ng virtuous leaders who would then lead the people in virtue.
As Slavin writes, "In many aspects the main interest Plato holds for us . . . lies in his ethics and his politics" (Slavin 200). And as Smith writes of Confucius: "He expected much of his students, . . . for he saw the cause in which he was enrolling them as nothing less than the redressing of the entire social order" (Smith 144-145).
Both thinkers' philosophies focus on healing the individual as well as the state because they both lived at times and in places which they saw as thoroughly corrupt. They both believe that restoring virtue to the individual is a task which should be carried out simultaneously with the restoration of virtue in the society at large. Smith writes that Confucius' time was marked by "social anarchy" and "the undiluted horror of the Period of the Warring States." Therefore, the major question to him was "How can we le
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