Question:easy

Who said that, 'Man is a social animal'?

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Think of the Greek philosopher who wrote Politics and argued that the state exists by nature.
Updated On: Jul 17, 2026
  • Socrates
  • Aristotle
  • Kahn
  • Plato
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

This question checks whether you can attach a famous line of political philosophy to the right Greek thinker. The phrase "man is a social animal" is a common translation of Aristotle's claim in Politics that man is by nature a political animal. Let us weigh each name given.

  1. Socrates: He taught by asking questions in the streets of Athens and wrote nothing himself. What we know of him comes through Plato and Xenophon. His concern was virtue and self examination, so this systematic claim about the natural origin of the state is not his.
  2. Aristotle: In Book I of Politics he says the polis exists by nature and that man is by nature a political or social animal. He supports it by pointing out that man alone has speech, which lets him discuss what is just and unjust, and that faculty is useless in isolation. This is the source of the quotation.
  3. Kahn: Not a figure in classical Greek political thought. The name is added only to complete the four options and carries no link to the quotation.
  4. Plato: He wrote The Republic and imagined an ideal city ruled by philosopher kings. He did treat the individual and the city as mirrors of each other, which makes him a tempting choice, but the actual sentence about man being a social animal is not from him.

So the credit goes to Aristotle. He reached the idea by tracing how the household grows into the village and the village into the state, and by arguing that a man who needs no society is either a beast or a god.

Let us summarize:

  • The line is from Aristotle's Politics, where the Greek word is political, usually rendered as social.
  • Aristotle's proof rests on speech and moral judgement, which only work among other people.
  • Plato is the closest distractor because he also wrote on the state, but the phrase is not his.

The correct answer is option (B), Aristotle.

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