scholarly journals Aristotle on happiness as the highest goal of the state

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 470-482
Author(s):  
Sergey Kocherov
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Ideal State ◽  
Form Of Government

The paper explores the key assertion of Aristotelian “Politics” that a state is formed primarily for the good life. Aristotle’s views on the essence, purpose and the best constitution of a state are analyzed in comparison with Socrates’ and Plato’s doctrine of an ideal state. The author investigates an Aristotelian interrelation between people’s understandings of happiness and their choice of a form of government and approval of a state policy. It is demonstrated that the Aristotelian idea of a state designed for the good life entered the Western political philosophy paradigm and has exerted a determining influence on the formation of a common good notion and the concept of a welfare state. The paper concludes that the choice between “the Aristotelian state” and “the Platonic state” is not only stipulated by historical and cultural reasons, but is at the same time existential for each nation.

Political philosophy, Confucian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Chan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
Natural Tendency ◽  
The Many ◽  
Egalitarian Justice

Confucianism is a tradition of ethical and political thought in which ethics and politics are tightly connected. Confucianism endorses a politics of virtue that can be understood in two ways. First, politics in Confucianism aims to promote certain virtues and social relationships it defines as good; second, Confucianism conceives that politics can be successful only if the people in power are virtuous. Confucian political philosophy is therefore a kind of perfectionism which says that the state should promote the good life, and it is therefore directly opposed to the contemporary liberal view that the state and its officials should take no stance regarding what constitutes the good life. This entry introduces the Confucian vision of politics and explores its implications for three issues, namely: the source of political authority, the scope of people’s rights and liberties, and the responsibilities of the state towards its people’s welfare. The politics of virtue as conceived in Confucianism naturally tends to endorse rule by the wise instead of rule by the many; it tends to stress the need for people to cultivate virtues rather than to enjoy rights and liberties; and it sees people’s care for the poor and needy as stemming from virtues or duties rather than imperatives of social equality or justice. Despite this natural tendency, however, it is not obvious that the politics of virtue leaves no room for democracy, rights, and egalitarian justice. Indeed some commentators have argued that a number of these liberal-democratic ideas are either present in Confucianism or consistent with its central tenets. It is arguable that classical Confucian texts do not contain any ideas of democracy, human rights, or egalitarian justice, but do leave room for endorsement of the first two ideals under certain circumstances.

Public Reason and Prostitution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Conception Of The Good

This chapter critically engages with the “sex work” approach to prostitution and argues that treating “sex work” like any other form of work is neither possible nor compatible with valuing the freedom and equality of women as citizens. Liberals often claim, erroneously, that liberalism’s commitment to a kind of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good life and its commitment to antipaternalism requires either decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. While arguments that rest on a particular conception of the “good” of sex or of the role of sex in a broader conception of the good are illegitimate grounds for state policy, it is argued that there are, nonetheless, good public reason arguments against decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. A defense of the Nordic model is offered.

Eudaimonia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.C.W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
Human Good ◽  
External Goods ◽  
Satisfactory Life

The literal sense of the Greek word eudaimonia is ‘having a good guardian spirit’: that is, the state of having an objectively desirable life, universally agreed by ancient philosophical theory and popular thought to be the supreme human good. This objective character distinguishes it from the modern concept of happiness: a subjectively satisfactory life. Much ancient theory concerns the question of what constitutes the good life: for example, whether virtue is sufficient for it, as Socrates and the Stoics held, or whether external goods are also necessary, as Aristotle maintained. Immoralists such as Thrasymachus (in Plato’s Republic) sought to discredit morality by arguing that it prevents the achievement of eudaimonia, while its defenders (including Plato) argued that it is necessary and/or sufficient for eudaimonia. The primacy of eudaimonia does not, however, imply either egoism (since altruism may itself be a constituent of the good life), or consequentialism (since the good life need not be specifiable independently of the moral life). The gulf between ‘eudaimonistic’ and ‘Kantian’ theories is therefore narrower than is generally thought.

Recognition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Honneth
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Different Levels

The concept of recognition has played an important role in philosophy since ancient times, when the good life was thought to depend partly on being held in regard by others. Only Hegel, however, made recognition fundamental to his practical philosophy. He claimed that human self-consciousness depends on recognition, and that there are different levels of recognition: legal or moral recognition, and the forms of recognition constituted by love and the state. A similar tripartite distinction can be used to ground a plausible modern account of ethics.

Home Truths: Property TV, Financialization, and the Housing Crisis in Contemporary Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Anthony P. McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Financial Market ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The State ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Income Disparity ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Commercial Property ◽  
Ideological Commitment

This article examines how a specific form of lifestyle programming indexes both national concerns and transnational financial trends as well as diffuse social fissures in Irish life. Emerging in the late 1990s amid a construction boom, Irish property television adapted and thrived through the subsequent post-2008 crash, the concomitant implementation of austerity policies and an ensuing housing crisis. This boom-to-bust cycle was precipitated by the financialization of property within Ireland, a process whereby housing and commercial property became embedded in transnational financial market cycles. Through an analysis of three key examples of the genre, this article argues that for the most part, Irish property television seeks to hold at bay anxieties generated by a growing wealth and income disparity in the state. While this programming displays an ideological commitment to the “investor subjects” of home-ownership, increasingly the concerns of those excluded from this version of the good life are evident.

Who Gets Power and Why

1949 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ithiel de Sola Pool
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Substantive Rationality ◽  
The Government

A Feature of Western ideology, particularly its American variant, is consciousness of tension between ideals and reality. One source of this tension is a propensity to seek social goals by way of adventitious motives. Education seeks marks not knowledge; business seeks profits not products; politics seeks power not the good life. To protest this lack of what Max Weber called substantive rationality, and to demand that first things be put first is labelled “idealism,” while acceptance of the immediate incentive and disregard for the final end is labelled “realism.”Thus in political science the name “realistic” has been largely applied to that tradition which concentrates on power relations and assumes that its subjects behave as “political men,” that is, that they strive to maximize power. The “realist” assumes that all men in politics share the same drive. So deeply ingrained is this identification of politics and power that it appears even in the unconscious where the state is a father symbol. It appears also in everyday idioms where to be in the government is “to be in power” and to go into politics means not to pave streets but to enter a game of hierarchical advancement. It appears also in scholarly thought. Unlike Aristotle, who defined the polis as that association formed for the highest good and which comprehends the rest, most modern scholars find in a monopoly of coercion the distinctive attribute of the state.

The Individual, The State, and The Common Good

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haldane
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Civil Order

Let me begin with what should be a reassuring thought, and one that may serve as a corrective to presumptions that sometimes characterize political philosophy. The possibility, which Aquinas and Madison are both concerned with, of wise and virtuous political deliberation resulting in beneficial and stable civil order, no more depends upon possession of aphilosophical theory of the state and of the virtues proper to it, than does the possibility of making good paintings depend upon possession of an aesthetic theory of the nature and value of art.

scholarly journals Neutrality as a Twofold Concept

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Alexa Zellentin
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
The State ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
State Regulations

Under the circumstances of pluralism people often claim that the state ought to be neutral towards its citizens’ conceptions of the good life. However, what it means for the state to be neutral is often unclear. This is partly because there are different conceptions of neutrality and partly because what neutrality entails depends largely on the context in which neutrality is demanded. This paper discusses three different conceptions of neutrality – neutrality of impact, neutrality as equality of opportunity and justificatory neutrality – and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the different conceptions in different contexts. It suggests that there are two common elements of neutrality in all its exemplifications: a) an element of “hands-off” and b) an element of equal treatment. It therefore argues that while justificatory neutrality is necessary for the state to be neutral it is not sufficient and claims that while conceptions of the good must not enter the justification of state regulations, they must be taken into consideration when deliberating the implementation of these regulations.

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