Aristotle's Political Throught

Aristotle writes about all of the important issues of knowledge and method in his time, and one of the important issues he addressed in several different contexts was justice. This topic is developed in his ethical writings and his political writings, as well as in his writings on rhetoric, since that subject was intimately connected with developing and disseminating the logic of political thought. In his analysis of the issue of justice, Aristotle considers the meaning of virtue and the qualities which identify the living of the good life. In terms of this issue, Aristotle relied on a particular doctrine, the doctrine of the mean.

Aristotle believes that every art and inquiry is aimed at some good, that everything has as its goal some good. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies political science as the discipline that has as its goal the study of what is good for mankind. Ethics are actually a branch of political science, and personal ethical science is at one level while political ethical science is at a higher level of inquiry. For Aristotle, statecraft holds a primary position because it employs all the other sciences. It must therefore embrace as its aims the aims of all the others. The purpose of political science is to secure the good. This is on a higher level for the state than it is for the individual because while the securing of the good for the individual is itself a good, the securing of the good for an entire nation of people is of

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it for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else (Aristotle 1734). Happiness, says Aristotle, is such a goal because we always choose happiness for itself and never for the sake of something else. On the other hand, honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose for themselves (for we should still choose them even if nothing else resulted from them) are chosen for the sake of happiness. We judge that by means of them we can be happy, but we choose happiness for its own sake and not for the sake of any of these other virtues. Each of these virtues leads to happiness. We choose honor not only for the sake of honor itself but because it produces a state of self-esteem and position leading to happiness. Pleasure might seem to be an end in itself, but the result of pleasure is happiness, a more generalized and more lasting condition than the pleasure itself. Virtue is said to be its own reward, but this is not really the case. Virtue as well pr

Category: Philosophy - A