Politics for Aristotle is not a struggle between individuals or classes for power, nor a device for getting done such elementary tasks as the maintenance of order and security without too great encroachments on individual liberty.

The state is "a community of well-being in families and aggregations of families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life." The legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim is the good life.
In an early dialogue of Plato's, the Protagoras, Socrates asks Protagoras why it is not as easy to find teachers of virtue as it is to find teachers of swordsmanship, riding, or any other art.

Protagoras' answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.

Plato and Aristotle both accept the view of moral education implied in this answer.

In a passage of the Republic (492 b) Plato repudiates the notion that the sophists have a corrupting moral influence upon young men.