Edward Snowden Research Paper

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Some argue that Edward Snowden acted out of love for his country and that he is a whistleblower who revealed wrongdoing by our government and believed that the people had the right to know what the government was up to in order to uphold their rights. However, others argue that his act of revealing government secrets was traitorous and what he did was in fact extremely criminal. In the eyes of Aristotle, a good citizen is a person that honors the constitution and its rights. Meanwhile a good man is one who possesses perfect virtue and does what is best for his community. Edward Snowden could be considered good man in a bad state because while his act doesn’t really conform to being a good citizen since he broke the law he does stick true to…show more content…
While Edward Snowden’s actions may have been for the betterment of his country you could argue that what he did was harmful to his surroundings and that he would not necessarily qualify as a good citizen. What he did was harmful because it arguably jeopardized the security of the state and the way he went about his actions created unneeded harm to its image. Meanwhile, Snowden could definitely be considered a good man because according to Aristotle a good man possess the virtue of the “complete good”. The good man does what is good to himself and to everyone else around him and you could argue that what Edward Snowden did was just that. However while he may have done what he believed was right for himself and everyone around him, he does not follow the ethics of responsibility according to Weber who says that people who stick to their principle will only get us killed. This could be relevant to Snowden because we can see all the harm that can be caused when a person that sticks to his principles decides to unilaterally act on his own. It creates a scenario of mass tension and unrest for the population and can have bad

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