Resumen de Good men aren�t enough The dialectics between the law and the practical virtue in the Aristotelian thought: the philosophy between normative and critical approaches

Marcella Furtado de Magalhães Gomes

• The discussion between these two great streams of the Western political thought, normative and critical philosophies, can�t forget its political-philosophical Greek root in the Aristotelian thought. His philosophy defends a path that doesn�t adhere to extremes, but focuses on allying logically the ontic purpose and the unforeseeability of the results, which are only likely.

  In this paper, we address the dialectical movement between the ethical awareness of the individual and the political and legal organization of the excellent polis, in the thought of Aristotle. The man can only fulfill his end as a human being by internalising the heteronomous good expressed in the ethically constituted nomos and by the conscious exteriorization of the good in his own praxis. In short, the man may only become complete while an ethical being as he lives in an ethical community, i.e., a politically and legally organized community.