Aristotle identifies politics as the chief architectonic science, as it deals with the ultimate end of human life. Yet this description is given at the beginning of the Ethics. Indeed, ethics and politics are intimately connected. In order to understand this relation fully, we must determine how they are distinct with regard to their origin, method, and end. Once properly distinguished, the conclusion follows that politics makes use of the principles of ethics, but for a greater and more noble end, the common good.
Ethics
In beginning of the Ethics, Aristotle discusses the ultimate end of man:
The sciences are divided into the speculative and the practical. The speculative sciences are pursued for the sake of knowledge itself, and thus do not have their end in operation. For example, mathematics is a speculative science, because the process and the conclusions of mathematics are inoperative: That is, perfect mathematics does not involve praxis. The method of the speculative sciences is resolutory, which means that knowledge proceeds from effect to cause, resolving complex truths into simple truths. For example, the mathematician may deduce a single function from a complex set of discrete data.
The practical sciences, on the other hand, are ordered to operation. For example, carpentry involves a method and acquisition of knowledge, but carpentry is not complete if it does not involve the activity of making things from wood. The method of the practical sciences is compository, which means that they proceed from simple to complex truths. For example, a carpenter, knowing that the height of a 45-degree angle is identical to its width, discerns the correct pitch of a roof and decides to cut the webs at equal lengths.
Ethics is a science that is, in a sense, both speculative and practical, and therefore its method is variable. In ethics, one may resolve complex truths into the simple, such as when one derives from the relationship of persons the principle of justice. But the speculative aspect of ethics is subordinated to the practical: That is, the principles derived in ethics must be put into practice in particular cases. In other words, ethics is not complete if it is not practiced, and so it is primarily a practical science. Therefore, ethics is a science insofar as it involves the attainment of knowledge, and an art insofar as this knowledge is put into practice.
Every art is done for some end, and the end of ethics is happiness. Aristotle defines happiness as, “an activity in accordance with virtue,” especially “the highest virtue… of the best part in us.” We know that the intellect is the best part of man because it is by his intellect that he participates in the natural law and is able to become virtuous at all. Moreover, the intellect is what distinguishes man apart from the other animals; it is the intellect which is the most human part of him. Thus the activity of the intellect, which is the contemplation of truth, is man’s greatest happiness, and the end of the virtuous life.
Politics
So, how does politics differ from ethics? Aristotle notes in the beginning of the Politics: “Observation shows us, first, that every polis is a species of association, and, secondly, that all associations come into being for the sake of some good -- for all men do all their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good.” Therefore, as the good is the end of ethics, the good of the community is the end of politics.
The method of political science is also similar to that of ethics. Politics is a practical science, as St. Thomas explains, “since the practical sciences are distinguished from the speculative sciences in that the speculative sciences are ordered exclusively to the knowledge of the truth, whereas the practical sciences are ordered to some work, [politics] must be comprised under practical philosophy, inasmuch as the city is a certain whole that human reason not only knows but also produces.”
Because politics is a practical science, its method is therefore, like ethics, compository. Thomas explains, “since human reason has to order not only the things that are used by man but also men themselves, who are ruled by reason, [politics] proceeds in either case from the simple to the complex.” However, though the method of politics as a science is similar to that of ethics, the practice of politics as an art is quite different. Because it is ordered not to the happiness of one person, but to the happiness of the whole community, it is necessary to have political activity beyond the scope of ethics.
Aristotle notes that most men are not capable of pursuing a moral education because they are not well disposed to practice virtue by their own inclination. And, though a man be eager to pursue the good, and learns how he might attain it, he will not attain the good until he acts. Likewise, St. Thomas observes:
Law
This dual activity of politics is called government, and is done by way of legislation (the creation of laws). Law in general has four essential characteristics; it is “[1] an ordinance of reason [2] for the common good, [3] made by him who has care of the community, and [4] promulgated.” The natural law governs all moral activity, as it is the rational creature’s participation in the Eternal law. Politics, however, makes use of human law.
The human law manifests the dual method of moral science; its resolutory derivation of principles and compository application to particular cases. As Thomas explains:
But, while the natural law is a participation in the eternal law promulgated by God, the human law is promulgated by human authority. Thus there is a distinction between ethics and politics in its relationship to authority. The man who acts virtuously obeys the natural law from God. But citizens are also bound to obey laws that are enacted by human authority in the art of politics. Human authority participates in God’s authority insofar as it derives its principles from the natural law and seeks to attain the end for which the natural law itself is promulgated.
The Common Good
Ethics and politics are further distinguished in their relation to the end for which all law is promulgated. Ethics instructs man in virtue, the end of which is his own happiness. But because virtue is necessarily in accord with the natural law, it also contributes to the common good. Yet ethics is concerned with human acts and happiness simply. Politics, on the other hand, governs the whole community with the explicit end of attaining the common good. Therefore, the greatest distinction between ethics and politics is their relation to the common good. So, in order to understand this distinction well, the common good itself must be well understood.
The common good is called “common” because it is participatory. Strictly speaking, every good is common insofar as it is participatory, as Thomas says, “in the whole created universe there is not a good which is not such by participation.” This is not to say that there is no such thing as a “private good,” but that every good is ordered to some end, and to have a good is to participate in this order.
The common good is therefore defined as the good of the whole for which its parts are ordered. Because the common good is the end toward which its members participate, it is manifested primarily in the peace and order of its members. The most immediate example of the common good is the end of the domestic household; the peace and order of the family. For the peace of the family, the husband must provide for the good of his wife and children, the wife must care for her husband and children, and the children must respect one another and obey their parents. Each well-lived role has the character of virtue, and redounds to the happiness of each person, but the end of domestic virtue is not the happiness of any one person, but of the whole household.
Because all personal goods are ordered to the common good, the common good is better. The primacy of the common good over that of one person is summarized by Aristotle:
That the common good is greater and prior to personal good does not imply that the common good is detrimental to the person. As Aristotle explains, it is quite the contrary:
Objections to the Primacy of the Common Good
We will consider three objections against the common good’s primacy over the person. Firstly, though politics is necessary for the governance of the human community, the individual who is well disposed to contemplate needs no human governance. The contemplative man has attained moral excellence and is led by his own knowledge. Thus, it would seem that the act of contemplation falls outside the purview of politics. Secondly, while it is necessary to pursue virtue in communion with others, contemplation itself is a solitary act, and so the highest good for the person is not the common good. Thirdly, appeal might be made to the dignity of the person, which is primary to the common good on account of its inviolability. That is, the dignity of the human person cannot be violated for the sake of another good.
To the first objection, we respond that politics is necessary not only because many persons are ill-disposed to pursue virtue by their own inclination, but because participation is impossible without an external governing principle. The good of the whole, as its end, is external to whatever participates in it. For example, the good of a man, though it involves a well-functioning hand, is not limited to the good of the hand itself: A man’s good is external to the good of his hand, because his hand is ordered to the good of the whole man. Moreover, because the good of the whole man is external to that of his hand, his hand is incapable of attaining this external good of its own principle.
Therefore, even if every member of the community were perfect in virtue, an external governing principle would be necessary to attain peace and order, as Etienne Gilson summarizes:
To the second objection, it should be noted that, though the end of ethics is the contemplation of Truth, contemplation is itself a special participation in the highest Good common to all things. Truth is not made private by man’s grasp of it. Though a solitary act by outward appearance, the activity of man’s intellect is itself a participation in the light of the Divine Intellect. Therefore, when one contemplates, he does not ascend from a good shared by the community to a noble personal good; rather, he ascends from a lesser common good to a greater common good.
To the third objection, we reply that personal dignity itself is derived from participation in the common good. Any attempt to elevate the singular person above the common good of which he is part only diminishes personal dignity, as De Koninck explains:
To assert that personal dignity is something greater than its source is to say that the part, which is good insofar as it is ordered to the whole, is also good without the whole. This is absurd.
Conclusion
We may therefore conclude that ethics is not distinct from politics as an “individual” rule from a communal rule, but as the practical science of man’s good from the practical science of the common good. Ethics is ordered to the common good implicitly, and politics makes use of the principles of ethics in ordering man to the common good. Therefore, while ethics may be considered to be a “self-sufficient” science with respect to each person, it is essentially a part of politics.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. trans. David Ross. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Aristotle. Politics. trans. Ernest Barker. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
De Koninck, Charles. On the Primacy of the Common Good. 1997. At https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/aquinas-review/1997/1997-dekoninck-common-good.pdf
Gilson, Etienne. Moral Values and the Moral Life: The Ethical Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas. trans. Leo Richard Ward. (reprint by Kessinger publishing).
Oesterle, John A. Ethics: The Introduction to Moral Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1957.
Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics. trans. C.I. Litzinger, O.P. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Ethics.htm
Thomas Aquinas. Sententia Libri Politicorum. trans. Ernest L. Fortin and Peter D. O’Neill. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Politics.htm
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Benziger bros., 1947. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/index.html.
Ethics
In beginning of the Ethics, Aristotle discusses the ultimate end of man:
If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good[...] We must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature… (NE I.2)Aristotle then lays out the method of this “most authoritative art” and concludes the first part of the Ethics with a brief discussion of the “chief good.” The chief good is the end of ethics, so ethics may be defined as “the art which is pursued for the sake of man’s ultimate end.” Sometimes Aristotle calls ethics an art, sometimes a science. This dual characterization is possible because ethics is a practical science.
The sciences are divided into the speculative and the practical. The speculative sciences are pursued for the sake of knowledge itself, and thus do not have their end in operation. For example, mathematics is a speculative science, because the process and the conclusions of mathematics are inoperative: That is, perfect mathematics does not involve praxis. The method of the speculative sciences is resolutory, which means that knowledge proceeds from effect to cause, resolving complex truths into simple truths. For example, the mathematician may deduce a single function from a complex set of discrete data.
The practical sciences, on the other hand, are ordered to operation. For example, carpentry involves a method and acquisition of knowledge, but carpentry is not complete if it does not involve the activity of making things from wood. The method of the practical sciences is compository, which means that they proceed from simple to complex truths. For example, a carpenter, knowing that the height of a 45-degree angle is identical to its width, discerns the correct pitch of a roof and decides to cut the webs at equal lengths.
Ethics is a science that is, in a sense, both speculative and practical, and therefore its method is variable. In ethics, one may resolve complex truths into the simple, such as when one derives from the relationship of persons the principle of justice. But the speculative aspect of ethics is subordinated to the practical: That is, the principles derived in ethics must be put into practice in particular cases. In other words, ethics is not complete if it is not practiced, and so it is primarily a practical science. Therefore, ethics is a science insofar as it involves the attainment of knowledge, and an art insofar as this knowledge is put into practice.
Every art is done for some end, and the end of ethics is happiness. Aristotle defines happiness as, “an activity in accordance with virtue,” especially “the highest virtue… of the best part in us.” We know that the intellect is the best part of man because it is by his intellect that he participates in the natural law and is able to become virtuous at all. Moreover, the intellect is what distinguishes man apart from the other animals; it is the intellect which is the most human part of him. Thus the activity of the intellect, which is the contemplation of truth, is man’s greatest happiness, and the end of the virtuous life.
Politics
So, how does politics differ from ethics? Aristotle notes in the beginning of the Politics: “Observation shows us, first, that every polis is a species of association, and, secondly, that all associations come into being for the sake of some good -- for all men do all their acts with a view to achieving something which is, in their view, a good.” Therefore, as the good is the end of ethics, the good of the community is the end of politics.
The method of political science is also similar to that of ethics. Politics is a practical science, as St. Thomas explains, “since the practical sciences are distinguished from the speculative sciences in that the speculative sciences are ordered exclusively to the knowledge of the truth, whereas the practical sciences are ordered to some work, [politics] must be comprised under practical philosophy, inasmuch as the city is a certain whole that human reason not only knows but also produces.”
Because politics is a practical science, its method is therefore, like ethics, compository. Thomas explains, “since human reason has to order not only the things that are used by man but also men themselves, who are ruled by reason, [politics] proceeds in either case from the simple to the complex.” However, though the method of politics as a science is similar to that of ethics, the practice of politics as an art is quite different. Because it is ordered not to the happiness of one person, but to the happiness of the whole community, it is necessary to have political activity beyond the scope of ethics.
Aristotle notes that most men are not capable of pursuing a moral education because they are not well disposed to practice virtue by their own inclination. And, though a man be eager to pursue the good, and learns how he might attain it, he will not attain the good until he acts. Likewise, St. Thomas observes:
A man needs to receive this training from another, whereby to arrive at the perfection of virtue. And as to those young people who are inclined to acts of virtue, by their good natural disposition, or by custom, or rather by the gift of God, paternal training suffices, which is by admonitions. But since some are found to be depraved, and prone to vice, and not easily amenable to words, it was necessary for such to be restrained from evil by force and fear, in order that, at least, they might desist from evil-doing, and leave others in peace, and that they themselves, by being habituated in this way, might be brought to do willingly what hitherto they did from fear, and thus become virtuous. Now this kind of training, which compels through fear of punishment, is the discipline of laws. Therefore in order that man might have peace and virtue, it was necessary for laws to be framed… (ST Ia-IIae, q.95, a.1)Hence the activity of political art has two chief characteristics; the didactic, which educates citizens in virtue, and the coercive, which disciplines citizens in the practice of virtue.
Law
This dual activity of politics is called government, and is done by way of legislation (the creation of laws). Law in general has four essential characteristics; it is “[1] an ordinance of reason [2] for the common good, [3] made by him who has care of the community, and [4] promulgated.” The natural law governs all moral activity, as it is the rational creature’s participation in the Eternal law. Politics, however, makes use of human law.
The human law manifests the dual method of moral science; its resolutory derivation of principles and compository application to particular cases. As Thomas explains:
Something may be derived from the natural law in two ways: first, as a conclusion from premises, secondly, by way of determination of certain generalities. The first way is like to that by which, in sciences, demonstrated conclusions are drawn from the principles: while the second mode is likened to that whereby, in the arts, general forms are particularized as to details[…] Accordingly both modes of derivation are found in the human law. But those things which are derived in the first way, are contained in human law not as emanating therefrom exclusively, but have some force from the natural law also. But those things which are derived in the second way, have no other force than that of human law. (ST Ia-IIae, q.95, a.2)Thus, the human law is a rational participation in the natural law, and is therefore an ordinance of reason.
But, while the natural law is a participation in the eternal law promulgated by God, the human law is promulgated by human authority. Thus there is a distinction between ethics and politics in its relationship to authority. The man who acts virtuously obeys the natural law from God. But citizens are also bound to obey laws that are enacted by human authority in the art of politics. Human authority participates in God’s authority insofar as it derives its principles from the natural law and seeks to attain the end for which the natural law itself is promulgated.
The Common Good
Ethics and politics are further distinguished in their relation to the end for which all law is promulgated. Ethics instructs man in virtue, the end of which is his own happiness. But because virtue is necessarily in accord with the natural law, it also contributes to the common good. Yet ethics is concerned with human acts and happiness simply. Politics, on the other hand, governs the whole community with the explicit end of attaining the common good. Therefore, the greatest distinction between ethics and politics is their relation to the common good. So, in order to understand this distinction well, the common good itself must be well understood.
The common good is called “common” because it is participatory. Strictly speaking, every good is common insofar as it is participatory, as Thomas says, “in the whole created universe there is not a good which is not such by participation.” This is not to say that there is no such thing as a “private good,” but that every good is ordered to some end, and to have a good is to participate in this order.
The common good is therefore defined as the good of the whole for which its parts are ordered. Because the common good is the end toward which its members participate, it is manifested primarily in the peace and order of its members. The most immediate example of the common good is the end of the domestic household; the peace and order of the family. For the peace of the family, the husband must provide for the good of his wife and children, the wife must care for her husband and children, and the children must respect one another and obey their parents. Each well-lived role has the character of virtue, and redounds to the happiness of each person, but the end of domestic virtue is not the happiness of any one person, but of the whole household.
Because all personal goods are ordered to the common good, the common good is better. The primacy of the common good over that of one person is summarized by Aristotle:
If the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. (NE I.2, 1094b)The primacy of the common good over the personal is not quantitative but categorical. That is, the common good is not the total sum of all personal goods: A pie, for instance, is not the common good of all who have a slice, because each slice that is taken from the pie diminishes the good available to others. Rather, the common good only increases by added participation; as the citizens grow in number and virtue, so grows the peace and order of the city.
That the common good is greater and prior to personal good does not imply that the common good is detrimental to the person. As Aristotle explains, it is quite the contrary:
The city is prior in the order of nature to the family and the individual. The reason for this is that the whole is necessarily prior to the part. If the whole body is destroyed, there will not be a foot or a hand, except in the ambiguous sense… All things derive their essential character from their function and their capacity; and it follows that if they are no longer fit to discharge their function, we ought not to say that they are still the same things, but only that, by an ambiguity, they still have the same names. (Pol I.2, 1253a18)That is, a single person cannot attain the good apart from the whole to which he is ordered. Man, being a political animal by nature, attains his good by participation in the community of which he is a part. As Charles De Koninck argues, the common good is in fact each man’s highest good:
The highest good of a man belongs to him not insofar as he is himself a certain whole in which the self is the principal object of his love, but "insofar as he is part of a whole," a whole which is accessible to him because of the very universality of his knowledge[…] Thus it is indeed as part that we are ordered to this greatest of all goods which can only be ours most completely through being communicable to others. (De Koninck, 30)The community to which man is ordered is not limited to the civitas. There is a variety of common goods which exist in a hierarchy, as there is of particular goods, and the degree to which man participates in each good determines its greatness. Therefore, God Himself is the greatest common good, because man participates in God by virtue of his very being.
Objections to the Primacy of the Common Good
We will consider three objections against the common good’s primacy over the person. Firstly, though politics is necessary for the governance of the human community, the individual who is well disposed to contemplate needs no human governance. The contemplative man has attained moral excellence and is led by his own knowledge. Thus, it would seem that the act of contemplation falls outside the purview of politics. Secondly, while it is necessary to pursue virtue in communion with others, contemplation itself is a solitary act, and so the highest good for the person is not the common good. Thirdly, appeal might be made to the dignity of the person, which is primary to the common good on account of its inviolability. That is, the dignity of the human person cannot be violated for the sake of another good.
To the first objection, we respond that politics is necessary not only because many persons are ill-disposed to pursue virtue by their own inclination, but because participation is impossible without an external governing principle. The good of the whole, as its end, is external to whatever participates in it. For example, the good of a man, though it involves a well-functioning hand, is not limited to the good of the hand itself: A man’s good is external to the good of his hand, because his hand is ordered to the good of the whole man. Moreover, because the good of the whole man is external to that of his hand, his hand is incapable of attaining this external good of its own principle.
Therefore, even if every member of the community were perfect in virtue, an external governing principle would be necessary to attain peace and order, as Etienne Gilson summarizes:
This or that man’s reason, though qualified to guide his actions for his welfare, is not, therefore, qualified to shape them for the good of the community to which he belongs, and to subordinate them to it. Here is the basis of the exteriority, so far as the individual is concerned, of the principle which obliges his activity. Law, then, will express the demands of reason ordering the individual’s life in view of the common good of his group and speaking from the outside in the name of that group. (Gilson, 195)The exteriority of the human law to each person is a reflection of the natural law from which it is derived. Man’s participation in the eternal law, while it orders him as a part of the Eternal law, is ordered to God Himself, who is external to man.
To the second objection, it should be noted that, though the end of ethics is the contemplation of Truth, contemplation is itself a special participation in the highest Good common to all things. Truth is not made private by man’s grasp of it. Though a solitary act by outward appearance, the activity of man’s intellect is itself a participation in the light of the Divine Intellect. Therefore, when one contemplates, he does not ascend from a good shared by the community to a noble personal good; rather, he ascends from a lesser common good to a greater common good.
To the third objection, we reply that personal dignity itself is derived from participation in the common good. Any attempt to elevate the singular person above the common good of which he is part only diminishes personal dignity, as De Koninck explains:
Through disordered love of singularity, one practically rejects the common good as a foreign good and one judges it to be incompatible with the excellence of our singular condition. One withdraws thus from order and takes refuge in oneself as though one were a universe for oneself, a universe rooted in a free and very personal act. One freely abdicates dignity as a rational creature in order to establish oneself as a radically independent whole. (De Koninck, 35)
To assert that personal dignity is something greater than its source is to say that the part, which is good insofar as it is ordered to the whole, is also good without the whole. This is absurd.
Conclusion
We may therefore conclude that ethics is not distinct from politics as an “individual” rule from a communal rule, but as the practical science of man’s good from the practical science of the common good. Ethics is ordered to the common good implicitly, and politics makes use of the principles of ethics in ordering man to the common good. Therefore, while ethics may be considered to be a “self-sufficient” science with respect to each person, it is essentially a part of politics.
Bibliography
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. trans. David Ross. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Aristotle. Politics. trans. Ernest Barker. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
De Koninck, Charles. On the Primacy of the Common Good. 1997. At https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/aquinas-review/1997/1997-dekoninck-common-good.pdf
Gilson, Etienne. Moral Values and the Moral Life: The Ethical Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas. trans. Leo Richard Ward. (reprint by Kessinger publishing).
Oesterle, John A. Ethics: The Introduction to Moral Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1957.
Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics. trans. C.I. Litzinger, O.P. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Ethics.htm
Thomas Aquinas. Sententia Libri Politicorum. trans. Ernest L. Fortin and Peter D. O’Neill. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Politics.htm
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Benziger bros., 1947. At https://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/index.html.
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