Aristotle's Ethics and Politics

Aristotle: Ethics, Virtue, and the Polis

The status of citizens and humans tends toward an end or highest good: happiness. This involves understanding why a contemplative life dedicated to rational activity is considered the ultimate aspiration. What in everyday life is often just a great aspiration.

The Pursuit of Happiness and Virtue

The soul's rational part encompasses intellectual virtues, such as dianoetic wisdom, and also has a function related to moral or ethical virtues.

Intellectual and Ethical Virtue

Dianoetic virtue is the result of instruction, while ethical virtue is achieved through habituation. This led Aristotle to state that ethical virtue is a habit. For this philosopher, it is not enough merely to know the rule; one must create a second nature within oneself. Habit, therefore, should be guided by reason.

Finding the Golden Mean

For Aristotle, the virtue that leads to happiness lies in the middle ground that fits every situation or individual. Finding that point is not easy, as the philosopher notes that there are a thousand ways to go wrong, but only one way to succeed. Prudence and experience guide us toward virtue.

Prudence, Experience, and Wisdom

Aristotle also emphasizes the wise person, recognized by the community as wise, and links this to his theory through dialogue.

Ethics Leads to Politics

Therefore, ethics necessarily leads to politics.

Human Nature and Society

Aristotle emphasizes the natural sociability of man. Society allows the development of the most excellent aspects of our nature, and through this, we can achieve happiness.

The Ideal Polis

The best society is the one most conducive to the good of its citizens, meaning their habituation to a reasonable life. For Aristotle, society is prior to the individual.

Ethics and politics are interconnected. Ethics identifies the values that should guide politics, and these values only acquire their full meaning within the political sphere.

Citizenship and the Good Life

Aristotle envisions happiness as the highest good, primarily attainable by those capable of rational activity. The contemplative life is presented as the highest form of happiness, more accessible to certain citizens. The text also touches upon the structure of society and citizenship, implying that altering established roles, such as the natural distinction between master and slave, is considered a perversion of natural law according to this philosophical perspective.

Justice in the City-State

The virtue that presides over the political life is justice. This has two aspects:

• Distributive Justice: Establishes the relationships between the city and its inhabitants.
• Corrective Justice: Where judges restore relations between citizens.

Study of Constitutions and Government

Aristotle and his collaborators in the Lyceum collected 158 constitutions of Greek cities.

Types of Government

This philosopher describes six types of government: three positive (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) and three degenerations of these (tyranny, oligarchy, and demagogy).

Aristotle's Preferred Political System

Aristotle seems to favor a mixed system with a democratic base, but open to the aristocratic influence of the best.