the one hand somewhat liberating: several of the articles go in new directions, unencumbered by engagement with scholarly chestnuts. On the other hand, the lack of scholarly engagement overlooks the resources offered by others who have reflected upon and developed positions on many of the vexed questions treated in the volume. If some Francophone scholars have conducted their research largely independent of that of Anglophone scholars, one hopes that Anglophone scholars will not return the gesture.