Politics and Ethics

For Aristotle, Ethics and Politics are coordinated. The attainment of personal virtue for him is possible only through the actualization of one's rational nature, and the exercise of the latter involves the constructive interaction with others, which is the fundamental character of the sphere of Politics. Perhaps the first significant historical separation of the two comes with the distinction drawn between 'rendering unto Caesar' and 'rendering unto God'. In other words, Ethics proper then became attached to Religion, leaving Politics earthbound, relegated to the status of Necessary Evil. Even with the advent of the 'secular' era, the stigma continued. For Hobbes, Politics is a recourse to prevent a 'war of all against all'. For Locke, it is a means to the enhancement of personal happiness. Perhaps only Rousseau's concept of Democracy approximates the dignity envisioned by Aristotle. For him, voting is an expression not of one's personal wishes, but of what one judges to be best for society as a whole. Such transcendence of the merely personal is analogous to Aristotle's conception of Reason, though it took Kant to explain that better than Rousseau. Still, most contemporary Americans conceive of Democracy along Lockeian or Hobbesian lines, rather than Rousseauian. Marx and other pioneering Socialists, might also have been attempting to restore Politics to its original dignity, but 20th century Communism has severely compromised that effort. So, Politics continues to be regarded as 'dirty business', and even its proponents seem embarrassed by 'big government' policies. The flip side of that coin is that Ethics is still often widely regarded as merely private, as in e. g. 'it's the thought that counts'.