Marisa Lopes

Protagoras and Aristotle’s conceptions of virtue are without doubt different. The former conceives it as the exercise of certain moral qualities that are indispensable to the attainment or maintenance of what is useful to oneself and to those who dedicate themselves to the affairs of the city. The latter conceives it as a strong and immutable state of character, which is the condition for the realization of the individual’s and of the city’s Eudaimonia. It would seem, however, that Protagoras and Aristotle converge on this point: the subsistence of a city does not depend upon a ruler who holds the science of ruling well with which he rules, but rather on well educated and excellent rulers and citizens, which is the condition for good political exercise. My aim here is to indicate the affinity between the political conceptions of Protagoras and Aristotle concerning the end of civic education as a guarantee of justice in the city.

This papers intends to show that Aristotle's theory on the political nature of man implies a specific difference in relation to other animals and that this does not arise from his understanding of human beings as naturally vulnerable animals that would seek in political life an artifice to redress their insufficiency or individual vulnerability to live. The qualitative difference of human beings in relation to other animals - including political species, such as bees or ants - drives them to an equally specific type of life, whose foundation obeys values that ca be universalized. The political application of these values does not correspond to what is done in the domestic sphere, nor does it correspond to the mere transposition to a quantitatively superior community, because the universality of political values is extracted from what is understood by human beings as necessary for the realization of man as man, not man as an element of nature.