The method of enquiry on the definition of justice in Ethica Nicomachea V

Abstract

The goal of the article is to analyse the first part of book V of the Nicomachean Ethics, which discusses justice, to show that the method there employed is not dialectical. Many scholars in recent years have attributed to the Nicomachean Ethics as a whole the method described in book VII 1, whose objective seems to be that of saving the most important opinions about the matter.  Contrary to this position, we purport to find the characteristics of scientific investigations as described in the Posterior Analytics, II 1-3 and 8-10, which relatively to its object takes as starting point an answer to the question ei estin and proceeds to a definition of its essence through successive steps, one of which is the indication of a nominal definition. In this procedure, there is a good deal of use of endoxa, but the argument is not a dialectical one.