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Aristotle Essay

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Aristotle

The primary concern of political theorists is to determine by what form of constitution the state will most likely succeed. According to Aristotle the definition of political success means the general happiness of the citizenry. Both Aristotle and James Q. Wilson share the belief that molding excellent character within the citizenry is the first and most important step towards solidifying the happiness of the state as a whole. The basic structure of Aristotle’s philosophies are derived by gathering as much information about the history of a subject as possible (in trying to develop the ultimate constitution Aristotle went through 150 constitution from historically great nations) taking from the good and removing the …show more content…

Aristotle proposes that the constituents of a nation establish the character of government and depending on the goodness of the character formed a political structure either sinks or swims.
What Aristotle is saying is that in order to put together a political system of maintained justice, freedom and order, society must start with the right materials. The “right materials” are young minds trained to pursue the virtues that comprise excellent adults. The sentence at the end of the first paragraph of book VIII of The Politics shows the value Aristotle placed on excellent character being a fundamental part of excellent government where he says the better the character, the better the government. The issue of government policy concerning character formation and the implications of politicians passing legislation specifically aimed at improving moral character as a means of eliminating social ills is precisely the same issue James Q. Wilson addresses in his essay The Rediscovery of Character: Private Virtue and Public Policy. Wilson structures his essay by going through a variety of public problems he believes can only be explained by the deterioration of character in modern America. The first part of Wilson’s essay goes through present government problems within the realms of schooling, welfare, public finance, and crime, at the end of each of these summaries Wilson comes to the

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