Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle [most read books of all time .txt] 📗

are the excellences of the reason or intellect (νοῦς in its widest meaning). Sense (αἴσθησις) does not need separate treatment, as it is here regarded as merely subsidiary to reason and desire; for human life is (1) speculative, (2) practical, and no independent place is allowed to the artistic life. The fourth part therefore alone remains. ↩

Reading τοὺς πανούργους. ↩

As φρόνησις, prudence. ↩

μετὰ λόγον: the agent must not only be guided by reason, but by his own reason, not another’s. ↩

σεῖος is a dialectical variety for θεῖος, godlike. ↩

(1) Some men are born brutal; (2) others are made so; (3) others make themselves so. ↩

Chapter 5. ↩

Reading αὐτὸν. ↩

This is the sophistical paradox alluded to. ↩

Of these objections, as well as of the opinions which called them forth, it is to be expected that some should prove groundless, and that others should be established and taken up into the answer. ↩

This section seems to me not an alternative to the first paragraph of this chapter; but a correction of it, or rather a remark to the effect that the whole passage (both the first paragraph and the discussion introduced by it) ought to be rewritten, and an indication of the way in which this should be done. Of considerable portions of the Nicomachean Ethics we may safely say that the author could not have regarded them as finished in the form in which we have them. It is possible that the author made a rough draft of the whole work, or of the several parts of it, which he kept by him and worked upon⁠—working some parts up to completion; sometimes rewriting a passage without striking out the original version, or even indicating which was to be retained (e.g. the theory of pleasure); more frequently adding an afterthought which required the rewriting of a whole passage, without rewriting it (e.g., to take one instance out of many in Book V, τὸ ἀντιπεπονθός is an afterthought which strictly requires that the whole book should be rewritten); sometimes (as here) making a note of the way in which a passage should be rewritten. Suppose, if need be, that the work, left in this incomplete state, was edited and perhaps further worked upon by a later hand, and we have enough, I think, to account for the facts. ↩

Alluding to the Heraclitean doctrine of the union of opposites, which Aristotle rather unfairly interprets as a denial of the law of contradiction. Cf. Metaphysics iii 7, 1012a 24. ↩

I.e. not effective, οὐκ ἐνεργεῖ: further in this chapter (the paragraph beginning “Now, when you have on the one side⁠ ⁠…”) ἐνεργεῖ is used again of the minor which when joined to the major is effective. ↩

Action in spite of knowledge presents no difficulty (1) if that knowledge be not present at the time of action, as above (“But we use the word know⁠ ⁠…”), or (2) if, though the major (or majors) be known and present, the minor (or one of the minors) be unknown or absent, as above (“Again, since these reasonings involve two kinds of premises⁠ ⁠…”). But (3) other cases remain which can only be explained by a further distinction introduced in this paragraph; i.e. a man who has knowledge may at times be in a state in which his knowledge, though present, has lost its reality⁠—in which, though he may repeat the old maxims, they mean no more to him than to one who talks in his sleep. This paragraph, I venture to think, is (like the second one in this chapter) not a repetition or an alternative version, but an afterthought, which requires the rewriting of the whole passage. ↩

φυσικῶς, by arguments based upon the special nature of the subject-matter, opposed to λογικῶς, by arguments of a general nature; accordingly, in what follows both the elements of reason and desire are taken into account. ↩

In a practical syllogism. ↩

Notice that ἡδὺ here corresponds to γεύεσθαι δεῖ above. ↩

The minor premise, “this is sweet,” obviously is not “opposed to right reason;” but is not the major premise? In one of the two forms in which it here appears, viz. “all sweet things are pleasant,” it certainly is not so opposed; it merely states a fact of experience which the continent or temperate man assents to as much as the incontinent. In its other form, however, “all sweet things are to be tasted,” the judgment is “opposed to right reason;” but it is so because desire for an object condemned by reason has been added; and thus it may be said that it is not the opinion, but the desire, which is opposed to right reason. It is a defect in the exposition here that the difference between these two forms of the major premise is not more expressly noticed. ↩

Of the syllogism which would forbid him to taste. ↩

Reading full stop after Ἐμπεοκλέους and comma after δρον. ↩

Or the perception of the particular fact. After all Socrates is right: the incontinent man does not really know; the fact does not come home to him in its true significance: he says it is bad, but says it as an actor might, without feeling it; what he realizes is that it is pleasant. ↩

As a man