social ethics questions

Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics

Plato and Aristotle

Raphael’s “The School of Athens” (ca.1511)

I. The historical background: Aristotle was writing and lecturing in Athens, during the 4th century BCE.

a. Athens was a Greek city-state (Polis) that had transitioned from monarchies to a fragile democracy. This new democracy was becoming torn between rivalries from the old monarchies and new commercial forces.

i. Aristotle’s ethics sought to build from a rational conception of a common good that orients human nature beyond the previous narrowness of the warrior ethos without digressing into the new impersonal commercial ethos and it soullessness.

1. The warrior ethos of Homeric society:

a. Exclusive loyalty to family and close friends.

b. Obsessive focus on training for war:

· Courage, strength, and honor are cultivated only to advance military expeditions abroad and protect the palace at home.

· Cunning use of force is privileged to manipulate others, as might-makes-right.

· Obedience is required for accepting a given chain of command, and in accepting one’s lot within the limits of a cosmos supposedly controlled only by violent forces pitted against each other.

2. The newly emerging commercialism:

a. Production of goods not for communal use but rather for private profit (society becomes oriented around indifferent exchange values rather than social use values)

b. Indifferent market exchanges for accumulating money then become the dominant form of social relations rather than cooperatively and creatively producing together.

c. This led to an obsessive focus on the cunning pursuit of money for its own sake, and the cunning use of money to manipulate the people (since profit is made by monopolizing supply and exploiting demand – more on this in Politics).

ii. Aristotle continually argued that neither framework holistically perfects what is most excellent and distinctive within human nature and its capacity for community.

II. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics begins with a simple broad point (1094a):

a. Every human activity aims at an end considered good:

1. Not all ends are complete in themselves but refer to other ends.

a. E.g. Saddle making is a craft that nevertheless serves an end beyond itself.

b. E.g. studying a discipline at school is for larger purposes than that particular study itself.

2. The most complete end—something done for its own sake—is that for which all other relative ends are ordered.

a. The end for which saddle making should contribute is the end of riding a horse well, which itself ultimately serves the end of freedom of mobility.

b. The end for which all your studies should contribute is that ultimate end of becoming a well-rounded, wise, self-determining person.

i. You do not choose to become a complete person for the sake of some lower relative and partial end, but rather choose relative ends (various means) for the sake of becoming a complete human person.

ii. Moreover, the ultimate end has objective standards of excellence that should guide the choice and organization of all relative activities:

· there are better ways to craft a saddle for the art of riding well that allows greater mobility

· and there are better ways to educate for the art of becoming a holistically self-determining person.

c. “there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else, clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”

3. What then is the chief or ultimate good desired for its own sake? In other words, Aristotle is asking that basic Socratic question about that ultimate end or purpose of life that unites all other relative activities:

a. “Then do the carpenter and the leatherworker have their functions and actions, while a human being has none, and is by nature idle, without any function?” (1097b30)

i. Are we to assume that while all of our daily actions serve some relative purpose, there is nevertheless no purpose or meaningful form to human life as such, no distinctive activities worth doing for their own sake, and no master art by which to coordinate and craft a whole life?

ii. Notice that his ethical questions about the good are deeply economic matters: they ask “what is the ultimate good for which all our productive activities should be organized?”

III. What then is the ultimate end and chief Good implied in all our activities and of universal interest to all? … HAPPINESS!

a. But in what sense does Aristotle use this commonplace word? The word “Happiness” is actually not an entirely accurate translation of the Greek word that Aristotle uses, which is “eudaimonia”. This Greek term refers to something more holistic than our common psychological sense of happiness as a feeling. Eudaimona is better translated as “well-being” or “flourishing”.

b. To further clarify this more holistic meaning, he begins by claiming that while most people commonly believe the source of happiness (or well-being/flourishing) consists in either pleasure, honor, or wealth, this ultimately cannot be the case:

1. Happiness is not solely about enjoying sensual pleasures.

a. Pursuing only sensual pleasures leads to a pursuit of one momentary pleasure after another.

i. Temporary pleasures are fleeting and therefore are always relative, serving some other purpose or greater pleasure

ii. Moreover, some temporary pleasures might be worth avoiding in order to obtain a deeper satisfaction beyond immediate gratification.

iii. Also, sensual pleasure-seeking is always dependent on something external outside oneself—it can create an unhealthy dependency on something or someone

iv. If Happiness is the ultimate good it must then mean something more than mere sensible pleasures, enjoyable experiences, or a mere smiling disposition.

2. Happiness is not merely about obtaining honor

a. Honor is externally bestowed and so it relies on the perspectives of others whereas happiness as the ultimate good should be self-sufficient.

b. Moreover, honor can only be given as a recognition of the good; it therefore cannot itself be the good life but functions only by acknowledging this greater good.

3. Wealth in terms of money-making cannot be ultimate happiness

a. Money is a means simply for facilitating exchange, and not an end in itself – more on this in the lecture on Politics below.

4. The ultimate good of happiness is greater than the relative goods of pleasure, moneyed wealth, and honor.

c. Aristotle uses “happiness” to refer to that ultimate sense of satisfaction achieved in reaching the highest fulfillment, over a lifetime, of what it means to be distinctively human—to holistically realize our essential human nature in its most excellent form.

i. It pertains to living “a complete life. For one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one day; nor, similarly, does one day or a short time make us blessed and happy.” (1098a20)

ii. We call things good that perform their essential function well: a good flute player, a good scientist, a good athlete, a good carpenter, etc. But what are those essential capabilities or activities that distinguishes a good human life as such?

1. What makes us the distinctive animals we are? For Aristotle, we are inherently social and rational beings: the capacity of reason is for realizing a higher form of individual and communal self-determination:

a. We share with all organic beings (plants and animals) basic biological processes of continuing life through nutrition, reproduction, and growth.

b. We also share with all other animals sense perception and mobility.

c. But what distinguishes us as uniquely human animals is that we have a higher social and rational capacity—a means by which to imagine new ends, linguistically reason, and intellectually formulate higher rational principles by which to organize our life activity toward more excellent ways of existing beyond mere survival and sense stimuli.

d. Therefore, as social and rational beings humans uniquely forge higher communal associations on the basis of new social qualities and rational activities rather than brute animality. (more on this later)

e. But rational for Aristotle means the ability to see and choose new ends that fulfill higher potentials: to reason about how to fulfill something according to its highest ends, its ultimate good.

· This is very different from modern notions of reason as merely instrumental rationality, which is just the calculation of efficient means for whatever ends—how to control a process, rather than how to cultivate a potential toward fulfilling its highest organic end.

2. Happiness = holistic flourishing insofar as we realize our distinctive rational and social qualities/capacities that make us truly human rather than brute animals.

a. It is about practicing those distinctively human activities that define us as human, for their own sake.

iii. The right means for transitioning beyond brute animality and toward realizing our rational and social essence so that we can flourish is what Aristotle calls “virtue”.

IV. What is Virtue? The intentional cultivation of our distinctive powers for transformation that would otherwise remain inactive.

a. For Aristotle, virtue is any practiced and internalized rational activity that actualizes our distinctively human capacities in an integrated and holistic way

i. Virtues are not about “first nature” in terms of biological instincts, drives, and inclinations, but rather about how we distinctively transform these tendencies in a higher social and rational way, into a kind of “second nature”, or more humanly mediated form.

1. This means virtue is not about repression or restraint as much as disciplined transformation of instincts and desires into higher forms of more complex social manifestations.

2. This transformative nature distinguishes virtue ethics from utilitarianism, which reduces ethics to base inclinations without higher development, and deontology, which emphasizes the repression/restraint of natural inclinations and desires altogether.

ii. Virtue as a means to fulfilling our highest essential nature, however, is not a means separable from the ends like a mere instrument.

1. It is not about using whatever means/coping mechanisms there are to help obtain a desired end, since virtue is the end itself becoming internalized through practice.

a. Practices of internal goods (e.g. courage, truthfulness, justice, solidarity, compassion, wisdom) rather than external goods (e.g. money, power, status)

· If the end itself is the holistic fulfillment of the best of our nature then there is no shortcut and no means of purchasing it, it can only be made through continual practice:

· e.g. you can’t gain the ends of being courageous, loving, just, or wise by means other than practicing courageous, loving, just, and wise actions themselves.

2. Virtues therefore are about habit-forming practices so that our nature is not controlled by blind drives and irrational forces, but increasingly by our freedom for social and rational self-determination.

a. That is, virtue has to do with educating desire and organizing one’s life in a unified way so as to be able to enjoy life’s many diverse pleasures without being controlled, consumed, or fragmented by them.

b. As practices or habits, virtue does not mean simple rule-following, conformity, or being conventionally well-mannered, but rationally cultivating a flexible “mean”, a skillfully balanced middle way between blinding extremes.

1. It is about learning how to apply a general principle to particular occasions within life (like any science, craft, or art—but virtue has to do with crafting a whole life)

a. The middle ground between deficiency and excess – what is proportionate, providing neither too little nor too much (avoiding inordinate wealth and abject poverty).

· not about simply avoiding the extremes of pleasure and pain as if to become stoically indifferent and insensible:

· it is about practicing a trait to the point of dexterity and facility, so that the internalized practice, while initially unpleasant, becomes more pleasurable itself and more readily applied to a variety of concrete situations.

· Freedom for Aristotle is not in merely having options or having a choice, nor in only the act of choosing, but rather in practicing the necessary arts for self-determination that lead to living well.

1. E.g., one might be free to choose a career path:

a. but having a choice alone is not the meaning and realization of freedom as such (a necessary but not sufficient condition)

b. to be free one must both make the right choice as well as see it through with the right kinds of practices.

· The scholar, master craftsman, master painter, or guitarist, etc., have the most freedom and pleasure in their craft beyond the amateur because of their internalized virtues through committed practice.

c. What is Justice? Aristotle says in book V that justice is not one virtue amongst others but the “whole of virtues”: that wisdom about how to balance, unify, and organize the various virtues toward their ultimate good of a holistically flourishing life together with others.

i. Injustice is either having too much or too little in relation to what it is good to have; it is then about preventing disproportionate distribution or gaining from another’s loss, which means justice is the wisdom of how to meet real needs.

ii. Justice as the sum of virtues is not a purely punitive or legal principle of abstract fairness, but more comprehensively about cultivating the good in things, knowing what is needed or fitting for that thing’s highest fulfillment – “in justice is every virtue comprehended”.

1. you can’t enforce or beat goodness into something—it can only be cultivated and justice is the knowledge for how to cultivate it

a. Aristotle also says that justice is “complete virtue” because it is that wisdom that considers not just private character but the social virtue of how to act in community with others.

iii. The law is meant to facilitate the development of the virtue of justice as the fulfillment of the good:

1. This notion of justice according to needs differs from most modern theories of justice as fairness which claim to be merely a formal and legal matter of rights without presuming any knowledge of what it is good to be, nor providing robust conditions for becoming good (but is this even possible?).

2. Justice according to needs is not just about meeting the basic material needs for life, but more so about meeting the higher needs for living a good life, a truly human life—therefore it is about providing opportunities and guidance by which our higher capacities can be fulfilled.

a. Is it even possible to maintain a meaningful sense of rights while bracketing out any notion of the good? Is a healthy democratic society even possible without meeting the common good of humanity’s highest needs along with their basic needs?

d. In sum: What is important to see so far, and which will be further confirmed in Politics, is that virtue ethics for Aristotle is not simply about personal character formation in terms of psychological attitudes, feelings, and individual behavior, but more so about the material and institutional conditions that support the collective project of raising humanity to its highest social form of the good life.

1. Aristotle’s virtue ethics relies on a normative conception of human nature, which for Aristotle requires necessarily unfolding the unique rational powers and social qualities in a political community.

a. —only in politics can humanity achieve its highest potentials as unique social and rational animals. This is why in Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle says that ethics is really a subfield of politics, politics being the supreme science of the Good because it concerns itself with securing the highest ends of humanity.

b. To this end we must now move on to Politics

Aristotle – The Politics

“The Science of the human good is politics”

I. What is the polis? The Greek word for “city”, which meant an independent political unit called the city-state.

a. Aristotle begins by saying the city, as a political community, is the highest human form of association because its nature (though, not always lived out) is to aim at the most comprehensive good for humanity, inclusive of all other relative goods.

i. Before he spells out why, however, he briefly traces the natural evolution of human communities toward the city as a political community:

1. First there is the family unit for procreation.

2. Then the household formed for the larger extended family and its organization of familial self-preservation.

3. The first community beyond individual households is that of the village, which formed from different households coming together for mutual long-term advantage.

4. But the first true or complete political community (i.e. definitive of what it means to be fully human) emerging beyond kinship is that of the city:

a. A city forms out of many diverse villages coming together for higher ends beyond mere self-preservation.

ii. His analysis was historically significant since he provided one of the first evolutionary accounts of society.

II. Why is the political community of the city the highest form of human community?

a. The city is a higher association with emergent qualities—that is, its reason for being (or final cause) transcends its initial material causes since “it comes to be for the sake of living, but remains in being for the sake of living well.” (1252b30)

i. This is because the city provides that new context for the virtuous fulfillment of humanity’s highest rational and social nature, beyond brute nature, as an inherently “political animal”:

1. it is a whole greater than the sum of its parts, i.e., it is that higher form of social life by which a greater range of our distinctively human capacities are revealed and can develop in a way not possible in the private sphere alone.

2. “political” here means the human animal as inherently social begins to define itself according to its universally shared capacities, bonds, and qualitative ends beyond merely maintaining lower animal functions—

a. humanity, through political organization begins to determine itself according to new social purposes, choosing higher communal associations for their own sake.

3. A family unit or kinship village alone still bases community on exclusionary blood ties rather than on universal qualities and capacities that all humans share regardless of genetic familial lines of descent and physical similarities.

4. A true political community is also not determined by mere geographical proximity which would be an accidental gathering rather than an intentional community.

5. Similarly, there can be no political community established purely on the basis of a military alliance against a common enemy, or one that seeks defensively to merely prevent injustice (1280a35).

a. a city based only on impersonal legal decrees to prevent injustice is not yet a true political community because it is “unable to make the citizens good and just.” (1280b10–15)

b. law in such a society would be merely a restraining device on the worst of human nature, rather than cultivating a virtuous unfolding of human nature in its universally positive qualities.

b. But most importantly for our context, Aristotle is keen to emphasize that a market society established solely around commercial exchange is also not a true political community either. This requires diving further into his understanding of the economy and the role of money.

III. What is the economy and what is its purpose according to Aristotle? To materially provide the conditions for fulfilling our higher social and political nature.

a. Aristotle’s understanding of the economy (oiko=house; nomos=law: together the term originally meant = the art of household/communal management): It is a fundamentally social process by which people cooperate to satisfy the material needs for the common good of community building.

i. The natural purpose of the economy is then first and foremost ethical for Aristotle in that its nature is to produce and acquire only those socially useful goods that can contribute toward the development of human capabilities:

1. The human is more than the needs of its stomach, but rather a political animal whose highest need is to perfect the best of its rational nature in higher associations of self-determining social existence.

2. As serving human needs the economy then is a relative good toward this greater good of community building for its own sake—it provides a shared material surplus and thus surplus time by which the good life for all can be fulfilled through practicing higher activities in the arts, sciences, politics, and culture.

3. Remember, temples are a reminder of the economy’s inherently moral direction in providing a surplus for serving the social whole.

IV. What are the two different “arts of acquisition”?

a. The first notion of acquisition is the natural form of trade for acquiring goods, tools, skills, and services for better developing the household/city according to its highest qualities:

i. The production process aims at producing what is socially useful for the community, but with the expanding diversification of needs and thus the specialization of craft production there is greater need to exchange for a greater variety of goods.

1. This is about exchanging goods according to uses and needs, and so it is preoccupied with use values (the functional purpose of a thing). It is about obtaining goods that are “either necessary for life or useful to the association of the city” (p.272) – exchanging and acquiring goods for the ends of developing our social qualities.

b. The second notion of acquisition is through retail trade for the sake of acquiring money as an end in itself:

i. This art looks like the first because it is also an exchange in a variety of goods; however, it does not serve the purpose of developing those qualities needed for household/city life, but only to increase private gain in the form of monetary value.

ii. It produces, exchanges, and treats goods not according to their social usefulness, but only according to their exchange value , taking advantage of whatever market demand there happens to be—making extra shoes or even unnecessary commodities solely for trade, or buying wholesale solely to monopolize for the purpose of selling retail at a higher rate.

1. In the first art of acquisition, value is determined qualitatively by what is socially useful for meeting real human needs, but in the second form value is determined quantitatively by monetary market prices regardless of society’s valued qualities and needs.

2. What is wrong with accumulating quantities of money as the ultimate end of exchange?

· It’s a form of value privately accumulated and consumed

· its form has no access to real qualitative values

· its pursuit denies public discourse about how to socially meet real human needs.

· It thus runs against the inherently social nature of productive activity

V. Where did money come from and what is it for? Aristotle’s thought here is significant as he provided one of the first analyses in the ancient world of the historical emergence of money as well as providing a critical social assessment.

a. As noted above, with the development of production and its specialized division, the city evolved into a more highly complex unit of diverse social needs. According to Aristotle, this led to more bartering, which led to a need for more convenient ways to barter.

i. Exchanging one commodity (C) directly for another commodity (C) can be cumbersome if the goods are too large or diverse:

1. Plus, each thing has its own specific use value and so there is no easy way to establish commensurability between two distinct use values (how do you find an equal proportion for a fair exchange between shoes and a house?)

ii. In barter then the direct swap of one commodity for another, C–C, required a common standard of measurement that could more adequately represent their values in the abstract and thus mediate the exchange—hence the invention of currency or money (M).

iii. Money then historically emerged as a social convention serving a moral purpose—it was a symbolic means for facilitating a more just exchange:

1. it was inherently called into being according to a principle of justice for finding a truly proportionate exchange of goods by way of a common mediator, so that there was now C–M–C.

iv. But the very convenience of money opened the door for retail trade, since now one could produce more than necessary, exclusively for obtaining money on the market, and then purchase more than necessary in order to monopolize supply and exploit demand by reselling at a higher price.

v. Instead of the virtue of justice maintaining a fair proportion within the transaction of C–M–C, there were now transactions that sought to gain only more money at the loss of others (buy low, sell high, for the end of making more money), M–C–M’ (M’ = more money).

vi. With the formula M–C–M’ the exchange no longer serves real human needs and a principle of fairness because money no longer functions according to its proper nature as a conventional means, but is now distorted into the beginning and end of the economic activity itself.

1. If justice is the meeting of real needs in a balanced way so as to avoid extremes, then the just nature of money is now eliminated in M–C–M’.

vii. Aristotle, then, does not have a problem with the nature of exchange or money, but only with economic activity distorted by money-making as an end in itself because it leads to unnatural, false wealth

VI. What is True wealth and False wealth?

a. True wealth: an abundance of socially useful goods and instruments whose use also allows one to internally perfect virtuous qualities and skills for communally organizing the good life together.

b. False wealth: simply the private accumulation of abstract monetary value as the end of economic and social activity itself rather than a means to the social good.

i. True wealth is a common wealth, acquiring an abundance of goods, knowledges, relationships and conditions for enriching humanity through the qualitive development of its distinctive life activities.

1. It structures the production process socially around discussion of real human needs that aim toward the cultivation of humanity’s creative potentials as a whole.

ii. False wealth is merely the private amassing of money as a quantitative abstraction: an empty power that internally perfects no qualities or skills in the possessor—wealth here is only the expansion of possessive/consumptive capacities for a few.

1. Aristotle does not think the problem of pursuing false wealth is merely a problem of individual greed, but rather it represents a tendency that begins to structurally invert the very nature of productive activity.

a. Accumulation of monetary wealth allows the increasing monopolization of supply by privatizing the production process, which means this inherently social process is no longer oriented toward its own genuinely social ends, but rather is used as a means to the private ends of a few.

i. That is, the point of production is reordered away from its communal orientation and is privately employed toward supplying market demands regardless of whether these meet the real human needs of the community of producers.

ii. Real human needs are therefore no longer the ends to which money serves, but rather human needs and social qualities are the means utilized for the end of privately making money.

iii. Therefore, the very structure of M-C-M’ is unjust since it relies on exploiting the social nature of human productive activity as a mere means to private gain, as well as taking advantage of another’s loss in the act of exchange.

iv. This leads to the most egregious form of twisting monetary wealth into an end itself, which is the capitalizing on interest from loans: what Aristotle calls “usury” or “the most unnatural” (1258a35).

v. Such an end therein promotes competitive and antagonistic anti-social relations around exploitation of each other, with greed becoming no longer one vice among others, but now institutionalized as a necessary cardinal virtue.

b. In exclusively pursuing monetary value, commercialized society starts to become determined less by a conscious democratic pursuit of the common good, and more by the blind dictates of market demand and the irrational short-term private interests behind them.

Hence market economies have no real means of comprehending actual human and environmental needs. (a great recipe for increasing the inequality gap and destroying the environment, as we have become all too familiar)

c. Such a society organized around the ultimate aim of acquiring monetary wealth, according to Aristotle, therefore is unnatural and backwards because it treats means as ends, and ends as means.

· “a state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life.” (1280b)

VII. But what is this higher qualitative association of well-being—that ultimate purpose—that makes the city a truly human community in its highest form beyond all lower functions?

a. It is the virtue of friendship: the city is a genuine political state when it becomes a “product of friendship” – “the decision to live together is friendship” (1280b35–40)

i. Friendship for Aristotle is a bond based on fulfilling our social and rational nature as political animals—we are ultimately moved to form higher communities because of our innate desire for companionship as an end in itself:

1. The art of politics brings out the best of our nature that would otherwise remain dormant:

a. It requires reasoning together with people from diverse backgrounds about the common good, a public practice which itself builds companionship based on a shared rational/social basis beyond familial, class, status, or ethnic lines—hence, the universalist concept of the citizen

b. and companionship is the highest relationship by which human potential can achieve excellence for its own sake (arts, sciences, politics) rather than using others as a means for serving lower ends (biological necessities, private profit, military alliance).

c. Politics occasions the higher association of friendship, and friendship is the association by which human nature is able to freely pursue its most excellent form of self-determination.

i. In sum: without social relationships beyond divisiveness and competitive individualism how would we access and develop our higher social and rational qualities.

ii. Aristotle also says: “For if what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to excellence lived without impediment , and that excellence is a holistic balancing, then the life which is in a balanced way attainable by everyone , must be the best.” (Politics, 1295a) ); and: “It is evident that the best politeia is that arrangement according to which anyone whatsoever might do best and live a flourishing life” (Pol 1324a23–5)

1. Thus Aristotle implies that politically organized society is best when it is most inclusive on the basis of rationally determined companionship between fully functioning equals .

a. Even though Aristotle often uncritically accepted some of the commonplace classist and sexist prejudices of his day, he nevertheless critically laid down a new paradigm for understanding humanity as a “political animal” that implicitly challenges such prejudices.

b. Moving forward, progressive thinkers such as Karl Marx, Martin Luther King, and feminists like Martha Nussbaum, to name a few, have advanced these critical insights from Aristotle’s framework beyond some of Aristotle’s more dated and conservative viewpoints.

b. The big takeaway:

· the city is more than an accidental aggregate of individuals, but a new whole of mutual flourishing greater than the sum of the parts (this is why he says it is better for rule by many since they are endowed with more qualities than rule by an isolated individual)

· It’s normatively based on universally shared rational/social capacities (the basis for the idea of citizenship) revealed in humanity’s emergent forms of higher association

· This drive of the political animal is fulfilled in cultivating the higher virtues of friendship for their own sake—politics is the building of community for the sake of community—the communal “good life” as the product of cultivating social virtues.

· This means a truly human form of social life is intelligible only insofar as it is politically organized around the ultimate end of realizing human excellence most comprehensively.

· The very nature of politics for Aristotle, therefore, is one and the same as the ethical project of realizing human excellence—the individual cannot flourish without a community pursuing this end universally for all, and the community cannot flourish without individuals pursuing the common good.

1. This is very different from modern ideas of politics as we will eventually see:

a. Often politics is understood as a legal contract/procedure negotiating private interests and protecting private property, rather than a social ethics around communally fulfilling the highest potentials of human nature.

b. This is because the modern view often presupposes that there is no innately shared potential of excellence within human nature to be politically completed, but only the conflict of self-centered individuals to be regulated.

c. Aristotle would say our modern view is diminished because our inherently social nature is hidden behind our inverted society, where the market no longer serves social relations but rather our social relations are commodified to serve the narrow end of money-making.

Summary: For Aristotle we are those animals that socially cooperate to transform our environment in order to more freely exist through our own rational capacities for higher companionship, and in the process we come to relate to one another no longer just for utility but for higher qualitative forms of socializing—which means to build a society no longer for the utility of mere survival, or for facilitating commercial exchanges and private profit, or according to defensive measures and military alliances, but according to higher forms of association for mutual up-building, so that politics is about friendship for the sake of its own excellence.