Concerning this point, Aristotle asserts that even though people with a bad character may be ignorant and even seem unable to choose the right things, this condition stems from decisions that were originally voluntary, the same as poor health can develop from past choices—and, "While no one blames those who are ill-formed by nature, people do censure those who are that way through lack of exercise and neglect. As Sachs points out, (2002, p. 30) it appears the list is not especially fixed, because it differs between the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, and also because Aristotle repeats several times that this is a rough outline.[44]. [76] In contrast a buffoon can never resist making any joke, and the deficient vice in this case is an uncultivated person who does not get jokes, and is useless in playful conversation. [113], Book IX and the last sections of Book VIII turn to the question of how friends and partners generally should reward each other and treat each other, whether it be in money or honor or pleasure. Aristotle also focuses on the question of what the greatest things one may be worthy of. In the Middle Ages, a synthesis between Aristotelian ethics and Christian theology became widespread, in Europe as introduced by Albertus Magnus. 7.: It is in part natural, in part conventional. What is just to fulfill one's need, whereas people err by either desiring beyond this need, or else desiring what they ought not desire. Video Book Notes. Avoiding fear is more important in aiming at courage than avoiding overconfidence. Aristotle does not however equate character with habit (ethos in Greek, with a short "e") because real character involves conscious choice, unlike habit. One whereby we contemplate or observe the things with invariable causes, One whereby we contemplate the variable things—the part with which we deliberate concerning actions. The definition given is therefore: The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them. 2 Or perhaps ‘both to ascertain and to secure.’. "Each moment of pleasurable consciousness is a perfect whole. Many believe that these works were not put into their current form by Aristotle himself, but by an editor sometime later. Other more "Averroist" Aristotelians such as Marsilius of Padua were controversial but also influential. [10] Character here translates ēthos in Greek, related to modern words such as ethics, ethical and ethos. 1211b 27 ff. Even if a temperate person avoids excesses of some pleasures, they still have pleasures. The obsequious (areskos) person is over-concerned with the pain they cause others, backing down too easily, even when it is dishonorable or harmful to do so, while a surly (duskolos) or quarrelsome (dusteris) person objects to everything and does not care what pain they cause others, never compromising. While parents often attempt to do this, it is critical that there are also good laws in the community. : THE SEVERAL MORAL VIRTUES AND VICES—Continued. Now he will discuss the other type: that of thought (dianoia). Aristotle says that while all the different things called good do not seem to have the same name by chance, it is perhaps better to "let go for now" because this attempt at precision "would be more at home in another type of philosophic inquiry", and would not seem to be helpful for discussing how particular humans should act, in the same way that doctors do not need to philosophize over the definition of health in order to treat each case. [9], From this starting point, Aristotle goes into discussion of what ethics, a term Aristotle helped develop, means. The Nichomachean Ethics is Aristotle's comprehensive deductive/logical treatise concerning the ends for which we should live. As in many of these examples, Aristotle says the excess (boastfulness) is more blameworthy than the deficiency (being self-disparaging). In other words, it is not described as a mean between two extremes. Earlier in both works, both the Nicomachean Ethics Book IV, and the equivalent book in the Eudemian Ethics (Book III), though different, ended by stating that the next step was to discuss justice. (Marsilius is for example sometimes said to have influenced the controversial English political reformer Thomas Cromwell.). However, Aristotle says this aim is not strictly human, and that to achieve it means to live in accordance not with our mortal thoughts but with something immortal and divine which is within humans. Two kinds of incontinence, the hasty and the weak. He reviews some arguments of previous philosophers, including first Eudoxus and Plato, to argue that pleasure is clearly a good pursued for its own sake even if it is not The Good, or in other words that which all good things have in common. However, the practice of virtue requires good education and habituation from an early age in the community. What is just in distribution distinguished from what is just in correction. But these pleasures and their associated activities also impede with each other just as a flute player cannot participate in an argument while playing. A critical period in the history of this work's influence is at the end of the Middle Ages, and beginning of modernity, when several authors such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, argued forcefully and largely successfully that the medieval Aristotelian tradition in practical thinking had become a great impediment to philosophy in their time. This is understood to be referring to Plato and his school, famous for what is now known as the Theory of Forms. With these friendships are classed family ties of hospitality with foreigners, types of friendships Aristotle associates with older people. Aristotle says that virtue, practical judgment and wisdom, and also pleasure, all associated with happiness, and indeed an association with external abundance, are all consistent with this definition. Some pleasures are more beautiful and some are more base or corrupt. It is concerning this third class of actions that there is doubt about whether they should be praised or blamed or condoned in different cases. 14.: Of the bodily pleasures, and the distinction between naturally and accidentally pleasant. The highest human good, then, is that activity that is an end in itself. [121], Different activities in life, the different sense perceptions, thinking, contemplating, bring different pleasures, and these pleasures make the activities grow, for example a flute player gets better at it as they also get more pleasure from it. The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. This is a sort of blind justice since it treats both parties as if they were equal regardless of their actual worth: "It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man or a bad one a good one". It is Book VI in the latter. It could include a noble and manly person with appropriate ambition, or a less ambitious person who is moderate and temperate. The part of the soul with reason is divided into two parts: Aristotle states that if recognition depends upon likeness and kinship between the things being recognized and the parts of the soul doing the recognizing, then the soul grows naturally into two parts, specialised in these two types of cause. This good toward which all human actions implicity or explicitly aim is happinessin Greek, \"eudaimonia,\" which can also be translated as blessedness or living well, and whi… By itself this would make life choiceworthy and lacking nothing. Sachs: "and it belongs to a man of serious stature to do these things well and beautifully"; Ross: "and the function of good man to be the good and noble performance of these"; Rackham: "and say that the function of a good man is to perform these activities well and rightly"; Thomson: "and if the function of a good man is to perform these well and rightly"; Crisp "and the characteristic activity of the good person to be to carry this out well and nobly". One is through excitability, where a person does not wait for reason but follows the imagination, often having not been prepared for events. Chapter 6 contains a famous digression in which Aristotle appears to question his "friends" who "introduced the forms". Aristotle says we can dismiss the question of whether we live for pleasure or choose pleasure for the sake of living, for the two activities seem incapable of being separated. Chapter 9. A truly courageous person is not certain of victory and does endure fear. Book X, Chapters 7–8. Having said this however, most people we call wasteful are not only wasteful in the sense opposed to being generous, but also actually unrestrained and have many vices at once. In the "natural desires" says Aristotle, few people go wrong, and then normally in one direction, towards too much. Some desires like that of food and drink, and indeed sex, are shared by everyone in a certain way. The section is yet another explanation of why the Ethics will not start from first principles, which would mean starting out by trying to discuss "The Good" as a universal thing that all things called good have in common. [23], Chapter 4 states that while most would agree to call the highest aim of humanity (eudaimonia), and also to equate this with both living well and doing things well, there is dispute between people, and between the majority (hoi polloi) and "the wise". Books VIII and IX are continuous, but the break makes the first book focus on friendship as a small version of the political community, in which a bond stronger than justice holds people together, while the second treats it as an expansion of the self, through which all one's powers can approach their highest development. One of the two. The difference is that this friendly virtue concerns behavior towards friends and strangers alike, and does not involve the special emotional bond that friends have. Such a person would be unfair in responses, angry at wrong people, and so on. That which is just in the strict sense is between citizens only, for it implies law. And such virtue will be good, beautiful and pleasant, indeed Aristotle asserts that in most people different pleasures are in conflict with each other while "the things that are pleasant to those who are passionately devoted to what is beautiful are the things that are pleasant by nature and of this sort are actions in accordance with virtue". This is a similar subject to the last one discussed concerning surliness and obsequiousness, in that it concerns how to interact socially in a community. Other types of failure to master oneself are akrasia only in a qualified sense, for example akrasia "in anger" or "in the pursuit of honor". As Aristotle points out, his approach is partly because people mean so many different things when they use the word justice. The vices opposed to courage were discussed at the end of Book II. Aristotle says that such cases will need to be discussed later, before the discussion of Justice in Book V, which will also require special discussion. The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it (although his young age makes this less likely). Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved. Aristotle therefore names the virtuous man as a person who claims the good qualities he has without exaggeration or understatement. THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE. 4.: Men agree that the good is happiness, but differ as to what this is. Aristotle points out that this is a very specific realm of honesty, that which concerns oneself. Chapter 9. Dealing differently with different types of people, for example people in a higher position than oneself, people more or less familiar to you, and so on. 2.: Arguments of Eudoxus that pleasure is the good. (In other words, Aristotle makes it clear that he does not think being more philotimos than average is necessarily inappropriate.) The temperate person desires the things that are not impediments to health, nor contrary to what is beautiful, nor beyond that person's resources. (p. 215). The pleasures from being restored into a natural hexis are accidental and not natural, for example the temporary pleasure that can come from a bitter taste. 3.: Exactness not permitted by subject nor to be expected by student, who needs experience and training. 8.: Of the practical life as happiness in a lower sense, and of the relation between the two. Furthermore, a truly temperate person would not even have bad desires to restrain. It is therefore connected to Aristotle's other practical work, the Politics, which similarly aims at people becoming good. Chapter 1 distinguishes actions chosen as relevant to virtue, and whether actions are to be blamed, forgiven, or even pitied. 4.: The others are imperfect copies of this. He refers to these as animal-like and disease-like conditions. The Nicomachean Ethics is widely considered one of the most important historical philosophical works and had an important influence on the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy. The slavish way of pleasure, which is the way the majority of people think of happiness. 7.: Of the speculative life as happiness in the highest sense. Pleasure is discussed throughout the whole Ethics, but is given a final more focused and theoretical treatment in Book X. Aristotle starts by questioning the rule of thumb accepted in the more approximate early sections, whereby people think pleasure should be avoided—if not because it is bad simply, then because people tend too much towards pleasure seeking. The parties involved will be different concerning what they deserve, and the importance of this is a key difference between distributive justice and rectificatory justice because distribution can only take place among equals. Click here to watch a video on the notes from this book. (In contrast to politics and warfare it does not involve doing things we'd rather not do, but rather something we do at our leisure.) Aristotle reminds us here that he has already said that moral dispositions (hexeis) are caused by the activities (energeia) we perform, meaning that a magnificent person's virtue can be seen from the way he chooses the correct magnificent acts at the right times. 5th edition (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., 1893). "[85] In a famous statement, Aristotle makes a point that, like many points in Book 5, is thought to refer us to consideration of Plato's Republic. The most important version of this synthesis was that of Thomas Aquinas. The Nicomachean Ethics is very often abbreviated "NE", or "EN", and books and chapters are generally referred to by Roman and Arabic numerals, respectively, along with corresponding Bekker numbers. The Nicomachean Ethics, frequently referred to as the Ethics or Aristotle’s Ethics, is Aristotle’s best-known work on ethics and is one of the most influential works in Western moral theory. Read by Geoffrey Edwards. Aristotle said in Book II that—with the moral virtues such as courage—the extreme one's normal desires tend away from are the most important to aim towards. 8.: Incontinence compared with vice and virtue. 9.: Sundry questions about doing and suffering injustice. Nicomachean Ethics By Aristotle. Aristotle says that while both "the truth and one's friends" are loved, "it is a sacred thing to give the highest honor to the truth". Plato had discussed similar themes in several dialogues, including the Republic and the Philebus and Gorgias. Aristotle says that while "the magnificent man is liberal, the liberal man is not necessarily magnificent". 4.: Of knowledge of things variable, viz. Aristotle also points out that we do not give much gratitude and praise at all to someone simply for not taking (which might however earn praise for being just). Moreover, to be happy takes a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make a spring. "[12] The others are a type of justice (1129b in Book V), phronesis or practical judgment as shown by good leaders (1144b in Book VI), and truly good friends (1157a in Book VIII). Aristotelian Ethics is about what makes a virtuous character (ethikē aretē) possible, which is in turn necessary if happiness is to be possible. "(1131a) The just must fall between what is too much and what is too little and the just requires the distribution to be made between people of equal stature. As in the examples above, overconfident people are likely to be called courageous, or considered close to courageous. [123], Turning to happiness then, the aim of the whole Ethics; according to the original definition of Book I it is the activity or being-at-work chosen for its own sake by a morally serious and virtuous person. While every case can be different, given the difficulty of getting the mean perfectly right it is indeed often most important to guard against going the pleasant and easy way. The Nicomachean Ethics In his ethical treatises Aristotle offers a defense of the idea of eudaimonism (human flourishing or happiness) which is achieved as a result of human choice in search of excellence and the good life. This version has been converted from the original text. Chapters 6–12, First examples of moral virtues, Book IV. Once again trying to describe justice as a mean, he says that "men require a judge to be a middle term or medium—indeed in some places judges are called mediators—, for they think that if they get the mean they will get what is just. According to Aristotle, the virtue with regards to anger would not be led by the emotions (pathoi), but by reason (logos). Plato's treatment of the same subject is once again frequently compared to Aristotle's, as was apparently Aristotle's intention (see Book I, as explained above): Every virtue, as it comes under examination in the Platonic dialogues, expands far beyond the bounds of its ordinary understanding: but sōphrosunē undergoes, in Plato's Charmides, an especially explosive expansion – from the first definition proposed; a quiet temperament (159b), to "the knowledge of itself and other knowledges" (166e). The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it (although his young age makes this less likely). For Aristotle, akrasia, "unrestraint", is distinct from animal-like behavior because it is specific to humans and involves conscious rational thinking about what to do, even though the conclusions of this thinking are not put into practice. In chapters 9-12, Aristotle addresses some objections or questions that might be raised against his definition of happiness thus far. Pleasure not a transition, but unimpeded activity. According to Aristotle, getting this virtue right also involves:-. Finally, Aristotle repeats that the discussion of the Ethics has not reached its aim if it has no effect in practice. [63] This is why some modern translations refer literally to greatness of soul. 3.: Of the five modes of attaining truth: (1) of demonstrative science of things invariable. In this way the virtue "bravery" can be seen as depending upon a "mean" between two extremes. We cannot plead that our notion of good depends on our nature; for (1) vice would still be as voluntary as virtue, (2) we help to make ourselves what we are. Thus the just is a sort of mean, inasmuch as the judge is a medium between the litigants". To describe more clearly what happiness is like, Aristotle next asks what the work (ergon) of a human is. 1.: In all he does man seeks same good as end or means. 4.: A man’s relation to his friend like his relation to himself. The definition itself is very important to the whole work. Limits within which this is possible. All human activities aim at some end that we consider good. Friendship defined. [6], It is also noted that a discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics is also better understood using the Rhetoric. Concerning true friendship see books VIII and IX. Aristotle's approach to defining the correct balance is to treat money like any other useful thing, and say that the virtue is to know how to use money: giving to the right people, the right amount at the right time. Aristotle ranks some of them as follows:[122], Aristotle also argues that each type of animal has pleasures appropriate to it, and in the same way there can be differences between people in what pleasures are most suitable to them. 4.: Of a similar virtue in smaller matters. At first he says this is spoken of in terms of external goods, but he observes that the greatest of these must be honor, because this is what we assign to gods, and this is what people of the highest standing aim at. And, the type of discourse lends itself to that type of response. This latter virtue is a kind of correct respect for honor, which Aristotle had no Greek word for, but which he said is between being ambitious (philotimos honor-loving) and unambitious (aphilotimos not honor loving) with respect to honor. [40] According to Aristotle's analysis, three kinds of things come to be present in the soul that virtue is: a feeling (pathos), an inborn predisposition or capacity (dunamis), or a stable disposition that has been acquired (hexis). The Nicomachean Ethics (/ˌnɪkoʊˈmækiən/; Ancient Greek: Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, Ēthika Nikomacheia) is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. All societies are summed up in civil society. Aristotle points out also that a person with this virtue would not get money from someone he should not get it, in order to give "for a decent sort of taking goes along with a decent sort of giving." These virtues of character, or "moral virtues" as they are often translated, become the central topic in Book II. Burger (2008) points out that although the chapter nominally follows the same path (methodos) as previous chapters "it is far from obvious how justice is to be understood as a disposition in relation to a passion: the proposed candidate, greed (pleonexia), would seem to refer, rather, to the vice of injustice and the single opposite of the virtue." πρὸς γὰρ τὰ τῷ γένει ἕτερα καὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς μορίων ἕτερον τῷ γένει τὸ πρὸς ἑκάτερον πεφυκός, εἴπερ καθ᾽ ὁμοιότητά τινα καὶ οἰκειότητα ἡ γνῶσις ὑπάρχει αὐτοῖς.
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