Unlike most modern thinkers, Aristotle sees complete continuity between the study of ethics and the study of politics. His argument runs something like this: no single individual is necessary to the existence or thriving of a city (the Greek word is polis, which could mean the specific form of city-state familiar to Aristotle, or could refer more generally to any effectively organized human community), but some city or other is necessary to the development of any actualized human individual. So the ethics or virtue of a person always relates inherently to her or his political community.
Do you find this reasoning compelling, and what implications does it have for how we think about ethics?
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