Reeve (2024) Introduction to Nicomachean Ethics (2)

Aristotle (2024). Nicomachean Ethics. Second Edition. Translated With Introduction and Notes By C. D. C. Reeve Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.

 

3. The Foundations of Politics

How, then, do we get this understanding? Where do we start the process? “We must,” Aristotle says, “start from things that are known. But things are known in two ways; for some are known to us, some unconditionally. Presumably, then, one must start from things known to us” (1095b2–4). For the sake of clarity, let us call these “raw starting-points.” These are what we start from when we are arguing to explanatory scientific starting-points. It is crucial not to confuse the two.

In the case of the methodical inquiry of NE, we are told that a raw starting- point is “the that” (1095b6; also 1098b2–3) and that it concerns “noble things, just things, and the subject matter of politics as a whole” (1095b5–6). But since no explicit examples are given of these starting-points, we need to do some detective work to get a better understanding of what exactly they are.

An important clue to their nature derives from the way that we gain access to them: “it is virtue, whether natural or habituated, that teaches correct belief about the starting-point” (NE 1151a18–19). Hence Aristotle’s insistence on the importance of being well or nobly brought up: “it makes no small difference, then, whether people are habituated in one way or in another way straight from childhood; on the contrary, it makes a huge one—or rather, all the difference” (1103b23–25). Equally important is the account of the way that failure to be brought up well affects or blocks our access to raw starting-points:

Ordinary people naturally obey not shame but fear and abstain [자제하다] from base things not because of their shamefulness but because of the sanctions involved; for living by feeling as they do, they pursue the pleasures that are properly their own as well as the things through which these come about, and avoid the opposing pains. Of the noble and the truly pleasant, however, they have no understanding at all, not having tasted it. What sort of argument, then, could reform such people? For it is not possible—or not easy—to alter by argument what has long since been locked up in traits of character. (NE 1179b11–16)

By being habituated badly where pleasures and pains are concerned, people are prevented from experiencing what is noble and truly pleasant.

One sort of raw political starting-point, then, is a belief about the sort of value that noble things (as well as just things) have. People who have been correctly habituated to enjoy and hate in a noble way see correctly that these things are intrinsically valuable or choiceworthy for their own sake and that they are more valuable than external goods.

People who have been inadequately habituated cannot see this and so reject one of the raw starting- points of politics right off the bat.

Happiness is also a raw starting-point of politics (NE 1102a2–4), about which people quite reasonably get “their suppositions . . . from their lives” (1095b15–16). Hence happiness too can seem as variable as good things generally (1094a16–17). As a result, ordinary people—anyway “the most unrefined ones”—suppose that happiness is pleasure, since their bad habit uation, especially where bodily pleasures and pains are concerned, leads them exclusively to pursue “money, honors, and bodily pleasures . . . on the supposition that they are the best goods” (1168b16–18). Yet, as Aristotle points out, they “get a hearing for their choice,” since people in positions of power, like Sardanapalus, who can do what they want, pursue these goods too. It is this argument that makes their views worth examining (1095b19–22). The same goes for people whose upbringings have led them to pursue honor as if it were the best good.

Raw political starting-points, we now see, are socially mediated and language-mediated facts (or putative facts) that are accessible only to properly socialized subjects and so only to subjects who are members of societies— that is, of groups that socialize or habituate their members into some common form of life. Here is Aristotle himself on the topic:

The voice is a signifier of what is pleasant or painful, which is why it is also possessed by the other animals (for their nature does extend this far, namely, to having the perception of pleasure and pain and signifying them to each other). But speech is for making clear what is advantageous or harmful, and so too what is just or unjust; for this is special to humans, in comparison to the other animals, that they alone have perception of the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, and the rest. And it is community in these that makes a household and a city. (Pol. 1253a10–18)

It follows, then, that the beliefs of properly socialized subjects—or the way things noble, just, and so on appear to them because of such socialization— are the rawest data available. It is to these that politics is ultimately answer able. That is why the NE invariably appeals to what socialized subjects say or think or to how things seem or appear to them (for example, 1098b9–12).

Because the things that appear to be so to appropriately socialized subjects are the raw starting-points in canonical sciences just as much as in politics, the only difference between them lying in the sort of socialization involved, we must be careful not to think of an appeal to “the things that are said (ta legomena)” (NE 1098b10, 1145b20) as an appeal to evidence of a sort quite different from the sort appealed to in a canonical science. We are not in the one case appealing to conceptual considerations or “intuitions,” and in the other case to empirical facts or findings. We are not looking at analytic matters as opposed to synthetic ones. Instead, what we have in both cases are socially mediated facts, some closer to the conceptual or the analytic, some closer to the empirical or synthetic. Political subjects who disagree about the intrinsic choiceworthiness of what is noble, for example, are not disagreeing about a concept or about the meaning of a word but are disagreeing about a substantive issue concerning how to live. Aristotle’s account of happiness and his definition of virtue of character as a sort of mean state are to be evaluated not by appeal to our intuitions but by appeal to the facts of our lives (1179a17–22).

These notions may well, then, be epistemically sanctioned within these other bodies of knowledge too, providing correct explanations of the relevant sorts of facts. But this does not mean that politics must be committed to them as fixed points of its own explanatory enterprise. Rather it takes them on board wholly and entirely as answerable to raw political starting-points and must reject them if they prove inadequate for those purposes. In the only really important sense, then, politics has political facts as its sole foundations. Biology, metaphysics, and other bodies of knowledge have no foundational role in politics whatsoever.

 

4. Explanatory Starting-points and Dialectic

In the case of canonical sciences, the most important explanatory starting points consist of definitions that specify the kind (or genus) and differences (or differentiae) of the real (as opposed to nominal) universal essences of the beings with which the science deals (APo. 93b29–94a19). Since scientific definitions must be apt starting-points of demonstrations, this implies, Aristotle thinks, that the “extremes and the middle terms must come from the same kind” (75b10–11). As a result, a single canonical science must deal with a single kind (87a38–39). The conclusion we reached earlier—that politics deals with and is empirically based only on political facts—thus marks another potential similarity between politics and a canonical science, since it suggests that politics does deal with a single kind and so meets a crucial condition definitive of a canonical science.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in defining the virtues of character, which are the explanatory starting-points of politics and are those states of the soul with which noble and just actions must be in accord, Aristotle first specifies their kind (NE 1106a12–13). They are, he says, states—where a state is a condition “due to which we are well or badly off in relation to feelings” (1105b25–26). Then, making use of the so-called doctrine of the mean, he goes on to tell us what the differences are of the states that are virtues: “Virtue . . . is a deliberately choosing state, which is in a mean in relation to us, one defined by a reason and the one by which a practically wise person would define it” (1106b36–1107a1). At that point he implies he has discovered virtue’s “substance, and the account that states its essence” (1107a6–7). It is just what a definition or account in a canonical science is supposed to do (APo. 90b16, 93b29).

There is an important difference...If politics is a science at all, it is a practical one, which aims to make us good. This means that the definitions it produces must be of a sort that can guide the actions of politicians, legislators, and individual agents. They must, in a word, be definitions that can be put into practice. Thus, Aristotle’s major criticism of Plato’s view on the Form of the good is that it is impractical: “Even if there is some single good predicated in common of all intrinsic goods, a separable one that is itself an intrinsic good, it is clear that it would not be doable in action or acquirable by a human being. But that is the sort that is being sought now” (NE 1096b32–35). Moreover, it is even impractical in a more attenuated [약화된] sense, namely, as a sort of regulative ideal, unachievable in action yet guiding it from beyond. For to treat it as such results in a clash with the productive sciences as these are actually practiced, as the practitioners of the productive sciences, though seeking some good, ignore the Form of the good altogether, “yet for all craftsmen not to know—and not even to look for—so important an aid would hardly be reasonable” (1097a6–8).

It is true that Aristotle’s own definition of happiness as activity of the soul in accord with the best and most complete virtue seems to entail that a certain theoretical activity—the contemplation of the god—is the best sort of happiness (NE 10.7–8). But it is not a theoretical definition for all that, if by “theoretical” we mean, as we should, that truth alone is the measure of its correctness. What matters most is that what it defines, unlike Plato’s good itself, is something we can put into practice—something we can do. That is why the measure of its success is an entirely practical one: “When we examine what has been previously said, . . . it must be by bringing it to bear on the works and the life, and if it is in harmony with them, one must accept it, but if it clashes, one must suppose it mere words” (1179a20–22). With similar concerns in mind, Aristotle prefaces his definition of virtue of character with an account of how we think such virtue is acquired (2.1) and with a reminder that the goal of the NE is practical, not theoretical (2.2). When the definition is finally developed (2.5–6), we see that it is in keeping with these prefatory comments, since it is one that can guide us in both inculcating and maintaining the virtues of character in others and in ourselves (2.9).

Nowadays philosophy is for the most part a theoretical subject, so it is easy to forget that Aristotle thinks of some branches of philosophy in quite a different way. His discussion of voluntariness and involuntari ness, for example, is intended to be “also useful to legislators regarding honors and punishments” (NE 1109b34–35). When we evaluate that discussion, therefore, we should not just do so in standard philosophical fashion—by looking for clever counterexamples, however far-fetched they might be. We should think rather of how well it would work in practical life, where the far-fetched seldom occurs and requires special provision when it does. Here the discussion of decency (5.10) should serve as our guide.

Aristotle describes what he is undertaking in the NE specifically as a “methodical inquiry,” as we saw, and as a contribution to the “philosophy of human affairs.” And to the explanatory scientific starting-points of these, he claims, there is a unique route

Dialectic is recognizably a descendant of the Socratic elenchus, which famously begins with a question like this: Ti esti to kalon? What is the noble? The respondent, sometimes after a bit of nudging, comes up with a universal definition: what is noble is what all the gods love, or whatever it might be (I adapt a well-known answer from Plato’s Euthyphro). Socrates then puts this definition to the test by drawing attention to some things that seem true to the respondent himself but which conflict with his defi nition. The puzzle, or aporia, that results from this conflict then remains for the respondent to try to solve, usually by reformulating or rejecting his definition. Aristotle understood this process in terms that reveal its rela tionship to his own

Think now about the respondent’s first answer, his first definition: what is noble is what all the gods love. Although it is soon shown to be incor rect, there is something quite remarkable about its very existence. Through experience shaped by acculturation and habituation involving the learn ing of a natural language the respondent is confident that he can say what nobility is. He has learned to apply the word “noble” to particular people, actions, and so on correctly enough to pass muster as knowing its mean ing, knowing how to use it. From these particular cases he has reached a putative universal, something the particular cases have in common, but when he tries to define that universal in words, he gets it wrong, as Socrates shows. Here is Aristotle registering the significance of this:

The things that are knowable and primary for particular groups of people are often only slightly knowable and have little or nothing of the being in them. Nonetheless, beginning from things that are poorly known but known to ourselves, we must try to know the ones that are wholly knowable, proceeding, as has just been said, through the former. (Met. 1029b8–12)

The nominal (or analytic, meaning-based) definition of the general term “thunder,” for example, might pick out the universal “loud noise in the clouds.” When science investigates the things that have this nominal essence, it may find that they also have a real essence or nature in terms of which their other features can be scientifically explained:

Since a definition is said to be an account of what something is, it is evident that one sort will be an account of what its name, or some other name-like account, signifies—for example, what tri angle signifies. . . . Another sort of definition is an account that makes clear why it exists. So the former sort signifies something but does not prove it, whereas the latter will evidently be like a demonstration of what it is, differing in arrangement from a demonstration; for there is a difference between saying why it thunders and saying what thunder is. In the first case you will say: because fire is being extinguished in the clouds. And what is thunder? The loud noise of fire being extinguished in the clouds. Hence the same account is given in different ways. In one way it is a continuous demonstration, in the other a defini tion. Further, a definition of thunder is “a noise in the clouds,” and this is a conclusion of the demonstration of what it is. The definition of an immediate item, though, is an indemonstrable positing of what it is. (APo. 93b29–94a10)

A real (or synthetic, fact-based) definition, which analyzes this real essence into its “elements and starting-points” (Ph. 184a23), which will be definable but indemonstrable, makes intrinsically clear what the nominal definition made clear to us only by enabling us to recognize instances of thunder in a fairly—but imperfectly—reliable way. As a result, thunder itself, now clearly a natural and not just a conventional kind, becomes better known not just to us but entirely or unconditionally (NE 1095b2–8). These ana lyzed universals, which are the sort reached at stage (4), are the ones suited to serve as starting-points of the sciences and crafts: “People with experi ence know the that but not the why, whereas those with craft knowledge know the explanation why, that is, the cause” (Met. 981a28–30).

The fact that all or most people believe something leads us “to trust it as something in accord with experience” (Div. Somn. 426b14–16), and—since human beings “are naturally adequate as regards the truth and for the most part happen upon it” (Rh. 1355a15–17)—as containing some truth. That is why, having catalogued some of the things that people believe happiness to be, Aristotle writes: “Some of these views are held by many and are of long standing, while others are held by a few reputable men. And it is not reasonable to suppose that either group is entirely wrong, but rather that they are correct on one point at least or even on most” (NE 1098b27–29). Later he generalizes the claim: “things that seem to be so to everyone, these, we say, are” (1172b36–1173a1). Raw starting-points are just that—raw. But when refined, some shred of truth is likely to be found in them. So likely, indeed, that if none is found, this will itself be a surprising fact needing to be explained: “when a reasonable explanation is given of why an untrue view appears true, this makes us more persuaded of the true view” (1154a24–25). It is in the perhaps mere grain of truth enclosed in an acceptable belief that a philosopher or scientist is interested, then, not in the general acceptability of the surrounding husk, much of which he may discard.