By Aristotle (translated by Terence Irwin)
– Then surely knowledge of this good also carries great weight for [determining the best] way of life; if we know it, we are more likely, like archers who have a target to aim at, to hit the right mark.
– Further, each person judges rightly what he knows, and is a good judge about that; hence the good judge in a given area is the person educated in that area, and the unqualifiedly good judge is the person educated in every area.
– As far as its name goes, most people virtually agree; for both the many and the cultivated call it happiness, and they suppose that living well and doing well are the same as being happy. But they disagree about what happiness is, and the many do not give the same answer as the wise.
– For the many think it is something obvious and evident—for instance, pleasure, wealth, or honor. Some take it to be one thing, others another. Indeed, the same person often changes his mind; for when he has fallen ill, he thinks happiness is health, and when he has fallen into poverty, he thinks it is wealth.
– [Among the wise,] however, some used to think that besides these many goods there is some other good that exists in its own right and that causes all these good to be good.
– That is why we need to have been brought up in fine habits if are to adequate students of fine and just things…
– “He who grasps everything himself is best of all; he is noble also who listens to one who has spoken well; but he who neither grasps it himself nor takes to heart what he hears from another is a useless man.” Hesiod
– for a white thing is no whiter if it lasts a long time than if it lasts a day.
– Hence an end that is always choiceworthy in its own right, never because of something else, is complete without qualifications.
– Honor, pleasure, understanding, and every virtue we certainly choose because of themselves, since we would choose each of them even if it had no further result; but we also choose them for the sake of happiness, supposing that through them we shall be happy.
– Goods are divided, then, into three types, some called external, some goods of the soul, others goods of the body. We say that the goods of the soul are goods most fully, and more than the others, and we take actions and activities of the soul to be [goods] of the soul.
– And just as Olympic prizes are not for the finest and strongest, but for the contestants—since it is only these who win—the same is true in life; among the fine and good people, only those who act correctly win the prize.
– For being please is a condition of the soul, [and hence is included in the activity of the soul].
– And since it is activities that control life, as we said, no blessed person could ever become miserable, since he will never do hateful and base actions. For a truly good and prudent person, we suppose, will bear strokes of fortune suitably, and from his resources at any time will do the finest actions,
– since we also say that happiness is an activity of the soul. If this is so, it is clear that the politician must in some way know about the soul, just as someone setting out to heal the eyes must know about the the whole body as well.
– hence happy people are said to be no better off than miserable people for half their lives.
– Rather, we are by nature able to acquire them, and we are completed through habit.
– Further, the sources and means that develop each virtue also ruin it, just as they do in a craft.
– What we do in terrifying situations, and the habits of fear or confidence that we acquire, make some of us brave and others cowardly.
– For both excessive and deficient exercise ruin bodily strength, and similarly, too much or too little eating, or drinking ruins health, whereas proportionate amount produces, increases, and preserves it. The same is true, then, of temperance, bravery, and the other virtues.
– For pleasure causes us to do base actions, and pain causes us to abstain from fine ones.
– and pleasures and pains make people base, from pursuing and avoiding the wrong ones, at the wrong time, in the wrong ways
– If, then, the virtues are neither feelings nor capabilities, the remaining possibility is that they are states.
– We can be afraid, for instance, or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, and in general have pleasure or pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well. But having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue.
– We must also examine what we ourselves drift into easily. For different people have different natural tendencies toward different goals, and we shall come to know our own tendencies from the pleasure or pain that arises in us.
– It is sometimes difficult, however, to judge what [goods] should be chosen at the price of what [evils], and what [evils] should be endured as the price of what [goods].
– Again, we wish for the end more [than for the things that promote it], but we decide on things that promote the end. We wish, for instance, to be healthy, but we decide to do things that will make us healthy; and we wish to be happy, and say so, but we could not appropriately say we decide to be happy, since in general the things we decide on would seem to be things that are up to us.
– Again, those who make the best decisions do not seem to be the same as those with the best beliefs; on the contrary, some seem to have better beliefs, but to make the wrong decisions because of vice.
– For when acting is up to us, so is not acting, and when no is up to us so is yes. And so if acting, when it is fine, is up to us, not acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us; and if not acting, when it is fine, is up to us, then acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us.
– Bravery is no concerned with reputation, poverty, health standing against [unreadable word] conditions, including death
– Moreover, we act like brave men on occasions when we can use our strength, or when it is fine to be killed; and neither of these is true when we perish on the sea.
– Hence, whoever stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time, and is correspondingly confident, is the brave person
– Moreover, rash people are impetuous, wishing for dangers before they arrive, but they shrink from them when they come. Brave people, on the contrary, are eager when in action, but keep quiet until then.
– If someone finds nothing pleasant, or preferable to anything else, he is far from being human.
– Intemperance is more like voluntary condition that cowardice; for it is caused by pleasure, which is choiceworthy, whereas cowardice is caused by pain, which is to be avoided.
– For when someone lacks understanding, his desire for the pleasant is insatiable and seeks indiscriminate satisfaction.
– Whatever has a use can be used either well or badly
– Using wealth seems to consist in spending and giving, whereas taking and keeping seem to be possessing rather than using.
– For what is generous does not depend on the quantity of what is given, but on the state [of character] of the giver, and the generous state gives in accord with one’s means.
– besides, everyone likes his own work more than [other people’s], as parents and poets do.
– Ungenerosity, however, is incurable, since old age and every incapacity seem to make people ungenerous…the many are money-lovers rather than givers. Moreover, it extends widely and has many species, since there seem to be many ways of being ungenerous. For it consists in two conditions, deficiency in giving and excess in taking; but it is not found as a whole in all cases. Sometimes the two conditions are separated, and some people go to excess in taking, whereas others are deficient in giving.
– The magnificent person, in contrast to these, is like a scientific expert, since he is able to observe what will be the fitting amount, and to spend large amounts in an appropriate way.
– For what suits gods does not suit human beings, and what suits a temple does not suit a tomb.
– He is not prone to marvel, since he finds nothing great, or to remember evils, sine it is proper to a magnanimous person not to nurse memories, especially not of evils, but to overlook them.
– Those who joke in appropriate ways are called witty, or, in other words, agile-witted. For these sorts of jokes seem to be movements of someone’s character, and characters are judged, as bodies are, by their movements.
– for what people used to find funny was shameful abuse – this is a sentiment I’ve seen in my life too looking back at old stand up and how what was said then would be brutalized by todays standards…
– but relaxation and amusement seem to be necessary in life.
– Further, the feeling of shame is suitable for youth, not for every time of life.
– In every matter that they deal with, the laws aim either at the common benefit of all, or at the benefit of those in control, whose control rests on virtue or on some other such basis. And so in one way what we call just is whatever produces and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community.
– That is why Bias seems to have been correct in saying that ruling will reveal the man; for a ruler is automatically related to another, and in a community.
– for in any action where too much and too little are possible, the fair [amount] is also possible.
– Hence the just requires four things at least; the people for whom it is just are two, and the [equal] things involved are two.
– whenever equals receive unequals shares, or unequals equal shares, in a distribution, that is the source of quarrels and accusations.
– For having more than one’s own share is called making a profit, and having less than what one had at the beginning is called suffering a loss.
– Justice is a mean, not as the other virtues are, but because it is about an intermediate condition, whereas injustices is about the extremes.
– And doing injustice is awarding to oneself too many of the things that, [considered] without qualification, are good, and too few of the things that, [considered] without qualifications, are bad.
– Whenever one does them unwillingly, one neither does justice nor does injustice, except coincidentally
– Actions are involuntary, then, if they are done in ignorance; or they are not done in ignorance, but they are not up to the agent; or they are done by force.
– since anger is a response to apparent injustice.
– For the standard applied to the indefinite is itself indefinite
– But injustice to whom? Surely to the city, not to himself, since he suffers it willingly, and no one willingly suffers injustice.
– Now a thing’s virtue is relative to its own proper function
– There are three [capacities] in the soul—sense perception, understanding, desire—that control action and truth.
– As assertion and denial are to thought, so pursuit and avoidance are to desire.
– Thought by itself moves nothing; what moves us is goal-directed thought concerned with action.
– ‘Of this alone even a god is deprived—to make what is all done to have never happened.’ (Agathon)
– It seems proper to a prudent person to be able to deliberate finely about things that are good and beneficial for himself, not about some restricted area—about what sorts of things promote health or strength, for instance—but about what sorts of things promote living well in general.
– The remaining possibility, then, is that prudence is a state of grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about things that are good or bad for a human being.
– [The states of the soul] by which we always grasp the truth and never make mistakes, about what can or cannot be otherwise, are scientific knowledge, prudence, wisdom, and understanding.
– For it would be absurd for someone to think that political science or prudence is the most excellent science; for the best thing in the universe is not a human being [and the most excellent science must be of the best things].
– For if there is no one medical science about all beings, there is no one science about the good of all animals, but a different science about each specific good.
– It does not matter if human beings are the best among the animals; for there are other beings of a far more divine nature than human beings—most evidently, for instance, the beings composing the universe.
– There is a capacity, called cleverness, which is such as to be able to do the actions that tend to promote whatever goal is assumed and to attain them.
– Moreover, prudence does not control wisdom or the better part of the soul, just as medical science does not control health.
– And so, if, as they say, human beings become gods because of exceedingly great virtue, this is clearly the sort of state that would be opposite to the bestial state.
– Some people are overcome by, or pursue, some of these naturally fine and good things to a degree that goes against reason; they take honor, or children, or parents (for instance) more seriously than is right. For though these are certainly good and people are praised for taking them seriously, still excess about them is also possible.
– Quick-tempered and volatile people are most prone to be impetuous incontinents. For in quick-tempered people the appetite is so fast, and in volatile people so intense, that they do not wait for reason, because they tend to follow appearance.
– For virtue preserves the principle, whereas vice corrupts.
– Now there are some other people who tend to abide by their belief. These are the people called stubborn, who are hard to persuade into something and not easy to persuade out of it. These have some similarity to continent people, just as the wasteful person has to the generous, and the rash to the confident.
– But stubborn people are not swayed by reason; for they acquire appetites, and many of them are led on by pleasures.
– The stubborn include the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish. The opinionated are as they are because of pleasure and pain.
– And incontinents through habituation are more easily cured than the natural incontinents; for habit is easier than nature to change. Indeed the reason why habit is also difficult to change is that it is like nature; as Eunenus says, ‘Habit, I say, is longtime training, my friend, and in the end training is nature for human beings.”
– …no becoming is of the same kind as its end—for instance, no [process of] building is of the same kind as a house.
– Further, the temperate person avoids pleasure. Further, the prudent person pursues what is painless, not what is pleasant. Further, pleasures impede prudent thinking, and impede it more the more we enjoy them.
– A sign [that supports our distinction between pleasures] is the fact that we do not enjoy the same thing when our nature is being refilled as we enjoy when it is eventually fully restored.
– That is why all think the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into happiness, quite reasonably. For no activity is complete if it is impeded, and happiness is something complete. That is why the happy person needs to have goods of the body and external goods added [to good activities], and needs fortune also, so that he will not be impeded in these ways.
– And because happiness needs fortune added, some believe good fortune is the same happiness. But it is not. For when it is excessive, it actually impedes happiness; and then, presumably, it is no longer rightly called good fortune, since the limit [up to which it is good] is defined in relationship to happiness.
– for all things by nature have something divine [in them].
– We must, however, not only state the true view, but also explain the false view; for an explanation of that promotes confidence. For when we have an apparently reasonable explanation of why a false view appears true, that makes us more confident of the true view.
– A pain is driven out by its contrary pleasure
– Things are pleasant by nature, however, when they produce action of a healthy nature.
– Further, it is most necessary for our life. For no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods. Indeed rich people and holders of powerful positions, even more than other people, seem to need friends. For how would one benefit from such prosperity if one had no opportunity for beneficence, which is most often displayed, and most highly praised, in relation to friends?
– But in poverty also, and in the other misfortunes, people think friends are the only refuge. Moreover, the young need friends to keep them from error. The old need friends to care for the and support the actions that fail because of weakness. And those in their prime need friends to do fine actions; for ‘when two go together…’, they are more capable of understanding and acting.
– Now do people love the good, or the good for themselves? For sometimes these conflict; and the same is true of the pleasant.
– In fact, each one loves not what is good for him, but what appears good for him; but this will not matter, since [what appears good for him] will be what appears lovable.
– For friendship is said to be reciprocated goodwill.
– Those who love each other for utility love the other not in his own right, but insofar as they gain some good for themselves from him. The same is true of those who love pleasure; for they like a witty person not because of his character, but because he is pleasant to them.
– What is useful does not remain the same, but is different at different times.
– The cause of friendship between young people seems to be pleasure. For their lives are guided by their feelings, and they pursue above all what is pleasant for themselves and what is at hand.
– For the erotic lover and his beloved do not take pleasure in the same things; the lover takes pleasure in seeing his beloved, but the beloved takes pleasure in being courted by his lover.
– Those who welcome each other but do not live together would seem to have goodwill rather than friendship. For nothing is as proper to friends as living together; for while those who are in want desire benefit, blessedly happy people [who want for nothing], no less than the others, desire to spend their days together, since a solitary life fits them least of all.
– Loving would seem to be a feeling, but friendship is a state. For loving is directed no less toward inanimate things, but reciprocal loving requires decision, and decision comes from a state; and [good people] wish good to be beloved for his own sake in accord with their state, not their feelings.
– Among sour people and older people, friendship is found less often, since they are worse-tempered and find less enjoyment in meeting people
– No one can have complete friendship for many people, just as no one can have an erotic passion for many things at the same time; for [complete friendship, like erotic passion], is like an excess, and an excess is naturally directed at a single individual.
– Moreover, blessedly happy people have no need of anything useful, but do need sources of pleasure.
– Because the many love honor they seem to prefer being loved to loving…and being loved seems closer to being honored.
– Those who want honor from decent people with knowledge are seeking to confirm their own view of themselves, and so they are pleased because the judgment of those who say they are good makes them confident that they are good.
– for we aim at whatever we find we lack, and give something else in return.
– The first political system is kingship; the second aristocracy; and since the third rests on property (timema), it appears proper to call it a timocratic system, though most people usually call it a polity. The best of these is kingship and the worst is timocracy.
– For someone is a king only if he is self-sufficient and superior in all goods; and since such a person needs nothing more, he will consider the subjects’ benefit, not his own.
– the tyrant pursues his own good.
– The transition from aristocracy [rule of the best people] is to oligarchy [rule of the few], resulting from the badness of the rulers. They distribute the city’s goods to themselves, and always assign ruling offices to the same people, counting wealth for most.
– The rule of a master over his slaves is also tyrannical, since it is the master’s advantage that is achieved in it.
– For the master and slave have nothing in common, since a slave is a tool with a soul, while a tool is a slave without a soul.
– For a person regards what comes from him as his own, as the owner regards his tooth or hair or anything; but what has come from him regards its owner as its own not at all, or to a lesser degree.
– The friendship of children to a parent, like the friendship of human beings to a god, is friendship toward what is good and superior.
– Children seem to be another bond, and that is why childless unions are more quickly dissolved; for children are a common good for both, and what is common holds them together.
– Accusations and reproaches arise only or most often in friendship for utility.
– Friendship for utility, however, is liable to accusations. For these friends deal with each other in the expectation of gaining benefits. Hence they always require more, thinking they have got less than is fitting; and they reproach the other because they get less than they require and deserve. And those who confer benefits cannot supply as much as the recipients require.
– all or most people wish for what is fine, but decide to do what is beneficial
– Hence someone who suffers a monetary loss [by holding office] receives honor in return, while someone who accepts gifts [in office] receives money [but not honor];
– This, then, is how we should treat unequals. If we benefit from them in money or virtue, we should return honor, and thereby make what return we can. For friendship seeks what is possible, not what accords with worth, since that is impossible in some cases, as it is with honor to gods and parents. For no one could ever make a return in accord with their worth, but someone who attends to them as far as he is able seems to be a decent person.
– These sorts of charges arise whenever the lover loves his beloved for pleasure while the beloved loves his lover for utility, and they do not both provide these. For if the friendship has these causes, it is dissolved whenever they do not get what they were friends for; for each was not fond of the other himself, but only of what the other had, which was unstable.
– for when someone does not get what he aims at, it is like getting nothing.
– For each person sets his mind on what he finds he requires, and this will be his aim when he gives what he gives.
– And so, if we mistakenly suppose we are loved for our character, when our friend is doing nothing to suggest this, we must hold ourselves responsible.
– how could they still be friends, if they neither approve of the same things nor find the same things enjoyable or painful?
– The defining features of friendship that are found in friendships to one’s neighbors would seem to be derived from features of friendship toward oneself. For a friend is taken to be someone who wishes and does goods or apparent goods to his friends for the friend’s own sake.
– for when people do not look out for the common good, it is ruined.
– What is pleasant is actualization in the present, expectation for the future, and the memory of the past; but what is most pleasant is the [action we do] insofar as we are actualized, and this is also most lovable.
– everyone is fond of whatever has taken effort to produce; for instance, people who have made money themselves are fonder of it than people who have inherited it. And while receiving a benefit seems to take no effort, giving one is hard work.
– Hence he should also love himself most of all.
– Those who make self-love a matter for reproach ascribe it to those who award the biggest share in money, honors, and bodily pleasures to themselves. For these are the goods desired and eagerly pursued by the many on the assumption that they are best.
– Those who are unusually eager to do fine actions are welcomed and praised by everyone. And when everyone strains to achieve what is fine and concentrates on the finest actions, everything that is right will be done for the common good, and each person individually will receive the greatest good, since that is the character of virtue.
– It is quite true that, as they say, the excellent person labors for his friends and for his native country, and will die for them if he must; he will sacrifice money, honors, and contested goods in general, in achieving the fine for himself. For he will choose intense pleasure for a short-time over slight pleasure for a long time; a year of living finely over many years of undistinguished life; and a single fine and great action over many small actions. This is presumably true of one who dies for others; he does indeed choose something great and fine for himself. He is also ready to sacrifice money as long as his friends profit; for the friends gain money, while he gains the fine, and so he awards himself the greater good.
– for having friends seems to be the greatest external good.
– For animals, life is defined by the capacity for perception, but for human beings, it is defined by the capacity for perception or understanding
– Life itself, then, is good and pleasant, as it would seem, at any rate, from the fact that everyone desires it, and decent and blessed people desire it more than others do—for their life is most choiceworthy for them, and their living is most blessed.
– For in the case of human beings what seems to count as living together is this sharing of conversation and thought, not sharing the same pasture, as in the case of grazing animals.
– Presumably, though, the right quantity is not just one number, but anything between certain defined limits.
– For in fact we seek them in both; for in ill fortune we need assistance, and in good fortune we need friends to live with and to benefit, since then we wish to do good. Certainly it is more necessary to have friends in ill fortune; that is why useful friends are needed here. But it is finer to have them in good fortune.
– For friendship is community, and we are related to our friend as we are related to ourselves.
– Besides, enjoying and hating the right things seems to be most important for virtue of character.
– For they argue that if pain is evil, it does not follow that pleasure is good, since evil is also opposed to evil, and both are opposed to the neutral condition [without pleasure and pain].
– The difference between a friend and a flatterer seems to indicate that pleasure is not good, or else that pleasures differ in species. For in dealing with us the friend seems to aim at what is good, but the flatterer at pleasure; and the flatterer is reproached, whereas the friend is praised, on the assumption that in their dealings they have different aims.
– This also seems true because a process must take time, but being pleased need not; for what is present in an instant is a whole.
– Pleasure completes the activity.
– For nothing human is capable of continuous activity, and hence no continuous pleasures arises either, since pleasure is a consequence of the activity. Some things delight us when they are new to us, but later delight us less, for the same reason. For at first our thought is stimulated and intensely active toward them, as our sense of sight is when we look closely at something; but later the activity becomes lax and careless, so that the pleasure fades also.
– whenever we are engaged in two activities at once. For the most pleasant activity pushes out the other one, all the more if it is much more pleasant, so that we no longer even engage in the other activity. Hence if we are enjoying one thing intensely, we do not do another very much. It is when we are only mildly pleased that we do something else.
– he count happiness as an activity rather than a state.
– Happiness, then, is not found in amusement; for it would be absurd if the end were amusement, and our lifelong efforts and sufferings aimed at amusing ourselves.
– Besides, happiness seems to be found in leisure; for we deny ourselves leisure so that we can be at leisure, and fight wars so that we can be at peace.
– each person seems to be his understanding
– Similarly, the brave person will need enough power, and the temperate person will need freedom [to do intemperate actions], if they are to achieve anything that the virtue requires. For how else will they, or any other virtuous people, make their virtue clear?
– When we go through them all, anything that concerns actions appears trivial and unworthy of the gods.
– Hence the gods’ activity that is superior in blessedness will be an activity of study. And so the human activity that is most akin to the gods’ activity will, more than any others, have the character of happiness.
– And so [on this argument] happiness will be some kind of study.
– for the life of someone whose activity accords with virtue will be happy.
– For the many judge by externals, since these are all they perceive.
– Hence we ought to examine what has been said by applying it to what we do and how we live; and if it harmonizes with what we do, we should accept it, but if it conflicts we should count it [mere] words.
– the aim of studies about action, as we say, is surely not to study and know about a given thing, but rather to act on our knowledge. Hence knowing about virtue is not enough, but we must also try to posses and exercise virtue, or become good in any other way.
– For the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base because of the penalties, not because it is disgraceful.
– That is why it is said that the pains imposed must be those most contrary to the pleasures he likes.
– Further, education adapted to an individual is actually better than a common education for everyone, just as individualized medical treatment is better.