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

to Aristotle the highest ἐνέργεια involves no transition or motion at all (cf. Chapter 14⁠—“… God always enjoys one simple pleasure⁠ ⁠…”), and in every true ἐνέργεια, even when a transition is involved, the end is attained at every moment. Cf. Metaphysics ix 6 1048b. ↩

The argument is, “Pleasure is good because it is the opposite of pain, which is evil.” “No,” says Speusippus; “it is neither pleasure nor pain, but the neutral state, which is opposite to both, that is good.” “No,” replies Aristotle, “for then pleasure will be bad.” ↩

Virtuous faculties and activities (II 6⁠—“… because the mean or moderate amount is, in a sense, an extreme⁠ ⁠…”) do not admit of excess, because by their very nature they are right and occupy the mean; too much of them would be a contradiction in terms. ↩

Pain generally (ὅλως) is bad, to be avoided.

Objection: The pain of foregoing certain excessive pleasures is not to be avoided.

Answer: The opposite of these excessive pleasures, i.e. the foregoing them, is not painful to the virtuous man, but only to him who sets his heart upon them, i.e. to a vicious or incontinent man. ↩

As these words disturb the order of the argument, I have, following Gottfried Ramsauer (Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea), put them in brackets; but I see no sufficient reason for regarding them as spurious. ↩

Cf. Chapter 12 (“In the second place⁠ ⁠…”).

I am sick and take medicine, hungry and take food (which seems to be here included under medicine); but neither the drug nor the food can of themselves cure me and restore the balance of my system⁠—they must be assimilated (or the body is not like a jar that can be filled merely by pouring water from another jar), i.e. part of my system must remain in its normal state and operate in its normal manner. But this operation, this ἐνέργεια τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἕξεως, is pleasure (by the definition given in Chapter 12: “… pleasure⁠ ⁠… is an activity⁠ ⁠…”), and in ignorance of the process we transfer the pleasure to the medicine and call it pleasant. The weakness of this account is that it overlooks the fact that, though the medicine cannot itself cure without the operation of τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἕξεως, yet on the other hand this ἕξις, this faculty, cannot operate in this manner without this stimulus; so that there seems to be no reason why the medicine, as setting up an ἐνέργεια τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἕξεως, should not itself be called φύσει ἡδύ. But the whole passage rests on the assumption that there can be activity without stimulus, i.e. without want⁠—an assumption which has become inconceivable to us. ↩

Cf. X 7 (“But a life which realized this idea would be something more than human⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

τῶν δικαίων τὸ μάλιστα sc. τὸ ἐπιεικές: cf. V 10 (“What is just⁠ ⁠… and what is equitable are generically the same, and both are good, though what is equitable is better”) and VI 11 (“… equitable is a common term that is applicable to all that is good in our dealings with others.”). ↩

Cf. Plato’s Republic, 834. ↩

Literally, “Crow to crow.” ↩

Literally, “say that all who thus resemble one another are to one another like potters,” alluding to the saying of Hesiod⁠—

Καὶ κεραμεὺς κεραμεῖ κοτέει καὶ τέκτονι⁠—

“Potter quarrels with potter, and carpenter with carpenter.” ↩

See Gottfried Ramsauer, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea. ↩

A family of importance in a Greek state was usually connected by ties of hospitality with other families in other states: persons so connected were not φίλοι, not strictly friends, since they lived apart; but ξένοι, for which there is no English equivalent. ↩

To a Greek, of course, this does not necessarily imply living under the same roof, as it does to us with our very different conditions of life. ↩

Reading πολλοὺς. ↩

The words ἂν μὴ καὶ τῇ ἀρετῇ ὑπερέχηται literally mean “unless he also be surpassed in virtue.” Who is “he”? Not the former, for σπουδαῖος, the ideally good man, cannot be surpassed in virtue; therefore the latter⁠—the great man, the tyrant, king or prince. The whole passage displays a decided animus against princes (perhaps, as Adolf Stahr suggests in his Aristotelia, a reminiscence of experiences in the Macedonian court). ↩

The general rule of justice is that what different people receive is different, being proportionate to their respective merits (τὸ κατ᾿ ὰξίαν or ἰσότης λόγων: cf. V 3, 5, and again in 5); in exceptional cases, when the merits of the persons are the same, what they receive is equal (τὸ κατ᾿ becomes τὸ κατὰ ποσὸν ἴσον). But friendship in the primary sense is friendship between equals, so that the general rule here is that both give and take equal amounts of love, etc.; in the exceptional case of inequality between the persons, the amounts must be proportionate. ↩

It is the institution of the state which gives a permanent significance to these amusements of a day. ↩

As the ἄρχων βασιλεύς at Athens. ↩

Literally “more evident,” sc. than that kingly rule is the best. ↩

Scarcely consistent with “… the case of princes⁠ ⁠… those who are greatly inferior do not claim their friendship⁠ ⁠…” in Chapter 7; but cf. “… another kind of