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

friendship, in which the persons are unequal, as that⁠ ⁠… of a ruler of any kind for a subject.” earlier in that chapter. ↩

We pay taxes to the king, and tend our parents in their old age; but, as this is no adequate repayment of what they have done for us, we owe them honour besides. ↩

For he desires the good of his friend. ↩

In the papers of October 8, 1880, a suit is reported in which A tries in vain to recover from B certain goods given during courtship⁠—according to B as presents, according to A ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς, viz. on condition of marriage, which condition had not been fulfilled. ↩

Reading ὃ ὡμολόγησεν. ↩

Where the two friends have different motives. ↩

Viz. the pleasure of anticipation. ↩

μισθὸς δ᾿ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ εἰρημένος ἄρκιος ἔστω. —⁠Hesiod ↩

Omitting ἐκεῖνο τὸ γενόμενον, after Ingram Bywater, Journal of Philology, vol. xvii, p. 71. ↩

φαῦλος here as elsewhere includes all who are not good, the incontinent as well as the vicious. ↩

Epicharmus was a Sicilian dramatist. ↩

Reading Ἐνεργείᾳ δ᾿ ὁ ποιήσας τὸ ἔργον ἐστί πως. ↩

ἐγκρατής, continent, in whom the true masters the false self; ἀκρατής, incontinent, in whom the true self is mastered. ↩

Reading δή. See J. A. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, p. 386. ↩

(1) They are good, (2) they belong to him. ↩

Cf. the last words of this book. ↩

Cf. note 217. ↩

See a few lines on, at the end of the next paragraph. ↩

ἐσθλῶν μὲν γὰρ ἄπ᾿ ἐσθλὰ μαθήσεαι. —⁠Theognis ↩

τὸ αἱρετόν covers, as no English word can, the transition from desired to desirable. ↩

The neutral state, neither pleasure nor pain, which they hold to be good. ↩

Adopting Leonhard von Spengel’s conjecture, κενούμενος for τεμνόμενος. ↩

Physics, Book iii f.: cf. especially viii 8, 264 b, 27, quoted by Gottfried Ramsauer, who founds on it an ingenious emendation of this passage. ↩

As already remarked, there is no one English word which includes these various senses of ἕξις, (1) habit of body, (2) moral habit or character, (3) intellectual habit or trained faculty. ↩

At other periods of life the various organs of the body may perform their functions completely, but in youth this is accompanied by an inexpressible charm which all other ages lack. The only analogy between pleasure and the doctor is that both “complete the activity” from outside: medicines alter the functions; pleasure, like beauty, does not alter them, but is an added perfection. ↩

Sight and touch are classed together on the one hand, and hearing, smell, and taste on the other, because, while the announcements of all the senses are, in the first instance, of secondary qualities (colours, sounds, etc.), it is mainly from the announcements of sight and touch that we advance to the knowledge of the mathematical properties or primary qualities (number, figure, motion, etc.). ↩

τὰ σπουδαῖα. It is impossible to convey in a translation the play upon the words σπουδή and σπουδαῖος: σπουδή is earnestness; σπουδαῖος usually = good: here, however, σπουδαῖος carries both senses, earnest or serious, and good. ↩

ἡ κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργεια, the contemplation of absolute truth. ↩

The search for this truth. ↩

I.e. our nature as moral agents, as compounds of reason and desire. ↩

I.e. the principles of morals cannot be proved, but are accepted without proof by the man whose desires are properly trained. Cf. I 4 (“… nothing but a good moral training can qualify a man to study what is noble and just⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

Reading ὰνδρείου ὑπομένοντος⁠ ⁠… κινδυνεύοντος after Ingram Bywater, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, p. 69. ↩

Before theory or instruction can be any use. Cf. I 4 (“… nothing but a good moral training can qualify a man to study what is noble and just⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

Cf. the opening paragraphs of VI 8. ↩

Homer’s Odyssey, ix 114. ↩

Transposing καὶ δρᾶν αὐτὸ δύνασθαι as suggested by Ingram Bywater: cf. I 2 (“For though this good is the same for the individual and the state⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

The work to which this conclusion forms a preface is the Politics of Aristotle, still extant, but in an incomplete state. ↩

Colophon

The Nicomachean Ethics
is based on the lectures of
Aristotle
and was compiled around 340 BC.
It was translated from Greek in 1906 by
F. H. Peters.

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