1998/12/01 by Gerald M. Mara · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
paper · doi:10.2307/3235230
openalex publication_date 1998/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Postmodern liberalism's concern with the relationship between culture and identity has intensified the long-running debate within liberalism about the relationship between successful political institutions and the development of civic virtue or character among the citizens. Aristotle's dialogic treatment of ho spoudaios (the excellent human being) in the Nicomachean Ethics contributes to the liberal conversation by interrogating a number of the conceptions of ho spoudaios prevalent within the democratic culture. In connecting his investigation of ho spoudaios to a variety of conceptions of political virtue, Aristotle makes clear that questions about the content of good citizenship cannot be separated from questions about human excellence, offering a teleological approach improving the accounts offered by neutralist, purposive and postmodern variants of liberalism.