PHIL 120 · Ethics and Political Philosophy — The Good and the Just: From Ethics to Politics

Led by Aristotle

The capstone of the Cambridge Part IA Ethics and Political Philosophy paper, led by Aristotle, who opened it. It gathers the four traditions — Aristotle, Mill, Kant, Rawls — on the axis between the good and the right, redeems the place of friendship as the bond of community and the deferred question of the contemplative versus the political life, and presses Aristotle's thesis that ethics is completed in politics, the good life in the good community.

1. Module 8 ○ Open

   The Good and the Just: From Ethics to Politics

   Led by Aristotle

   The question

   How is the good life related to the just society — and after Aristotle, Mill, Kant, and Rawls, what should we make of the whole inquiry? Aristotle, returning to close the paper he opened, argues that because we are by nature political animals the good life can only be completed in a good community, so ethics and politics are one inquiry. He gathers the four traditions on the axis between the good and the right, supplies the missing account of friendship as the bond that holds a community together, and faces the question left open since the first module: is the highest life active and political, or contemplative? The capstone asks the student not to crown a winner but to hold all four traditions as live options and to carry the paper's permanent questions — the good or the right, one human good or many, what truly binds a society, the active life or the contemplative — as their own.

   Begin the course → Mark module complete Print certificate of completion