manner and mode addresses the world as something: λέγειν τι κατά τινος. In speaking about something, I make it present, I bring it into the there, as this or that, in the character of as. It is the primary function of λόγος, and one that is fitting at every step, to explicitly separate, and bring into the there, the world in this character of referring to. . . . Thus it becomes clear that speaking in the world is, for human beings, the δηλοῦν τὸ συμφέρον.26
This speaking about . . . is deliberating, συμβουλεύεσθαι, “bringing to language with itself.” With oneself, one comes to take counsel about something. That is merely an altogether definite possibility of something much more originary—counseling with others. This bringing-to-language-thus as expressing is speaking with another about something, a talking-through. Speaking is exhibitive self-expressing to . . . It is not a matter of speaking so as to establish, but rather discussing the συμφέρον. The συμφέρον stands in view. The λόγος, which has this function of exhibiting, has the character of a definite communicating. I communicate with others; I have the world there with the other and the other has the world there with me, insofar as we talk something through—κοινωνία of the world. Speaking is, in itself, communicating; and, as communication, it is nothing other than κοινωνία.
There may seem to be a gap in this account if we do not see why speaking is speaking-with-others. But the Greeks saw λόγος in an original way. Today we have a primitive notion of language or none at all. The concrete document for the originality of the Greek view is the entire Rhetoric. Speaking is deliberative speaking about that which is conducive, speaking-with-one-another; λόγος is the mode of being of human beings in their world, such that this being is, in itself, being-with-one-another. This κοινωνία is not only determined through λόγος itself, but also through the fact that the λόγος is a deliberating within the surveying look of concern. Concern is μετὰ λόγου. Here μετά means “right in the midst of.” Λόγος belongs to concern; concern is in itself a speaking, a discussing.
Thus far, we have suppressed a further character of the world as encountered, the ἀγαθόν, although Aristotle ultimately characterizes the συμφέρον as ἀγαθόν. We are now prepared to understand what the ἀγαθόν means. Aristotle gives a description thereof at the aforementioned place in Book 1, Chapter 6 of the Rhetoric, precisely in connection with the definition of the συμφέρον.
Αγαθόν is:
1. αὐτὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἕνεκα αἱρετόν,27 that which is “graspable in itself and for its own sake”—hence the determination of ἀγαθόν as οὗ ἕνεκα, “for-the-sake-ofwhich,” “for-the-sake-thereof.”
2. καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα ἄλλο.28 The reference runs, in the reverse order from before, from τέλος to συμφέρον. To see the fundamental context, one must note
26. Ibid.
27. Rhet. Α 6, 1362 a 22.
28. Ibid.