Mary McCabe, King's College London Aristotle's Nichomachaean Ethics is one of the most important and central texts in the history of Western philosophy. In this book I have provided the standard references, but I have also included the Book and Ethics chapter for additional help in placing a reference in its context.
Note on the text
Athens was the cultural center of the Mediterranean, and its citizens would have had two reasons not to be immediately impressed by the young Aristotle. Both of Aristotle's parents came from families with a long tradition of medical practice, and his father was personal physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon.
Aristotle’s life and work
Perhaps Aristotle hoped to instill Plato's ideals in the young heir to the throne, but in light of the brutality of some of Alexander's campaign tactics, one wonders how complete Aristotle's influence was on his pupil. Aristotle was convinced that the explanations were not to be found in some supersensible world of Platonic forms, but in the internal organization of the organisms themselves.
Style, structure and aim of
1Not only are there two works: to complicate matters further, three of the eight books of the Eudemian Ethics are identical to three of the ten books of the Nicomachaean Ethics. Perhaps three of the books from one of the two works were lost and replaced by the three parallel books from the other work (which was probably the Eudemian Ethics).
Aristotle tells us that the first three chapters of the Ethics are like a preface to the work as a whole (1095a12). Only someone with no knowledge of the subject would expect that kind of detailed clarity.
The fulfilled life
It is that a fulfilled life is by definition not pursued for the sake of something else – what else could be the point of that. We have seen that it is Aristotle's view that a fulfilled life is a life lived kat'arete¯n – in accordance with virtue.
Moral virtues and moral
Moral virtues are the subject of this chapter, and intellectual virtues will be dealt with in the following. The main characteristic of the moral virtues is that they involve a particular pattern of emotional response to situations. In II, 6, Aristotle develops his account of the way in which the emotions are involved in moral virtue.
Appropriate responses are those that accord with the judgment of a certain type of person—a person of practical wisdom. The mention of "diagram" suggests that all special cases are instances of triplets consisting of one virtue article and two opposing vices. In the last chapter of the Ethics (X, 9) he returns to the subject of moral education and gives a comparatively complex account of what is involved.
Courage—the appropriate emotional response to danger—is defined in part by the corresponding emotion of loyalty, and vice versa. Much of the power of this kind of criticism depends on precisely what is to be considered controversial in ethics and what is not.
Practical wisdom
Finally, we have already seen that Aristotle defines the moral virtues in terms of the choices made by the person who has practical wisdom. It is generally supposed that it is characteristic of the man of practical wisdom to be able to consider the things that are good and useful to himself, not in a limited way (good for his health or his strength), but that live well in general. 7Another form of example could be this: what is the next member of the series JFMAMJJ.
In deciding which means to use, we clarify our understanding of the goal we should be aiming for. After all, Aristotle says that practical wisdom is not only intended for the personal life of individuals, but is also a virtue of politicians who must think of the good of the community as a whole (VI, 8). Aristotle says that it is characteristic of a man of practical wisdom that he thinks carefully about what is good and useful for himself and what will generally lead to a good life (VI, 5, 1140a24–28).
We do not deliberate about what is impossible to change - the universe, geometrical facts, the weather or the movements of the stars. It is a habitual state which is developed in the eye of the soul only in the presence of moral virtue, as we have already said and is clear enough.
Responsibility
Such events are simply not actions at all, as Aristotle defines actions, since they are not explained by the agent's desires or choices, nor do they express anything about the agent's character. As he saw it, he was performing quite different actions, and the actions must be defined in terms of the agent's desires and thoughts at the time of acting. Aristotle uses the phrase "not willingly" to describe the action as it was performed at the time, and "unwillingly" to describe it in light of the agent's subsequent reaction to what happened.
The differences must be partly explained by the narrower legal context of the discussion in V, 8. It is not ignorance of the universal that causes someone to act unwillingly (people are blamed for ignorance of that kind), but ignorance of the information that to which the action relates and in which the actions consist. It is at least an understandable policy, as one does not want to give citizens an incentive to not know the requirements of the law.
While they are a good starting point, they are, by their nature, not conclusive. But of course it is also true that in a deterministic world it was inevitable, given the state of the world at t–1, that our desires and beliefs were what they were.
Moral failure
In explaining what he wants to do in the first ten chapters of Book VII, Aristotle gives one of his most explicit accounts of the. In the next section I will try to defend it in more detail against other possible interpretations of the text. This is exactly the conclusion that Aristotle led us to expect at the beginning of the discussion.
The student does not yet know exactly what he is repeating by heart; and the actor doesn't have to believe any of the things he says. First, it is intended as a physiological explanation for the examples of drunkenness/madness given in (3). This careful description of the person who lacks self-control explicitly distinguishes him from the person who is carried away by his feelings.
This is cute. this second is one of the details); the person who is able and not prevented will immediately act accordingly. The person affected by desire 'does not have, or rather does not use' his understanding of the particular situation.
Relationships with others
It is common to speak of the part of the Ethics that includes Books VIII and IX as Aristotle's discussion of friendship. The word appears in what is actually the title of the long section of the Ethics, which begins at 1155a3. That is, it suggests that the way in which all the features of the relationship work out will depend on the basis on which the relationship as a whole is based.
But in every kind of friendship the benevolence is directed to the good of the other person, for that person's sake. 4. It has its roots in Plato's famous dictum that the good man cannot be harmed, and his consequent identification of the fulfilled life with the life of virtue. Instead of arguing that human fulfillment consists in the integrated functioning of the various powers inherent in human nature, Aristotle insisted that.
Perhaps he sees the fine and noble as characteristic features of the fulfilled life, precisely because the fulfilled life is lived in community, and the actions that a fulfilled life requires of us have a communal dimension. It is no coincidence that, due to careless editing, almost two entire books of the Ethics are taken up with the discussion of the relationships between people.
Pleasure and the good life
Pleasure is discussed in two different places in the Ethics, once in VII. book at the end of the treatment of moral failure and once at the beginning of Book X, which introduces the final definitive discussion of eudaimonia. This puzzle is one of the most obvious reminders that Aristotle wrote two treatises on ethics. Commentators have more often taken the view that the passage in Book X is later, and have perceived a more detailed and sophisticated discussion of the issues than is found in VII.
1See Gosling and Taylor [1982], chapters 11 and 15 for an excellent and detailed description of the various possibilities. He thought the same result. followed by consideration of the opposite: pain in itself is to be avoided by all, so the parallel would be that pleasure in itself is worthy of choice. Many of the same arguments of a broad moral character which we might think of as being made against basing morality on the pursuit of pleasure were current in Aristotle's time.
Furthermore, a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure is very likely to miss out on many of the most worthwhile activities. Almost in a series of one-liners, he refutes a number of moral arguments intended to show that pleasure cannot be good.