An anthropological dilemma repeated here at DU:

[bemildred]

16. This is Philosophy, not Anthropology.

You can find the "elites should rule" argument in Plato's Republic, and from then on it is ubiquitous among ruling elites and their sycophants. Rather self-serving, I think, since it assumes it's own conclusion, i.e. that elites are in fact constitutionally better than their subjects, hence I consider it merely a self-serving rationalization. It amounts to saying the poor should be grateful to their oppressors.

I tend to the Consequential side, a knife should be sharp. The Greek idea of virtue is essentially that, applied to being a man. (Still, tough luck for the helots and women.) But this only works in a relative way, things are only "good" in a context that makes then "good", there is no universal "good" that is independent of human choice. Most of the time, it amounts to what the society you live in says is good, which can get quite strange.

Deontology is simply an appeal to authority of one sort or another, yet another way to kick the can down the road.

The solution, in my view, is to stop thinking of collective abstractions like "man" as though they had characteristics that properly belong only to individuals.