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[From
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
translated by W. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925).
The author (384–322 B.C.E.) was a pupil of Plato who
founded his own school of philosophy, called the Lyceum. He had the
distinction of being the leading figure in every branch of knowledge
existing in his time, some of which, such as logic, he founded himself.
The books of
his writings that have survived are the notes for his lecture courses,
edited and published after his death. These include two systematic
treatises on ethics, each named after the person who is believed to
have
edited it—in the case of the present work, Aristotle’s son Nicomachus.
(The other work is called the Eudemian
Ethics after its presumed editor,
Eudemius.) The division of the work into books and chapters is the work
of ancient editors. The division of chapters into paragraphs is the
work of the modern translator. Links
within the text lead to notes by
the instructor, at the bottom of the document.]
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Aristotle NICOMACHEAN ETHICS BOOK I Chapter 1 |
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| 1 |
Every
art
and every inquiry, and
similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and
for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which
all things aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are
activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce
them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of
the products to be better than the activities. Now, as there are many
actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the
medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy
victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a
single capacity—as bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the
equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every
military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under
yet others—in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be
preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the
former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the
activities themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else
apart from the activities, as in the case of the sciences just
mentioned. |
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Chapter 2 |
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| 2 |
If,
then,
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 (for at that rate the process would go
on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly
this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it,
then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who
have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so,
we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which
of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong
to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master
art. And politics appears to be of this
nature; for it is this that
ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which
each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should
learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to
fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since
politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates
as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of
this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be
the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and
for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater
and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth
while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more
godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are
the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in
one sense of that term |
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Chapter 4 |
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| 3 |
Let
us
resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all knowledge
and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say political
science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by
action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general
run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing
well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they
differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the
former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth,
or honor; they differ, however, from one another—and often even the
same man identifies it with different things, with health when he is
ill, with wealth when he is poor; but, conscious of their ignorance,
they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their
comprehension. Now some thought that apart from these many goods there
is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all
these as well. To examine all the opinions that have been held were
perhaps somewhat fruitless; enough to examine those that are most
prevalent or that seem to be arguable. |
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| 4 |
Let
us not
fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between arguments
from and those to the first principles. For Plato, too, was right in
raising this question and asking, as he used to do, ‘are we on the way
from or to the first principles?’ There is a difference, as there is in
a race-course between the course from the judges to the turning-point
and the way back. For, while we must begin with what is known, things
are objects of knowledge in two senses—some to us, some without
qualification. Presumably, then, we must begin with things known to us.
Hence anyone who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is
noble and just, and generally, about the subjects of political science
must have been brought up in good habits. For the fact is the
starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him, he will not
at the start need the reason as well; and the man who has been well
brought up has or can easily get starting points. And as for him who
neither has nor can get them, let him hear the words of Hesiod: |
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Far best is he who knows all
things himself;
Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right; But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart Another’s wisdom, is a useless wight. |
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Chapter 5 |
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| 5 |
Let
us,
however, resume our
discussion from the point at which we digressed. To judge from the
lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem
(not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with
pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For
there are, we may say, three prominent types of life—that just
mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life. Now the
mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring
a life suitable to beasts, but they get some ground for their view from
the fact that many of those in high places share the tastes of Sardanapallus. A consideration of
the prominent types of life shows
that people of superior refinement and of active disposition identify
happiness with honor; for this is, roughly speaking, the end of the
political life. But it seems too superficial to be what we are looking
for, since it is thought to depend on those who bestow honor rather
than on him who receives it, but the good we divine to be something
proper to a man and not easily taken from him. Further, men seem to
pursue honor in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at
least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honored,
and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue;
clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better. And
perhaps one might even suppose this to be, rather than honor, the end
of the political life. But even this appears somewhat incomplete; for
possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or
with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings
and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy,
unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs. But enough of this;
for the subject has been sufficiently treated even in the current
discussions. Third comes the contemplative life, which we shall
consider later. |
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| 6 |
The
life of
money-making is one
undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we
are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something
else. And so one might rather take the aforenamed objects to be ends;
for they are loved for themselves. But it is evident that not even
these are ends; yet many arguments have been thrown away in support of
them. Let us leave this subject, then |
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Chapter 7 |
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| 7 |
Let
us
again return to the good
we are seeking, and ask what it can be. It seems different in different
actions and arts; it is different in medicine, in strategy, and in the
other arts likewise. What then is the good of each? Surely that for
whose sake everything else is done. In medicine this is health, in
strategy victory, in architecture a house, in any other sphere
something else, and in every action and pursuit the end; for it is for
the sake of this that all men do whatever else they do. Therefore, if
there is an end for all that we do, this will be the good achievable by
action, and if there are more than one, these will be the goods
achievable by action. |
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| 8 |
So
the
argument has by a
different course reached the same point; but we must try to state this
even more clearly. Since there are evidently more than one end, and we
choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes, and in general instruments)
for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are final ends;
but the chief good is evidently something final. Therefore, if there is
only one final end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are
more than one, the most final of these will be what we are seeking. Now
we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that
which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that
which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than
the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of
that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification
that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of
something else. |
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| 9 |
Now
such a
thing happiness,
above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and
never for the sake of something else, but honor, pleasure, reason, and
every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted
from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also
for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be
happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of
these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself. |
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| 10 |
From
the
point of view of
self-sufficiency the same result seems to follow; for the final good is
thought to be self-sufficient. Now by self-sufficient we do not mean
that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a
solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for
his friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship. But
some limit must be set to this; for if we extend our requirement to
ancestors and descendants and friends’ friends we are in for an
infinite series. Let us examine this question, however, on another
occasion; the self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated
makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think
happiness to be; and further we think it most desirable of all things,
without being counted as one good thing among others—if it were so
counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even
the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods,
and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness, then, is
something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action. |
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| 11 |
Presumably,
however, to say that
happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of
what it is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could
first ascertain the function of man. For just
as for a flute-player, a
sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a
function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in
the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or
activities, and has man none? Is he born without a function? Or as eye,
hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has a function,
may one lay it down that man similarly has a function apart from all
these? What then can this be? Life seems to be common even to plants,
but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore,
the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of
perception, but it also seems to be common even to the horse, the ox,
and every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element
that has a rational principle; of this, one part has such a principle
in the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of
possessing one and exercising thought. And, as ‘life of the rational
element’ also has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense of
activity is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of
the term. Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which
follows or implies a rational principle, and if we say a so-and-so and
a
good so-and-so have a function which is the same in kind, e.g. a
lyre-player,
and a good lyre-player, and so without qualification in all cases,
eminence in respect of goodness being added to the name of the function
(for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a
good lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case, and we state
the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an
activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the
function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these,
and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance
with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, human good turns
out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are
more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete. |
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| 12 |
But we must add ‘in a complete life.’ For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. [. . .] | |
Chapter 9 |
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| 13 |
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| 14 |
It
will
also on this view be
very generally shared; for all who are not maimed as regards their
potentiality for virtue may win it by a certain kind of study and care.
But if it is better to be happy thus than by chance, it is reasonable
that the facts should be so, since everything that depends on the
action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly
everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if
it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is
greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. |
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| 15 |
The
answer
to the question we
are asking is plain also from the definition of happiness; for it has
been said to be a virtuous activity of soul, of a certain kind. Of the
remaining goods, some must necessarily pre-exist as conditions of
happiness, and others are naturally co-operative and useful as
instruments. And this will be found to agree with what we said at the
outset; for we stated the end of political science to be the best end,
and political science spends most of its pains on making the citizens
to be of a certain character, viz. good and capable of noble acts. |
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| 16 |
It is natural, then, that we call neither ox nor horse nor any other of the animals happy; for none of them is capable of sharing in such activity. For this reason also a boy is not happy; for he is not yet capable of such acts, owing to his age; and boys who are called happy are being congratulated by reason of the hopes we have for them. For there is required, as we said, not only complete virtue but also a complete life, since many changes occur in life, and all manner of chances, and the most prosperous may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances and has ended wretchedly no one calls happy. [. . .] | |
Chapter 13 |
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| 17 |
Since
happiness is an activity
of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature
of virtue; for perhaps we shall thus see better the nature of
happiness. The true student of politics, too, is thought to have
studied virtue above all things; for he wishes to make his fellow
citizens good and obedient to the laws. As an example of this we have
the lawgivers of the Cretans and the Spartans, and any others of the
kind that there may have been. And if this inquiry belongs to political
science, clearly the pursuit of it will be in accordance with our
original plan. But clearly the virtue we must study is human virtue;
for the good we were seeking was human good and the happiness human
happiness. By human virtue we mean not that of the body but that of the
soul; and happiness also we call an activity of soul. But if this is
so, clearly the student of politics must know somehow the facts about
soul, as the man who is to heal the eyes or the body as a whole must
know about the eyes or the body; and all the more since politics is
more prized and better than medicine; but even among doctors the best
educated spend much labor on acquiring knowledge of the body. The
student of politics, then, must study the soul, and must study it with
these objects in view, and do so just to the extent which is sufficient
for the questions we are discussing; for further precision is perhaps
something more laborious than our purposes require. |
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| 18 |
Some
things
are said about it,
adequately enough, even in the discussions outside our school, and we
must use these; e.g. that one element in the soul is irrational and one
has a rational principle. Whether these are separated as the parts of
the body or of anything divisible are, or are distinct by definition
but by nature inseparable, like convex and concave in the circumference
of a circle, does not affect the present question. |
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| 19 |
Of
the
irrational element one
division seems to be widely distributed, and vegetative in its nature,
I mean that which causes nutrition and growth; for it is this kind of
power of the soul that one must assign to all nurslings and to embryos,
and this same power to fullgrown creatures; this is more reasonable
than to assign some different power to them. Now the excellence of this
seems to be common to all species and not specifically human; for this
part or faculty seems to function most in sleep, while goodness and
badness are least manifest in sleep (whence comes the saying that the
happy are not better off than the wretched for half their lives; and
this happens naturally enough, since sleep is an inactivity of the soul
in that respect in which it is called good or bad), unless perhaps to a
small extent some of the movements actually penetrate to the soul, and
in this respect the dreams of good men are better than those of
ordinary people. Enough of this subject, however; let us leave the
nutritive faculty alone, since it has by its nature no share in human
excellence. |
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| 20 |
There
seems
to be also another
irrational element in the soul—one which in a sense, however, shares in
a rational principle. For we praise the rational principle of the
continent man and of the incontinent,
and the part of their soul that
has such a principle, since it urges them aright and towards the best
objects; but there is found in them also another element naturally
opposed to the rational principle, which fights against and resists
that principle. For exactly as paralyzed limbs when we intend to move
them to the right turn on the contrary to the left, so is it with the
soul; the impulses of incontinent people move in contrary directions.
But while in the body we see that which moves astray, in the soul we do
not. No doubt, however, we must none the less suppose that in the soul
too there is something contrary to the rational principle, resisting
and opposing it. In what sense it is distinct from the other elements
does not concern us. Now even this seems to have a share in a rational
principle, as we said; at any rate in the continent man it obeys the
rational principle and presumably in the temperate and brave man it is
still more obedient; for in him it speaks, on all matters, with the
same voice as the rational principle. |
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| 21 |
Therefore
the irrational element also appears to be two-fold. For the vegetative
element in no way shares in a rational principle, but the appetitive
and in general the desiring element in a sense shares in it, in so far
as it listens to and obeys it; this is the sense in which we speak of
‘taking account’ of one’s father or one’s friends, not that in which we
speak of ‘accounting for’ a mathematical property. That the irrational
element is in some sense persuaded by a rational principle is indicated
also by the giving of advice and by all reproof and exhortation. And if
this element also must be said to have a rational principle, that which
has a rational principle (as well as that which has not) will be
twofold, one subdivision having it in the strict sense and in itself,
and the other having a tendency to obey as one does one’s father. |
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| 22 |
Virtue
too is distinguished into kinds in accordance with this difference; for
we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral,
philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being
intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a
man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but
that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also
with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those
which merit praise virtues. |
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NOTES BY THE INSTRUCTOR |
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| Politics (par. 2): Aristotle speaks
of politics (politikê,
with the sense of political science) here, with the implication that
the present work belongs to that discipline. The Ethics, however, concerns only
individual conduct and not the organization of states. The latter is
the subject of another treatise by Aristotle, the Politics. Ethics for Aristotle is
thus a part of politics, not the whole of it. RETURN |
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| Happiness
(par. 3): The Greek word
that is translated here as happiness is eudaimonia, which has no clear
equivalent in English. Other terms that have been used to translate it
include “well-being,” “flourishing,” and “success.” The main point to
bear in mind is that it does not signify a state of feeling: in Greek, the question
whether one is eudaimon or
not is not a question of how one is feeling, but of how one is faring
in life overall. The best
indication of what Aristotle means by the term is his identification,
within this paragraph, of eudaimonia
with doing well and living well. RETURN |
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| Hesiod
(par. 4): Greek poet,
circa 700 B.C.E. The quotation is from his Works and Days, 293–297, with some
lines omitted. The word
“wight” is an antiquated expression meaning (according to the Merriam-Webster
Online Dictionary),
“a living being : CREATURE; especially : a human being.” Another
translation of the lines reads: “That man is altogether best who
considers all things himself and marks
what will be better afterwards and at the end; and he, again, is good
who listens to a good adviser; but whoever neither thinks for himself
nor keeps in mind what another tells him, he is an unprofitable man.”
From Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and
Homerica, trans.
Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1914); from the on-line text at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu.
RETURN |
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| Sardanapallus
(par. 5): “An Assyrian king (669–626 B.C.) who lived in
legendary
luxury” (Terence Irwin, note to his translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd ed.
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), p. 177). RETURN |
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| Function
(par. 11): The word so translated is ergon,
from which we have “erg,” a unit of energy. Some have proposed
translating it as “characteristic activity.” The ergon of a thing is not necessarily
a task that is assigned to
it; it is, rather, an activity that makes it a thing of the particular
kind that it is. Thus the ergon
of a flute-player is playing the flute, the ergon of an eye seeing, and so
forth. To say that human beings have an ergon is not to say that they have
been made for some task, but that there is something that we do which
makes us human; and Aristotle in this paragraph argues for a particular
explanation of what that is. RETURN |
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| Priam (par.
16): The King of Troy in Homer’s Iliad.
RETURN |
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| Continent
(par. 20): Exercising continence, meaning “self-control”; contrasted
with “incontinent,” meaning “lacking self-control.” The kind of
continence that Aristotle has in mind is not the ability to control
one’s bowels but the ability to act according to what one judges to be
best. RETURN |