The great Australian philosopher John Anderson urged us ‘not to ask of a social institution: “What end or purpose does it serve?” but rather, “Of what conflicts is it the scene?”’ (Passmore 1962, p. xxii). If Aristotle had asked this question both of the polis and of the individual agent, he would have had an additional resource for understanding the teleological character of both the virtues and the social forms which provide them with a context. For it was Anderson’s insight—a Sophoclean insight—that it is through conflict and sometimes only through conflict that we learn what our ends and
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