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

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Book II, chapter 9 (“But it is a hard task, we must admit⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

The things that the boaster pretends to are also the things that the ironical man disclaims. ↩

Omitting προσποιούμενοι. See Ingram Bywater’s translation, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (1890). ↩

What follows explains why all these terms have a specific moral meaning. ↩

Friendliness, truthfulness, wit. ↩

Reading καὶ τῷ εἷναι. See Ingram Bywater’s translation, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (1890). ↩

The continent man desires the evil which he ought not to desire, and so is not good; but he does not do it, and so is not bad: thus continence also might be called “hypothetically good”; granting the evil desire (which excludes goodness proper), the best thing is to master it. ↩

Book VII. ↩

A man may “do that which is just” without “acting justly:” cf. II 4 (“… he must also be in a certain state of mind when he does it⁠ ⁠…”), and Chapter 8 of this book. ↩

While his children are regarded as parts of him, and even his wife is not regarded as an independent person: cf. Chapter 6 below (“We cannot speak (without qualification) of injustice towards what is part of one’s self⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

Or “differently manifested:” the phrase is used in both senses. ↩

Putting comma after ἁπλῶς instead of ἕξις (Trendelenburg). ↩

This is not merely a repetition of what has been said in the second paragraph of this chapter: acts of injustice (2) are there distinguished from acts of injustice (1) by the motive (gain), here by the fact that they are referred to no other vice than injustice. ↩

Before the sixth paragraph of the first chapter in this book the two kinds of injustice were called δμώνυμα, i.e. strictly, “things that have nothing in common but the name;” here they are called συνώνυμα, “different things bearing a common name because they belong to the same genus,” as a man and an ox are both called animals: cf. Aristotle’s Categories I 1. ↩

τὰ ἐκτὸς ἀγαθά is the name which Aristotle most frequently uses, sometimes τὰ ἁπλῶς ἀγαθά, as above, Chapter 1 (“Since the unjust man, in one of the two senses of the word⁠ ⁠…”). ↩

The two characters coincide perfectly only in the perfect state: cf. Aristotle’s Politics III 4, 1276 b16 f. ↩

If this amount be equal, it must be equal to something else; if my share is fair, I must be sharing with one other person at least. ↩

A’s share and B’s. ↩

Counting all free men as equals entitled to equal shares. ↩

E.g. (a ÷ b) = (c ÷ d). ↩

Assigning or joining certain quantities of goods (c and d) to certain persons (a and b). ↩

In the way of redress, as given by the law-courts: later on (Chapter 5) he gives as an afterthought the kind of justice which ought to regulate buying and selling, etc. See note 108. ↩

The δικασταί at Athens combined the functions of judge and jury. ↩

The point to be illustrated is, that in these private transactions what one man gains is equal to what the other loses, so that the penalty that will restore the balance can be exactly measured. Of this principle (on which the possibility of justice does in fact depend) Aristotle first gives a simple geometrical illustration, and then says that the same law holds in all that man does: what is suffered by the patient (whether person, as in medicine, or thing, as in sculpture or agriculture) is the same as what is done by the agent. This paragraph occurs again in the next chapter (5⁠—“This is no less true of the other arts and professions⁠ ⁠…”): but it can hardly have come into this place by accident; we rather see the author’s thought growing as he writes. I follow Trendelenburg (who omits the passage here) in inserting ὅ before ἐποίει, but not in omitting τὸ before πάσχον. ↩

For the aim of trade is neither profit nor loss, but fair exchange, i.e. exchange (on the principle laid down in Chapter 5) which leaves the position of the parties as the state fixed it (by distributive justice, Chapter 3). But when in the private transactions of man with man this position is disturbed, i.e. whenever either unintentionally, by accident or negligence, or intentionally, by force or fraud, one has bettered his position at the expense of another, corrective justice steps in to redress the balance. I read αὐτἀ δἰ αὐτῶν and accept J. A. Stewart’s interpretation of these words (Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle), and in part Henry Jackson’s interpretation of τῶν παρὰ τὸ ἑκούσιον (Περὶ Δικαιοσύνης [Concerning Righteousness]: The Fifth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle), but cannot entirely agree with either as to the sense of the whole passage. ↩

We had before (Chapter 3 starting at “Let us say, then⁠ ⁠…”) as the rate of distributive justice: (A÷B)=(C÷D), and the distribution was expressed by the “joining” (σύζευξις) of the opposite or corresponding symbols, A and C, B and D. Here we have the same two pairs of symbols, ranged