Aristotle’s Nichomacean Ethics (NE) has trouble getting started and defining what it’s about. Book 1 and the first chapters of Book 2 spend a great deal of time setting the limits of the discussion, defining who this discussion is for, and digressing and beginning again.

For one thing, “ethics” is not what Aristotle says he’s writing about. Rather, he’s explicitly writing a work of “politics”. As such, the level of precision required in his argument is less rigorous than if he were writing up a theory. Aristotle offers NE as a techne (art) as opposed to theoretike. The difference is important and repeated occasionally. As techne, NE is less concerned with precision and more with practical outcomes — much more like the work of a carpenter who seeks practical outcomes as a craftsman rather than a geometer who seeks theoretical answers to stable Truths.

For another thing, Aristotle makes various unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the relationship among “the good”, “happiness” and “virtue.” Is there a single Platonic idea of “the good” that unites all things that can be considered good? Or is “the good” defined within a specific domain? Does happiness result from a virtuous life? Is virtue the path to happiness? Or is happiness unnecessary for the virtuous life? Is happiness the greatest good, or is the exercise of virtue higher than happiness? We end Book 1 without a satisfactory conclusion.

For a third thing, Aristotle explicitly postpones a number of inquiries that would seemingly be foundational to his political discussion: what is happiness? what is virtue? what is “correct reason” (orthos logos)? These postponements don’t seem to bother Aristotle; he feels perfectly comfortable proceeding without laying down these seeming preliminaries. The discussion about how to be a virtuous political leader and citizen can proceed without dwelling on these theoretical discussions. It’s also clear to Aristotle that these detailed inquiries are not part of the “political art” (politike) — they are not necessary to the endeavor:

The inquiry would be adequately made if it should attain the clarity that accords with the subject matter [political art]. For one should not seek out precision in all arguments alike, just as one should not do so in the products of craftsmanship either. The noble things and the just things, which the political art examines, admit of much dispute and variability, such that they are held to exist by law [nomos, which could also mean “custom” or “convention”] alone and not by nature. (1.3, 1094b13-17)

When it comes to the intersection of ethics and politics, Aristotle is thus a pragmatist. We can still have a productive discussion about how to live together in a functional society concerned with maximizing happiness even if we have a difficult time grounding the discussion in univocal answers to “what is good,” “what is virtue,” “what is orthos logos” and “what constitutes human happiness.” To definitively answer these, one would need to undertake a theoretical inquiry into “nature” in order to seek truth. But as a politician — or more properly a philosopher educating citizens on the art of politics — our work will be more on the order of craftsmen who undertake a practical art where “the good” is defined more as fitness for purpose than a Platonic idea. All we need is a commitment and an intuitive understanding of these concepts.

This pragmatism is central to Aristotelian thought. Postponing, limiting, beginning again and equivocating are not the symptoms of intellectual weakness, but are fundamental to inquiries and discussions that are more craftsmanlike and practical than contemplative and truth-seeking for its own sake.

Clearly, this is not put forward as a fully baked theory of human nature. As Pierre Hadot pointed out, “… it does not occur to Aristotle to found an individual ethics with no relation to the city.”

Instead, in the Nicomachean Ethics, he addresses politicians and legislators in order to form their judgment, by describing to them the various aspects of man’s virtue and happiness and thus teaching them to legislate in such a way as to give the citizens the possibility of practicing the virtuous life. (What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 90)

Therefore, it would be a mistake to say that Aristotle has a theory of human nature and thus try to derive his politics as an extension of the theory. That is not the actual order in which the book proceeds. Rather, Aristotle is explicitly working in the other direction — what makes a good community (a city-state), and what is required ethically of the individuals who are its citizens and governors? At minimum, citizens must agree that virtue, justice, the good, and human happiness are desirable outcomes for any political community. But as a politician and a citizen, these discussions should never be untethered from the particular circumstances in which the concepts need to be enacted.

It is important to bear in mind that these metaphysical discussions are not irrelevant to politics. By “postponing” or “saving for later” these discussions, Aristotle is keeping them close. They remain relevant but unanswerable at the level of an “outline”, which is how he positions the discussion throughout Book 1 and the beginning of Book 2. By sketching the outline of an art of politics, Aristotle insists that these concepts are essential to the practical work, though this outline is not the time nor place to define them.

What is the point then of NE? It is, I believe, fairly straightforward. The virtues he covers are the values that one must enact in any given political and moral circumstance. He’s teaching his listeners how to activate virtues circumstantially, and this activation typically involves finding the “mean” between excessive and deficient behavior. If “correct reason” is anything at all, it is this cultivated and habituated ability to find the right values to apply to any given situation.

As an example, Aristotle tackles this problem in his discussion of homonia in Book 9, Chapter 6. It is important that homonia is discussed within Aristotle’s lengthy discussion of “friendship” as a virtue. Much of his discussion is at attempt to extend the virtue of friendship beyond people who know each other. In doing so, he arrives at virtues such as “good will” (essentially a disposition to be friends with unknown others) and homonia.

Bartlett and Collins translate homonia as “like-mindedness”. It is clear to Aristotle that like-mindedness does not mean that everyone holds the “same opinions” nor that they share the same beliefs about “things in the heavens.” Rather, political homonia is about agreement on the big issues facing the body politic and that we should be disposed to each other as “friends” in the resolve to address those issues to the benefit of the city as a collection of individuals striving for their own eudaemonia.

… cities are like-minded whenever people are of the same judgment concerning what is advantageous, choose the same things, and do what has been resolved in common. It is about matters of action, therefore, that people agree, and in particular about what is of great import and admits of belonging to both parties or to all involved. (9.6, 1166)

Aristotle concludes this thought with “Like-mindedness, therefore, appears to be political friendship.” Thus politics (and therefore justice and promotion of the good of the city’s inhabitants) will be about the ability to activate values (virtues) that are essential to the health of the polity without founding those values on dogma and rigid definitions of what good is, what justice is and what happiness is. The activation of the values will drive the discussions. In short, one must bring agreed upon values to the discussions rather than dogmatic truths.