Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1

It was in rereading this first book that ideas started forming for what I wanted to write about for my paper topic. Aristotle will talk a lot throughout Ethics about the Good, what it is to man, and how man achieves it. When I first read Nicomachean Ethics last semester, I thought it was odd that Aristotle would frame this discussion with mentions of politics at the beginning and end of Ethics. But in rereading it and looking at the translator’s notes, I realized that I had a misconstrued interpretation of what Aristotle meant by politics, so I went back to look at what the translator had to say since he has knowledge of both the Greek and English languages (surprise! It’s a little sad that it took me the second time reading this to look it up).

So here it is: Politike is the science of the city-state (polis) and the members of it. It is not constrained to our narrow “political science” sense of the word, but also in the sense that a civilized human existence is only possible in the polis. Therefore, politike involves not only politics as a science of the state, but our concept of society as well.

 

So what does this mean in the context of serving as the opening and closing framework of Ethics? This is part of what I will be exploring in my paper, but if I had to make a preliminary guess… Society, or any form of community really, is necessary for man to reach the highest good. Man flourishes within the structure of community because he is able to put into practice much of the things the Aristotle discusses throughout Nicomachean Ethics. This is why Aristotle devotes an entire book to the importance of friends, because that is another form of community in which man can flourish and grow. (This is a little rough in terms of accuracy and depth, but writing a blog post about it has helped solidify ideas about what I want to write about.)