The Beautiful in Aristotle’s Ethics

2022 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
David H. Little
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Aesthetic Reading ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics

Abstract This article argues for an aesthetic reading of to kalon, primarily as it appears in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle uses to kalon to indicate that, to the morally serious, virtue is attractive and productive of a kind of pleasure. Read aesthetically, to kalon mitigates the tension between one’s own good and the common good. Aristotle shows how his students’ understanding of to kalon can be refined and thus preserved as an important and salutary feature of moral and political life.

The Machiavellian Budgeter

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Cowart
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
The Common ◽  
As If

Some political theorists maintain that Niccolò Machiavelli was a rather immoral sort. His exhortations to guile, perfidy, deception and opportunism were numerous, his scruples few. Others, in a more revisionist vein, suggest that his preferred tactics were only meant for the common good. Yet, whether Machiavelli was a scientist, a descriptivist, a technician, a moralist or an immoralist is immaterial from one standpoint: he taught us something about the nature of human interaction in the State. Machiavellian interpretations of human events underlie many of our personal impressions of political life. We speak of strategy, tactics, morality, honesty as if the locations of political leaders along those dimensions determine what governments do for us or to us.

scholarly journals Nature of the common good as the foundation of the community

2021 ◽  
Vol XIX (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Karol Jasiński
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Third ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Integral Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

The subject of interest of the author of the text is the common good as an inalienable element of the organization of the human community. The paper consists of three parts. The first part analyses the need for a common good as the basis of social and political life. The starting point was the distinction of four forms of common life (community, society, political body and state), defining the nature of society, presentation of three forms of relationship between man and society (individualism, collectivism and personalism) and identifying problems related to the definition of the common good. In the second part, the author presented a reflection on the procedural common good in the liberal tradition, the issue of impartiality and identification of the common good in the process of the debate. In the third part, attention is paid to the personalistic view of the common good, which is based on the integral development of personal human nature in the framework of the appropriate institutions and structures. This understanding of the common good is, in the author’s conviction, the best point of reference in social and political life.

From Republic to Empire: Political Revolution and the Common Good in Xenophon's Education of Cyrus

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Nadon
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Short Review ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Important Work ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

While recent scholarship has provoked renewed interest in the Education of Cyrus as an important work for our understanding of the origins of classical political philosophy, it has yet to produce a coherent interpretation that preserves the unity of Xenophon's vision of political life. Following a short review of three recent books on the subject, I argue that the obstacles in the way to such an understanding can be resolved by focusing on the underlying causes in Xenophon's account of the transformation of a republican regime into a universal empire and, in particular, on the various deficiencies and self-contradictions of the republican conception of the common good. I show how an understanding of Xenophon's analysis of virtue within both republican and imperial political orders can lead to a fruitful confrontation with the thought of his most famous student, admirer, and antagonist, Machiavelli.

The Church, Democracy and Responsible Citizenship

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 60-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clint Le Bruyns
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The People ◽  
The Common ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations

Abstract The quality of our democratic life is intimately bound up with the quality of our church-state relations. The aim of this article is to direct attention to the contribution that churches and other faith communities can possibly offer towards the nurturing of a responsible citizenship in political life together. It recognizes and applauds the role of the state itself in advancing the common good, but resists the tendency among many who confine this role to the state alone. Church-state relations are typically discussed simply with reference to church and state, with a blind spot for the people comprising our political community. Responsible citizenship affirms the meaningful and constructive role which ordinary people in their personal and professional capacities can fulfill towards the common good. It consequently discusses the notions of hope, power and grace as some of the concrete ways through which a more participatory democracy or active citizenship might be envisaged, embodied and practiced by the people as part and parcel of their political responsibility together. Each of these aspects bear implications for the contribution churches can provide in public life as they nurture as well as exercise this sense of responsible citizenship.

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