In this Meditation, I want to ruminate on Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 and 1.7 and work out my understanding Aristotle’s vision of the relationship between truth and reason. I continue to see in Aristotle’s NE a proto-pragmatist approach to philosophy, which is thoroughly on display in these two chapters. In fact, what Rorty says about American pragmatism sounds a lot like what is happening in 1.6 and 1.7: “If there is anything distinctive about pragmatism it is that it substitutes the notion of a better human future for the notions of ‘reality,’ ‘reason’ and ‘nature’” (“Truth without Correspondence to Reality”). Certainly, “reason” and “nature” are all over NE, but they exist as concepts in service to the front-and-center questions of how to create a polis that brings about human happiness.

These chapters seem to work as a pair with the latter (1.7) containing the famous “functional argument” where Aristotle asserts that “the work” (to ergon) of a human being is to perform actions (praxis) according to reason (logos). The overarching good that human actions seek is happiness and overall well-being (eudaemonia).

For many readers of NE, the “functional argument” is the main takeaway of the work. But if we look at what comes before the functional argument, we can better see how Aristotle is reworking the relationship between truth, reason and action in the functional argument. This reworking is crucial because he wants to preserve the role of reason in ethics (and by extension politics), but he also wants to put human action at the center of his inquiry. Why do we do what we do? What are the best uses of our reason as human beings? How do we create the political conditions for justice and friendship to govern our relationships with one another?

While these are traditionally philosophical questions, Aristotle’s pairing of 1.6 and 1.7 presents a relationship between truth and reason that is very different than his mentor’s. 1.6 is a critique of a Platonic concept of “the good” as a “form” or an “idea” (eidos). For Aristotle, this argument reduces all the things we consider good — e.g., prudence, justice, sight, honor, certain pleasures, et cetera — to a single idea of the good. Such an approach to truth creates two practical problems:

1. If all the things we consider good are good for the same reason, then we have no way of distinguishing the separate goods from each other. How could one distinguish honor from liberality or a well-made house from friendship? They’re all good, of course, but they can’t be good in the same way.

2. If there is only one way to be good, then it is pretty much impossible to talk in any practical way about how humans pursue “the good” in their day to day lives. Even if we think that prudence and sight and honor are means to the end that is “the good,” we have no basis for choosing which of these we should pursue at any given moment because they’re all indistinguishable as goods.

“The good” as a universal, abstract eidos cannot, therefore, provide a necessary motivation for action. In other words, if prudence, courage, justice and other good things are all lumped together and indistinguishable under a common idea of “the good”, then “the good” cannot be a motivator to any specific action. How would anyone know when to pursue courage vs prudence — or simply walk away from the situation and build a nice house? All are equally good in a Platonic view of the world. You’ll need to rely on some other motivating faculty to decide what action is called for at any given opportune moment (kairos) because pursuit of “the good” as eidos leaves one without criteria for choosing one virtue over another.

Much of the remaining books of NE can be seen as resolving this problem, which requires Aristotle to rework the relationship between reason and truth. As I’ve already meditated on, Book 6 is crucial because it subdivides reason in such a way that the pursuit of truth as “contemplation” is different from “calculation”. The first is oriented more to truths that can take the form of stable and eternal ideas. Calculation, however, is concerned with outcomes and actions, and it is the province of reason as “prudence” (phronesis). But before Aristotle can get to that point in the argument, he has to offer a different concept of truth than Plato’s.

This new concept of truth has to provide a better answer to why humans pursue good things in general, but it will have to answer why they pursue particular good things — a well-built house, victory in battle, justice for the city, beautiful music, friends. To successfully accomplish this, he needs to shift the directional flow of the analysis from “the good” as an originating eidos that reduces all differences to sameness, to “the good” as an outcome that we produce by virtue of our actions: “But how indeed are they spoken of [as good]? … Is it by dint of their stemming from one thing or because they all contribute to one thing?” (1096b 25-30)

The NE will now necessarily have a pragmatic, tenuous and unstable relationship to truth.

Now, since the present subject is taken up, not for the sake of contemplation, as are others — for we are conducting an examination, not that we may know what virtue is, but so that we may become good, since otherwise there would be no benefit from it — it is necessary to examine matters pertaining to actions, that is, how one ought to perform them. (2.2 1103b 26-30)

Like a good American pragmatist more than 2000 years later, Aristotle simply evades and sidesteps the “what is” questions that are the object of philosophical contemplation by deeming them impractical for the present purposes. We will not find the truth of the moral virtues residing outside of history. A contemplation of origins and universals will not help us. We will find the moral virtues, however, in the flow of history and in the world around us because they are the motivators of our actions.

As Aristotle sets aside the “what is” questions, he substitutes other, more practical questions about how human action brings about a better future for the polis. This is precisely what is at issue as Aristotle shifts from 1.6 to 1.7 and enters into his first extended discussion of eudaemonia as the goal of human actions.

Eudaemonia is a crucial concept for Aristotle. It allows him to preserves an overarching good that unifies all of the things we consider good while also preserving their particularity. The temporary sidestepping of a purely philosophical contemplation of “the good” as eidos ends up displacing “the good” to an outcome rather than an origin. “The good” is humanized by Aristotle’s use of eudaemonia, which brings it down to earth.

Eudaemonia is, then, not an eidos that exists prior to human action in the ahistorical realm of the gods. If this were so, moral and ethical action would be an attempt to connect with it. Contemplation would be the fundamental ethical use of reason, which is emphatically not the case for the Aristotle of NE and the Politics.

Rather eudaemonia is an end (telos) — a state of being that we seek to bring about not merely for ourselves but for the city. But to say what eudaemonia is with certainty and in such a way so as to erase the differences among the things that can bring about happiness — beautiful music, the search for justice, making friends, leading an army, et cetera — is not only useless, it is not how human beings think, and it is certainly not how we talk about “the good.”

To be specific about how thoroughly Aristotle sets aside his mentor’s concept of truth, let’s look at the structure of 1.7. It has two parts:

1. Establishing eudaemonia as the ultimate end of our actions

2. Defining reason as the human faculty that pursues eudaemonia through action (the “functional argument”)

The transition occurs at 1097b 20:

So happiness appears to be something complete and self-sufficient, it being an end of our actions.

But perhaps saying that “happiness is best” is something manifestly agreed on, whereas what it is still needs to be said more distinctly. Now, perhaps this would come to pass if the work [to ergon] of the human being should be grasped.

What is happening here? After establishing eudaemonia as the goal of human action, he moves to the necessity of the “what is” question. But again, he evades the Platonic answer by substituting another set of questions — what is the purpose (work, to ergon) of the human being. This is the transition to his famous “functional argument” about human happiness and it is where truth and reason are realigned. “What is human happiness” can only be answered by examining the nature of how humans act to bring about eudaemonia for themselves and others.

The putting off of the eidos-driven “what is” concept of truth is relentless in NE. In this case, Aristotle provides an answer that in no way squares with happiness as an eidos that we try to reconnect with through our actions. As Bartlett and Collins gloss it in a footnote to 1.7, “happiness consists in the activity or use rather than the mere possession of a characteristic”. Happiness is a state of being that comes about because the human being is doing what the human being is supposed to do — it results from the use of reason as “an activity of soul in accord with virtue” (1098a 16). Eudaemonia, therefore, is the result of action.

Aristotle has thus equated “the good” with eudaemonia and therefore humanized it in a way that “the good” as eidos cannot. He has also succeeded in fitting the definition of happiness and humanity into his worldview where every entity pursues “its own perfection and inner goal, in terms of which alone it can be defined or understood” to borrow Isaiah Berlin’s gloss in “The Birth of Greek Individualism”. The human being, in other words, has a purpose — a “work” — that defines it. Aristotle has shifted “the good” from an origin to an outcome of our actions — it is something that we pursue naturally — and can only come into existence from human action. “The good” also gets a new name in the process, eudaemonia.

How does this effect the connection between truth and reason, which is what I’m interested in exploring in this Meditation? Reason and truth are connected through human action. This necessarily relegates the “what is” questions of “the good” and happiness to secondary status. The the search for certainties and definitive answers can be saved for later — if ever. Reason will not, therefore, be fundamentally about contemplation of truth but about phronesis (Book 6) — the virtue that uses the calculating and deliberative qualities of reason to bring about good outcomes for the city. Truth hovers somewhere between the inherent work (to ergon) of the human and what humans actually create as outcomes. As a result, when it comes to ethics and politics, truth need only be understood “in outline” — just enough to pursue the moral virtues (justice, courage, homonia, et cetera) without getting wrapped around the axle of navel-gazing contemplation.

This is, in fact, how we operate most of the time. For example, we can easily believe in virtues like happiness and friendship without theorizing about them in the first place. No one becomes friends with another by contemplating the nature and truth of friendship before one chooses to make a friend. The same goes for happiness. We must have some experience of these things before we can talk about them. But when we talk about them, it’s largely for the sake of improving our experience of them. We might sit down with a friend after they’ve done something out of character with our friendship and discuss the nature of our relationship. This conversation might tread into the realm of “what is friendship” in the abstract, but we’d do so in order to bring about a stronger friendship and more happiness for each other. How that friendship and the attending happiness come about and what they feel like cannot be reduced to any kind of eidos.