ARISTOTLE and Plato

Aristotle was interested in the best form of Government. His concerns were ethics, good governance
and happiness.

He looked for ethical values in the facts of human conditions. According to him ethics refers to real men
and to their real or actual behavior. Human behave according to moral principles, he believes it is the
most important part of human development, the unique end.

He further maintained that ethics pertained to a variety of virtues, liberality, courage, temperance,
justice etc. that men praise as good.

According to him men practice virtues because they recognize that virtue contributes to happiness, for
example a courageous man is happy, a coward is miserable; virtue must be understood as part of human
that context.

Aristotle believed that Justice should be found in man’s behavior and that all men aim for happiness,
but , happiness must be unique to men, in that, man must have the capacity to reason and to carry what
he reasons into practice. Happiness is virtue, that is, the ability to perform a specific function well;
man’s actions must have a rational basis. We learn to be virtuous by practicing virtue (Ari) is immanent
in man and can only be actualized through practice.

PLATO looked for ethical values such as justice in the realm of the human conditions. Like Aristotle he
believed that all men aim for happiness.

Plato asserted that moral virtue was strictly identical to knowledge (remember according to Plato we
are virtuous, because we were born with virtues.