Plato And Aristotle: The Connection Between Ethics And Politics

Connection between Ethics and Politics The primary concern of politics is to give the description of a government structure and function by describing laws for the citizens to regulate their behavior. It does all this to achieve and bring to recognition the good of the public. Man is hardly a social being alone but also a political being because of the close interdependence between them and the state. Ethics and politics have an intimate relationship considering that both are normative sciences (Hakim 344). Ethics concentrates on the supreme good of a person whereas politics is aimed at the public good. It goes without a doubt that the public good can be attained via individual good and hence it is well to state that politics targets establishing an ideal state that realizes more perfection of the citizens. Plato and Aristotle, two great philosophers, sought to describe ethics with relation to politics reaching both similar and different conclusions. The following paper discusses the relationship between ethics and politics as per the philosophies of Plato/ Socrates and Aristotle by making a comparison of the two. …show more content…
Aristotle wrote two treatises on ethics and politics that were separate and thus made a difference in the key areas of subjects (Large 3). Plato was of the philosophical idea that all concepts possessed a universal form or rather an ideal way that led to an idealistic philosophy. However, Aristotle held contrary opinions suggesting that the universal forms were hardly attached to either concept or object and that the analysis of each object or concept was to be conducted individually (Hakim 356). The above viewpoint established the Aristotelian empiricism. Plato in his philosophy insisted that the qualities of an object would be determined via experiments and reasoning that would be sufficient to prove the