Paper Summary:

This paper examines the writings of Aristotle and Plato on the subject of equality of all individuals versus the needs of society to be led by the best and brightest. A discussion is presented of the compromises made by contemporary American society, as a democracy, in order to acknowledge the importance of an elite.

From the Paper:

"We may begin our discussion with Aristotle's Nicomachean Nicomachean , which he wrote in 350 b.c. The treatise covers a range of topics, but focuses on the ways in which both a person's character and his or her intelligence are related to the chance that that person has in life to be both happy and virtuous. Aristotle's definition of "virtue" (like that of his contemporaries) was different from the ways in which we in general today define the term: It was more inclusive, perhaps being more akin to our idea of conscience or morality. In this treatise, Aristotle outlines two different kinds of virtue (which we might also translate simply as excellence): moral virtue and intellectual virtue. Moral virtue, for Aristotle, is an outgrowth of an individual's character and comes about through a lifetime of decisions and actions. In other words, for Aristotle, moral virtue is effected by the accumulation of a person's repeated and habitual choices: We make ourselves into virtuous (or unvirtuous) people by acting or failing to act in virtuous ways whenever we are presented with the chance to do so."

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