Justice, Education, and Human Flourishing in Plato and Aristotle

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Aristotle's definition of man as a political animal is so familiar that its meaning and its implications are all too often simply taken for granted. The question of whether this definition deserves its canonical status is rarely asked. Its validity is readily assumed as though it were simply describing the most obvious and significant feature of the human. Consequently, we fail to ask what is revealed and what is obscured by understanding man in this light, in thinking of his political orientation to the world as fundamental and distinctive. More specifically, while the tension between man as a political animal and Aristotle's other famous definition of man as a rational animal has received extensive scholarly attention from the perspective of the question of the best life, i.e., whether the political or the contemplative life is the highest, far less attention has been given to how the tension between these two definitions reveals the ambiguous character of the human. That is, if there are two equally good definitions of a being, then the being appears to be characterized by a fundamental duality. The significance of this duality is especially evident in questions of education and of justice. This panel seeks to investigate the possibilities, conditions, and pre-requisites of human flourishing. In particular, the panel explores the peculiar status of political life as the necessary condition for the fully formed human being but also as the source of potential limitations on individual human agency and independence. It appears as though to fulfill one of Aristotle’s definitions one must transcend the other.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Society for Greek Political Thought

Individual Presentations

• Plato’s Parmenides and the Alcibiades - Alex Priou

• Suffering & Doing Injustice: The Political Continuity of the Socratic Maxim - Mary Elizabeth Halper, Hertog Foundation

• Aristotle on the Political Preconditions for Human Flourishing - Gregory A. McBrayer, Ashland University

• Cannibalism & Thinking in Plato's Euthydemus - Gwenda-lin Kaur Grewal, Vassar College

Chair

• Paul T. Wilford Boston College

Discussant

• Charles E. Butterworth University of Maryland