The question of whether statesmanship has a moral dimension was presented in several class discussions, and after careful consideration, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a moral component because statesmen are considering the common good. If one takes the assumption that the goal of the statesman is to provide for the common good of all or even most of the people he serves, then the statesman is essentially answering a moral question. According to Aristotle, this moral question arises when the decision is made between what is “right,” or for the common good, and what is “wrong,” or contrary to the common good. A critic might argue that leaders like Stalin and Kim John Un are not statesmen with the goal of providing for the common …show more content…
Ceaser writes, “a knowledge of place seeks to understand the constraints and developmental forces at work in the world both in time (a historical era) and space (a people or a nation)” (42). In other words, the study of place looks at two ideas: the point of origin or the development of a society and the character of the people. Tocqueville relies on Montesquieu’s general causes of social life, those being physical causes and moral causes. The physical causes subject a people group to develop in a particular way, whether it’s geography, climate, or placement. Moral causes are what allow people in the same physical contexts to differ in their development, and these causes include religion, manners, and the way of thinking (43). After understanding the historical development aspect of the “study of place,” Ceaser then moves to a narrower subset of geography through the analysis of the “genius of a people.” The “genius” or “mores” of a people means the “sum of moral and intellectual dispositions of men in society” (20). Tocqueville claims that an analysis of mores can be helpful in determining whether a form of government would succeed or fail because of how well it fits with the prevailing genius