Abstract

Insofar as man belongs to a political community, all his activities and ends are prescribed by the 'laws' in view of the common good. But is man just a part of the whole? Are there no virtues that concern man as an individual and not just as a part of the community? Is the education of man identical with his political education as a citizen? This would be the case if the good man and the good citizen were identical. The present article examines the relation between ethics and politics in Aristotle starting from ananalysis of Politics III, 4 where the question is raised whether the virtues of the good man and the good citizen are identical. Since the rediscovery of the Politics in the thirteenth century, Aristotle's argumentation has been used to detach the finality of the life of the individual from the finality of the state as a whole