Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) created a whole new way to think about the collision between politics and philosophy. It explicitly creates a new art (politike, or the art of politics) where the best political organization of a city is answerable to philosophical definitions of human happiness, justice and “the good life.” Or does it? Do we really need to read it first as a philosophical statement with the politics as derivative of the philosophy?

It certainly is tempting to focus on Aristotle’s philosophical examination of what makes us human —

• How do humans pursue happiness (eudaemonia)?

• How do we seek to fulfill our desires (epithumia) as simultaneously rational (logos) and emotional (pathe) and political animals?

• How do we balance these individual desires and longings (orexis) with living with others?

Reading NE this way is an Enlightenment bias that foregrounds the philosophical aspects and shoves “the political art” into the background. The Enlightenment wants us to think about politics as coming after our discovery of what makes us all share a common humanity. In other words, the legitimacy of any state is supposed to be founded on an understanding of humanity and its god-given rights and aspirations. Political institutions are then built up around this understanding. At least that’s the conventional story handed down to us as our Enlightenment habituation.

This way madness lies (and tyranny). Eventually, such a bias marshaled endless concepts of non-conformity to keep people in line: madness, criminality and a host of other “deviations” that must be corrected or purged in the name of societal progress toward an essential humanity — or as Kant put it in “What Is Enlightenment?", man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. This much we know and no more needs to be said at this point. (You can watch Chomsky and Foucault debate the point here.)

In a previous post, I showed how Freud ran up to the limits of psycho-analysis and the Enlightenment’s directional flow in the final chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents. Starting from a deep understanding of individual “libidinal economics”, his career relentlessly traced the unfolding of individual development and, in Civilization, reaches a dead end and must contemplate what would happen if the flow of inquiry moved in the other direction: “in the one case [the process of individual development] the integration of separate individuals into a human group, and in the other case [the process of civilization] the creation of a unified group out of many individuals” (Standard Edition 140).

What he found when he reversed the flow is what Aristotle found in NE — ethics (144) and human happiness:

… in the process of civilization things are different [from the “process of individual development”]. Here by far the most important thing is the aim of creating a unity out of the individual human beings. It is true that the aim of happiness is still there, but it is pushed into the background. (141)

For Freud, the concept of happiness that emerges from psycho-analysis must be “pushed to the background” in this new form of knowledge, but this repression is incomplete as “the aim of happiness is still there.” To accommodate the return of happiness, psycho-analysis may have very little to say because reversing the flow of analysis will require other concepts: “we are only dealing with analogies and that it is dangerous, not only with men but with concepts, to tear them from the sphere in which they have originated and been evolved” (147).

Aristotle knew this because he had already been there. He had already staked out the “disputed ground” (142) Freud envisioned in the collision of “the process of civilization” and the “development of the individual”. Famously, Aristotle also found the need to think about human happiness (eudaemonia) in the collision.

NE is the collision itself.

While Freud could not name the “sphere of knowledge” that would take up the opposite flow of psycho-analysis, NE (and by extension Aristotle’s Politics) starts within the disputed ground and gives it a name — politike (“political art” as translated by Bartlett and Collins, but “the art of politics” and “the political” are equally valid translations according to them).

Aristotle does not arrive here from an originating theory of human happiness. If anything, it’s the other way around. He arrives at the need to think about human happiness by formulating an art of politics. Aristotle’s definitions of happiness (eudaemonia), virtue (arete), the good (to agathos) and reason (logos) are all concepts marshaled within the political art. He continually and explicitly postpone’s inquiries into what they are (their “nature” and the “what is” questions of essence) in favor of what they should mean to the politician whose job is “habituating citizens”:

by habituating citizens, lawgivers make them good, and this is the wish of every lawgiver; all who do not do this well are in error, and it is in this respect that a good regime [politeia] differs from a base regime. (Book 2, Chapter 1, 1103b 4-5)

Insofar as this is the aim of those who govern, “precision” will only be necessary up to a point. Aristotle frequently runs up against this problem of “precision” at which points in his argument he typically calls for a “postponement” of further inquiry. This postponement is almost always in the service of setting limits to the present inquiry. In fact, Aristotle’s statements about politike’s limits either immediately follow or precede the postponement statements.

At the end of Book 1 (Chapter 13), this postponement-limit rhetorical trick comes to a head and is worth quoting at length to demonstrate how Aristotle walks a tightrope: he insists that human happiness is fundamental to the art of politics without letting NE become a digression into a foundational metaphysics of humanity. (He frequently calls out, names and returns from these “digressions” in Book 1.) After reminding his audience that we are talking about “the political art” (1102a 11-12), he embarks on the critical summary of Book 1:

But that we must examine the virtue distinctive of a human being is clear, for we were seeking both the human good and human happiness. We mean by “virtue distinctive of a human being” not that of the body but that of the soul, and by “happiness” we mean an activity of the soul. But if these things are so, then it is clear that the politician ought to know in some way about the soul, just as also someone who is going to treat the eye must know the whole body as well — and even more so inasmuch as the political art is more honorable and better than medicine. Those physicians who are refined take very seriously what pertains to knowledge of the body, and the politician too ought to contemplate the soul; but he ought to contemplate it for the sake of these things and up to the point that is adequate for what is being sought: to be more precise is perhaps too difficult for the tasks set forth. (1.13, 1102a 14-26, emphasis added)

The “we” that is addressed here — four times in rapid succession in the translation — are clearly not philosophers. He is quite clear in the opening sections of Book 1 that the audience he is addressing are citizens who are actively involved in making political decisions. After the fourth repetition of “we” in the passage cited, he finally names “the politician” as the proper name of the “we”. So, as politicians, “we must examine the virtue distinctive of a human being”.

It is easy to gloss over who Aristotle’s “we” actually is so as to make NE into a metaphysics of human nature first and a definition of the art of governing second. However, to do so is to establish the directional flow in favor of our Enlightenment bias for making it seem like defining the essence of human nature precedes our concept of politics.

What if we resist this temptation and take seriously that Aristotle’s starting point for NE is the definition of a political techne? I think we find a new way to imagine the Enlightenment’s relationship between definitions of human nature and politics.

To be clear, the directional flow for Aristotle is not the opposite of Freud’s. His politike does not start from “the process of civilization” and arrive at the unifying of individuals. Nor is Aristotle waiting for the collision sometime in the future as Freud was in Civilization. Aristotle is pulling the two flows toward himself, forcing the collision, and seeing what comes of it in his own time and place.

What comes of it is the imperative — “we must examine the virtue distinctive of a human being” — but not go too far in doing so. In other words, Aristotle’s “we must” is paired with an assertion of the practical limits of theoretical precision about the human good within the art of politics. This twin move — we must examine human nature, but only so far — is the foundational rhetorical technique of Aristotle’s politike in Book 1. In making this rhetorical move, especially in 1.13, he’s operating in the brackish waters created by the collision of two opposing flows — the “what is” questions (of the philosopher) are colliding with the “how to” (techne) questions of uniting citizens in a just, equitable and fair polis. The “what is” questions need not be completely settled for the “how to” questions to bring about justice and happiness for the many.

For Aristotle’s politike, “outlines” and “sketches” are all that is necessary for getting started. The definitive answers will have to come later (some in the later Books and some much later as history unfolds):

Let the good have been sketched in this way, then, for perhaps one ought to outline it first and fill it in later. It might seem to belong to everyone to advance and fully articulate things whose sketch is in a noble condition, and time is a good discoverer of or contributor to such things: from this having arisen the advancement of the arts too, for it belongs to everyone to add what is lacking. (Book 1, Chapter 8, 1098a 20-26, emphasis added)

Aristotle’s “we must” thus originates within politike, which foregrounds the importance of these questions as both philosophical and political questions simultaneously. Putting human happiness, the good, and the virtues in the foreground (as opposed to Freud’s imagined background) is what politike does, but without providing perfect and complete answers. The art of politics only helps us to recognize “opportune moments” (kairos) and to activate the appropriate virtues to achieve just, fair and equitable outcomes. As such, politike pulls in philosophy, but without giving it the last word. At best, the philosopher is an assistant who can help to answer the “what is” questions. It is up to politicians to frame the issues at hand, make the practical decisions, and to know their limits in doing so.

Yes, “we must” ask these questions as a political imperative if we want to live in a just, fair and equitable society. By taking up the imperative in specific circumstances and kairos, we will re-activate the collision between the theoretical contemplation of human happiness and the in-the-moment decisions about how we distribute society’s benefits — wealth, honor, food, health, etc. — without letting the “what is” have the final teleological say. Thus, we will be the ones who “add what is lacking” because we will be the ones who reactivate this collision each time a kairos occurs.

To put a button on this meditation: Aristotle’s NE is giving us the critical values that will be essential to activate in this collision — happiness (eudaemonia), virtues (arete), correct reason (orthos logos), friendship, good will, decency, etc. — without telling us definitively what they are. We are given merely a “sketch” and an “outline”, which for Aristotle is good enough for a political art. Armed with these, we must use them, and by doing so intentionally and authentically we will contribute to making them real and widespread without knowing what the answers are ahead of time. Having the answers before the questions begin is not only not necessary, but impossible and potentially dangerous.