Philosophical Virtue: In Defense of the Grand End
Kristen Inglis
In Polansky, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Cambridge, 2014

"[T]o promote virtue, the rulers must have legislative politike (nomothetike, NE X.9 1180b13-29, VI.8 1141b25). Legislative politike takes as its starting point a clear grasp of the human good (NE I.2 1094a22-25; cf. Politics 1321a14-16). [22] So these rulers' citizen virtue consists - in part at least - in their possession of and acting in accordance with the correct and articulate conception of human happiness that we find in the NE's political science lessons. We have seen what makes the rulers in the Politics III.4 city good citizens. What makes them good human beings? Politics III 1277a12-16 and 1277b25-26 make clear that it is their possessing phronesis; NE VI.13 1144b30-1145a2 implies this as well. [fn22: The universal laws that the lawmaker crafts in light of this target then guide the jurors and assemblymen charged with making a particular decree (psephisma) on individual legal cases. Aristotle calls the phronesis pertinent to adjudicating such cases "deliberative" (bouleutike) and "judicial" (dikastike) phronesis (NE VI.8 1141b25-30). Because it essentially concerns particular cases, it differs from the universal legislative politike that is on display in the ethical works.]" (INGLIS, p. 275) [PSA: note the connection between bouleutike and boulesis = resolution.]

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