Should the virtuous hold office?

This paper argues about why I agree with Aristotle that the virtuous should rule.
There are many to discuss about this. But to better understand my side on this question, we
must first answer the questions that Aristotle, himself, asked. What is a state? What is its
purpose? What is the good life? And what is the best form of rule?
The state is a collection of villages that come from the combining of households to
provide the peoples needs. For Aristotle, the telos or purpose of a thing that once fulfilled
depicts the completion of a thing. For example, the purpose of a household is to sustain
biological life, the village sustains more that daily recurring needs and the state provides for
the good life a moral or virtuous life. This sets up my argument for why I agree with him
that a virtuous man should hold office.
What is a good life? To answer this question, first, we must define what is good.
What is good, according to Aristotle, depends on which case it is injected unto. Personally
speaking, in a post-apocalyptic world, I can view killing a man for scavenged good as an act
of good for myself. On the other hand, speaking through the eyes of the law, killing that man
may be view as something that is the opposite of good for according to the law a member of
the community cannot kill anyone just because they want to. That being said, the good life
that the state provides for would then be defined with accordance to what political system is
being practiced in said state.
As an example, in the Philippines, democracy is the constitution that is being
practiced. This political system, as discussed in our lectures, is the rule of the many the
poor. The majority gets to elect who they want to be seated in office. They elect who they
view as good, who it is that appears to want the same things that they need and/or want.
The people often forget to contemplate whether or not whatever the promises of the person
they are thinking of electing are false pretenses to achieve a position of power. Another
question they forget to ask when choosing who to vote for is whether who they are going to
elect qualified to rule?
The question in the above paragraph brings to mind a new inquiry. How can one
qualify to become a ruler? It was earlier stated that the good life for a state depends on what
constitution being practiced in it. Therefore, to answer the question of who should rule, we
should first know what would be the ideal political system.
According to Aristotle, the best form of rule is Polity. In this political system, it is
neither the one or few rich nor the many poor who rule; instead it is the large middle class.

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He explain that the middle class is a better fit for rule because they are more likely to listen
to both sides of the argument for they are neither wealthy and privileged nor poor and
dastardly to reason. Between the rich and the poor, the latter, he sees, find themselves
superior to the former as well as sees themselves as more of a master to the poor which
then are their slaves.
In this light, we can say that a good action resides in the mean of two extremes.
Then, we can also say that a man who has this view can be a fitting ruler to a polity.
Similarly, people with this view of what is a good action can be seen as virtuous
because they can prevent either extremes form dominating the other. These people, then,
should hold office because they have a clear perspective of what kind of solution or
consequence would be fitting for a certain situation.
In conclusion, given that the purpose of the state is to provide the good life for its
community and that the best form of rule is polity then I agree with Aristotle that the virtuous
(middle class) should hold office.

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Reference(s):
Irwin, T., & Fine, G. (1995). Aristotle Selections. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing
Company, Inc.

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