Revista Tinerilor Economiºti (The Young Economists Journal)

Revista Tinerilor Economişti (The Young Economists Journal)
we pursue the others? This goal is the good.
The science which deals with the discovery and knowledge of this good is the
politics. The goal which Aristotle initially imposes to this discipline aims at the role
which it should play in the society.
The politics is that science to which the others (rhetoric, law) are
subordinated. Like Plato, Aristotle considers that it is really important to search for the
good at the level of the walled city, that is the good for everybody, because this will be
the good for each one. A state must be sufficient for itself and accomplish the goal for
which it exists: welfare. This is identified with “eudemonia” (happiness), which is also
the individual’s goal. „The fundamental principle of democratic constitution is liberty
[…] The first form of liberty is to lead and to be lead successively […] Another form is
everybody’ s right to live as he likes” (Aristotel, 2001).
Plato–as representative of ethical-political paradigm–maintains the same
theorem of man’s natural sociability. Man must be studied both at individual level and
especially at broader level of his public, political and social level. The author asserts –
through the voice of his character, Socrates – that the birth of a walled city occurs
because “each of us is not autonomous, but he lacks many things” (Platon, 1966). From
this point of view, the state-public system arises in order to cover and to realize “the
lack of self-sufficiency and work division” (Carpinschi, 1995) which become
fundamental for any walled city.
The politician or the decider has to aim at realizing the justice (dike), legal
order (eunomia) and peace (eirene). The perfect walled city can be realized if the
politics will follow the principle of justice and if it would be administered by a leaderwise
(king-philosopher), guided by the idea of Good. So the justice becomes a common
property of both the individual and the state and for the walled city it means the
principle of oikeiopragia, that is everybody has to do what he knows to do, the things
for which he was born for.
Hence we can conclude that public politics, as applied part of politics and
applied activity of the institutionalized-etatic system, aims at the general good of
society and must be understood as teleological actions, with a public and ethic
dimension.
3.2. Public politics – from ethics to an ideal hierarchy of interests
From moral point of view, public politics have to ensure the common good
for different social, political, economical, cultural groups within a society. The
resources or the capital allocation of different groups is a game of null sum which
generates winners and excluded. The dilemma of correct resources allocation and of
right choice among values and concurrent principles which may appear when it is about
public decision arises from the point of view of an applied ethics within the practice of
public politics. To establish the moral acceptability of the same act, to do competing or
even contradictory evaluations for the same decisional act suppose the analyse and
selection of different relevant consequences, of people or affected or implied groups.
From the point of view of classical utilitarians (J. Bentham, J. St. Mill), the
taking of the decision is based on principles of hedonist structure. The public decisions
will affect the members of the community in the following way: „they will produce
them certain pleasures or, on the contrary, they will produce them displeasures,
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