PHL 501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Oligarchy, Aristocracy

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHL 501
• Professor: David Ciavatta

Document Summary

Citations: refer to marginal page numbers or easiest sentence . (politics, page number) and footnote for first reference. Issue that aristotle is talking about is justice. In the greek world here are some virtues, justice, temperance, courage, generosity, wisdom. Justice is seen as the most political virtue. Aristotle notices that justice is defined differently in different regimes. In one regime, everyone gets an equal share (democratic: the many rule, who as a whole don"t have an enormous amount of wealth; no privileging for anyone. In an oligarchic society, justice can mean something else. A wealthy person would say that it"s unjust to share wealth. The best a society can, is to be virtuous. People thought that the ones should rule should be the one who are most virtuous, most just, and most deserving. Make sure that everyone has enough to try and make a just society. The idea of justice, is distributing goods fairly.