انسان خوب،شهروند خوب؛جستاري مقايسه اي ميان انديشه سياسي افلاطون و ارسطو

A Good Man and a Good Citizen; a Contrastive Study of the Political Thoughts of Plato and Aristotle

Pursuing the desired perfection and reaching this goal is the only alternative for achieving a meaningful life and for having purposeful human acitvities in this world. The ancient philosophersʹ views about the way of achieving this goal are hotly disputed by modern philosophers; each philosopher perceives things according to his own philosophical, political and moral inclination. Observing manʹs characteristics and conditions, both individually and socially, is of great importance. As one of the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato sees that manʹs individual aspect plays a major role in this respect and a citizenʹs excellence go alogside human excellence. According to Plato being a good man has priority over being a good citizen. As for Aristotle, he considers the citizen as the cornerstone in pursuing perfection and he lays more emphasis on citizensʹ excellence. He thinkʹs that citizenʹs excellence, when compared to manʹs excellence, is more attainable, owing to the fact that the first has an idealistic nature. The study contains a comparison between Platoʹs thoughts and Aristotleʹs thoughts.