New Conventions for Old 183wrong to suggest that Aristotle considers justice or politics ‘as something that can be
determined by disinterested analysis of human nature and particular socio-political
conditions rather than as something that emerges from political argument and com-
petition.’ (Yack 1993: 167). Yack also mentions both Alasdair MacIntyre and Hannah
Arendt as distorting Aristotle on this issue.
For Yack, therefore, the idea that there is some kind of putative rich universal
good in Aristotle is simply mistaken. Politics rather grows out of the diverse material
and empirical needs of human beings. No political communities are well ordered or
harmonious. Consequently, not many regimes are praised by Aristotle. All political
regimes provide some of the goods necessary for human functioning. All regimes will
also contain offensive and unhelpful laws. Further, in Yack’s interpretation, politics
itself is a comparatively rare activity. It occurs when relatively free and equal citizens
can engage in regular public discussion about laws and policies (Yack 1993: 7). This
is not a common occurrence, particularly in Aristotle’s period. Rather than fostering
ideals, the neo-Aristotelian perspective, for Yack, basically helps us to take imper-
fections and the heterogeneity of values and beliefs more seriously. He helps us to
read and understand our flawed social existence. Yack’s Aristotle sees the notion of
community without any moralistic glow whatsoever. We need therefore to disentangle
Aristotle from all the modern debates concerning communitarianism, republicanism,
and liberal individualism. Humans might, through politics, be able to achieve some
form of excellence. But politics, in itself, can never be the perfection we seek.
The upshot of this reading of neo-Aristotelianism is more interpretive or hermen-
eutical. It also contends that we should not seek for ideals and moral foundations
in neo-Aristotelianism. Conversely, it is a framework of analysis and interpretation,
within which we can assess all types of regime or ideals. In a perspective, which bears
comparison to Yack’s, Richard Salkever also suggests that neo-Aristotelianism can
provide a supportive philosophical rapprochement with contemporary liberalism. As
he comments, in a quasi-hermeneutic mode, reading Aristotle ‘is not a source of
solutions to modern problems’ (Salkever 1990: 5). For neo-Aristotelians, political life
is neither a tragic pluralist paradox, nor a perfectly soluble ideal. Rather, for Salkever,
neo-Aristotelianism avoids both dogmatism and relativism, both liberal individual-
ism and communitarianism. It proposes a practical way out of these dilemmas. In
consequence, it proffers a ‘third way’ (Salkever 1990: 7–8). In one sense, it is also
empty of content. However, in this context, although neo-Aristotelianism does not
provide any definitive political ideals, it can, nonetheless ‘be a starting point for
discussing those problems in new ways, ways that avoid familiar dead ends, such
as the opposition between liberal individualism and republican communitarianism,
between the politics of the right and the politics of the virtues’ (Salkever 1990: 5).
Salkever therefore contends that we should neither view neo-Aristotelianism as invok-
ing tragic agonism and paradox, nor offering some perfectible form of life and rich
ideal. Humans, for Salkever’s Aristotle, ‘are neither predictable machines nor self-
creating deities’. Neo-Aristotelianism’s third way can allow us to analyse, discuss, and
defend liberal politics. But, it is quite definitely, for Salkever, not an alternative to
liberalism (Salkever 1990: 7–8).