In Book 2, Chapter 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle directly faces up to the circularity of his argument about moral virtues:

But someone might be perplexed as to what we mean when we say that to become just, people must do just things or, to become moderate, do moderate things. For if they do just and moderate things, they already are just and moderate, just as if they do what concerns letters and music, they are by that fact skillful [or artful] in letters and music.

Foregrounding this circularity is fundamental to Aristotle’s argument. The moral virtues are “characteristics” or “dispositions” (the Greek is hexis) that must be formed through habit (ethos) and thus built up over time. They are not and cannot be perfect from the beginning. Thus for Aristotle, NE is about how moral virtues are the result of actions that, through repetition, become part of one’s character over the course of a lifetime — one swallow does not make a spring.

This overt and conscious circularity is a proto-pragmatist move. It is a move that makes the text’s relationship to truth and knowledge tenuous while making its orientation to future outcomes more prominent. Again, this is not a problem for the Aristotle of NE. He is far more concerned with orienting his readers (as politicians, lawgivers and citizens and definitively not philosophers) toward how to use their judgment and prudence to bring about good outcomes for the city than he is about articulating certain truths about human happiness, moral virtues and eudaemonia.

This overt and intentional circularity is accompanied by three other rhetorical moves typically found in American pragmatism, particularly as practiced by Rorty:

1. “Setting aside” or (to use Cornel West’s term) “evading” traditional philosophical issues by calling them unnecessary, too precise, or impractical for the inquiry at hand.

2. Treating language as a creative force rather than primarily as a medium whose fundamental purpose is to faithfully represent and communicate an external reality.

3. The reliance on endoxa (received wisdom) as a legitimate ground for inquiry.

Let’s take #1 — the rhetorical technique of overt and explicit evasion. It’s well known, and I’ve covered it before, that Aristotle will typically back off his arguments at moments where it is treading toward too much “precision” calling it impractical for the “present purposes.” One such example occurs at the beginning of 2.2:

Now, since the present subject is taken up, not for the sake of contemplation, as are others — for we are conducting an examination, not so 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. For these actions have authoritative control over what sorts of characteristics come into being, as we have said.

This is a crucial passage for understanding the program and purpose of NE, and it makes problematic any attempt to reduce Aristotle’s politike to a fundamentally philosophical work, as I’ve said before. In repeatedly making this evasive move, he swerves away from an examination of stable truths in favor of a more practical and pragmatic examination of how human action brings about good outcomes.

This shifts the inquiry from what Rorty called philosophy’s “quest for certainty” to “inquiry as a way of using reality.”

So the relation between our truth claims and the rest of the world is causal rather than representational. It causes us to hold beliefs, and we continue to hold beliefs which prove to be reliable guides to getting what we want” (“Truth without Correspondence to Reality”).

I can come up with no better description of what Aristotle is doing in NE (and the related works of Politics and Rhetoric).

Implied in this evasion of “contemplation” in favor of bringing about a practical outcome (“so that we may become good”) is a break from the power of language as the representative of extra-linguistic truths. By evading the question of “what virtue is” in favor of examining the actions that will make us good and virtuous human beings, language itself must shift its purpose from “correspondence with reality” (to use Rorty’s phrase) to languages as a creative force that brings about the reality it describes. The repetition of “becoming” phrases in the above passage from 2.2 is necessary when this shift is made — “so that we may become good,” “how one ought to perform them [good actions],” and “what sorts of characteristics come into being.”

By evading “what is” questions as impractical to the present inquiry, Aristotle realigns belief, action and truth such that the truth of moral virtues is founded in beliefs that are reinforced through action. Courage comes into existence because we believe that it is the virtue called for in a given opportune moment and we respond to such moments as our belief dictates. The repetition of this cycle “habituates” us to strengthening the virtue in the recurrence of those moments. Moral virtues, therefore, are only realized through human action but can only be represented in language by referring to commonly held opinions and beliefs (doxa and endoxa). We are not dealing with language as a mirror of reality or a scientific method where “demonstration” is the ultimate form of making words transparent to reality.

We’ve now arrived at Aristotle’s prescient use of the third American pragmatist move — that moral truths are the result of what we believe and put into action. When it comes to “examining” moral virtues, language is the bearer of beliefs about how we should conduct ourselves in the world, and these beliefs are open to examination. Aristotle’s examination, however, is different from Plato’s Socrates. For Socrates, the examination typically focuses on the “what is” questions — what is virtue? what is courage? what is piety? For Aristotle, the examination is concerned with “how” questions — how do we find the mean between excess and deficiency? how do we bring about justice? how do we form our habits and characters to be virtuous when the time comes? But these “how” questions for Aristotle, as we’ve seen, can be meaningfully discussed while begging off on settling the “what is” answers first.

Yet, we can discuss the “what is” questions at some level. The reason we can do so is because language is the bearer of long-held beliefs (endoxa) about what virtues are important to the individual and collective pursuit of happiness (eudaemonia). In this sense, then, the examination of virtues is an examination of nomos — custom, law and convention, which are all terms used in Bartlett and Collins’s translation.

The inquiry would be adequately made if it should attain the clarity that accords with the subject matter. 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, custom, convention] alone and not by nature. (1.3 1094b 12ff; emphasis in translation)

The inquiry, then, doesn’t set out to discover some pre-existing “nature” that would unify all the virtues into a single answer to a complex question — “what is virtue?” This type of inquiry seeks a level of precision that is not practical for the purposes at hand — defining an art of politics that unifies individuals into a well-functioning city.

Rather, Aristotle famously starts the inquiry from the fact that these virtues are of value to human beings living together. He starts also from the fact of their variability and that they are different from culture to culture. He does not seek to reduce the variability to a single idea (eidos). His examination starts from received wisdom and opinions (doxa, endoxa and dokein). The moral virtues are products, not of nature (physis), but of nomos and therefore can only be examined by looking into what people think and say that they are. Words are the bearers of the virtuous circularity and cannot be reduced to representatives of a univocal truth.

Aristotle is thus signaling that his approach to “truth” in this particular endeavor/inquiry will be of a different sort than those forms of inquiry that seek to find the nature of things outside of a given nomos. As such, nomos and doxa — laws, customs, conventions and opinions that habituate us — will be the starting points. The variability of the virtues and values we live by as human beings will not be an obstacle to overcome, but will be a guide to how we inquire into them and their usefulness for an art of politics.

Truth is not lost in this form of inquiry, but it takes a different form. It will not be a search for universal forms that reduces differences to an essence given to us by nature. Rather, it will be a truth that is the product of human action and must be understood in its particularity. Truth is a culturally and politically produced truth that resides in the beliefs and actions of the citizens habituated to accept and enact the virtues and values of their fellow citizens. It is this same circularity that passes it all on to subsequent generations.

But to get to this version of truth, Aristotle has to pass through his mentor, Plato, which he does in 1.6. I’ll take this up in my next Meditation, but for now it is enough to say that Aristotle’s form of truth will not, and cannot, take the form of definitive answers phrased as “All things are good that meet the following criteria:…” Such a form of truth would need to withstand all of the “What about this and what about that” objections that are the driving force of so many of the Socratic dialogs. This kind of truth seeks to reduce all of the particulars to a single definition, which for Aristotle is not only impractical for the present purposes but ignores the facts around us and reduces human action to a longed for conformity with the pronouncements of philosopher kings.

For Aristotle, the choice of desired outcomes is the starting point for the conversation. What we want to happen is an open and valid question and must take into account all of the factors at play in an opportune moment (kairos). When it comes to moral and political opportune moments, the virtues outlined in NE serve as guides for the individuals involved in the actions. The relevant virtues must be selected (through the exercise of “judgment”), the longing/desire (orexis) must be fashioned and a choice (proairesis) must be made. In the process, deliberation (boule), calculation (logismos) and prudence (phronesis) will be the ways in which reason operates to select the best actions and techniques to bring about the longed for outcome. (See Book 6 and my earlier Meditation.)

The result is a virtuous circle that is not a philosophical inconsistency or weakness. Circularity — from belief to action to outcomes to strengthened belief — keeps going so that the results are characteristics and dispositions (hexis) that intuitively enact the right moral virtue at the right time and right place in the right way. These characteristics and dispositions are not simply individual, but they are embedded in the values and virtues of the city and born to future generations by the words we use.