Aristotle
The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle: Core Concepts and Detailed Analysis
Book I: The End
Chapter 1: Man Seeks Some Good as End or Means
Universal Aim: Every art, inquiry, act, and purpose aims at some good.
Definition of Good: The good is that at which everything aims.
Differences in Aims: Observable differences exist among these aims or ends.
Sometimes the aim is the exercise of a faculty (e.g., playing the flute).
Sometimes the aim is a certain result beyond that exercise (e.g., building a house).
Superiority of Result: Where there is an end beyond the act, the result is better than the exercise of the faculty.
Multiplicity of Ends: Since there are many actions, arts, and sciences, there are many ends:
Health is the end of medicine.
Ships are the end of shipbuilding.
Victory is the end of the art of war.
Wealth is the end of economy.
Subordination of Ends: When several arts are subordinated to one master-art (e.g., bridle-making to horsemanship, horsemanship to war):
The end of the master-art is always more desired than the ends of the subordinate arts.
Subordinate ends are pursued for the sake of the master-art's end.
This holds true whether the end is mere exercise or a result beyond the act.
Chapter 2: The End is the Good; Our Subject is This and its Science, Politics
Ultimate End: If there is one end in human action that is desired on its own account, and all others are means to it, then this must be the good or the best of all things.
Avoidance of Infinite Regress: If every end were merely a means to something else, desire would be left void and objectless, leading to an infinite regress.
Practical Importance: From a practical standpoint, knowing this ultimate good is crucial, like archers aiming at a definite mark, to be more likely to attain what is desired.
Identification of the Supreme Art: This ultimate good seems to belong to the supreme art or science, the master-art.
Politics as the Master-Science: Politics (in Aristotle's broad sense) appears to fit this description.
Scope of Politics: Prescribes which sciences a state needs, which each citizen studies, and to what extent.
Subordination to Politics: Even the highest arts (economy, rhetoric, art of war) are subordinated to Politics.
Comprehensive End: Since Politics uses other practical sciences and ordains what men are to do and refrain from, its end must include the ends of others, and must be the proper good of man.
Good of Individual vs. State: While the good for the individual and the state is the same, the good of the state is grander and more perfect to attain and secure.
Nobler and More Divine: To achieve this for a people and many states is nobler and more divine than for a single individual.
Aim of Inquiry: The present work is a form of political inquiry.
Chapter 3: Exactness Not Permitted by Subject, Nor to Be Expected by Student, Who Needs Experience and Training
Degree of Precision: Contentment with the degree of precision the subject admits of is necessary, as different subjects require different levels of accuracy.
Uncertainty in Noble and Just Things: The noble and just (central to Politics) are so varied and uncertain that some deem them conventional, not natural.
Uncertainty in Good Things: Similar uncertainty applies to good things; wealth can ruin, courage can lead to death.
Nature of the Subject-Matter: Given this nature, the truth can only be indicated roughly and in outline.
Probable Conclusions: In matters not amenable to immutable laws and reasoning from probable premises, one can only arrive at probable conclusions.
Reader's Expectation: The reader should approach statements in the same spirit.
Mark of an Educated Man: To require only so much exactness as the subject permits.
Absurdity: It is equally absurd to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician as to demand proof from an orator.
Competence in Judgment: Each person can judge what they know well.
Special vs. Universal Education: A "good judge" of a special matter has specific education; a "good judge" (without qualification) has a universal education.
Youth and Politics: A young man is unqualified to study Politics.
Lack of Experience: Lacks experience of life's affairs, which form the data of Politics.
Swayed by Feelings: Prone to be swayed by feelings, deriving no benefit from a study whose aim is practical (not speculative).
Young in Character: This applies to those young in character, not just in years, whose life is ruled by feeling and desire.
Such individuals turn knowledge to no practical account (like the incontinent).
Those guided by reason benefit greatly.
Preface Summary: This serves as a preface regarding the student, the spirit of engagement, and the object of inquiry.
Chapter 4: Men Agree That the Good is Happiness, But Differ as to What This Is. We Must Reason From Facts Accepted Without Question by the Man of Trained Character
Resumption of Inquiry: What is the aim of Politics or the highest realizable good?
Agreement on Name: Nearly all agree the name is "happiness" (εὐδαιμονία).
"Live well" or "do well" is synonymous with being "happy."
Disagreement on Nature: People differ on what happiness is.
Masses: Believe it to be something palpable and plain (pleasure, wealth, fame). Varies even for the same person (health after sickness, wealth in poverty, intellectual admiration when ignorant).
Philosophers (Some): Posit an "absolute good" that causes the goodness of individual good things.
Scope of Review: Will focus on most popular or reasonably founded opinions, not all.
Methodological Distinction: Noticing the distinction between deriving from principles and working up to them.
Plato's Question: Whether to start from or work up to first principles (like a race from judges to boundary, or vice versa).
Starting Point: Must start from what is known.
Two Meanings of "Known": "Known to us" (relative) vs. "known simply" (absolute).
Preference: Must start from "what is known to us."
Requirement for Study: Good moral training is necessary to study noble and just things, in short, the data of Politics.
Facts as Starting Points: An undemonstrated fact, if sufficiently evident, needs no further "reason why" (e.g., principles of action).
Role of Moral Training: A well-trained individual either has these principles or easily accepts them.
Hesiod's Saying: "The best is he who of himself doth know; / Good too is he who listens to the wise; / But he who neither knows himself nor heeds / The words of others, is a useless man."
Chapter 5: The Good Cannot Be Pleasure, As Some Hold, Nor Honour, Nor Virtue
Return to Discussion: Resuming the point of what the good or happiness is.
Popular Notions from Lived Lives: Men derive their ideas of good/happiness from actual lives.
Masses: Equate it with pleasure, aiming for the life of enjoyment.
Considered slavish preference for brute beasts' lives.
Their views gain consideration when high-ranking individuals share Sardanapalus' tastes.
Three Conspicuous Lives: (1) Life of enjoyment, (2) Life of the statesman, (3) Contemplative life.
Life of the Statesman (Honour):
Men of refinement with a practical bent prefer honour, which is the aim of the statesman's life.
Critique of Honour: Too superficial to be the sole good.
Depends on those who give rather than receive it.
The good is felt to be something uniquely one's own and hard to take away.
People pursue honour to be assured of their own excellence, specifically from men of sense and those who know them, based on virtue.
This implies virtue is better than honour; virtue, then, might be the end of the statesman's life.
Life of Virtue (as an End in Itself):
Critique of Virtue: Appears too incomplete for happiness.
A virtuous man could be asleep, inactive, or suffer great disasters and misfortunes.
No one would call such a man happy, except for argument's sake.
(Further discussion reserved for later).
Money-making Life (Wealth):
Considered unnatural.
Wealth is not the good sought, as it's merely a means to something else.
Pleasure and virtue are chosen on their own account, making them more plausible ends than wealth.
However, even pleasure and virtue are not the ultimate end.
Life of Contemplation: To be treated later.
Chapter 6: Various Arguments to Show Against the Platonists That There Cannot Be One Universal Good; Even if There Were it Would Not Help Us Here
Critique of the Universal Good (Platonists):
Acknowledges difficulty and reluctance to criticize friends (Platonists) but prioritizes truth.
First Argument (Priority): Creators of the theory do not assert a common idea for things where one is prior to the other (e.g., numbers).
"Good" applies to substances, qualities, and relations.
Substance (independent existence) is logically prior to relatives (accidents).
Thus, by their own logic, there cannot be one common idea of "good" across these categories.
Second Argument (Categories of Being): "Good" is used in as many ways as "being."
Substances (God, reason), qualities (virtues), quantity (due amount), relatives (useful), time (opportunity), place (habitation).
If "good" were one notion, it would apply in only one category, not all.
Third Argument (Multiplicity of Sciences): If the notion were one, there would be one science of all goods (as one science for all things under one idea).
Many sciences exist for goods even under one category (e.g., strategy for opportunity in war, medicine for opportunity in disease/food; gymnastic for due amount in exercise).
Fourth Argument (The "Absolute"): Questioning the meaning of "absolute."
"Man" in "absolute man" and "man" has the same sense; no difference in manhood.
Similarly, "good" in "absolute good" and "good" should have the same sense, making the "absolute" term superfluous.
Fifth Argument (Eternity): Eternity does not make a good more good.
A white thing lasting long is no whiter than one lasting a day.
Pythagorean Doctrine: More plausible-placing "the one" with good things, rather than reducing all goods to unity.
Speusippus (Plato's nephew and successor) seems to follow this.
Platonists' Response: They hold that goods pursued on their own account are good by reference to one common form/type, while things tending to produce/preserve these are good only as means.
Refinement: Distinguish things good-in-themselves from things good-as-means.
Examples of Goods-in-Themselves: Wisdom, sight, certain pleasures, certain honours (pursued even apart from consequences).
Implication: If these are excluded, only the idea is good in itself, rendering the "form" meaningless (a form of nothing if it has no particulars).
Challenge: If included, then the goodness of all these (honour, wisdom, pleasure) must be definable in the same terms (like "white" for snow and white lead).
Rebuttal: In fact, a separate and different account is needed for the goodness of honour, wisdom, and pleasure.
Conclusion: "Good" is not applied to all these things in the same sense or reference to one common idea/form.
Alternative Explanation for Common Name: Perhaps they proceed from one source, or conduce to one end, or share an analogy (e.g., reason as the eye of the soul).
Dismissal for Current Inquiry: These detailed philosophical questions belong to another branch of philosophy.
Irrelevance of Universal Good for Man: Even if a universal good exists, it's not attainable by man; the current inquiry seeks a realizable good.
Counter-Argument (Plausibility): Knowledge of universal good might help discern and achieve one's own good.
Rebuttal (Sciences Disagree): Existing sciences, though striving for good, neglect this universal good; professors of arts/sciences would surely know/seek what helps them so much.
Practical Irrelevance: How would a weaver or carpenter benefit from knowledge of absolute good? Or a physician/general from contemplating pure form? A physician seeks health of man, or a particular man.
Chapter 7: The Good Is the Final End, and Happiness Is This. To Find It We Ask, What Is Man’s Function? Resulting Definition of Happiness
Return to Primary Question: What is the good being sought?
Variability of Good: Different in different actions and arts (health in medicine, victory in war, house in building).
End as the Good: In each case, the good is that for the sake of which all else is done.
Realizable Good: If there is one end for all man's actions, this will be the realizable good (or the most final if there are many ends).
Refinement of Argument: Many ends exist; some are chosen as means (wealth, flutes, instruments), not final.
Final Good: The best of all things must be final.
Absolute Finality: What is pursued as an end in itself is more final than what is pursued as a means.
What is never chosen as means is more final than what is chosen both as end and means.
What is always chosen as an end in itself and never as means is strictly final.
Happiness as Strictly Final: Happiness perfectly fits this description.
Always chosen for itself, never for anything else.
Honour, pleasure, reason, virtue are chosen partly for themselves, but also for the sake of happiness.
No one chooses happiness for the sake of these, or as a means to anything else.
Happiness and Self-Sufficiency: Led to the same conclusion from the notion of self-sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια).
Definition: What by itself makes life desirable and lacking nothing.
Scope: Considers man not as a solitary individual but within a community (parents, children, wife, friends, fellow-citizens), as man is a social being.
Limit: Some limit required for this consideration (not infinite regress of friends, etc.) to be considered later.
Conclusion: Happiness is believed to be self-sufficing.
Happiness as Most Desirable: Believed to be the most desirable thing, not merely one among others.
If it were one among others, adding any other good would make it more desirable, which contradicts its nature as the most desirable (the greater of two goods is always more desirable).
Summary: Happiness is something final and self-sufficing, the end of all man does.
Need for Precise Definition: No one disputes happiness is the best, but a more precise definition is needed.
Man's Function (ἔργον):
Achieved by asking, "What is the function of man?"
Just as a piper's, sculptor's, or artisan's excellence lies in their function, so man's good lies in his function, if he has one.
Assumption: Surely man, like his bodily members (eye, hand, foot), has a function, not just craftsmen.
Identifying Man's Peculiar Function:
Excluding Mere Life: Life (nutrition and growth) is common with plants, thus excluded.
Excluding Life of Sense: Life of sense is shared with animals, thus excluded.
Remaining: The life of his rational nature (πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος).
Two Sides of Rational Nature: (1) Rational as obeying reason, (2) Rational as having and exercising reason.
Ambiguity: Clarified to mean life that consists in the exercise of faculties (ἐνέργεια), which is more properly entitled.
Summary: Function of man is the exercise of vital faculties (soul: 1. obeying reason, 2. having reason).
Function of Man vs. Good Man: Generically the same (harper vs. good harper). The good man's function is with superior excellence (to harp well).
Definition of Happiness (Initial):
Man's function = a kind of life, specifically exercise of faculties and action of various kinds with reason.
Good man's function = to do this well and beautifully/nobly.
Function of anything is done well in accordance with its proper excellence/virtue.
Therefore, Good of Man: Exercise of his faculties in accordance with excellence or virtue (or the best and most complete virtue if more than one).
Condition of Full Term of Years: "One swallow or one fine day does not make a spring, nor does one day or any small space of time make a blessed or happy man."
Methodological Note: This is a rough outline; details to be filled in (like arts/sciences developing). Details revealed by time or found through work.
Refinement of Precision: Recalls earlier point (I. 3) not to demand same accuracy in all studies.
Carpenter vs. Geometer: Both seek the right angle, but the carpenter for practical approximation, the geometer for its essential nature (truth).
Application: Avoid spending more time on immaterial than real business.
Reason Why: Not always necessary to demand the reason why; sometimes the undemonstrated fact (starting point/principle) is enough.
Starting Points: Form the first step of a science, arrived at by induction, perception, or training.
Importance of Clear Definition: Principles have great influence on subsequent inquiry.
Good Start: "A good start is more than half the race," clearing up difficulties.
Chapter 8: This View Harmonizes Various Current Views
Testing the Definition: Must examine the starting point as a conclusion from data and in relation to current opinions.
Truth and Harmony: "All experience harmonizes with a true principle, but a false one is soon found to be incompatible with the facts."
Division of Goods (Historical): Goods divided into three classes.
External goods.
Goods of the soul.
Goods of the body.
Soul-Goods as Primary: Goods of the soul are commonly considered most good.
Definition Confirmation: "Actions and exercises of the vital faculties of the soul" are "of the soul," confirming the definition.
This opinion is ancient and philosophical.
Implying actions/exercises are the end ranks it among soul-goods, not external.
Harmony with "Living Well/Doing Well": Definition aligns with the common saying that the happy man lives well and does well.
Characteristics Expected in Happiness: All attributes commonly expected of happiness seem to belong to this definition.
Some say virtue/excellence, some prudence, some wisdom, others some/all of these plus pleasure (ingredient or accompaniment), some external prosperity.
Synthesizing Views: Some views possess ancient authority, others limited but weighty support. Probably neither entirely wrong, but right in some points.
Happiness as Excellence (Virtue):
Harmonizes with "exercise of faculties in accordance with excellence."
Possession vs. Exercise: Crucial distinction: happiness is not mere possession (habit/trained faculty) but its use (exercise).
Habit can be present but yield no good (asleep, hindered).
Exercise is always active and good (Olympic victors are contenders, not just strong/fair).
Winners in life are those who manifest excellences in deed.
Happiness and Pleasure:
The life of virtuous men is inherently pleasant. Pleasure is an affection of the soul.
Each person takes pleasure in what they love (horses, sight-seeing, justice, virtuous acts).
Virtuous Pleasure is Natural: While most men have conflicting pleasures (not naturally pleasant), those who love what is noble take pleasure in what is naturally pleasant (manifestations of excellence).
Pleasure is Intrinsic: Virtuous life doesn't need pleasure added; it contains pleasure.
Condition of Virtue: A man is not good unless he takes pleasure in noble deeds (just in justice, generous in generosity).
Conclusion: Manifestations of excellence are pleasant in themselves, good, and noble in the highest degree (if the good man's judgment is right).
Happiness as Best, Noblest, Pleasantest: These are not separate (contra Delian inscription).
Delian Inscription: "What is most just is noblest,—health is best, / Pleasantest is to get your heart's desire."
Aristotle's Synthesis: All these characteristics are united in the best exercises of faculties, which are identified with happiness.
Happiness and External Goods: Happiness requires external goods.
Impossible or difficult to act nobly without "furniture of fortune" (friends, wealth, political influence).
Absence of some things diminishes happiness (good birth, children, beauty).
Examples: Ugly, low-born, solitary, childless, or one with worthless/lost children/friends are unlikely to be happy.
Conclusion: Happiness needs prosperity, leading some to identify it with good fortune.
Chapter 9: Is Happiness Acquired, or the Gift of Gods or Chance?
Question of Origin: Happiness acquired by learning, habit, training, divine dispensation, or chance?
Divine Gift?: If gods give gifts, happiness is likely among them (more likely than anything else, being the best).
Political Science Re-entry: This question belongs to another branch of inquiry.
Acquired Happiness: Even if not heaven-sent, but a consequence of virtue/learning/training, it seems divine and blessed.
Accessibility: If acquired, it would be widely accessible (within the power of all capable of excellence, through study/diligence).
Natural Arrangement: If acquired, this is better than chance.
Nature arranges things in the best possible way.
Art and causation follow this; especially the noblest mode of causation.
Absurd to leave the noblest and fairest to chance.
Definition Clears Difficulty: Happiness defined as exercise of vital faculties in accordance with excellence/virtue.
External Goods: Remaining goods are necessary conditions or aids/instruments.
Agreement with Starting Point: Aligns with the art political's end as the best, whose business is to form good citizens.
Exclusion of Brutes: An ox, horse, or any brute cannot be happy, as they cannot share this activity.
Exclusion of Children: A child is not happy due to age, inability to perform such activities (happiness is based on hope for them).
Conditions of Happiness: Requires perfect excellence/virtue AND a full term of years for its exercise.
Priam's Example: Prosperity in youth can be followed by great disasters in old age; a man ending miserably cannot be called happy.
Chapter 10: Can No Man Be Called Happy During Life?
Solon's Saying: "Call no man happy as long as he lives, but wait for the end."
Absurdity of Post-Mortem Happiness: If it means happy after death, that's absurd, especially for those who define happiness as activity/life.
Safety from Evil: If it means safely applying the term after death (beyond reach of evil), there's still objection.
Post-Mortem Good/Evil: Good/evil (honours, dishonours, fortune of descendants) are thought to befall a dead man (like a living man unconscious of them).
Descendants' Fortunes: A man who lived happily might have descendants facing great changes (good/bad).
Degree of Relation: Descendants' relation to ancestors varies.
Consequence: Strange if the dead man changes from happy/miserable by turns, but also strange if they are not affected at all.
Return to Solon's Meaning: Perhaps it means to look for the end and call a man happy based on past happiness.
Objection: Strange to refuse to call a living happy man happy due to potential changes, when happiness is enduring and constant.
Fortune's Revolutions: Fortune's changes could make the same man happy/miserable often, making him a "chameleon" without sound foundation.
Rejection of Fortune-Following: Impossible to rightly follow fortune.
Source of Weal/Woe: Not in fortune, but in excellent employment of powers (constitutes happiness), or its reverse (misery).
Further Confirmation: Nothing human is so constant as excellent exercise of faculties.
Sciences themselves are less abiding.
Highest exercises of faculties (philosophic contemplation) are most abiding because continuously occupied (explains why we don't forget them).
Permanence of Happy Man: Will be permanent, preserving character through life, occupied continually in excellent deeds/speculations.
Bearing Fortune: Will take whatever fortune sends nobly, bearing himself suitably, being truly good and "foursquare without a flaw."
Impact of Fortune's Dispensations:
Small good/evil have no weight.
Numerous great good things make life happier (add grace, noble use).
Numerous great evil things enfeeble/spoil happiness (bring pain, impede faculty exercise).
True Worth: Shines in calm endurance of misfortunes, not through insensibility, but nobility/greatness of soul.
Character Determines Life: If a man's actions determine his life's character, no happy man becomes miserable (never does hateful/base acts).
Wise Man's Dignity: Truly good and wise man bears dignity whatever fortune sends, making the best of circumstances (like a good general or shoemaker).
Conclusion on Happy Man: Never becomes miserable (though not truly happy with Priam's fate).
Stability: Not unstable, nor easily changed by ordinary misfortunes, only by many heavy ones.
Recovery: Recovers happiness (if at all) only over a considerable period, achieving noble things.
Final Definition of Happy Man (Revised):
"One who exercises his faculties in accordance with perfect excellence, being duly furnished with external goods, not for any chance time, but for a full term of years."
Added Clause: "and who shall continue to live so, and shall die as he lived."
This is because the future is veiled, but happiness is taken as the end, perfectly final/complete.
Blessed/Perfectly Happy: Those living men who both have and shall continue to have these characteristics are blessed; happy as men only.
Chapter 11: Cannot the Fortunes of Survivors Affect the Dead?
Disagreement with Popular Opinion: Doctrine that descendants' fortunes don't affect the dead is "too cold and opposed to popular opinion."
Complexity: Events are many and vary greatly, making separate discussion endless.
General Terms: Enough to speak in general terms and outline.
Weight of Misfortunes: As misfortunes to self vary in weight, so do misfortunes to friends.
Difference Alive vs. Dead: It makes much more difference whether the affected are alive or dead than whether a tragedy is enacted or supposed to have happened.
Doubtful Accessibility to Good/Ill: Even if good/evil events reach the dead, their influence is unsubstantial and slight (if not in itself, its magnitude/nature cannot make happy what is not, or remove happiness from those who are).
Conclusion: Prosperity and adversity of friends do affect the dead, but not enough to change their happy/unhappy state.
Chapter 12: Happiness As Absolute End Is Above Praise
Inquiry about Happiness: Is it to be praised or revered (as an actual good, not mere potentiality)?
Nature of Praise: What is praised is usually of a certain quality, having a relation to something else.
Praise for just/courageous man, virtue: based on what they do or produce.
Praise for strong/swift man: based on a gift/faculty related to something admirable.
Gods and Praise: Praising gods is ridiculous, making them relative to man (only praised in relation to something else).
Greater than Praise: Best things deserve something greater than praise, like reverence.
Gods are called blessed and happy.
"Blessed" (μακάριος) is for godlike men.
Happiness and Reverence: No one praises happiness like justice; it is called blessed, being better and more divine.
Eudoxus' Argument (for Pleasure): Fact that pleasure is not praised, though good, shows it's higher than praised goods (like God/good).
These are standards by which all else is judged.
Praise belongs to excellence (makes us apt to do noble), encomiums to results of virtue (bodily/psychical).
Conclusion: Happiness is among the goods revered and counted as final.
Happiness as Principle/Cause: It is a starting-point or principle (ἀρχή); everything is done for its sake.
The principle/cause of all good is divine and worthy of reverence.
Chapter 13: Division of the Faculties and Resulting Division of the Virtues
Transition to Virtue: Since happiness is exercise of faculties in accordance with perfect virtue, inquiry into virtue follows.
This will aid the inquiry into happiness.
Politics and Virtue: The true statesman is concerned with virtue, making citizens good and law-abiding (e.g., Cretan, Lacedaemonian lawgivers).
Alignment with Purpose: Inquiry into virtue (if it belongs to Politics) aligns with the original purpose.
Excellence of Man: The virtue considered is that of man (seeking good/happiness of man).
Soul as Locus: Excellence of man is not of body, but of soul (happiness is activity of the soul).
Statesman's Knowledge of Soul: Statesmen need some knowledge of the soul, proportionally more as state-science is higher than medicine.
Scope of Inquiry: Inquire into soul's nature only as far as required for the purpose (minuter detail too laborious).
Adopted Doctrines: Rely on doctrines about the soul stated elsewhere.
Two Parts of the Soul: Irrational and Rational.
Separation: Irrelevant for this purpose whether parts are separated (like body parts) or distinguishable in thought only (like concave/convex).
Divisions of the Irrational Part:
Vegetative Faculty: Common to all living things (plants), causes nutrition and growth.
Assumed present even in embryos, same in grown beings.
Its excellence is shared with other beings, not specifically human.
Confirmation (Sleep): Most active in sleep; good and bad men indistinguishable (half their lives no difference).
Dreams of good men are better due to slight bodily stirring.
Dismissal: Disregarded as it has "no place in the excellence of man."
Appetitive/Desiring Faculty: Irrational, yet in some way partakes of reason.
In continent and incontinent men: reason (rational part) exhorts rightly to what is best.
Another principle fights and struggles against reason.
Analogy: Like a paralyzed limb moving contrary to will.
Unseen Battle: See refractory limb in body, but not in soul.
Conclusion: Something besides reason opposes it in the soul (distinction doesn't matter here).
Partaking of Reason: Submits to reason in the continent man; more obedient in temperate and courageous (in harmony with reason).
Divisions of the Rational Part: (If appetitive part partakes of reason)
Rational in the Strict Sense: Possesses reason in itself (e.g., mathematical truths).
Rational as Listening: Listens to reason (as a child listens to father).
Basis for Virtue Division: On this division of faculties is based the division of excellence.
Intellectual Excellences: Wisdom, understanding, prudence (virtues of the strictly rational part).
Moral Excellences: Liberality, temperance (virtues of the appetitive part, rational as listening).
Moral Character and Praise: Speaking of moral character, one is called gentle or temperate (not wise/intelligent).
Wise man is praised for habit/trained faculty.
A praiseworthy habit/trained faculty is an excellence or virtue.
Book II: Moral Virtue
Chapter 1: Moral Virtue is Acquired by the Repetition of the Corresponding Acts
Two Kinds of Excellence: Intellectual and Moral.
Intellectual Excellence: Birth and growth mainly from instruction; requires time and experience.
Moral Excellence: Result of habit or custom (ἔθος).
Greek name for moral excellence (ἠθικὴ ἀρετή) is derived from ἔθος With a slight change.
Moral Virtues Not Natural: None are implanted in us by nature.
What is by nature cannot be altered by training (e.g., a stone falling downwards, fire moving upwards).
Acquisition of Power: In natural things, power comes first, then act (senses: see/hear first, then acquire faculties).
Acquisition of Virtues/Arts: Acquire virtues by doing the acts (like learning an art by doing it).
Become builders by building, harpers by harping.
Become just by doing just acts, temperate/courageous by doing temperate/courageous acts.
Attestation by States: Legislators make citizens good by training (their wish).
Failure distinguishes bad from good constitutions.
Same Acts Produce Virtues and Vices: Both moral virtues and corresponding vices result from and are formed by the same acts.
Arts Analogy: Harping produces good/bad harpers; building well makes good builders, badly makes bad ones.
Application to Virtues: Same principle.
Conduct in human intercourse makes us just or unjust.
Acting in danger, training to feel fear/confidence makes us courageous or cowardly.
Behaving regarding animal appetites/anger makes us temperate/gentle or profligate/ill-tempered.
Conclusion: Acts of any kind produce habits/characters of the same kind.
Importance of Early Training: Acts must be of a certain kind; resulting character varies. "Makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained from his youth up in this way or in that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference."
Chapter 2: These Acts Must Be Such As Reason Prescribes: They Cannot Be Defined Exactly, But Must Be Neither Too Much Nor Too Little
Purpose of Inquiry: Not merely speculative knowledge of virtue, but to become good (otherwise profitless).
Focus: What kind of acts are to be done, as they determine habits/character.
First Principle: Accordance with Right Reason: Acts must be in accordance with right reason (taken for granted, to be discussed later).
Inexactness of Practical Reasoning: All reasoning on matters of practice must be in outline merely, not scientifically exact.
Kind of reasoning varies with subject.
In practical/expediency matters, no invariable laws (like health).
Inexactness about Particular Cases: Even more inexact; no system of scientific rules or maxims.
Agent must consider special occasion requirements (medicine, navigation).
Help Provided: Nevertheless, will try to help.
Principle of Excess and Deficiency: In matters of this sort, both falling short and exceeding are fatal.
Analogy (Strength and Health): Too much/too little exercise destroys strength; too much/too little food ruins health.
Fitting amount produces, increases, preserves.
Application to Virtues: Same for temperance, courage, etc.
Shunning/fearing everything (cowardice); fearing nothing (foolhardy).
Taking all pleasure (profligate); shunning all (devoid of sensibility).
Conclusion: Temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and defect, preserved by moderation.
Virtues Produced, Preserved, Manifested by Same Occasions/Means:
Analogy (Strength): Produced by nourishment/hard work, strong man has capacity for these.
Application to Virtues: Abstaining from pleasure makes temperate, then best able to abstain.
Habituating to despise/face danger makes courageous, then best able to face danger.
Chapter 3: Virtue is in Various Ways Concerned With Pleasure and Pain
Test of Formed Habit: Pleasure or pain accompanying acts is the test.
Temperate: rejoices in abstinence from bodily pleasures.
Profligate: vexed by abstinence.
Courageous: faces danger with pleasure, or without pain.
Coward: finds facing danger painful.
Connection of Virtue with Pleasure/Pain: Moral virtue is closely concerned with them.
Pleasure moves to do base, pain to refrain from noble.
Plato's View: Man needs training from youth to find pleasure/pain in the right objects (sound education).
Virtue, Actions, Passions: Virtue concerns actions and passions/affections.
Every affection/act is accompanied by pleasure or pain.
Curative Property: Attested by use of pleasure/pain in correction (cure by administering opposite of disease).
Formation of Character: Every character is relative to and concerned with things that form it.
Bad characters formed through pursuing/avoiding wrong pleasures/pains, or at wrong time/manner, or other errors.
Critique of "Impassive State" Definition: Some define virtues as an impassive/neutral state of mind.
Error in stating this absolutely, without qualifying by right/wrong manner, time, etc.
Conclusion: Moral excellence makes us do what is best in matters of pleasure and pain; vice has the contrary effect.
Three Choiceworthy Things, Three Avoidable Things:
Choose: Beautiful/noble, advantageous, pleasant.
Avoid: Ugly/base, hurtful, painful.
Good man goes right, bad man goes wrong, especially about pleasure.
Pleasure is common to man and animals.
Accompanies all pursuit/choice (noble and advantageous are pleasant in idea).
Engrained Pleasure: Feeling of pleasure fostered from infancy, engrained in life, hard to eradicate.
All more or less use pleasure as a test for actions.
Inquiry about Pleasure/Pain: Whole inquiry must concern these matters.
Being pleased/pained in right/wrong way greatly influences actions.
Hardness of Virtue: Fighting pleasure is harder than fighting wrath.
Virtue (like art) is more concerned with what is harder; greater success for harder tasks.
Conclusion (Moral Virtue & State Science): Both must concern pleasures/pains; right behavior leads to goodness, bad behavior to badness.
Summary (Established Points): Moral virtue concerns pleasures/pains; acts produce/develop/destroy it; it manifests in acts that produced it.
Chapter 4: The Conditions of Virtuous Action As Distinct From Artistic Production
Objection: If justice/temperance achieved by doing just/temperate acts, then agents are already just/temperate (like grammarians/musicians).
First Answer (Arts): Not entirely true even for arts.
Grammatical acts can be by chance, or prompting of another.
One is grammatical only by own knowledge of grammar.
Second Answer (Virtues vs. Arts): Virtues are not analogous to arts on this point.
Artistic Excellence: Products have excellence in themselves (enough if they are of a certain quality).
Virtuous Action: Requires a specific state of mind of the doer:
Knowledge: Must know what he is doing.
Choice: Must choose it, and choose it for itself.
Character: Act must be expression of a formed and stable character.
Contrast: For art, only knowledge is necessary. For virtues, knowledge is of little avail; the other conditions (from repeated acts) are all-important.
Definition: An act is just/temperate when it is such as the just/temperate man would do.
A man is just/temperate only if he does it in the spirit of the just/temperate man.
Conclusion: Doing just/temperate acts makes a man just/temperate; without them, no chance of becoming good.
Critique of Speculative Philosophy: Most men theorize, fancying it makes them good (like sick man listening to doctor, disobeying orders).
Such philosophizing won't produce healthy mind, nor such treatment healthy body.
Chapter 5: Virtue Not An Emotion, Nor A Faculty, But A Trained Faculty Or Habit
Inquiry: What is excellence/virtue?
Qualities of the Soul: Virtue must be one of three types:
Passion or Emotion (πάθος): Appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, emulation, pity, or anything accompanied by pleasure/pain.
Power or Faculty (δύναμις): That in virtue of which we are capable of being affected (e.g., able to be angered, pained, pity).
Habit or Trained Faculty (ἕξις): That in virtue of which we are well or ill-regulated in our emotions (e.g., moderate in anger: well-regulated; too violent/slack: ill-regulated).
Virtues are Not Emotions:
(1) Not called good/bad for emotions, but for virtues/vices.
(2) Not praised/blamed for emotions (e.g., not for being angry, but for how angry).
(3) Emotions can be without deliberate choice; virtues require deliberate choice.
(4) Emotions move us; virtues/vices regulate or dispose us.
Virtues are Not Powers/Faculties:
Not called good/bad for merely being capable of emotion, nor praised/blamed.
Nature gives powers/faculties, but doesn't make us good/bad.
Conclusion: If not emotions or faculties, virtues must be habits or trained faculties (ἕξεις).
Chapter 6: Viz. the Habit Of Choosing the Mean
Focus: Not just that virtue is a trained faculty, but what kind.
Function and Excellence: The virtue/excellence of a thing makes it good and perform its function well (e.g., eye's excellence makes it see well, horse's excellence makes it run well).
Man's Excellence: Proper excellence/virtue of man is the habit/trained faculty that makes him good and perform his function well.
Quantity and the Mean: Any quantity (continuous/discrete) admits larger, smaller, or equal amounts, either absolutely or relatively to our needs.
Equal/Fair Amount: A mean amount, between excess and deficiency.
Absolute Mean: Equidistant from both extremes, one and the same for all (e.g., 6 between 2 and 10).
Relative Mean: Neither too much nor too little for us; not one and the same for all.
Example: 6 pounds of food may be too much for some, too little for others (Milo vs. beginner).
Master of Any Art: Avoids too much/too little, seeks/chooses the relative mean.
Virtue's Aim: If art perfects work by looking to the mean (excellence destroyed by excess/deficiency, secured by mean), and if virtue is more exact and better than art, then virtue must aim at the mean (moral virtue specifically).
Concerns passions and actions, which admit of excess, deficiency, and the mean.
Example Emotions: Fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, pleasure, pain.
Feeling too much/too little is wrong.
Virtuous Feeling: To be affected at the right times, on the right occasions, towards the right persons, with the right object, in the right fashion (mean course, best course).
Outward Acts: Also admit of excess, deficiency, and the mean.
Conclusion on Virtue's Domain: Deals with feelings/passions and outward acts.
Excess is wrong, deficiency is blamed.
Mean Amount: Praised and right (both characteristics of virtue).
Virtue as Moderation (μεσότης):
It is a moderation, aiming at the mean/moderate amount.
"Evil is infinite in nature…while good is finite" (Pythagorean figure).
Many ways to go wrong, only one to go right (easy to miss mark, hard to hit).
Excess/deficiency characterize vice; hitting the mean characterizes virtue.
"Goodness is simple, ill takes any shape."
Definition of Virtue: "A habit or trained faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in moderation or observance of the mean relatively to the persons concerned, as determined by reason, i.e. by the reason by which the prudent man would determine it."
Moderation (between Two Vices): Stands in the middle between two vices (one of excess, one of defect).
Choosing the Mean: While vices fall short/exceed due measure, virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Essence vs. Perfection: In its essence, virtue is a middle state; but in relation to what is best and right, it is the extreme of perfection.
Not All Actions/Passions Admit Moderation: Some actions/passions imply badness by their very names (malevolence, shamelessness, envy, adultery, theft, murder).
These are bad in themselves, not just in excess/deficiency.
Impossible to go right in them; always wrong.
Rightness/wrongness doesn't depend on person/occasion/manner; the mere act is wrong.
Absurdity of Mean in Badness: Equally absurd to seek moderation in unjust/cowardly/profligate conduct (would imply moderation in excess/deficiency).
No excess/deficiency in temperance/courage (mean is extreme of perfection).
Similarly, no moderation/excess/deficiency in inherently bad acts, they are wrong however done.
Chapter 7: This Must Be Applied to the Several Virtues
Application to Particulars: General statements not enough; must apply to specific virtues/vices.
Conduct concerns particulars; statements must hold good when applied to these.
Table of Virtues and Vices (Examples):
Fear and Confidence: (Mean = Courage)
Excess in fearlessness (no name, e.g. foolhardy).
Excess in confidence (Foolhardy).
Excess in fear/deficient in confidence (Cowardly).
Pleasures (and to a less extent, pains): (Mean = Temperance)
Excess (Profligacy).
Deficiency (hardly found, no name - "void of sensibility" (ἀναίσθητος)).
Giving and Taking Money: (Mean = Liberality)
Excess in spending/deficient in taking (Prodigality).
Deficient in giving/excess in taking (Illiberality).
(Outline only; more detail later).
Money (Large Scale Expenditure): (Mean = Magnificence)
Excess (Bad taste/Vulgarity).
Deficiency (Meanness).
(Differs from liberality; explained later).
Honour and Disgrace: (Mean = High-mindedness (μεγαλοψυχία))
Excess (Vanity).
Deficiency (Little-mindedness).
Honour (Smaller matters): (Mean = unnamed Virtue, often called due desire for honour)
Excess (Ambitious/Fond of Honour (φιλώτιμος) - sometimes praise, sometimes reproach).
Deficiency (Unambitious/Not Fond of Honour (ἀφιλώτιμος) - sometimes praise, sometimes reproach).
(Why this variation explained later; extremes claim middle place).
Anger: (Mean = Gentleness)
Excess (Wrathful/Wrathfulness).
Deficiency (Wrathless/Wrathlessness).
Social Intercourse (Truthfulness of speech/action): (Mean = Truthful Person/Truthfulness)
Exaggerates (Boasting/Boaster).
Understates (Irony/Ironical).
Social Intercourse (Pleasantness - Amusement): (Mean = Witty/Wittiness)
Excess (Buffoonery/Buffoon).
Deficiency (Boorish/Boorishness).
Social Intercourse (Pleasantness - Other relations in life): (Mean = Friendly/Friendliness)
Excess (no ulterior motive: Obsequious; ulterior motive: Flatterer).
Deficiency (Quarrelsome/Peevish Fellow).
Emotions (e.g., Shame): (Mean = Modest (αἰδήμων) - not a virtue, but praised)
Excess (Shame-faced).
Deficiency (Shameless).
Feelings of Pleasure/Pain at Neighbors' Fortune: (Mean = Righteous Indignation)
Excess (Envy).
Deficiency (Malevolence).
(To be discussed later).
Justice: Term used in more senses; to be distinguished later, and shown as a kind of moderation.
Intellectual Virtues: To be treated similarly.
Chapter 8: The Two Vicious Extremes Are Opposed to One Another and to the Intermediate Virtue
Three Classes of Disposition: Two vices (excess, deficiency), one virtue (mean).
Opposition: Each directly opposed to each other.
Extreme dispositions opposed to mean and to one another.
Moderate disposition opposed to both extremes.
Analogy (Quantity): An equal quantity is greater than a less and less than a greater.
Application to Virtues: The mean dispositions exceed defective and fall short of excessive, in feeling and action.
Courageous: seems foolhardy to coward, cowardly to foolhardy.
Temperate: seems profligate to insensible, insensible to profligate.
Liberal: seems prodigal to illiberal, illiberal to prodigal.
Displacement Tactics: Extreme characters attempt to disqualify the mean, representing it as falling into the opposite extreme (e.g., coward calls courageous foolhardy).
Extremes as More Contrary: Extremes are more strictly contrary to each other than to the mean.
Further removed from one another (like greater/lesser magnitude being further from each other than from the equal mean).
Resemblance of Extremes to Mean: Sometimes one extreme has a resemblance to the mean (foolhardiness to courage, prodigality to liberality).
Definition of Contraries: "Things that are as far as possible removed from each other."
Varying Opposition to Mean: Sometimes deficiency (cowardice) is more opposed to the mean (courage) than excess (foolhardiness).
Sometimes excess (profligacy) is more opposed than deficiency (insensibility) to temperance.
Reasons for Varying Opposition:
Nature of the Matter Itself: One extreme is nearer/more similar to the mean, so not as strongly opposed.
Foolhardiness more similar to courage than cowardice; thus, cowardice is considered more opposite.
Our Own Proneness: Those things we are more prone to by nature appear more opposed to the mean.
Natural inclination to pleasure; easier to fall into profligacy than regular habits.
Courses where we run to great lengths are seen as more opposed to the mean.
Thus, profligacy (excess) is more opposed to temperance than deficiency is.
Chapter 9: The Mean Is Hard to Hit, and Is a Matter of Perception Not of Reasoning
Summary of Moral Virtue: Moral virtue is moderation/observance of the mean:
Holding a middle position between two vices (excess and deficiency).
Aiming at the mean amount in both feeling and action.
Difficulty of Being Good: Finding the mean is hard (like finding circle's center).
Easy to be angry or give money.
Hard to do these to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right object, and in the right manner.
Right doing is rare, praiseworthy, and noble.
Guidance for Hitting the Mean:
Avoid the More Dangerous Extreme: "Clear of these smoking breakers keep thy ship" (Calypso to Ulysses).
One extreme is more dangerous.
Since hitting the mean precisely is hard, choose the "least of two evils." (As described).
Identify Own Natural Proneness: Learn from pleasure/pain our own inclinations.
Bend in the Opposite Direction: By keeping away from error, fall into the middle course (straightening a bent stick).
Guard Against Pleasure: Especially against pleasant things and pleasure itself.
Cannot judge her impartially.
Imitate old counsellors towards Helen: dismissing her is less likely to err.
Overall Difficulty: Hard task, especially in particular cases.
Not easy to determine how, with whom, at what, for how long one ought to be angry.
Public opinion praises both extremes (gentle for falling short, manly for harsh temper).
Blamable Error: Slight error (excess/deficiency) not blamed, only considerable error.
Hard to define by reasoning how much error incurs blame (depends on particulars).
Perception, Not Reasoning: Such matters lie in particulars and can only be determined by perception.
Conclusion: Middle character praised; ought to incline towards extremes sometimes to most easily hit the mean and attain right doing.
Book III: Chapters 1-5. The Will
Chapter 1: An Act Is Involuntary When Done (a) Under Compulsion, or (b) Through Ignorance: (a) Means Not Originated by Doer, (b) Means Through Ignorance of the Circumstances: Voluntary, Then, Means Originated with Knowledge of Circumstances
Virtue and Feelings/Actions: Virtue concerns feelings and actions.
Praise/Blame: Given only to what is voluntary.
Pardon/Pity: Involuntary acts receive pardon, sometimes pity.
Importance of Distinction: Clear distinction between voluntary and involuntary necessary for investigating virtue and for legislators assigning rewards/punishments.
Involuntary Act Definition: Generally held to be involuntary which is done (a) under compulsion, or (b) through ignorance.
Compulsion (a):
Definition: Cause is external, agent or patient contributes nothing.
Examples: Carried by whirlwind or irresistible men.
Problematic Cases (Mixed Nature):
Motivation: Acts done to avoid greater evil or obtain noble end (e.g., tyrant ordering disgraceful act to save family).
Example: Throwing cargo overboard in a storm (no one voluntarily throws property away, but sensible people do to save lives).
Nature: Acts of this kind are mixed, but more resemble voluntary.
Reason: Desired/chosen at the time.
End/motive is in view at the time.
Consideration: Voluntary/involuntary determined by state of agent's mind at the time.
Agent's Will: Agent wills the act; cause of action lies in the agent. It rests with him to do or not to do.
Conclusion: Such acts are voluntary (particular thing done is voluntary), though in themselves (apart from circumstances) they may be involuntary.
Praise/Blame for Mixed Acts: Sometimes praised (enduring disgrace for noble result), sometimes blamed (enduring disgrace for trifling/no noble result).
Pardon: In some cases, pardon given (induced by overwhelming pressure).
Inadmissible Compulsion: Some cases where compulsion is inadmissible (man ought to suffer death rather than do the act, e.g., Alcmeon killing his mother in Euripides).
Difficulty: Hard to decide whether to endure evil or do a deed, harder to abide by decisions (evil is painful, deed is disgraceful).
Final Definition of Compulsory: Cause lies outside, agent has no part in it.
Voluntary with Qualification: Acts not voluntarily done for their own sake, but chosen due to an alternative, where cause lies in the agent, are "involuntary in itself/abstract" but "voluntary now, in preference to this alternative." These are rather voluntary acts (particular thing done is voluntary).
Difficulty of Rules: Little possible to lay down rules for choosing alternatives due to differing particular cases.
Objection (Pleasant/Noble as Compulsory): Some might argue pleasant/noble motives are external constraints, making all acts compulsory.
Rebuttal: If so, all acts would be compulsory (motives for every human act).
Pain vs. Pleasure: Acting under compulsion is painful; acting from pleasant/noble motives involves pleasure. Absurd to blame external allurements instead of internal readiness; claim noble acts as own, but attribute disgraceful to external pleasure.
Summary of Compulsory: Cause external, compelled person contributes nothing.
Ignorance (b):
Ignorance and Non-Voluntary/Involuntary: Act done through ignorance is not-voluntary if agent is not pained afterwards, and involuntary if agent is pained afterwards (shows change of mind).
Distinction: "Not-voluntary" for no pain afterwards, "involuntary" for pain/sorrow afterwards (better to have distinct names).
Acting Through Ignorance vs. In Ignorance:
"In Ignorance": Man drunk or in rage acts in ignorance, not through ignorance (cause is intoxication/rage, not lack of knowledge).
Every Vicious Man: Ignorant of what ought to be done/not done (this error makes men unjust/bad).
True Involuntary Ignorance: Not ignorance of the fitting/universal principles (that's vice, blamed), but ignorance of particular circumstances (persons, things affected by act).
These grounds merit pity and pardon.
Specific Particulars (Six):
The doer.
The deed.
The object/person affected.
The instrument (means).
The purpose (sake).
The manner (gently/violently).
Ignorance of Doer: Impossible (unless mad).
Examples of Ignorance in Particulars: Words escaping unawares, not knowing subject forbidden (Aeschylus), intending to show weapon's working but discharging it (catapult), mistaking son for enemy (Merope), wrong spear/stone, drug intended to save killing, hitting hard when intending touch.
Key Particulars for Involuntary Act: Agent must be ignorant of any of these, especially important particulars (persons affected, result).
Condition for "Involuntary": Agent must also be grieved and sorry for what he has done.
Voluntary Act Definition (Summary): Originated by the doer with knowledge of the particular circumstances of the act.
Critique of Anger/Desire as Involuntary:
(1) If so, other animals and children would not act voluntarily.
(2) Does it mean noble acts are voluntary, disgraceful involuntary? Ridiculous, as cause of both is same.
(3) Absurd to desire something yet say its pursuit is involuntary (we ought to desire health/learning, and be angry at certain things).
(4) Unwilling acts are painful; acts from desire are pleasant.
(5) No difference in involuntariness between calculated wrong deeds and angry ones. Both avoided.
Conclusion: Unreasoning passions belong to man as much as reason; acts under impulse of anger/desire are man's acts. To make them involuntary is absurd.
Chapter 2: Purpose, a Mode of Will, Means Choice After Deliberation
Next Task: Discuss choice or purpose (προαίρεσις) after distinguishing voluntary/involuntary.
Most intimately connected with virtue.
Surer test of character than action itself.
Choice vs. Willing (βούλησις):
Choice is a form of willing, but not identical; willing is wider.
Children/animals have will, but not choice.
Spur-of-the-moment acts are voluntary but not done with deliberate purpose.
Critique of Other Definitions: Choice is not appetite, anger, or opinion.
Not Appetite (ἐπιθυμία):
(1) Irrational creatures share appetite, but not choice.
(2) Incontinent acts from appetite, not choice; continent from choice, not appetite.
(3) Appetite can be contrary to purpose, but not another appetite.
(4) Object of appetite is pleasant/painful; object of purpose is neither.
Not Anger (θυμός): Acts in anger seem least of all chosen/deliberate.
Not Wish (βούλησις): (Though very similar)
(1) Cannot choose impossible; can wish for impossible (e.g., escape death).
(2) Can wish for things outside own agency (actor's success); never choose such things, only what can be effected by own agency.
(3) More properly wish the end, choose the means (wish health but choose means; wish happiness, but don't choose happiness itself).
Purpose deals with what is in our power.
Not Opinion (δόξα):
(1) Anything can be opinion (unalterable/impossible as well as in power).
(2) Opinion distinguished by true/false; purpose by good/bad.
(3) Choose good/evil; opine about nature/goodness/way; not opine to take/avoid.
(4) Commend purpose for rightness/correctness, opinion for truth.
(5) Choose when knowing it's good; opine when knowing nothing.
(6) Best at choosing not always best at forming opinions; excellent judgment can fail in choice due to depravity.
(7) Purpose may be preceded/accompanied by opinion, but not identical.
Definition of Choice/Purpose: "Deliberate desire for something in our power."
Implies calculation and reasoning.
Name (προαίρεσις) implies "chosen before" or "in preference to other things."
Chapter 3: We Deliberate On What We Can Do—Not On Ends, But Means
Scope of Deliberation: Do we deliberate about everything, or are some things impossible?
Rational Being: Understand "matter for deliberation" as what a rational being deliberates about, not a fool/maniac.
Things Not Deliberated About:
Eternal or unalterable things (heavenly bodies, incommensurability of side/diagonal).
Things that change invariably (solstices, sunrise).
Quite irregular things (drought, wet).
Matters of chance (finding treasure).
Human affairs not in our control (best constitution for Scythia by a Spartan).
Reason: None of these can be affected by us.
Things Deliberated About: Matters of conduct within our control.
The only remaining cause of change, besides nature/necessity/chance, is reason and human agency.
Men deliberate on what they can do themselves.
Further Limitation: No deliberation where there is exact knowledge (e.g., writing letters).
Varying Degree of Deliberation: About things by our agency, but not always same way.
Medicine, money-making.
Navigation more than gymnastics (less systematized).
More about art than science (more doubt).
Uncertainty: Matters of deliberation have rules that generally hold but unpredictable results (element of uncertainty).
Important matters involve advisers (distrusting own judgment).
Ends vs. Means: Not about ends, but about means to the end.
A physician doesn't deliberate whether to heal, but how.
An orator doesn't deliberate whether to persuade, but how.
A statesman doesn't deliberate whether to make good laws, but how.
Process: Having end in view, consider how/by what means to attain it.
If multiple means: which is easiest/best.
If one means: how to attain by this means, how to secure the means itself.
Continue until first link in chain of causes (last in order of discovery).
Deliberation as Inquiry/Analysis: Like analyzing a geometrical figure to construct it.
Inquiry not always deliberation (mathematical inquiry).
Deliberation is always inquiry.
Last in analysis comes first in construction.
Action Upon Possibility: Give up if impossible (no money);
If possible, set to work.
"Possible" means doable by us (includes by friends, as we set them to work).
Finding Instruments/Agencies: Sometimes find instruments, sometimes how to use them, sometimes agency, sometimes how/through whom.
Summary of Man's Agency: Man originates acts, deliberates about what he can do himself, and does things for the sake of something else.
Cannot deliberate about the end.
Cannot deliberate about particular facts (immediate perception: this is a loaf, properly baked).
Endless deliberation means no conclusion.
Object of Deliberation and Choice: Same, except choice is already fixed/determined (selected after deliberation).
Stop inquiry when traceable to ourselves and the commanding part of ourselves (that which chooses).
Illustration (Ancient Constitutions): Kings announce chosen acts to people.
Refined Definition of Choice/Purpose: "Deliberate desire for something in our power."
First deliberate, then desire in accordance with decision.
Conclusion: Outline of choice/purpose and its domain (means to ends).
Chapter 4: We Wish For the End, the Real or Apparent Good
Wish (βούλησις) for the End: Already stated.
Dispute: Wish for the Good vs. Apparent Good:
Object of Wish is the Good: Must admit those who choose wrongly don't wish for the good (as their object is bad).
Object of Wish is What Seems Good: Must admit nothing is naturally an object of wish; each wishes what seems good to him (different/contrary things).
Aristotle's Synthesis: The good is the real object of wish (unqualified); what seems good is object of wish to each man.
Good Man: Wishes for the real object of wish.
Bad Man: Wishes for anything whatever (like diseased body finding unhealthy things healthy, or distorted tastes).
Ideal Man: Judges correctly, for whom the true seems true.
Distinguishing Feature of Good Man: Power to discern special forms of noble/pleasant in each case, serving as a standard/measure.
Source of Misguidance: Pleasure often misleads (appears good even when not).
Choose pleasant as good, shun pain as evil.
Chapter 5: Virtue and Vice Are Alike Voluntary: Our Acts Are Our Own; for We Are Punished for Them: Ignorance Is No Excuse When Due to Negligence: If This Be Our Character, We Have Made it by Repeated Acts: Even Bodily Vices Are Blamable When Thus Formed. 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
Connection of Means and Voluntary Action: Since we deliberate upon and choose means to the end, actions concerned with means are guided by choice and are voluntary.
Virtuous Acts and Means: Virtues are manifested in actions concerned with means.
Voluntariness of Virtue and Vice: Therefore, virtue depends on ourselves; vice likewise.
Where we can do, we can choose not to do.
If doing noble deeds is in our power, so is not doing them (disgraceful) and doing base deeds.
Conclusion: Since doing/not doing noble/base deeds is in our power, and this is identical with being good/bad, then it is in our power to be worthy or worthless.
Critique of "None Would Be Wicked…": Saying is partly false, partly true.
No one blessed against his will (true).
Vice is voluntary (Aristotle's claim).
Man as Originator of Actions: If we deny vice is voluntary, we must deny man is originator of his actions.
If statements about self-originating acts are accepted, and acts cannot be traced to other sources, then acts sourced within us are voluntary.
Attestation by Private Life & Legislators: Confirmed by private life and legislators.
Legislators punish evil (unless compulsion or non-responsible ignorance), honour noble deeds.
Purpose: To encourage the good, discourage the bad.
Ineffectiveness of Compulsion: No one encourages what is not voluntary (useless to persuade against heat/pain/hunger).
Ignorance Due to Negligence: Ignorance for which the agent is responsible is punished by law.
Example: Drunkenness penalty doubled (origin in man; could have avoided intoxication).
Ignorance of knowable legal ordinances does not avert punishment.
Where ignorance is result of negligence, offender punished (lay with him to remove, by taking trouble).
Character and Responsibility: Objection: "was the man's character not to take the trouble."
Reply: Men are responsible for acquiring dissolute characters by repeated bad acts (drinking).
Repeated acts create particular character.
Demonstrated by training for contests: practice continually.
Not knowing that repeated acts produce character is senseless.
Wishing vs. Acting: Absurd to say one who acts unjustly doesn't wish to be unjust, or profligate doesn't wish to be profligate.
Voluntary Injustice: If man knowingly does acts making him unjust, he is voluntarily unjust.
He cannot cease to be unjust by sheer wish, like a sick man cannot be well.
Analogy (Sickness): May be voluntarily sick through incontinence/disobedience. Had option not to be sick. Now, after losing health, no longer has it.
Analogy (Stone): Once discharged, stone cannot be recalled; but throwing was up to you (beginning of flight depended on you).
Conclusion: Unjust/profligate man was free not to acquire character; thus voluntarily unjust/profligate. But now, having acquired it, not free to put it off.
Voluntary Bodily Vices: Not only mental/moral vices are voluntary; some bodily vices are too, and censured.
Not natural ugliness, but negligence/lack of exercise.
Not born blind, or lost sight due to illness/blow (pity).
But censure one who blinded himself by drinking/profligacy.
Conclusion: Blamed bodily vices depend on ourselves; thus, other blamed vices also depend on ourselves.
Objection: Character Determines Apparent Good: "All men desire what appears good to them, but cannot control this appearance; character decides the end."
Reply (1): If partly responsible for character, then partly responsible for this appearance.
Reply (2) (If not responsible for character): Then man not responsible for evil-doing (does evil through ignorance of end, fancying it's greatest good).
Gift of Sight: Striving for true end not by choice; must be born with a "gift of sight" to discriminate/choose real good.
"Well-born" means richly endowed by nature with this greatest gift, which cannot be acquired.
Problem: How is virtue then more voluntary than vice?
Whether nature or something else determines end, it's determined same way for good/bad man.
Both refer all acts to it.
Synthesis (Man's Contribution): Either: not merely nature decides end, but man contributes something; OR end is fixed by nature, but virtue is voluntary because good man voluntarily takes steps to that end.
Result: In either case, vice is just as voluntary as virtue.
Self is active in bad man as in good man (in choosing particular acts, if not in determining the end).
Summary (Virtues in General):
Voluntary (we help make character, which colors our idea of end).
Forms of moderation/modes of observing the mean.
Habits or trained faculties.
Show themselves in acts that produce them.
Depend on ourselves.
Follow guidance of right reason.
Acts vs. Habits: Particular acts are not voluntary in same sense as habits.
Masters of acts from beginning to end with knowledge of circumstances.
Masters of beginnings of habits only; growth is imperceptible (like disease).
Resulting characters are voluntary because it lay with us to employ faculties.
Next Step: Take up each virtue, define it, its subject, how it deals with it-also seeing how many there are.
Book III: Chapters 6-End of Book V. The Several Moral Virtues and Vices.
Chapter 6: Of Courage and the Opposite Vices
Courage Defined: Moderation/observance of the mean with respect to feelings of fear and confidence.
Fearful Things: Roughly evil things; fear defined as "expectation of evil."
Not Every Kind of Evil: Not every kind gives scope for courage.
Noble Fear: Ought to fear disgrace (honourable man has due sense of shame, shameless man fears it not).
Some stretch "courageous" to shameless, due to resemblance (courage is a kind of fearlessness).
Not Strictly Courage: Poverty, disease, friendlessness, death (if not results of vice, not up to us) are things one ought not to fear.
Fearlessness in these not strictly courage (e.g., cowardly in war, yet bold in spending money).
Not cowardly for fearing outrage to family, or dreading envy.
Not courageous for unmoved by whipping.
Scope of Courage: Displays in the greatest terrors (no one more able to endure).
Most Terrible: Death (our limit; no good/evil after).
Not All Death: Not death by water or disease.
Noblest Occasions: Those in war, involving greatest and noblest danger.
Confirmation: Honours courage receives in free states and from princes.
Strict Definition of Courageous Man: Fearlessly faces an honourable death and all sudden emergencies involving death (mostly in war).
Fearless in Illness/Sea: Also fearless, but differently from sailors.
Sailors due to experience are hopeful; landsmen despair.
Circumstances for Courage: Prowess displayed, death is noble; not in other forms of death where no nobility/prowess.
Chapter 7: Of Courage—Continued
Fear and Men: Not everyone excited by same fearful things; some things surpass human power to face and inspire rational fear.
Fearful things differ in importance/fearfulness (and confident things too).
Courageous Man's Composure: Always keeps presence of mind (as far as possible).
Will fear fearful things but endure them as he ought and as reason bids him.
Motive: For the sake of what is noble (the end/aim of virtue).
Errors in Fear: Too much/too little fear; fearing what's not fearful.
Err by fearing wrong things, or wrong manner/time.
Applies to things inspiring confidence.
Definition of Courageous Man: Endures and fears what he ought, from right motive, in right manner, at right time, and similarly feels confidence.
Regulates feeling and action according to case's merits and reason's bidding.
End/Motive of Habit: Is the end/motive of its manifestation.
For courageous man, courage is essentially noble.
Therefore, motive of his courage is also noble (everything takes character from its end).
Conclusion: Courageous man endures and acts courageously from a noble motive.
Characters Running to Excess:
Excessive Fearlessness: No name (e.g., maniac, insensible to pain, like Celts who fear nothing).
Over-Confident Foolhardy Man: Over-confident in fearful things.
Generally a braggart, pretends courage.
Wishes to seem like the truly courageous in danger.
Often a coward at bottom; blusters safely, turns tail when real danger comes.
Over-Fearful Coward: Fears what he ought not, as he ought not, etc.
Deficient in confidence.
Character displayed in excess of fear in pain.
Despondent, frightened at everything.
Contrary to courageous man (confidence implies hopefulness).
Distinguishing Cowardly, Foolhardy, Courageous:
All display characters in same circumstances, just behave differently.
Cowards/foolhardy exceed/fall short; courageous behaves moderately.
Foolhardy: precipitate/eager before danger, fall away in its presence.
Courageous: keen in action, but quiet beforehand.
Courage Summarized: Observance of mean regarding confidence/fear in specified circumstances.
Chooses and sticks to course because it is noble, or disgraceful not to.
Warning Against False Courage: Seeking death as refuge from poverty, love, pain is not brave but cowardly.
Effeminacy to fly from vexation; death accepted as escape from evil, not for nobility.
Chapter 8: Of Courage Improperly So Called
Courage Proper: As defined.
Five Kinds of So-Called Courage:
Political Courage: Most resembles true courage.
Citizens face dangers due to legal pains/penalties and honours.
Most courageous in states where cowards are disgraced, brave men honoured.
Homer's characters (Diomede, Hector) show this (fear of reproach/shame).
Reason for Resemblance: Impulse is virtuous (sense of honour, desire for glory, aversion to reproach).
Forced Fighters: Officers forcing men to fight (fear, not honour) are similar but inferior (Hector's fashion: "Whoever is seen to skulk and shirk the fight / Shall nowise save his carcass from the dogs").
Distinction: Man ought to be courageous not under compulsion, but because it is noble.
Experience: In a particular matter, sometimes thought to be a kind of courage (Socratic notion that courage is knowledge).
Exhibited by regular troops in military affairs.
Acquainted with groundless alarms (appear courageous because others don't understand situation).
More efficient in attack/defence (skilled in weapons, best arms).
Analogy: Advantage of armed over unarmed, trained over untrained (like in athletic contests).
Limitation: Turn cowards when danger rises, outnumbered, out-equipped (e.g., Argives vs. Spartans).
Distinction: Citizens hold death preferable to disgraceful flight; regulars fight only when they fancy they're stronger, run when they learn the truth (fear death more than disgrace). Not true courage.
Rage (θυμός): Sometimes included under courage.
Those in sheer rage (like wild beasts) are taken for courageous because courageous man is full of rage.
Rage is eager to rush on danger (Homer: "Put might into his rage," "roused his wrath and rage," "fierce wrath breathed through his nostrils," "his blood boiled"). Signify awakening/bursting out of rage.
Distinction: Truly courageous man moved by what is noble, rage helping him.
Beasts moved by pain/blows/fear (don't attack man in wood/marsh).
Conclusion: Beasts not courageous (without foreseeing consequences).
Absurdity: Asses called courageous when hungry (won't stop eating); adulterers moved by lust.
Summary: Being driven by pain/rage not courage proper.
Natural Link: Impulse of rage is most natural, when deliberate purpose and right motive are added, becomes real courage.
Pain vs. Pleasure: Anger is painful, revenge pleasant. Those fighting from these motives fight well, but are not courageous (not for noble, but by passion). Bear resemblance.
Sanguine Man: Not properly called courageous.
Confident in danger due to past wins/defeats.
Resembles courageous (both confident).
Distinction: Courageous confident for noble reasons. Sanguine confident due to thinking he's superior/will win easily (like drunk people).
Limitation: Runs away when reality hits.
Courageous Character: Faces terrible even when seeing danger, because noble to do so, base not to.
Greater Courage: Greater courage in sudden danger than foreseen danger (more direct outcome of formed character, less preparation).
Ignorance of Danger: Appear courageous, not far removed from sanguine.
Inferior: not necessarily having opinion of themselves (sanguine must have).
Hold ground for a time, then run when they perceive/suspect true state (e.g., Argives vs. Sicyonians/Spartans).
Conclusion: Description of courageous man and those mistaken for him.
Chapter 9: How Courage Involves Both Pain and Pleasure
Courage and Fear/Confidence: Concerned with both, but more with occasions of fear.
Cool/right behavior on fear occasions makes one courageous, more than on confidence occasions.
Enduring Painful Things: Men called courageous for this.
Courage Brings Pain: Justly praised; harder to endure painful than abstain from pleasant.
End of Courage: Is pleasant, but hidden by attendant circumstances (like gymnastic contests).
Boxers have pleasant end (crown, honours), but blows are grievous/painful, labours many.
End is small, pleasantness hardly apparent.
Courageous Man's Pain: Death and wounds painful, against his will.
Endures because noble to do so, or base not to.
Grieving of the Virtuous: More virtuous/happy the man, the more grievous death is (life more worth living to him).
Deprives himself knowingly of best things; painful.
No less courageous; more courageous due to choosing noble conduct in battle over good things despite pain.
Virtue and Pleasure Principle: Rule that exercise of virtue is pleasant doesn't apply to all virtues, except insofar as the end is attained.
Soldiership: No reason why virtuous men shouldn't be as efficient soldiers as others.
Those with nothing good to lose are reckless of risk, sell lives cheaply.
Conclusion: Outline of courage's nature.
Chapter 10: Of Temperance
Transition: After courage, temperance (virtues of irrational parts).
Temperance Defined: Moderation/observance of mean regarding pleasures (less so pains, not in same manner).
Profligacy manifests in same field.
Kinds of Pleasures: Distinguish bodily pleasures from soul pleasures (gratified ambition, love of learning).
Soul Pleasures: Man delighted by honour/learning: mind affected, not body.
Not called temperate/profligate for these, or other non-bodily pleasures (gossipers are babblers, not profligate; pained at loss of money/friends not profligate).
Temperance and Bodily Pleasures: Concerned with bodily pleasures, but not all.
Excluded Senses: Sight (colours, forms, painting), hearing (music, acting), smell (fruits, roses, incense).
Can take delight in these as one ought, or too much/too little.
Not called profligate for excessive delight in music/acting.
Not profligate for pleasant smells (unless it reminds of lusts, e.g., unguents/savoury dishes).
Profligate takes delight in lust-reminding smells constantly.
Animals and Senses: Lower animals don't get pleasure through excluded senses (except accidentally).
Dog delights in eating hare, not scent.
Lion rejoices in devouring ox, not lowing.
Included Senses: Touch and Taste.
Common to lower animals, slavish and brutal.
Profligacy deservedly most censured (attaches to animal, not human, nature).
Taste's Small Role: Seems to play small part or none.
Function of taste: distinguish flavours (wine-tasters, seasoned dishes).
Not discrimination of objects, but actual enjoyment (medium: sense of touch) in eating, drinking, sexual intercourse (e.g., gourmand wishing for crane's throat).
Excluded Touch Pleasures: Manly touch pleasures (gymnast rubbing, warm bath) from profligacy.
Profligate cultivates touch in certain parts only.
Conclusion: To delight in these things, loving them most, is brutish.
Chapter 11: Of Temperance—Continued
Desires/Appetites: Some common to race, others individual/acquired.
Natural/Common: Desire for food (meat/drink), sexual intercourse (when young/vigorous).
Few err in natural desires, only in excess (eating/drinking till full).
Called "belly-mad" (γαστρίμαργοι).
Utterly slavish natures acquire this vice.
Individual/Acquired: Not all desire satisfaction in same way/things.
Partly natural, different people pleased by different things, yet some things universally liked.
Many err here in various ways (wrong things, unusual degree, wrong fashion).
Profligates exceed in all these ways (delight in hateful things, or more than usual/right).
Excess in Pleasures is Blamable: Plainly profligacy.
Pains (Contrast with Courage):
Not temperate for bearing pains, profligate for not bearing them.
Profligate: more pained than he ought at not getting pleasant things (pain caused by pleasure).
Temperate: absence of pleasant things or abstinence not painful.
Profligate's Desire: Desires all intensely pleasant things, chooses them above all else.
Constantly pained by failing to get them, by lusting (all appetite involves pain).
Strange to be pained for sake of pleasure.
Deficiency in Pleasure: Hardly found (insensibility scarcely human).
Even animals discriminate food.
Being to whom nothing was pleasant, finding no difference, would be far removed from man.
No name for such a being because it doesn't exist.
Temperate Man: Observes the mean.
Takes no pleasure in profligate's delights (rather disdains them), nor generally in wrong things, nor excessively.
Not pained by absence; desires them moderately (not more than ought, not at wrong time).
Desires pleasant things that conduce to health/good condition moderately/rightly.
Other pleasant things too, provided not injurious, incompatible with noble, or beyond means.
One who cares for them then, cares more than fitting; temperate man not apt to do that, but guided by right reason.
Chapter 12: How Profligacy Is More Voluntary Than Cowardice
Profligacy vs. Cowardice (Voluntariness):
Profligacy: impelled by pleasure (chosen).
Cowardice: impelled by pain (avoided).
Conclusion: Profligacy is more voluntary.
Pain and Nature: Pain upsets nature of sufferer; pleasure has no such effect.
Conclusion: Profligacy more voluntary.
Blame and Curability: Profligacy more blamable than cowardice.
Easier to train for right behavior in profligate situations (constant, no risk).
Cowardice situations are contrary (risky).
Character vs. Acts: Habit of cowardice more voluntary than particular acts of cowardice.
Not painful to be a coward in general.
Occasions of cowardice put men beside themselves (fear of pain), leading to disgraceful acts (throwing arms).
These particular acts are even thought compulsory.
Profligate's Acts vs. Character: Particular acts are voluntary (done with appetite/desire).
Character itself is less voluntary; no one desires to be a profligate.
Term "Profligacy" Applied to Children: Childish faults (akin to "chastening" or "correction").
Origin: Later named after earlier (doesn't matter which).
Metaphor: What needs chastening inclines to base things, has great powers of expansion.
Especially in appetite and childhood.
Children live by appetites, desire for pleasant things pronounced.
If this element is not submissive/obedient to governing principle, it will run wild.
Desire for pleasant things in irrational being is insatiable, gratifies itself any way.
Gratification increases natural tendency; intense gratifications thrust out reason altogether.
Conclusion: Appetites should be moderate/few, not opposed to reason ("chastened"), subject to reason like a child to a tutor.
Temperate Man's Appetites: In harmony with reason; aim of both is noble.
Desires what he ought, as he ought, when he ought (what reason prescribes).
Summary: Account of temperance.
Book IV: The Same—Continued
Chapter 1: Of Liberality
Liberality Defined: Moderation in the matter of wealth.
Scope: Commended behavior in giving/taking wealth, especially in giving.
Wealth = all things measurable in money.
Prodigality and Illiberality: Excess and defect in wealth.
Illiberality: Caring for wealth more than is right.
Prodigality (Common Use): Combination of vices (incontinent people squandering money in riotous living), seen as worthless.
Proper Use of "Prodigal" (ἄσωτος): Denotes one vice: wasting substance (ἀ priv. and σώζω save).
Prodigal is "destroyed through his own fault" (life dependent on substance).
This is the proper sense.
Using Wealth Well: Anything with a use can be used well or ill.
Riches = abundance of useful things (χρήματα).
Best used by one with the virtue concerned with it (liberal man).
Ways of Using Wealth: Spending and giving (more distinctive of liberal man) vs. taking and keeping (acquiring).
More distinctive of virtue to do good than have good done, to do noble than not do base.
Giving involves doing good/noble; taking involves receiving good/not doing base.
Praise for Giving: Thankful to givers, not abstainers; praise givers.
Ease of Not Taking: Easier not to take than to give (inclination to be stingy with own goods).
Liberality and Love: Liberal man is perhaps most beloved due to usefulness (in giving).
Motive of Liberal Man: Like other virtues, gives with a view to, or for the sake of, that which is noble.
Gives rightly: right things, to right persons, at right times.
Giving is pleasant or painless (virtuous acts are).
False Liberality: Gives to wrong persons, or from other than noble motive (not liberal, another name needed).
Not liberal who gives with pain (prefers money to noble action).
Taking: Liberal man will not take from wrong sources (inconsistent with character).
Not ready to beg (one who confers benefits not eager to receive).
Will take from right sources (own property) as necessary condition of giving.
Will not neglect property (wishes to help others).
Refuses to give to casual persons (to save for right persons, times, noble giving).
Excess in Giving: Characteristic to go to excess in giving (leave too little for self) because disregard of self is part of character (a departure from strict virtue, but a characteristic tendency).
Proportion to Fortune: Liberality measured by habit/character of doer, proportions gift to giver's fortune.
Smaller sum giver can be more liberal if means are smaller.
Inherited vs. Earned Fortune: Inheritors seem more liberal (never known want). All fond of what they've made (parents, poets).
Difficulty of Being Rich: Hard for liberal man (not apt to take/keep, apt to spend not for money itself, but for giving).
Fortune's Recrimination: Charge that those deserving wealth least receive it is natural; wealth requires trouble.
Right Spending: Liberal man won't give to wrong people or at wrong times (would not be true liberality, wouldn't have enough for right occasions).
Liberal Man (Summary Definition): Moderation in giving/taking wealth.
Gives/spends proper amount on proper objects (small/great), with pleasure.
Takes proper amount from proper sources (right taking consistent with right giving).
Pain/Pleasure: If spends contrary to noble, will be pained, but moderately (characteristic of virtue).
Easy to Deal With: Easy to cheat in money matters (doesn't value wealth).
More vexed at failing to spend where ought, than pained at spending where ought not.
Prodigal's Error: Not pleased on right occasions/way, nor pained (clearer later).
Prodigality & Illiberality (Recall): Both excess/deficiency in giving/taking (expenditure included in giving).
Prodigality exceeds in giving, not taking; falls short in taking.
Illiberality falls short in giving, exceeds in taking (in small things).
Combined Elements: Two elements of prodigality not commonly united in same person (not easy for non-taker to always give, esp. for private persons).
Prodigal (with both elements): Better than illiberal man.
Cured by age/lack of means, can come to middle course.
Has essential points of liberal character: gives, abstains from taking (but not well/as ought).
If trained, will be liberal (give to whom ought, not take whence ought not).
Generally not a bad character: excessive giving/not taking shows foolishness more than viciousness.
Comparision: Better than illiberal; prodigal does good to many, illiberal to no one (not even self).
Most Prodigals (Reality): Give wrongly, take from wrong sources (illiberal aspect).
Grasping because they want to spend but supplies fail.
Compelled to draw from other sources.
Care nothing for noble: recklessly take from any source.
Gifts not liberal: not noble, not for noble, not in right manner.
Enrich poor, give nothing to virtuous, give to flatterers/pleasure providers.
Mainly profligates: lavish money on riotous living, pursue pleasure.
Curability: If guidance fails, becomes profligate; if trained, returns to moderate course.
Illiberality: Incurable.
Old age/loss of power makes men illiberal.
Runs in blood more than prodigality (men more fond of money than giving).
Far-reaching, many forms.
Two parts: deficiency in giving, excess in taking.
Not always in entirety: some exceed in taking, others fall short in giving.
Niggardly/Stingy/Miserly: Fall short in giving, don't covet others' goods.
Motive: Some by honesty/desire to avoid disgrace (saving to avoid disgrace, e.g., "cheese-parer").
Others by fear (easy to take others' goods, without losing one's own); content with neither taking nor giving.
Exceed in Taking: Make any gain, any way (debasing trades, brothel-keepers, usurers).
Pursuit of base gain; endure reproach for small gain.
Large-scale improper gains (tyrants, pillaging temples) called wicked, impious, unjust (not illiberal).
Dice-sharper, bath thief, common thief: illiberal.
Make base gains, endure reproach for gain.
Thief endures great dangers; sharper gains from friends (to whom he should give).
Seekers of base gain (all such money-making ways are illiberal).
Illiberality vs. Prodigality: Illiberality rightly called opposite of liberality.
Worse evil.
Men more apt to err this way.
Conclusion: Account of liberality and its opposed vices.
Chapter 2: Of Magnificence
Transition: Examination of magnificence (also concerned with wealth).
Scope: Only large expenditure, goes beyond liberality in largeness (μεγαλοπρέπεια = suitable expenditure on a large scale).
Relativity of Largeness: Suitable expenditure for war-ship is not same as for sacred embassy.
Relative to person, occasion, business.
Not Magnificence: Spending fittingly on trifling or moderately important occasions (e.g., "To many a wandering beggar did I give").
Magnificent Man: Spends fittingly on great occasions.
Magnificent man is liberal, but liberal man may not be magnificent.
Deficiency/Excess: Deficiency: meanness; Excess: vulgarity, bad taste.
Vulgarity: Not spending too much on proper objects, but ostentatiously on improper objects and in improper fashion.
Magnificent Man as Artist: Like a skilled artist; sees what case requires, spends great sums tastefully.
Character takes complexion from acts/products.
Expenses must be great and suitable.
Product also of same nature; expense great and suitable to result (proportionate, or even greater).
Motive: Desire for what is noble (common to all virtues).
Spending: Spends gladly and lavishly; minute cost calculation is mean.
Inquires how to make most beautiful/elegant, not cheapest.
Relation to Liberality: Must be liberal.
Distinguished by greatness (actual magnitude of amount spent).
If amount same, magnificent man's result is more magnificent.
Excellence of Possession vs. Work: Possession: most precious is worth most (gold).
Work of art (product): most estimable is great and beautiful (excites admiration).
Excellence of work on a great scale is magnificence.
Estimable/Honourable Expenditure: Worship of gods (offerings, temples, sacrifices), heroes, public service from noble ambition (chorus, war-ship, public feast).
Proportion to Person/Means: Expenditure proportionate to circumstances, suitable to author.
Poor man cannot be magnificent (fool if tries, spends disproportionately, acts wrongly).
Fitting for those with means (own efforts, ancestors, connections, birth, reputation).
Scope of Magnificence: Most properly in public/honourable expenditure.
Also in private occasions occurring once in life (wedding).
Or of special state/governing interest (receiving/sending strangers, presents).
Magnificent man spends on public objects; gifts to strangers resemble offerings to gods.
Builds house suitable to wealth (public ornament).
Spends more readily on things that last (noblest).
Spends what's suitable for occasion (different for gods/men, temple/tomb).
Greatness and Expense: Every expenditure can be great after its kind.
Great expenditure on great occasion is most magnificent.
Less degree: great for the occasion (e.g., beautiful ball for child, though small price).
Characteristic: does magnificently whatever he does (cannot be easily surpassed), produces result proportionate to expense.
Excess (Vulgar/Bad Taste):
Spends improperly; great sums on small objects, unseemly display.
Example: wedding feast for club, purple costumes for comedy.
Motive: not noble/beautiful, but display of wealth to gain admiration.
Spends little where should spend much, much where should spend little.
Deficiency (Mean Man):
Falls short on every occasion.
Spoils beauty of work by niggardliness in a trifle.
Never acts without thinking twice, considering cheapest cost, bemoaning expense.
Thinks everything is on needlessly large scale.
Conclusion: Both extremes vicious, but not reproachful (not injurious to others, not very offensive in themselves).
Chapter 3: Of High-Mindedness
High-mindedness (μεγαλοψυχία): Concerns great things.
No difference considering quality or man.
High-minded Man Defined: Claims much, deserves much.
Claims much without deserving: fool (virtuous man is never foolish).
Deserves little, claims little: temperate/modest, but not high-minded (implies greatness).
Like beauty implies stature; small men can be neat but not beautiful.
Claims much without deserving: vain (not all who claim more).
Claims less than deserves: little-minded (fault greatest when deserts are great).
High-minded Man's Position: In respect of greatness of deserts, occupies extreme position.
In behaving as he ought, observes the mean (claims what he deserves).
Others claim too much or too little.
Ultimate Concern: If deserves/claims much, especially greatest things, concerned with one thing.
Desert refers to external good things.
Greatest external good: honour (due to gods, desired by high stations, prize for noblest deeds).
Conclusion: Honours and dishonours are the field where high-minded man behaves as he ought.
Confirmation: Honour is what high-minded men are concerned with (claim/deserve it).
Comparisons:
Little-minded man: falls short compared to own deserts or high-minded man's claims.
Vain/conceited man: exceeds what is due, but doesn't exceed high-minded man's claims (impossible).
Necessity of Virtue: High-minded man, deserving greatest things, must be a perfectly good/excellent man.
Better man deserves greater; best man deserves greatest.
Greatness in every virtue implied.
Inconsistent to be high-minded yet run away, commit injustice (
all things are of little account to him).Absurd: notion of high-minded man not good.
Cannot be worthy of honour if not good (honour is virtue's prize, due to good).
High-mindedness as Crowning Grace: Makes other virtues greater, cannot exist without them.
Hard to be truly high-minded: impossible without union of all virtues.
Manifestation: Especially in honours/dishonours.
Great Honour from Good Men: Moderately pleased (gets due or less, as no honour fully adequate to virtue). Accepts it.
Honour from Ordinary Men/Trivial Grounds: Utterly despises it (not deserved).
Dishonour: Makes light of it (never merits it).
Feelings about Wealth/Power/Fortune: Observes mean.
Neither greatly exalted by prosperity nor cast down by adversity.
Honour doesn't affect him as very important, so power/wealth are also lightly regarded (desired for honour's sake).
Conclusion: High-minded men seem to look down upon everything.
Fortune's Contribution: Good birth, power, wealth sometimes thought to contribute to high-mindedness.
They are in a position of superiority, honour in good things.
Makes people more high-minded in a sense (get honour from some).
Strictness: Only good man worthy of honour; good man with good fortune considered more worthy.
No claim to great things, nor truly high-minded without complete virtue.
Vain Men's Behavior: Without virtue, bear gifts of fortune poorly, become supercilious/insolent.
Think themselves superior, look down on others, do whatever pleases them.
Imitate high-minded man (where they can), but not truly like him (no virtue in acts).
High-minded man looks down justly (estimates correctly); most people for irrelevant reasons.
Danger, Benefits, Memory:
Danger: Not quick to petty dangers, doesn't love danger (few things valued).
Ready for great danger, unsparing of life (not worth keeping at all costs).
Benefits: Confers benefits, ashamed to receive.
Former: part of superior; latter: part of inferior.
Returns greater benefits when received: creditor becomes debtor (recipient of favour).
Memory: Remembers benefits conferred better than received (wishes to be superior).
Likes to be reminded of former, dislikes latter (Thetis and Zeus, Lacedaemonians and Athenians).
Manners and Conduct:
Never/reluctantly asks favours; ready to confer.
Lofty to high-stationed/favoured by fortune; affable to middle ranks.
Hard/dignified to assert superiority over former; easy over latter.
Haughty with great is good breeding; with low is brutal (showing strength on cripple).
Doesn't rush where honour is won, nor where others lead.
Holds aloof, shuns ventures, except when great honour/work.
Not many things, but great and notable things.
Speech and Action: Open in hate/love (cowardly to dissemble, care less for truth than opinion).
Open in word/deed (consciousness of superiority makes outspoken).
Truthful, except ironical tone with masses.
Cannot fashion life to suit another (except friend) (servile).
Flatterers/hangers-on are slavish; low natures become flatterers.
Admiration: Not easily moved to admiration (nothing great to him).
Injuries: Readily forgets injuries (not consistent to brood).
Gossip: No gossip (cares not for praise, nor others' blame).
Not apt to speak evil of others, even enemies (except to offend).
Distress: Last to cry out or beg for help in unavoidable/slight events (thinks them unimportant).
Possessions: Loves beautiful things that bring no profit more than useful things that pay (resources are in himself).
Demeanor: Gait slow, voice deep, speech measured.
Not in a hurry if few deep interests; not excited if nothing of great importance.
Conclusion: Character of high-minded man.
Extremes: Deficient: little-minded; Exceeds: vain/conceited.
Not bad (do no harm), but in error.
Little-minded: Deserves good, deprives self. Worse for not claiming, misjudging self (if judged right, would desire deserved good).
Not fools, but too retiring.
Misjudgment makes worse: shrinks from noble deeds/employments/external goods, thinking self unworthy.
Vain: Fools and ignorant of self.
Undertake unfit honourable offices, convicted of incapacity.
Dress/airs, wish to flaunt good fortune, talk about selves.
Opposition: Little-mindedness more opposed to high-mindedness than vanity (commoner and worse).
High-mindedness Scope (Recall): Honours on a large scale.
Chapter 4: Of a Similar Virtue in Smaller Matters
Virtue in Smaller Honours: Also a virtue concerned with honour, like liberality to magnificence.
Has nothing to do with great things (like liberality).
Causes proper behavior in moderate/trifling matters.
Desire for Honour: Possible to go too far, not far enough, or to desire from right source/manner.
Ambitious/Unambitious (Reproachful):
Ambitious (φιλώτιμος): Desiring honour more than ought, from wrong sources.
Unambitious (ἀφιλώτιμος): Not desiring to be honoured even for noble deeds.
Ambitious/Unambitious (Praiseworthy):
Ambitious: Manly, fond of noble things.
Unambitious: Moderate, temperate.
Problem of Sense: "Fond of a thing" has various senses; "fond of honour" not always same sense.
Praise: fonder than most men.
Reproach: fonder than is right.
No Recognized Term for Mean: Extremes fight for the "empty place."
Existence of the Mean: Wherever excess/defect, there is a mean.
Honour desired more and less than right; may also be desired to right degree.
This character (observance of mean) is praised, though unnamed.
Compared with ambition, seems lack of ambition; with lack of ambition, seems ambition; with both, seems both.
Other Virtues: Similar happens in other virtues (extremes opposed, mean unnamed).
Chapter 5: Of Gentleness
Gentleness Defined: Moderation with respect to anger.
No Recognized Names: No recognized name for the mean, scarcely for extremes.
"Gentleness" itself (πραότης) properly denotes inclination towards deficiency in anger, but applied to the mean.
Emotion Concerned: Wrath/anger (many/various causes).
Praiseworthy Behavior: Angry on right occasions, with right persons, in right manner, at right season, for right length of time.
Called "gentle" (πρᾷος).
Wishes not to lose balance, not carried away by emotions.
Angry only as reason prescribes.
Error of Gentleness: Seems to err rather on side of deficiency (loth to take vengeance, ready to forgive).
Deficiency (Wrathlessness): Censured.
Those not angered by what ought to anger them seem foolish.
Those not angry as/when/with whom they ought.
Feels nothing, pained by nothing, lacks spirit to defend self.
Suffering insult, watching friends insulted, shows slavish nature.
Excess (Wrathfulness): Possible to exceed in all points (wrong persons, things, more than ought, more quickly, longer).
Not all errors in same person (evil is self-destructive).
Wrathful Men: Get angry easily/quickly, at wrong people/things, more than ought.
Soon get over anger (good point).
Don't keep anger in; retaliate quickly, then done.
Choleric: Excessively quick-tempered, angered at anything/any occasion (ἀκρόχολοι).
Sulky: Hard to appease, anger lasts long (keep it in).
Retaliation brings relief (pleasant for painful).
Sulky man carries burden of wrath; no one tries to reason out of it (doesn't show it), takes long to digest.
Troublesome to self and friends.
Hard (χαλεποί): Offended by things that ought not, more than ought, longer, not appeased without vengeance.
Opposition of Extremes: Excess is more opposed to gentleness than deficiency (commoner, hard-tempered worse to live with).
Difficulty of Definition: Not easy to define how, with whom, at what, for how long one ought to be angry.
How far is right, when misconduct begins.
Perception: Such matters depend on particular circumstances, decided by immediate perception.
Conclusion: Habit observing mean (right anger) praised.
Excess/deficiency censured (slight error: slight censure; considerable: graver; great: severe).
Must strive for mean.
Summary: Account of habits concerning anger.
Chapter 6: Of Agreeableness
Context: Social intercourse (living with others, conversation, common occupations).
Obsequious Men: To please you, praise everything, never object, always avoid giving pain.
Cross/Contentious Men: Object to everything, never care about pain given.
Censure: Both extremes merit censure.
Commended Habit: Middle course (acquiesces when ought, refuses when ought).
No Recognized Name for Mean: Most nearly resembles friendliness (φιλία).
Man exhibiting moderation is like an upright friend, but doesn't imply emotion/affection (acts from character, not love/hate).
Behaves fittingly to known/unknown, intimate/not intimate (show different consideration).
Right Behavior in Intercourse: Tries to contribute to pleasure, avoid pain, guided by noble and fitting.
Refuses to acquiesce/prefers to give pain if pleasure is not noble or hurtful to self.
If pleasure involves discredit/injury to its source, and opposition gives little pain, will not acquiesce.
Behaves differently for great/ordinary people, intimate/acquaintances, giving each their due.
Promotes pleasure, but regulates conduct by consequences (noble and fitting).
Inflicts slight pain now for great future pleasure.
Summary: Mean-observing man of this sort, but unnamed.
Obsequious / Flatterer: Always makes self pleasant.
No ulterior object: obsequious.
To get profit (money/money's worth): flatterer.
Cross/Contentious: Sets face against everything.
Opposition of Extremes: Extremes seem opposed to one another (due to no name for mean).
Chapter 7: Of Truthfulness
Moderation between Truthfulness and Irony: Virtue also lacks a name.
Examining these qualities to know more about human character, further assured virtues are modes of the mean.
Truthful/Untruthful in Speech/Action/Pretensions:
Boaster: Fond of pretending to esteemed things he doesn't have, or not to such extent.
Ironical Man: Disclaims what he has, or depreciates it.
Mean (Truthful Person): "Always himself" (αὐθὴς), truthful in word/deed, confesses facts about self, neither exaggerates nor diminishes.
Motive: Each line of conduct can be with or without ulterior object.
Without ulterior object: lives according to character.
Falsehood/Truth: Falsehood is vile/blamable; truth is noble/praiseworthy.
Praise/Blame: Truthful man praised; untruthful characters blamed (boastful more than ironical).
Focus: Not truth in business or justice (another virtue), but truth in speech/life where no important issues are involved, due to character.
Good Man: Loves truth, truthful where nothing depends on it, more surely in serious interests.
Shuns falsehood as base, merits praise.
Inclines to understatement (exaggeration offensive).
Boaster (Proper): Pretends to more with no ulterior object.
Not a good character (doesn't take pleasure in falsehood), but silly rather than bad.
Boasters with Ulterior Object:
Reputation/honour: not severely censured.
Money/making money: greater reproach.
Distinction: Boaster Proper: Not faulty of boasting, but preference for boasting (boaster by habit/character).
Liar proper: delights in falsehood itself.
Liar for honour/gain.
Boaster's Pretensions: Tend to things commendable/making one happy.
Boaster for Gain: Pretends to things advantageous to others, whose absence may escape detection (magic, medicine).
Usually such things (meet conditions).
Ironical People: More refined character, motive not gain, but to avoid parade.
Disclaim esteemed things (Socrates).
Affected (ψευδομανιῶδες): Disclaim petty advantages they possess.
Often contemptible.
Extreme depreciation can be boastful (dressing like a Spartan).
Refined Irony: Employ irony in moderation, not too obvious/palpable.
Boaster vs. Truthful: Boaster is especially the opposite of truthful man (worse than ironical).
Chapter 8: Of Wittiness
Context: Relaxation is part of life; amusing conversation is a mode of relaxation.
Proper Mixing: Proper way to mix, right things to say, right way of saying/hearing.
Depends on kind of people.
Excess/Defect: Possible to exceed or fall short of the mean.
Buffoons/Vulgar Fellows: Go to excess in ridicule, strive for ridiculous effect.
Bent on raising a laugh, not elegant/inoffensive witticisms.
Boorish/Morose: Never say anything laughable, frown on those who do.
Witty Men (εὐτράπελοι): Jest gracefully, ready wit, versatile.
Character Revealed: Character revealed in sallies/playful movements (moral constitution judged like body by movements).
Misconception of Witty Man: Buffoon often called witty due to delight given.
Difference is considerable.
Mean in Wittiness: Tact: Man of tact says/listens to things befitting honest man/gentleman.
Jesting of gentleman differs from slavish, educated from uneducated.
Old vs. New Comedy: Old (obscenity), new (innuendo); difference in decency.
Limits of Jesting: Can good jesting be defined as what does not pain the hearer, or what gives pleasure?
Pleasure is indefinite (different things please/pain different people).
Consistency: What a man can listen to, he can make himself.
Jesting can vilify; law forbids certain vilification, perhaps should forbid certain jesting.
Regulated Wit: Refined/gentlemanly man regulates wit, being a law to himself.
Conclusion on Mean: This is the mean (man of tact/ready wit).
Buffoon: Cannot resist joke opportunity, spares neither self nor others if can raise a laugh.
Says/listens to things no refined man would.
Boor: Useless for this intercourse (contributes nothing, takes everything ill).
Recreation/amusement necessary for life.
Summary of Social Life Moderations: Three:
Truth.
Pleasantness in amusement.
Pleasantness in all other social intercourse.
Chapter 9: Of The Feeling of Shame
Shame (αἰδῶς) Not a Virtue: More like a feeling/emotion than a habit/trained faculty.
Defined as fear of disgrace.
Effects analogous to fear of danger (blush from shame, pale from fear of death).
Both physical manifestations, marking feelings over habits.
Becoming Only in Youth: Not becoming at all times of life, only in youth.
Proper for young to feel shame: guided by emotions, often misled, but restrained by shame.
Praise for young men for readiness to feel shame.
Not for Older Men: No one praises older man for being ashamed; ought not to do anything shameful.
Not Part of Good Man: Shame is not part of a good man, as it's occasioned by vile acts (ought not be done).
Doesn't matter if objectively shameful or only in public estimation; neither ought to be done.
Part of a worthless man, result of doing something shameful.
Absurdity: If a man's character means he would be ashamed of shameful acts, it's absurd to fancy he is a good man.
Shame felt only at voluntary acts; good man never voluntarily does vile acts.
Hypothetically Good: At most, shame is hypothetically good (good man would be ashamed if he were to do the act, but virtues are not hypothetical).
Shamelessness: Granting shamelessness is bad (not ashamed of shameful things) doesn't mean doing them and being ashamed is good.
Continence (Relation to Virtue): Not a virtue, but between virtue and vice.
(Details of continence later).
Transition: Now treat justice.
Book V: The Same—Concluded. Justice
Chapter 1: Preliminary. Two Senses of Justice Distinguished. Of Justice (1) = Obedience to Law = Complete Virtue
Inquiry: Justice and injustice; sort of acts concerned with, how justice observes the mean, what extremes it lies between.
Method: Follow previous method.
Common Understanding of Justice: Habit/character that makes men apt to do what is just, act justly, wish what is just.
Common Understanding of Injustice: Character that makes men act unjustly, wish what is unjust.
Justice vs. Science/Faculty: Oppose justice and injustice because a habit producing a certain result does not also produce the opposite (health only produces healthy manifestations).
Knowledge of Opposites: Often know habit by its opposite, or by causes/results (good condition from bad, or vice versa).
Multiple Senses: If one opposite term has multiple senses, the other generally will too.
Justice/Injustice Multiple Senses: Both have several senses, but the closeness of the meanings makes the difference escape notice (unlike κλεῖς - collar-bone vs. key).
Unjust Man (Two Senses):
Breaks the laws (lawbreaker).
Takes more than his share, or is unfair.
Just Man (Two Senses):
Law-abiding.
Fair man.
Just Thing (Two Senses):
In accordance with law.
Fair.
Unjust Thing (Two Senses):
Contrary to law.
Unfair.
Unjust Man & Share: Unjust man (in sense of "takes more than his share") acts in sphere of good things.
Not all good things, but those concerned with good/ill fortune (always good in themselves, not always for us).
Men pray for/pursue these, but ought to pray good-in-itself be good-for-us, choosing good-for-us.
Doesn't always take more; sometimes takes less (of bad things), but lesser evil is a good, so still means taking more good.
Unfair as Wider Term: Taking more than his share is always unfair (wider term).
Law-abiding Man is Just: Follows that whatever is according to law is just (legislator prescribes, always said to be just).
Laws Aim at Common Interest: Laws prescribe things aiming at common interest (all, or best men, or supreme in state).
"Just" applied to whatever produces/preserves community happiness and its elements.
Law bids courage (not leave ranks, not throw arms), temperance (not commit adultery/outrage), gentleness (not strike/revile).
Rightly when good law, not so rightly when improvised.
Justice (1) as Complete Virtue towards Others: This sense of justice is complete virtue, with addition that it is displayed towards others.
Often called "chief of the virtues," "neither evening nor morning star is so lovely," "sums up all virtues in itself."
Reason for Completeness: Exhibition of complete virtue; has it is able to exhibit virtue in dealing with neighbours, not just privately (many virtuous at home, fail with neighbours).
Bias' Saying: "Office will show the man" (in office stands in relation to others, deals with them).
Justice as Another's Good: Only justice is thought to be another's good (implies relation to others, aims at interest of ruler/fellow-citizens).
Best vs. Worst Man: Worst man displays vice in own affairs and with friends. Best man displays virtue towards others (hardest).
Justice (1) as Whole Virtue/Vice: Not a part of virtue, but the whole of it. Injustice opposed to it is the whole of vice.
Virtue vs. Justice (in this sense): Same character, differently viewed.
Viewed in relation to others: justice.
Viewed simply as a character: virtue.
Chapter 2: Of Justice (2) = Fairness, How Related to Justice (1). What Is Just in Distribution Distinguished From What Is Just in Correction
Next Task: Examine justice in the sense where it is a part of virtue (there is such justice), and its corresponding injustice.
Proof of this Sense: Other kinds of badness: man displays them, acts unjustly (in one sense), but doesn't take more than his share (e.g., coward throwing shield, ill-tempered reviling, illiberal refusing money).
When takes more than his share, displays no one specific vice, nor all, but a kind of badness (injustice in second sense).
Conclusion: There's a second sense of injustice (a particular vice, bearing same name as general vice).
Generic Conception: Same generic conception forms basis of definition (deals with others).
Limited Sphere: Limited to honour, wealth, security (perhaps one name for this class).
Motive: Pleasure of gain.
First Sense Sphere: Coextensive with good man's action.
Two Kinds of Justice (beyond Complete Virtue):
Senses of "Unjust": (1) contrary to law, (2) unfair.
Senses of "Just": (1) according to law, (2) fair.
Justice (1) corresponds to unlawful: Already considered.
Unfair vs. Unlawful: Unfair is not same as unlawful; part from whole (unfair is always unlawful, unlawful not always unfair).
Injustice (2) and Unfair: Unjust and injustice (sense corresponding to unfair) refers to specific violation of equality or proportion (a part of injustice).
Two Kinds of Particular Justice: Correspondingly, two kinds of particular justice.
Distribution: Distribution of honour, wealth, and things divided among body politic members (one's share can be unfair/fair).
Redress in Private Transactions: Giving redress.
Subdivision of Redress: Private transactions are (1) voluntary, (2) involuntary.
Voluntary Transactions/Contracts: Selling, buying, lending at interest, pledging, lending without interest, depositing, hiring.
Voluntary because parties enter of own will.
Involuntary Transactions: Two kinds:
Secrecy: Theft, adultery, poisoning, procuring, corruption of slaves, assassination, false witness.
Open Violence: Assault, seizure of person, murder, rape, maiming, slander, contumely.
Chapter 3: Of What Is Just in Distribution, and Its Rule of Geometrical Proportion
Unjust is Unfair: The unjust man (in this limited sense) is unfair.
Mean of Unfair: Between unfair on one side and unfair on the other lies the fair/equal.
Just as Mean: If unjust is unfair, then just is a mean (admitted by all).
Equality/Fairness Implies Two Terms: At least.
Just Implies Four Terms: Both a mean quantity and a fair amount relative to something else and to certain persons.
As mean quantity: implies more and less quantities.
As equal/fair amount: involves two quantities (shares).
As just amount: involves certain persons.
Equality of Ratios: Same "equality" (ratio) between persons and things.
If persons not equal, shares not equal (source of disputes: equal persons unequal shares, unequal persons equal shares).
"According to Merit": Indicated by common phrase.
In distribution, just must be according to merit/worth.
But standards of worth differ: democratic (free birth), oligarchic (wealth), others (noble birth), true aristocratic (virtue/personal merit).
Just as Proportionate: Therefore, just is proportionate.
Proportion applies to all enumerable things (equality of ratios, min. four terms).
Discrete Proportion: Requires four terms (a:b = c:d).
Continuous Proportion: Requires four terms, one repeated (a:b = b:c).
Just Requires Four Terms: Two persons, two things; same ratio between them.
If a is to b as c is to d (a:b = c:d), then (a+c) is to (b+d) in the same ratio.
Distribution: Joining a to c and b to d is just distribution.
Unjust as Disproportionate: Just is mean quantity, proportionate; unjust is disproportionate (one gets too much/little).
Wrongdoer gets too much of good, wronged gets too little.
Conversely for evil (lesser evil is as good compared to greater).
Geometrical Proportion: This proportion is geometrical (sum of first/third to sum of second/fourth in original ratio).
Not Continuous: Cannot be continuous (one term cannot represent both person and thing).
Summary: Just is proportionate; unjust is disproportionate (too much/too little advantageous/disadvantageous).
Suffering vs. Doing Injustice: Suffering is a lesser wrong than doing injustice.
Conclusion: One form of what is just.
Chapter 4: Of What Is Just in Correction, and its Rule of Arithmetical Proportion
Remaining Form: Justice in private transactions (voluntary or involuntary).
Difference in Kind: Differs from distributive justice.
Distributive Justice Review: Always according to specified proportion (e.g., common fund divided proportionate to contributions); injustice violates.
Corrective (or Rectificatory) Justice: Also fair/equal, but requires arithmetical proportion.
Principle of Corrective Justice: Makes no difference whether good man defrauds bad, or vice versa, or status of adulterer.
Law looks only to difference created by injury.
Treats parties as equal; asks if one has done/other suffered injury/damage.
Judge's Role: Unjust (unequal/unfair) is what judge tries to make equal/fair.
When one strikes/is struck, or kills/is killed: suffering/doing unequally divided.
Judge restores equality by penalty/loss from offender's gain.
"Gain" and "Loss" Terminology: Generally talk of doer's "gain" and sufferer's "loss" (even if not pecuniary).
After court assessment: doer's gets "loss"/penalty, sufferer gets "gain" (restituted amount).
Fair/Equal as Mean: Fair/equal is mean between more (too much) and less (too little).
Gain = more good/less evil; Loss = opposite.
Mean between them is equal/fair = just.
Appeal to Judge: Men appeal to judge (living embodiment of what is just).
Require judge to be moderate/observe mean (sometimes call them "mediators" (μεσίδιοι)).
Getting the mean = getting what is just.
Just as Mean: If judge is mediator, just must be mean.
Judge Restores Equality: Like dividing unequal line: cuts from greater, adds to less.
Equal Division: When whole equally divided, parties have their own, each receives equal/fair amount.
Arithmetical Mean: Equal/fair amount is arithmetical mean.
Called δίκαιον (just) because equal division (δίχα).
δικαστής (judge) derives from διχαστής (divider).
Arithmetic Illustration: Cut part from one of two equal lines, add to other.
Second line greater than first by two such parts (exceeds mean by one, mean exceeds first by one).
Shows how much to take from one, add to other.
Applicability: Holds in geometry and arts (worked-upon receives impression corresponding to artist's exertions).
Terms "Loss" and "Gain" from Voluntary Exchange: In voluntary exchange, more than own = gaining, less than started with = losing (buying/selling, free-play transactions).
If result is same amount as started with: having own, neither gainers nor losers.
Just: Mean between gain and loss (both contrary to intention), having equivalent of what you had before.
Chapter 5: Simple Requital is Not Identical With What Is Just, But Proportionate Requital Is What Is Just in Exchange: And This Is Effected by Means of Money. We Can Now Give a General Definition of Justice (2)
Simple Requital vs. Justice: Some think simple requital (Pythagorean: what a man done to another should be done to him) is just.
Critique of Simple Requital: Doesn't correspond to distributive or corrective justice (e.g., Rhadamanthine rule).
Differences: Many cases differ.
Officer strikes man: not struck in return. Punished.
Difference if done with consent or against it.
Proportionate Requital in Exchange: Rule of justice holding society together.
Not simple repayment of equals for equals.
State's existence depends on proportionate return.
Consequences of No Requital: Suffering evil, not requiting: slavish condition.
Receiving good, not repaying: no exchange of services (society's bond).
Temple of Graces: To remind to repay what received (characteristic of charity/grace).
Return good offices, then lead in good offices.
Cross Conjunction: Proportionate interchange achieved by "cross conjunction."
Example: A (builder), B (shoemaker), C (house), D (shoes).
Builder takes shoemaker's work, gives own.
Proportionate Equality Required: Result achieved if requital after proportionate equality established.
Otherwise, no equality, intercourse impossible.
Work of one may be worth more than other.
Work must be valued by common standard.
Applicable to Arts: True for other arts/professions; couldn't exist if client didn't receive corresponding quantity/quality to agent's exertion.
Exchange not between two similar professionals (physicians), but between different (physician and husbandman), unequal worth.
These unequal persons must be reduced to equality (measured by common standard).
Role of Money: Invented for this purpose, serves as medium of exchange.
Measures everything, superiority/inferiority of work (shoes equivalent to house/corn).
Formula: So many shoes bear to a house (corn) the same ratio as builder (husbandman) bears to shoemaker.
Unless adjustment happens, no dealing/exchange.
Cannot be effected unless things made equal.
Common Measure: Money is common measure of value (νομομα, from νόμος custom/law).
Value not from nature, but law; can be altered.
Requital with Pwares: Occurs after wares equated (e.g., shoemaker's work to husbandman's work in same ratio as husbandman to shoemaker).
Adjustment before exchange (not at time, to prevent one party from getting both advantages).
Need as Common Bond: Society held together by need for services (exchange occurs if needs, or common needs, exist).
Wine for corn: corn must be made equal to wine.
Money as Guarantee: Even if no immediate need, money guarantees future exchange.
Money's Value Stability: Subject to variations, but more constant than other things.
Assessment in Money: Everything assessed in money for exchange, making society possible.
Example: House = 5 minæ, Bed = 1/2 minæ; 1 house = 5 beds.
Before money, exchanges were like this (5 beds for a house).
Summary of Injustice/Justice: Injustice and justice determined.
Doing justice is a mean between doing and suffering injustice.
Doing injustice: having too much/more.
Suffering injustice: having too little/less than due.
Justice as Moderation (Virtue Sense): A kind of moderation/observance of the mean, but differently from other virtues.
Chooses a mean, but both extremes fall under single vice (injustice).
(Unlike courage, where cowardice and foolhardiness are different vices).
Virtue Justice Defined: Habit making just man apt to do deliberately that which is just.
In dealings with self/others, apportions things: not too much for self/friend, too little for neighbour/enemy.
But each gets his fair, proportionate share.
Vice Injustice Defined: Character choosing what is unjust (disproportionate amount).
Excess/deficiency respectively of advantageous/disadvantageous.
Injustice as Excess/Deficiency: Chooses both an excess and a deficiency.
Own affairs: excess of advantageous, deficiency of disadvantageous.
Others' affairs: similarly disproportionate (way depends on circumstances).
Suffering vs. Doing Injustice (Re-emphasis): Suffering is a lesser wrong.
Conclusion: General account of justice/injustice, just/unjust.
Chapter 6: (It Is Possible to Act Unjustly Without Being Unjust.) That Which Is Just in the Strict Sense Is Between Citizens Only, for It Implies Law
Acting Unjustly vs. Being Unjust: Possible to do an act of injustice without being unjust.
What acts of injustice stamp a man as unjust (thief, adulterer, robber)?
Reply: No difference in acts themselves. Difference lies in state of mind.
Adultery done knowingly, but not from deliberate purpose (momentary passion): acts unjustly, but is not unjust.
Requital and Justice: Already explained its relation to what is just.
Strict Justice is Between Citizens: Seeking what is just simply and in a state or between citizens.
Implies free men associating to supply deficiencies, on footing of equality (absolute or proportionate).
Non-Citizens and Justice: Cannot speak of justice between citizens for those who are not on this footing (slaves, animals).
Can be called just metaphorically.
Implication of Law: Term "just" only applies where men have law to appeal to.
Existence of law implies existence of injustice.
Administration of law is discrimination of just from unjust.
Injustice Implies Act of Injustice: (Act of injustice does not always imply injustice).
Taking too much of goods, too little of evils.
Individual Rule vs. Reason/Law: Do not allow individual to rule, but reason/law; individual takes more for self, becomes tyrant.
Magistrate's Function: Secure what is just, and thus what is equal/fair.
Gets no advantage if just (doesn't take larger share of good except proportionate to worth).
Works in others' interests (Justice = "another's good").
Salary: Receives honours/privileges. Magistrates not content become tyrants.
Justice in Non-Citizen Relations: Master-slave, father-child relations not same, though like.
Cannot speak of injustice towards what is part of one's self (chattels, children).
No one deliberately injures self, so man cannot be unjust to himself.
Cannot speak of what is unjust/just as between citizens for these relationships (implies law, equal participation in governing/governed).
Man and Wife: More appropriate to apply "just" than to children/chattels.
Speak of justice in a family, but not the same as citizen-justice.
Chapter 7: It Is in Part Natural, in Part Conventional
Justice between Citizens: Part natural, part conventional.
Natural Justice: Same validity everywhere, not dependent on acceptance/rejection (fire burns same everywhere).
Conventional Justice: May be determined in various ways initially, but once determined, no longer indifferent (ransom price, sacrifice details, special ordinances like Brasidas, decrees).
Objection to Natural Justice: Some think justice is always conventional (natural is invariable, justice is not).
Aristotle's Reply: Not altogether true, though true in a way.
Among gods: not true at all.
Among men: part natural, though all is subject to change.
Still, part is natural and part not.
Distinguishing Natural from Conventional: Not hard to distinguish among variable things.
Example: Right hand naturally stronger, but left can become equally strong.
Conventional Justice Variability: Varies like measures (wine/corn measures different in different places).
Justice not by nature but human ordinance not same everywhere.
Constitutions not same everywhere, but one is naturally the best.
"Just" and "Lawful" as Universal Notions: (In each of their senses) stand for universal notions embracing particulars.
Acts are many, notion is one (applied to all alike).
"Unjust" vs. "Act of Injustice": Different.
Thing is unjust by nature/ordinance. When done, it's an "act of injustice" (δικαιοπράγημα, before doing only unjust).
Same for "act of justice" (δικαίωμα), but applies to correction of act of injustice.
Further Inquiry: Nature, number, and scope of species of acts of justice/injustice postponed.
Chapter 8: The Internal Conditions of a Just or Unjust Action, and of a Just or Unjust Agent
Acting Unjustly/Justly: When a man voluntarily does these things.
Involuntarily: Not strictly acts unjustly/justly, but "accidentally."
Voluntariness and Blame: If voluntary, agent is blamed, and act becomes an act of injustice.
Can do something unjust, but not an act of injustice, if involuntariness present.
Voluntary Act (Recall): Within doer's control, done knowingly (person, instrument, result), without accident/constraint.
Example: Another taking hand to strike. Striking father without knowing he is father.
Same distinction for result and whole act.
Involuntary Act (Recall): Done in ignorance, or not under control, or under compulsion.
Natural processes (aging, dying) are knowing but neither voluntary nor involuntary.
Accidental Acts: Accidental unjust/just acts possible if done against will (e.g., restoring deposit for fear).
Voluntary Acts (Divided):
Done of set purpose (after deliberation).
Done without set purpose (without deliberation).
Three Ways to Hurt Neighbour:
Hurt in Ignorance (Mistake): Misconception as to person, thing done, instrument, or result.
Mishap: Hurt occurs contrary to reasonable expectation.
Mistake: Not contrary to reasonable expectation, but no vicious intention (man sets train of events in motion).
Misfortune: External agency interferes.
Act of Injustice (Knowledge, No Deliberation): Agent acts with knowledge, but without previous deliberation (impelled by anger, natural passions).
Acts unjustly, acts are acts of injustice, but don't stamp him as unjust/wicked (not out of wickedness).
Unjust and Wicked (Set Purpose): Done of set purpose.
Anger and Malice Aforethought: Acts in anger not of malice aforethought (provoker began, not passionate doer).
Disputes: In anger cases, dispute is usually justice of case, not facts.
Apparent injustice stirs wrath.
Deliberate aggressor knows rights of case.
One thinks wronged, other different.
Conclusion on Unjust Character: If man hurts of set purpose, he acts unjustly, and acts of injustice stamp him as unjust.
Just Character: Acts justly of set purpose.
Said to act justly if merely does voluntarily that which is just.
Involuntary Injuries (Pardon):
Pardonable: committed not merely in ignorance but by reason of ignorance.
Unpardonable: committed not through ignorance but rather in ignorance (through unnatural/inhuman passion).
Chapter 9: Sundry Questions About Doing and Suffering Injustice
Can One Suffer Injustice Voluntarily?: A doubted question.
Doing injustice is always voluntary.
Expect active/passive to be related (both voluntary or both involuntary).
Absurd to say receiving justice is always voluntary (some don't will it).
Suffer Unjust Thing vs. Suffer Injustice: Can a man who has unjust done to him always suffer injustice?
Requires further conditions, like for doing injustice.
Both doing/suffering can be "accidentally" just/unjust.
Doing unjust is not doing injustice; suffering unjust is not suffering injustice.
Crucial Condition: To have injustice done requires someone doing injustice; same for justice.
Incontinent Man Hurting Self: If doing injustice = hurting man voluntarily with knowledge (person, instrument, manner), then incontinent man (hurts self voluntarily) suffers injustice voluntarily.
So, a man could do injustice to himself, which is disputed.
Incontinent Man Hurt by Another: Might voluntarily suffer himself to be hurt by another acting voluntarily.
So, man might voluntarily suffer injustice.
Aristotle's Correction: Definition of doing injustice incorrect.
Must add "against his wish" to "hurting with knowledge of person, instrument, and manner."
Conclusion on Voluntary Suffering Injustice: Man can voluntarily be hurt and suffer what is unjust, but cannot voluntarily have injustice done to him.
No one wishes to be hurt (even incontinent acts contrary to wish).
No one wishes for what they don't think good; incontinent man doesn't do what he thinks he ought.
Glaucus and Diomede: Glaucus gives gold for bronze to Diomede, doesn't suffer injustice.
Giving rests with him; suffering injustice does not rest with oneself (requires someone to do injustice).
Final Answer: Suffering injustice cannot be voluntary.
Two Remaining Questions:
Is it the man who assigns or receives a disproportionately large share who does injustice?
Is it possible to do injustice to yourself?
Question 1 Answer: If the assigner does injustice, then a man who knowingly/voluntarily gives too much to another and too little to himself does injustice to himself.
Moderate persons often thought to do this (equitable man takes less than due).
But: May take a larger share of some other good (good fame, noble action).
Overcome by Definition: Nothing done to the man against his wish, so no injustice, at most harm.
Assigner Does Injustice: Man who makes unjust award does injustice, not always receiver.
Only prime mover (distributor, not receiver) can voluntarily do what is unjust.
Instruments: Inanimate instrument, hand, slave under orders may slay; do what is unjust, but not act unjustly.
Unwitting Unjust Judgment: If man unwittingly judges unjustly, not contravening legal justice, but in a sense unjust (difference between legal justice and primary justice).
Knowing Unjust Judgment: If knowingly, he is grasping more for himself (favour, vengeance).
Judge who gives unjust judgment takes more than his due, like receiving share of award (land for money).
Ease of Being Just?: Men fancy that as acting unjustly is easy, so is being just.
Rebuttal: Not so. Easy to perform acts (lie, strike, pass coins), but to do them as outcome of a certain character is not easy nor always in power.
Wisdom of Justice: Think knowing just/unjust needs no great wisdom (law prescribes, but this is accidental justice).
Difficulty: Knowing how acts done, distributions made to be just is harder than knowing what conduces to health (which is hard).
Easy to know honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, knife. Hard to know how, to whom, when to apply for health (to have this knowledge is to be a physician).
Just Man Doing Unjust?: Some think just man can act unjustly as justly (more capable of bad acts, like courageous throwing shield).
Rebuttal: Playing coward or acting unjustly is not merely doing act silently (accidentally unjust), but doing it in a certain frame of mind.
Like doctoring: not merely applying/not applying knife, but doing so in particular fashion.
Justice as Human: Lastly, implies persons who participate in things generally good, but can have too much/too little.
For gods, no amount too much. For vicious, no amount beneficial.
For rest, useful within limits.
Conclusion: Justice is essentially human.
Chapter 10: Of Equity
Inquiry: Equity (ἐπιείκεια) and its relation to justice.
Apparent Contradiction: Not absolutely identical, nor generically different.
Praise equitable and equitable man, metaphorically with "good" (more equitable, better).
But strange if praiseworthy and different from just (if different, either justice or equity not good; if both good, must be same).
Resolution: All correct and compatible.
Equitable, though better than justice (in one sense), is itself just.
Not better than absolute justice (not generically distinct).
Conclusion: Just and equitable are generically the same, both good, but equitable is better.
Obscurity: Equitable is just, but not identical with, but a correction of, legal justice.
Reason for Defect: Every law is general, but impossible to speak correctly in general terms about all matters.
Legislator lays down rule for majority, aware it doesn't hold for all.
Law not deficient: Defect isn't in law or lawgiver, but in subject-matter (necessarily involved in human action).
Correction of Law: When law is general, but particular case is exception:
Right to make good deficiency where legislator fails by speaking without qualification.
As lawgiver would do if present, or would have provided in law.
Equitable as Better Just: Equitable is just, and better than specific legal justice (which fails due to lack of qualification).
Essence of Equitable: Amendment of law where it fails due to generality.
Law's Limits: Law doesn't cover all cases because impossible to lay down law, requiring a special decree.
Variable Rule: Variable needs a variable rule, like the leaden rule in Lesbian masonry (adapts to stone).
Decree adapted to occasion.
Conclusion (Equitable Course/Man): Equitable course is just, better than legal justice (in a sense).
Equitable Man: Apt to choose/follow such course.
Doesn't insist on rights to others' damage; ready to take less than due, even with law's backing.
Character called equitableness (a sort of justice, not a different kind).
Chapter 11: Can a Man Wrong Himself?
Re-addressing Question: Can man act unjustly to himself (from III. 1 and V. 9)?
Legal Justice and Self-Injury: Justice (1) = manifestations of virtues prescribed by law.
Law does not order self-killing; what it doesn't order, it forbids.
Man kills self in rage, voluntarily (knowledge of person/instrument), without provocation, contrary to law: acts unjustly.
Unjust to Whom?: To the state, not himself.
Suffers voluntarily; but no one can have injustice done to him voluntarily.
State Punishment: State punishes suicide (disfranchisement) as one acting unjustly towards state.
Justice (2) and Self-Injury: Other sense of unjust (particular species of vice, not general badness).
Impossible to act unjustly to oneself in this sense.
This is distinct from the general badness sense (unjust man here bad like coward, particular vice, not completely vicious).
Reason: Impossible for same thing to be taken from and added to same person simultaneously.
Just/unjust deed always implies more than one person.
Voluntary Act of Injustice (Condition): Must be prior to hurt received (repaying hurt is not injustice).
He who hurts himself suffers hurt at same time he inflicts it.
Implication: If possible to act unjustly to self, then possible to suffer injustice voluntarily.
Specific Acts of Injustice: Man cannot act unjustly without doing particular acts of injustice.
No one commits adultery with own wife, breaks own walls, steals own property.
Overall Question Settled: By the answer to whether a man can voluntarily suffer injustice (V. 9).
Doing vs. Suffering Injustice (Magnitude of Wrong):
Both are bad (one gets less, other more than mean).
Doing injustice is worse: Blamable, implies vice (developed or potential); voluntary act of injustice doesn't always imply vice.
Suffering injustice: No token of vicious/unjust character.
Accidental Harm: Being unjustly treated is less bad in itself, but can be accidentally greater evil (stumble vs. pleurisy).
Justice Metaphorical for Self-Relations: Cannot apply "just" to self, but metaphorically to relations between parts of soul (rational and irrational).
Master and Slave, Husband and Wife Relations: This sort of relation exists between rational and irrational parts.
Origin of Idea of Self-Injustice: One part of man can have something done to it by another part contrary to its desires.
Thus, apply "just" to relations of these parts.
Conclusion: Examination of justice and other moral virtues concluded.
Book VI: The Intellectual Virtues
Chapter 1: Must Be Studied Because (a) Reason Prescribes the Mean, (b) They are a Part of Human Excellence. The Intellect Is (1) Scientific, (2) Calculative: We Want the Virtue of Each
Recall: What we should choose is the mean, what "right reason" prescribes. This needs explanation.
Virtues and Aim: Each virtue implies an aim for rational man regulating efforts (standard for moderation).
Right Reason: What is this, and what standard does it afford?
Critique of General Statement: "Brace self up, relax neither too much/little, in moderation, as right reason orders." True but imprecise.
Won't learn effectively (e.g., medicine without specific knowledge).
Need for Precision: Correctness of rule not enough; need to know what right reason is and its standard.
Division of Mind/Soul Virtues: Moral and Intellectual.
Moral excellences already discussed.
Now examine intellectual excellences, after remarks about the soul.
Division of Rational Part of Soul: Two rational faculties (similar to earlier soul division).
Scientific/Demonstrative: Knows things depending on invariable principles.
Calculative/Deliberative: Knows things that are variable.
Reason: Generically different objects require generically different faculties (likeness/kinship with objects for knowledge).
Deliberating is calculating; no deliberation about invariable things.
Calculative faculty is one division of rational faculty.
Problem: Find what each faculty becomes in its best state/full development (its excellence/virtue).
Excellence will refer to its proper function.
Chapter 2: The Function of the Intellect, Both in Practice and Speculation, Is to Attain Truth
Faculties Guiding Action and Apprehension of Truth: Three: Sense, Reason, Desire.
Sense: Cannot originate action (brutes have sense, incapable of action).
Reason and Desire: Two modes of reasoning: affirmation/negation (assent/denial).
Two corresponding modes of desire: pursuit/avoidance (attraction/repulsion).
Moral Virtue and Purpose: Moral virtue is habit of choice/purpose, purpose is desire following deliberation.
Right Purpose: Requires both calculation/reasoning to be true and desire right.
Same things assented to by reason, pursued by desire.
Practical Reasoning and Truth: This kind of reasoning and truth concerns action.
Speculative Reasoning: Concerns neither action nor production.
Good/bad as it is true or false simply.
Function of Intellect: Always apprehension of truth.
Function of Practical Intellect: Apprehension of truth in agreement with right desire.
Purpose as Cause of Action: Efficient cause/origin, not final cause.
Origin of purpose: desire and calculation of means.
Implies reason and its exercise and moral character/state of desires.
Right/contrary action impossible without both reason and moral character.
Reason Itself Cannot Initiate Action: Only reasoning about means to an end (practical reasoning).
Regulates production (ulterior object, desired as means).
But what you do is an end in itself (well-doing/right action is the end, object of desire).
Purpose Defined: "Reason that desires," or "desire that reasons." Constitutes a man as an originator of action.
No Purpose for Past Events: No one purposes to have sacked Troy (deliberates about future, variable).
Past cannot be undone (Agathon: "This thing alone not God himself can do— / To make undone that which hath once been done").
Conclusion on Faculties' Function: Both rational divisions/intellectual faculties have attainment of truth as function.
Developed state where it best attains truth will be its excellence/virtue.
Chapter 3: Of the Five Modes of Attaining Truth: (1) Of Demonstrative Science of Things Unalterable
Describing Virtues: Starting fresh.
Five Modes of Attaining Truth (Affirmation/Negation): Art, Science, Prudence, Wisdom, Reason.
Conception and opinion can be erroneous, thus excluded from attaining truth list.
Science (ἐπιστήμη):
Nature: What we know with scientific knowledge is invariable.
Of variable things, cannot say if existent when out of sight.
Object of science: necessary. Therefore eternal.
Eternal neither begins nor ceases to be.
Learned: All science can be taught, all teaching starts from known (Analytics: induction or syllogism).
Induction leads to universal principles; syllogism starts from these.
Principles from which syllogism starts are not by syllogism, but by induction.
Definition: "A habit or formed faculty of demonstration" (with Analytics qualifications).
Must add: principles of knowledge must be accepted and known in a particular way (better known than conclusions).
Unless principles better known, knowledge is merely accidental.
Conclusion: Account of science.
Chapter 4: Of Knowledge of Things Alterable, Viz. (2) of Art in What We Make
Variable Things: Include what man makes and what man does.
Production/making (ποίησις) is different from doing/action (πρᾶξις) (adopting popular distinctions).
Formed Faculty of Acting vs. Producing: Different.
One cannot include other, action is not production, production is not action.
Art (τέχνη):
Builder's faculty is an art: formed faculty of producing with calculation.
No art not of this kind; no faculty of this kind not an art.
Definition: "Same thing as a formed faculty of producing with correct calculation."
Concern: Bringing something into being (contriving/calculating how).
Object: things that can either be or not be; cause of production in producer, not thing itself.
Not with necessary being/coming into being, nor natural products (cause in themselves).
Art and Chance: Its domain is in a sense same as chance/fortune (Agathon: "Art waits on fortune, fortune waits on art.").
Definition Reiteration: Formed faculty/habit of production with correct reasoning/calculation.
Contrary (ἀτεχνία): habit of production with incorrect calculation.
Field of both: that which is variable.
Chapter 5: And (3) of Prudence in What We Do, the Virtue of the Calculative Intellect
Inquiry for Prudence (φρόνησις): Ask who is called prudent.
Characteristic of Prudent Man: Able to deliberate well about what is good or expedient for himself.
Not for a particular end (health, strength), but for well-being or living well.
Confirmation: Apply name to those who deliberate well in specific fields (calculating means to particular good ends, not art).
Generally, a man who can deliberate well is prudent.
Exclusions from Deliberation: No one deliberates about unalterable or what's not in their power.
Prudence is Not Science: Science implies demonstration.
Things with variable principles/causes don't admit demonstration (everything dependent is variable).
Necessarily determined things don't admit deliberation.
Conclusion: Prudence cannot be science (sphere of action is alterable).
Prudence is Not Art: Cannot be art (production generically different from action).
Definition of Prudence: "A formed faculty that apprehends truth by reasoning or calculation, and issues in action, in the domain of human good and ill."
Production has end other than itself; action's end is itself (good action/well-doing is the end).
Examples of Prudent Men: Pericles and similar (see what is good for themselves and men).
Character of managers of household or state.
Temperance (σωφροσύνη) and Prudence: Called σωφροσύνη (preserves prudence).
Preserved Judgment: Preserves this particular kind of judgment.
Not every judgment destroyed by pleasant/painful (e.g., triangle angles).
Only judgments about matters of practice.
Principles of Practice: Ends for which acts are done.
Corruption by Pleasure/Pain: Corrupted person loses sight of end, no longer sees what to choose/do.
Vice's Effect: Vice obliterates the principle.
Conclusion (Prudence Definition Repeated): A formed faculty which apprehends truth by reasoning or calculation, and issues in action, in the field of human good.
Art vs. Prudence: Art's excellence is in something other than itself; not so for prudence.
In art, voluntary error not as bad as involuntary; worse in prudence (and all virtues).
Conclusion: Prudence is a virtue, not an art.
Prudence and Soul's Rational Parts: Virtue of the second (calculative part/faculty of opinion).
Opinion deals with variable, so does prudence.
More Than a Formed Faculty: Something more than "a formed faculty of apprehending truth by reasoning or calculation."
Such faculty can be lost; prudence, once acquired, can never be lost (implies determination of will, constantly strengthened by exercise).
Chapter 6: (4) of Intuitive Reason as the Basis of Demonstrative Science (5) of Wisdom as the Union of Science and Intuitive Reason. Comparison of the Two Intellectual Virtues, Wisdom and Prudence
Science (Review): Mode of judging that deals with universal and necessary truths.
Demonstrable truths depend on principles; every science has principles.
Principles of Science: Cannot fall within science, art, or prudence.
Not science (demonstrable is different from principle).
Not art/prudence (deal with variable, not invariable).
Not wisdom (wise man has demonstrative knowledge of certain things, but not the principles).
Habits of Mind for Truth without Error: Science, Prudence, Wisdom, Reason (Art omitted here).
Intuitive Reason (Nous): If no other faculty apprehends these principles, then they are apprehended by reason.
Wisdom (σοφία):
Applied in Arts: To consummate masters (Phidias, Polyclitus) - excellence of art.
Generally Wise: Not in part, nor in particular thing, but generally wise.
Conclusion: Wisdom is the most perfect of the sciences.
Scope of Wise Man: Not only knows conclusions from principles, but also knows principles.
Definition: "Union of [intuitive] reason with [demonstrative] scientific knowledge, or scientific knowledge of the noblest objects with its crowning perfection."
Critique of Political Faculty: Absurd to suppose political faculty/prudence is highest (unless man is best).
Wholesome/Good/Wise/Prudent Terms: Wholesome/good mean different things for men/fishes; white/straight always same.
Wise means one thing always; prudent means different things.
Clear-sighted in own affairs are prudent (even animals show foresight in own life).
Wisdom vs. Statesmanship: Wisdom cannot be same as statesmanship (knowledge of what is advantageous to self, many kinds, different for each species of animal).
Man superior to animals, but doesn't change this; other things are diviner (heavenly bodies).
Conclusion on Wisdom: "Union of scientific [demonstrative] knowledge and [intuitive] reason about objects of the noblest nature."
Examples: Anaxagoras, Thales: wise, but not prudent.
Ignorant of own advantage.
Knowledge out of common, wonderful, hard, superhuman, but useless (not human good sought).
Prudence (Review): Deals with human affairs, matters admitting deliberation.
Prudent man's function: deliberate well.
No deliberation about invariable or where no realizable good.
"Deliberate well" (unqualified): arrived at what's best for man in practice by reasoning/calculation.
Prudence and Particulars: Not just general propositions, but knowledge of particular facts.
Issues in action; field of action is particulars.
Experience: Lacking scientific knowledge but efficient in practice (men of wide experience).
Knows light meat is wholesome (universal), but not what meats are light (particular) - less effective than one knowing chicken is light.
Prudence and Practice: Concerned with practice, needs knowledge of both general truths and particular facts, especially the latter.
Supreme Form of Practical Faculty: To be considered.
Chapter 8: Prudence Compared with Statesmanship and Other Forms of Knowledge
Statesmanship and Prudence are Same Faculty: Differently manifested.
Legislative Faculty: Supreme form (deals with laws).
Statesmanship (narrower sense): Special form for particular cases; deals with action and deliberation (decree concerns action as last link).
Those engaged here are called statesmen (act like craftsmen).
Prudence (Proper Sense): Applied to individual and one's own affairs.
Receives generic name: prudence or practical wisdom.
Other forms: (1) household management, (2) legislative, (3) statesmanship (deliberative, judicial).
Knowing One's Own Good: A kind of knowledge (though varied), according to opinion, prudent man knows/attends to own affairs.
Statesmen are busybodies (Euripides).
Men seek own good, fancy it's what they should do.
This leads to notion of prudential men.
Interconnectedness: Impossible to manage own affairs well without managing household and state.
Youth and Prudence: Young man proficient in geometry/mathematics/wisdom, cannot be prudent.
Reason: Prudence deals with particular facts, which experience alone familiarizes.
Young man inexperienced, experience is fruit of years.
Mathematician vs. Wise/Natural Scientist: Lad can be mathematician but not wise/natural scientist.
Mathematics is abstract; principles of wisdom/natural science derive from large experience.
Young man repeats propositions of latter without belief; easily apprehends mathematical terms.
Error in Deliberation: Universal or particular judgment.
Wrong: "all water that weighs heavy is unwholesome" (universal).
Wrong: "this water weighs heavy" (particular).
Prudence Not Science: Not science (deals with alterable, ultimate/particular fact).
Contrasted with Intuitive Reason (Nous):
Intuitive reason: deals with primary principles (undemonstrable).
Prudence: deals with ultimate [particular] facts (cannot be scientifically proved, perceived by sense).
Analogy: Perceiving in mathematics that a figure is a triangle (reasoning comes to a stand).
Correction: This faculty for particular facts in practice should be called sense rather than prudence.
Conclusion: Prudence is, and deals with.
Chapter 9: Of Deliberation
Deliberation as Inquiry: Particular kind of inquiry; ascertain what good deliberation is.
Not science (don't inquire about known).
Not happy guessing (without calculating, in a moment; deliberation takes time).
Not sagacity (kind of happy guessing).
Not any kind of opinion.
Good Deliberation as Correctness: In deliberating ill we go wrong, well we go right – so good deliberation is a kind of rightness.
Not correctness of science (no error) or opinion (truth of settled opinion).
Good deliberation impossible without calculation.
Conclusion (Deliberation): Correctness of reasoning (διάνοια).
Reasoning isn't assertion; opinion is assertion, deliberation is inquiry/calculation.
What Deliberation Means/Its Field: (Presupposes earlier discussion in III. 3).
Not Every Correctness is Good Deliberation: Incontinent/vicious man may correctly arrive at proposed end via calculation (but gains great evil).
Good deliberation: Arrives at what is good.
Right Conclusion, Wrong Syllogism: Right conclusion on what to do may come from wrong way/grounds (middle term wrong).
Good deliberation requires right grounds too.
Speed: One may arrive slowly, another rapidly.
Added Condition: Good deliberation = right conclusion on what's expedient/ought to be done, in the right manner and at the right time.
General vs. Particular Good Deliberation: Simply good deliberation (unqualified) leads to right conclusions on means to end simply.
Particular good deliberation leads to right conclusions on means to particular end.
Prudent Men and Good Deliberation: Good deliberation is correctness in judging what is expedient to that end of which prudence has a true conception.
Chapter 10: Of Intelligence
Intelligence (σύνεσις) / Sound Intelligence (εὐσυνεσία):
Not same as science generally (too broad, all would be intelligent).
Not same as opinion.
Not any particular science (medicine, geometry).
Scope: Not eternal/unchangeable. Only things one may doubt and deliberate about.
Overlap with Prudence: Deals with same matters as prudence.
Distinction from Prudence: Prudence issues orders (scope is to do/not do).
Intelligence discerns merely (equivalent to sound intelligence).
Not Possession/Acquisition of Prudence: Not identical.
Analogy (Learner): Learner in science shows intelligence when uses scientific knowledge from teacher.
In prudence, shows intelligence when uses others' opinions in judging fitly (fitly = soundly).
Origin of Term: From learning context, then generalized to faculty of intelligence.
Chapter 11: Of Judgment. Of Reason or Intuitive Perception As the Basis of the Practical Intellect
Judgment (γνώμη): Correct discernment of what is equitable.
Equitable man is kindly in judgments; passing kindly judgments is equitable.
Kindly judgment (συγγνώμη) is judgment correctly discerning equitable (correctly = truly).
Four Faculties Converge: Judgment, Intelligence, Prudence, Reason tend in same direction.
Apply all to same persons, talk of having them at a certain age.
All deal with ultimate and particular facts.
Discrimination in prudence matters makes one intelligent, of sound judgment, or kindly judgment (equitable relevant to all good dealings).
What is to be Done: Always a particular, ultimate thing.
Prudent man's business to know it; intelligence/judgment also concern it.
Intuitive Reason (Nous) and Ultimate Truths: Deals with ultimate truths in two senses.
(1) Primary principles (undemonstrable): apprehended in connection with deductions (general truths in morals/politics).
(2) Ultimate [particular] alterable facts (minor premise in practical syllogism): apprehended in connection with practical calculations.
Source of Conception: Particular judgments given by reason, source of conception of final cause/end of man.
Eliciting Universal Principle: Elicited from particular facts.
Perception: These particular facts must be apprehended by sense/intuitive perception, and this is reason.
Natural Faculties: These faculties are thought to be natural.
Nature doesn't make wise, but endows with judgment, intelligence, reason.
Accompanies certain periods of life (reason/judgment come with age) implies natural origin.
Intuitive Reason (Beginning and End): Both beginning and end.
Demonstration starts from and terminates in ultimate truths.
Respect for Experience: Pay same respect to undemonstrated assertions/opinions of age/experience/prudence as to demonstrations.
Experience gives faculty of vision to see correctly.
Summary: Prudence, wisdom defined; what each deals with; each virtue of different soul part.
Chapter 12: How Prudence Is Related to Cleverness
Objection: Use of Wisdom and Prudence:
"Wisdom doesn't consider what makes man happy (doesn't ask how things are brought about)."
"Prudence does, but why need it?"
Prudence deals with just, noble, good means for man.
Knowledge of these no more makes one apter to do them (if virtues are habits) than medicine/gymnastics knowledge makes one healthy.
Further Question (Prudence's Purpose): If prudent to become able to do acts, prudence useless to good/bad people.
Enough to take advice of others (like for health: don't learn medicine, take advice).
Prudence Governing Wisdom: "Prudence, though inferior to wisdom, must yet govern it, since in every field the practical faculty bears sway and issues orders."
Discussion of Objections:
Intrinsic Desirability: Both prudence/wisdom desirable in themselves (virtue of soul part), even if nothing produced.
Productiveness: They do produce something.
Wisdom and Happiness: Produces happiness, not like medicine produces health, but like health produces health (possession/exercise of wisdom, as part of complete virtue, makes man happy).
Prudence and Moral Virtue: Man performs function perfectly acting according to both.
Moral virtue ensures rightness of end aimed at.
Prudence ensures rightness of means thereto.
Vegetative Part: No excellence (no power to act/not act).
Prudence and Aptness for Noble/Just Acts (Deeper Look):
Some do just acts but aren't just (unwillingly, unwittingly, external motive).
Good when does acts with specific disposition: deliberate purpose, for sake of acts themselves.
Purpose vs. Execution: Rightness of purpose by moral virtue.
Deciding what is proper to be done to carry out purpose belongs to another faculty.
Cleverness (δεινότης): Power of carrying out means to any proposed end, achieving it.
If end noble, power merits praise.
If end base, power of villain.
Term "clever" applies to prudent man and villain.
Cleverness vs. Prudence: Not identical, but akin.
"Eye of the Soul": Cleverness is this power.
Condition for Perfection: Does not attain perfect development without moral virtue.
Reasoning and Moral Virtue: Syllogisms/deductive reasoning about action begin with "the end or supreme good is so and so" (any definition of good).
Only to the good man does this present itself as the good.
Vice perverts, causes error about principles of action.
Conclusion: Impossible to be prudent without being morally good.
Chapter 13: How Prudence Is Related to Moral Virtue
Prudence and Cleverness (Analogy): As prudence relates to cleverness, moral virtue relates to natural virtue.
Natural Virtues: All admit characters bestowed by nature (justice, temperance, courage inherent from birth).
Need developed goodness (different form).
Natural virtues present in children/brutes; without reason, hurtful.
Natural Virtue with Reason: Strong-bodied creature without sight stumbles; natural virtue enlightened by reason acts supremely well.
Natural virtue becomes fully developed virtue.
Two Forms of Faculties: Calculative (cleverness, prudence), Moral qualities (natural virtue, fully developed virtue).
Developed virtue impossible without prudence.
Socrates' View: All virtues are forms of prudence (all modes of knowledge).
Partly right (impossible without prudence), partly wrong (not actual forms of prudence).
Modern View (Right Reason): Everyone, defining virtue, adds "formed faculty/habit in accordance with right reason," and "right" means "in accordance with prudence."
Inkling that habit in accordance with prudence is virtue.
Refinement of Virtue Definition: Not simply formed habit in accordance with right reason, but formed habit implying right reason.
Right reason in these matters is prudence.
Aristotle vs. Socrates: Socrates: moral virtues are forms of reason. Aristotle: moral virtues imply reason.
Conclusion: Impossible to be good in full sense without prudence, or prudent without moral virtue.
Addressing Objection (Virtues Apart): "Virtues found apart (tendency to one, not others), so acquire one while lacking others."
Reply: True for natural virtues, not for fully developed virtues.
Presence of single virtue of prudence implies presence of all moral virtues.
Necessity of Prudence: Even if not aiding practice, needed as excellence of soul part.
Purpose cannot be right without both prudence and moral virtue (latter makes us desire end, former makes us adopt right means).
Prudence Subordinate to Wisdom?: Not mistress of wisdom or better part of nature (reason), any more than medicine is mistress of health.
Prudence doesn't employ wisdom, but provides means for its attainment.
Does not rule it, but rules in its interests.
Contrary assertion like statesmanship ruling gods (by issuing orders about public concerns, including worship).
Book VII: Chapters 1-10. Characters Other Than Virtue and Vice
Chapter 1: Of Continence and Incontinence, Heroic Virtue and Brutality. Of Method. Statement of Opinions About Continence
New Start: Undesirable moral characters are three: vice, incontinence, brutality.
Opposites: Virtue vs. vice. Continence vs. incontinence.
Opposite of Brutality: Excellence beyond us, heroic or godlike (Homer: Hector "not of any mortal man, but of a god").
Godlike/Brutal Rarity: Rare to find godlike man (Spartan: θεῖος ἀνήρ).
Brutal character also rare in men.
(1) Most frequent among barbarians.
(2) Produced by disease/organic injuries.
(3) Applied as reproach to those who carry vice to great pitch.
(Mentions this disposition later; vice already discussed).
Current Focus: Incontinence, softness, luxuriousness.
Also: continence, hardiness.
These are neither identical to virtue/vice, nor generically different.
Method: Follow usual method: state current opinions, raise objections, establish truth of most/most important opinions.
Resolution of difficulty is discovery of truth.
Common Opinions about Continence/Incontinence:
Continence/hardiness: good/laudable; incontinence/softness: bad/blamable.
Continent man: abides by calculations; incontinent man: swerves from them.
Incontinent man: knows act is bad, impelled by passion; continent man: knows desires are bad, withheld by reason.
Temperate man: continent and hardy. Some: continent/hardy always temperate; others: not always so.
Profligate: incontinent; incontinent: profligate (terms used indiscriminately).
Prudent man: impossible to be incontinent. Others: some prudent/clever men are incontinent.
Incontinent even in respect of anger, honour, gain.
Chapter 2: Statement of Difficulties As to How One Can Know Right and Do Wrong
Objection: How can man judge rightly and act incontinently?
Socrates' Position: Cannot act so if truly knows right; strange if knowledge mastered like a slave.
Contested incontinence, held men act contrary to best due to ignorance, never right judgment.
Conflict with Experience: This theory conflicts with experience.
If due to ignorance, what kind? (Incontinent man doesn't think act good until passion is upon him).
Partial Agreement/Disagreement with Socrates: Some agree nothing prevails against knowledge, but don't deny men act contrary to what seems best.
Say incontinent man has opinion, not knowledge, when yielding to pleasure.
Weak Opinion: If merely weak opinion (doubt), pardon for not abiding by it against strong desires. But vice (incontinence) is not pardoned.
Is it Prudence?: Is it prudence that opposes desire?
Absurd: strongest form of belief.
Would mean same man is prudent and incontinent (but prudent man would not voluntarily do vile acts).
Prudence essentially issues in act, involves ultimate thing to be done, implies all moral virtues.
Continent Man and Desires: If man needs strong, bad desires to be continent:
Temperate man: will not be continent, nor continent man temperate (temperate has no violent/bad desires).
Continent man: desires must be strong and bad.
If good, hindering them would be bad, continence not always good.
If weak, not bad, nothing to respect.
If bad and weak, nothing to admire.
Continence and False Opinion: If continence makes one abide by any opinion, it's bad (e.g., abiding by false opinion).
If incontinence makes abandon any opinion, there's good incontinence (Neoptolemus praised for abandoning Ulysses' lie due to pain).
Sophists' Paradox: Argument making folly + incontinence = virtue.
Incontinent man does opposite of what he judges good.
Judges good is bad.
Result: does the good, not the bad.
Curability: He who pursues pleasant from conviction/deliberate choice seems better than incontinent (not from calculation).
Former is more curable (convictions can change).
Incontinent: "If water chokes you, what will you wash it down with?" (Convinced something else is good, but acts otherwise).
"Incontinent Simply": If incontinence/continence everywhere, who is incontinent simply?
No one man has all forms, but some are simply incontinent.
Conclusion on Objections: Suggests many objections.
Must remove some, leave others; resolution of difficulty is discovery of truth.
Chapter 3: Solution: To Know Has Many Senses; in What Sense Such a Man Knows
Inquiry Plan: (1) If incontinent man acts with knowledge, and what knowledge means. (2) Field of continence/incontinence (all pleasures/pains or definite classes?). (3) Continent/hardy same or different? Others akin.
Refinement of Question (Incontinence): How is species of continence/incontinence distinguished (field or form/manner)?
Simply incontinent man: doesn't display character in all things, only those similar to profligate.
Not simply uncontrolled disposition (then incontinence = profligacy).
Distinction: Profligate carried by deliberate choice (pleasant now always to be pursued). Incontinent thinks otherwise, but pursues anyway.
True Opinion vs. Knowledge: Argument that men act incontinently against true opinion, not knowledge, makes no difference.
Some with opinions are not in doubt, fancy they have exact knowledge.
If opinion is weaker, makes sense to pardon against strong desires.
But no pardon for vice.
Knowledge in Different Senses: "Know" (επίστασθαι) in two senses:
(1) Has knowledge but not using it now (e.g., sleeping, mad, drunk).
(2) Using knowledge now.
Acting contrary to knowledge is strange only in latter sense.
Reasoning and Premises: Practical syllogism (universal major, particular minor).
Can act contrary to knowledge if using universal only, not particular (particular is thing to be done).
Different Universal Propositions: One concerns agent, another thing.
(1) "All men benefited by dry things; I am a man."
(2) "Things of this kind are dry." (Second minor unknown or dormant).
Vast Difference: Makes huge difference if knowledge is present in one way, not another.
"Having Knowledge without Using It": Includes different modes (asleep, mad, drunk).
People under influence of passion are in similar state (anger, sexual desire alter body, cause madness).
Incontinent man has knowledge like these (present, but lost reality).
Repeating Words is Not Proof of Knowledge: Repeat demonstrations like learners stringing words, actors reciting.
Meaning must be ingrained, requires time.
Cause of Incontinence (Special Nature Arguments):
Have (1) universal judgment, (2) particular facts (perception).
When joined: speculative conclusion assented; practical carried out at once (e.g., "all sweet things tasted; this is sweet" -> "this is tasted").
Conflict: Universal judgment forbids; universal judgment "all sweet things pleasant" + particular "this is sweet" (effective) + appetite is present.
Reason says avoid, appetite moves to take (appetite moves bodily organs).
Conclusion: Incontinent acts under influence of reason (opinion), but accidentally opposed to right reason (desire, not opinion, opposes reason).
Brutes Not Incontinent: No universal judgments; only images and memories of particular facts.
Recovery from Ignorance: Same account as drunk/asleep (natural science domain).
Minor Premise: Opinion about fact of perception, determines action.
Incontinent man under passion either has it not, or has it like a drunkard (not knowing in full sense).
Socrates' View Confirmed (in a way): Minor premise not universal, less knowledge.
Passion carries man away, not knowledge in strict sense, but sensitive knowledge perverted.
Chapter 4: Of Incontinence in the Strict and in the Metaphorical Sense
Question: Incontinent simply, or in particular way? If simply, what field?
Context for Continence/Incontinence: Pleasures and pains (where temperate/profligate manifest).
Sources of Pleasure: (1) Necessary (bodily: nutrition, reproduction – field of profligacy/temperance); (2) Desirable in themselves but admit excess (victory, honour, wealth – good/pleasant).
Incontinence with Qualification: Those who exceed in (2) despite better reason are not simply incontinent, but "incontinent with respect to money, gain, honour, anger."
Different characters, called incontinent metaphorically due to resemblance.
Not blamed as vice (simply), only as mistake, because these are not vices simply.
Incontinence Simply: Excess in pursuing pleasant/avoiding painful (hunger, thirst, heat, cold, touch, taste).
Not of deliberate choice, but contrary to choice/reasoning.
Simply incontinent (not qualified by specific thing like anger).
Softness: People also called soft in these bodily matters.
Grouping: Incontinent grouped with profligate and continent/temperate (not metaphorical cases).
Concerned with same pleasures/pains.
Behavior Difference: Other three deliberately choose; incontinent man does not.
Profligate vs. Incontinent: Man pursuing excess pleasure with moderate desire, avoiding slight pains, is more profligate than one impelled by violent desires.
What would the former do with violent passions?
Desires and Pleasures (Good vs. Bad):
Some desires/pleasures noble/good (naturally desirable).
Some reverse.
Some intermediate (money, gain, victory, honour).
Blamed not for being affected, but for doing so in certain ways and beyond moderation.
Blame those pursuing good/noble objects to unreasonable extent (too much honour, children, parents).
These are noble, caring for them praised, but excess is possible (Niobe fighting gods, Satyrus' folly).
No Room for Vice in Noble Excess: No vice/wickedness here (objects are desirable in themselves; excess not commendable, to be avoided).
No Strict Incontinence in Noble Excess: Not strict incontinence (incontinence = blamable).
But use metaphorically: "incontinent in this/that" (like bad physician/actor).
Conclusion: Strictly incontinence (continence) only in matters of temperance/profligacy.
Anger is metaphorically called incontinence.
Chapter 5: Incontinence in Respect of Brutal or Morbid Appetites
Pleasures (Natural, Acquired):
Some naturally pleasant (to all humans/animals, or to certain classes).
Others not naturally pleasant, but become so through:
Organic injuries.
Custom.
Originally bad nature (brutal).
Corresponding Character: Each of these classes has a corresponding character.
Brutal Natures (from 3):
E.g., creature ripping pregnant females, cannibals (wild tribes, Black Sea), Phalaris.
Disease/Madness (from 1):
E.g., man who ate mother, devoured fellow-slave's liver.
Morbid State/Custom (from 1 or 2):
Plucking hair, biting nails, eating cinders/earth, unnatural vice.
Sometimes natural (disease), sometimes custom (ill-treated childhood).
No Incontinence Applied Here: When nature is cause of morbid habits, don't call it incontinence.
Women's part in reproduction not incontinence.
Habitual indulgence leading to morbid state not incontinence.
Reason: Incontinence is human weakness; these are brutal or morbid.
Beyond Vice: These habits fall outside vice, like brutal character.
Metaphorical Continence/Incontinence: When man with these impulses conquers/is conquered, it's metaphorical continence/incontinence.
Similar to anger: not strictly incontinence.
Folly, cowardice, profligacy, ill temper, when extreme, are brutal/morbid.
Brutal Cowardice: Man frightened at mouse sound (inhuman).
Disease-caused fear (man afraid of weasel).
Irrational Humans: Naturally devoid of reason, live by senses (brutal, remote barbarians).
Cause is disease (epilepsy), or insanity (morbidly irrational).
Having Impulse vs. Dominated: Man can have brutal impulse without being dominated.
Phalaris desiring child flesh, but restraining.
Can also be dominated.
Summary (Vice and Incontinence):
Vice: human vice (simply), brutal/morbid vice (qualified).
Incontinence: brutal incontinence, morbid incontinence (qualified).
Strict Incontinence: Only that classed with human profligacy (bodily appetites/pleasures).
Conclusion: Incontinence/continence proper concern temperance/profligacy matters.
Other matters: metaphorical application.
Chapter 6: Incontinence in Anger Less Blamed Than In Appetite
Thesis: Incontinence in anger is less disgraceful than in appetite.
Anger vs. Appetite (Reason):
Angry Passions: Hear something of reason, but mis-hear it.
Like hasty servant, barks like a dog without full understanding.
Hear insult/slight, infer author is enemy, boil up to vengeance.
Appetite: If reason/sense proclaims "this is pleasant," rushes to enjoy.
Conclusion: Anger, in some sort, obeys reason; appetite does not. Therefore, appetite incontinence is more disgraceful.
Natural Impulses: More excusable to follow natural impulses.
Common appetites more pardonable (the commoner, the more).
Anger/ill temper more natural than desire for excessive/unnecessary pleasures.
Examples: Man beating father: "runs in the family." Man dragged out by son: "dragged his own father so far."
Anger vs. Malice: More malicious, more unjust.
Hot-tempered man not given to deliberate malice; anger open, not underhand.
Appetite: PoetsAphrodite, Homer's "embroidered girdle" ("charm doth steal the reason of the wise").
Conclusion: If appetite incontinence is more unjust, it's more disgraceful, and is incontinence simply (a sort of vice).
Outrage (Pain vs. Pleasure):
Outrage committed doesn't feel pain, but pleasure.
Acting in anger always feels pain.
Conclusion: Acts rousing justest indignation are more unjust. So incontinence in appetite is more unjust (no outrage in anger).
Summary: Incontinence in appetite more disgraceful.
Continence/incontinence proper have to do with bodily appetites/pleasures.
Chapter 7: Incontinence Yields to Pleasure, Softness to Pain. Two Kinds of Incontinence, the Hasty and the Weak
Bodily Appetites/Pleasures: What differences exist?
(1) Human and natural (kind and degree).
(2) Brutal nature.
(3) Organic injury/disease.
Temperance/Profligacy Scope: Only the first (human/natural).
Don't call beasts temperate/profligate (except metaphorically for peculiar lewdness/wantonness/voracity).
No purpose/deliberate calculation in beasts; they are in unnatural state (like madmen).
Brutality vs. Vice: Brutality less dangerous than vice, but more horrible.
Noble part not corrupted (as in vicious man), but absent.
Asking which is worse like comparing inanimate with animate.
Badness of that lacking originating principle less mischievous (reason is originating principle).
(Compares injustice to unjust man, each worse in own way).
Bad man does thousands times more harm than brute.
Continence/Incontinence Field (Touch/Taste):
Possible to succumb to or resist allurements most people resist/succumb to.
Pleasures: Succumbs (incontinent), resists (continent).
Pains: Succumbs (soft), resists (hardy).
Generality of men between these, inclining to worse.
Profligate (More Precise): Some pleasures necessary, others not (necessary in certain quantities, not too great/small).
He who pursues pleasures beyond legitimate (excessively) called profligate if by deliberate purpose, for own sake, not for results.
Such a man: incurable (incapable of remorse).
Opposite extreme (falls short): temperate.
Man avoiding bodily pains not overcome, but by deliberate purpose.
Incontinent (More Precise): Act without deliberate purpose due to pleasure or escape pain of desire.
Man doing disgraceful act without desire, or moderate desire, is worse than one with violent desire.
Striking in cool blood worse than in anger (what if he were passionate?).
Conclusion: Profligate man worse than incontinent.
Softness vs. Profligacy: Softness is distinct (falls to what others resist).
Continent vs. Hardy: Continent opposes incontinent; hardy opposes soft.
Hardiness: endure; Continence: overcome.
Enduring different from overcoming (escaping defeat vs. winning victory).
Conclusion: Continence better than hardiness.
Soft/Luxurious Man: Gives way to what generality can resist.
Suffers cloak to trail, plays invalid, doesn't consider self wretched.
Yielding to Violent Pleasures/Pains: Don't marvel if man yields (Piloctetes, Cercyon, Xenophantus).
Marvel when succumbs to what generality resist (unless hereditary disposition/disease, e.g., Scythian kings, female nature).
Amusement and Softness: Man given to amusement generally thought profligate, but is soft.
Amusement is relaxation (rest from labour).
Given up to amusement: take too much relaxation.
Two Kinds of Incontinence: Hasty and Weak.
Weak: Deliberate, but don't abide by deliberations (overcome by passion).
Hasty: Swayed by passion because don't deliberate.
People of quick sensibility/melancholic temperament most liable to hasty incontinence.
Don't wait for reason's voice (rapidity/intensity of impressions, follow imagination).
Chapter 8: Incontinence Compared with Vice and Virtue
Profligate and Remorse: Profligate not prone to remorse (abides by deliberate purpose), incurable.
Incontinent and Remorse: Incontinent always prone to remorse, curable.
Analogy: Full-formed vice (profligacy) is chronic disease (dropsy, consumption).
Incontinence like epilepsy (intermittent badness).
Incontinence vs. Vice (Generic Difference):
Vicious man: doesn't know nature of his acts.
Incontinent man: knows nature of his acts.
(Incontinent man, when fit is over, recognizes badness. Vicious man, aware acts are called bad, dissents from social judgments).
Incontinent Characters (Badness Scale):
Those momentarily losing reason (hasty) not as bad as those retaining reason but disobeying it (weak).
Latter give way to slighter impulse.
Cannot claim to act without deliberation.
Incontinent man: gets drunk quickly with little wine (less than others).
Incontinence Not Vice: But it is in a manner vice.
Key Difference: Vicious man acts with deliberate purpose; incontinent acts against it.
Similar Acts: Acts are similar (Demodocus against Milesians: "not fools, but act like fools").
Conclusion: Incontinent man not unjust, but will act unjustly.
Profligate vs. Incontinent (Motives):
Incontinent: pursues bodily pleasures (excessive, contrary to reason) without being convinced of goodness.
Profligate: convinced pleasures are good (character).
Curability: Former easily brought to better mind; latter not.
Virtue and Principle: Virtue preserves the principle; vice destroys it.
In conduct, motive (end/final cause) is principle/efficient cause (like hypotheses in mathematics).
Reasoning cannot instruct about these principles.
Role of Virtue: Not reason, but virtue (natural or acquired) teaches right opinions about action's principle.
Temperate: character holds right opinions. Profligate: opposite character.
Momentarily Deprived of Reason: Class of people momentarily deprived by passion, don't act by reason.
Not so far as to believe they ought to pursue pleasures limitlessly.
These are the incontinent: better than profligate, not absolutely bad.
Best part of nature (principle of right conduct) survives in them.
Opposing Class (Continent): Abide by resolutions, not deprived of senses by passion.
Good type of character.
Chapter 9: Continence and Incontinence Not Identical With Keeping and Breaking a Resolution
Who is Continent? Abides by any reason/purpose, or right purpose?
Who is Incontinent? Abandons any purpose/reason, or true reason/right purpose?
Essential vs. Accidental: Essentially, it's a true reason and right purpose the one abides by, the other abandons.
If pursue A for B, pursue B essentially, A accidentally.
"Essentially" (καθ’ αὑτό) means "absolutely" or "simply" (ἁπλῶς).
So, accidentally any opinion, simply a true opinion.
Stubborn/Obstinate (ἰσχυρογνώμονες):
Stick to opinions, averse to persuasion.
Resemble continent (prodigal to liberal, foolhardy to courageous), but differ.
Continent dislikes changing mind due to passion/appetite (ready to yield to reason).
Obstinate will not listen to reason, often conceives passion, led by pleasures.
Classes of Obstinate: Opinionated, ignorant, boorish.
Opinionated are obstinate from pleasure/pain (delight in victory, pained if opinion lost).
Resemble incontinent rather than continent.
Abandoning Resolutions (Other Motives): Sometimes for other reasons than incontinence (Neoptolemus: noble pleasure of truth, Ulysses persuaded him to lie).
Not always profligate/worthless/incontinent if pleasure is motive (only if base pleasure).
Those with Deficiency in Pleasure: Take too little delight in bodily pleasures, swerve from reason in this direction.
Continent men are between these and incontinent.
Incontinent swerve due to excess, these due to deficiency.
Continent holds fast.
Continence as Good: If good, opposed characters must be bad.
Other extreme (deficiency) rare, so incontinence seen as only opposite (like profligacy the only opposite of temperance).
Metaphorical Continence of Temperate Man: Both continent and temperate acts contrary to reason for bodily pleasures.
Continent: has bad desires, but not swayed.
Temperate: does not have bad desires, takes no delight in contrary to reason.
Incontinent & Profligate Resemblance: Both pursue bodily pleasures.
Profligate: on principle (aims at them as end).
Incontinent: does not.
Chapter 10: Prudence Is Not, But Cleverness Is, Compatible with Incontinence
Prudent Man and Incontinence: Cannot be prudent and incontinent simultaneously.
Prudence requires being morally good.
Prudence and Action: Not prudent simply by knowing; must act according to knowledge.
Incontinent Man and Action: Not apt to act according to knowledge.
Cleverness: Man clever at calculating means can be incontinent.
People sometimes think a man prudent but incontinent because cleverness resembles prudence (intellectual faculty), but differs by absence of purpose.
Knowledge (Incontinent Man): Doesn't know as one using knowledge, but as one asleep or drunk.
Voluntary but Not Bad: Acts voluntarily (knows what he's doing, with what object), but not bad.
Purpose is good, so only "half bad."
Not unjust (not deliberately malicious: some swerve from resolutions, others melancholic/act without deliberating).
Analogy (State): Incontinent man like state with excellent decrees/laws, but never carries them out (Anaxandrides: "So willed the state that takes no heed of laws").
Bad man like state with bad laws that it does carry out.
Continence/Incontinence Beyond Average: Imply something beyond average character.
One more steadfast, other less.
Curability of Incontinence: Melancholic temper more curable than those who make resolutions but don't keep them.
Custom-based incontinence more curable than natural infirmity.
Easier to alter habit than change nature (Euenus: "Train men but long enough to what you will, / And that shall be their nature in the end.").
Conclusion: Continence, incontinence, hardiness, softness, and their relations discussed.
Book VII: Chapters 11-14. Pleasure
Chapter 11: We Must Now Discuss Pleasure. Opinions About It
Importance of Pleasure/Pain: Political philosopher must consider (constitutes the end by which we judge good/bad).
Moral virtue/vice relate to pleasures/pains.
Happiness implies pleasure (εὐδαίμων from χαίρω, rejoice).
Disputes about Pleasure:
No pleasure is good (essentially or accidentally); good and pleasure distinct.
Some pleasures are good, most are bad.
Even if all pleasures good, supreme good cannot be pleasure.
Arguments Against Pleasure (1 - Not Good):
(a) All pleasure is felt transition (γένοσις) to natural state; transition is generically different from end (building vs. house).
(b) Temperate man avoids pleasures.
(c) Prudent man pursues painless, not pleasant.
(d) Pleasures impede thinking (intensity: sexual pleasures).
(e) No art of pleasure (every good has an art).
(f) Pursuit of children and brutes.
Arguments Against Pleasure (2 - Not All Good):
Some base/disgraceful, even hurtful (unhealthy).
Arguments Against Pleasure (3 - Not Supreme Good):
Not an end, but a process/transition.
Conclusion: Summary of current opinions.
Chapter 12: Answers to Arguments Against Goodness of Pleasure. Ambiguity of Good and Pleasant. Pleasure Not a Transition, But Unimpeded Activity
Arguments Don't Prove Pleasure Isn't Good/Highest Good.
Reply to (1a) Transition: "Good" applies to activities and faculties; motions/processes also. Some things called bad are not bad for particular persons, or only for a short time. Some are not even pleasures (painful medicines).
Accidentally Pleasant: Activities that restore natural faculties are accidentally pleasant.
Animal appetites: active part is in normal state, not in want.
Philosophic study: no previous pain/appetite.
Confirmation (Filling Wants): Don't delight in same things when filling wants vs. when filled.
Filling: sharp/bitter things (not naturally pleasant).
Filled: things pleasant in themselves.
So, pleasure from restorative things not real pleasures (pleasures relate as things that produce them).
Pleasure as Activity, Not Transition: Not proper to say pleasure is felt transition.
It is an activity (ἐνέργεια), and itself an end.
Not in becoming, but doing that we feel pleasure.
End not always different from process (only when something brought to completion of its nature).
Substitute "unimpeded" for "felt" in definition of pleasure as activity of faculties in natural state.
Why Some Think Pleasure is Transition: Because it is good in the full sense, and they suppose exercise of faculty is transition.
But it is different.
Reply to (2) Unhealthy Pleasures: Saying pleasures are bad because some unhealthy is like saying health is bad because some healthy things are bad for money-making.
Pleasures, even if injurious, don't make health bad.
Philosophic study can be injurious to health.
Reply to (1d) Impeding Thinking: No faculty impeded by its proper pleasure (e.g., study pleasure increases study).
Impeded by other pleasures (e.g., sexual pleasures, flute music hindering argument).
Reply to (1e) No Art of Pleasure: Natural; art never produces an activity, only makes it possible.
Perfumery/cookery considered arts of pleasure (not producing pleasure as activity itself, but conducive to conditions of pleasure).
Reply to (1b, 1c, 1f) Temperate Man/Prudent Man/Children/Brutes: Same reply.
These pursue specific kinds of pleasure: those involving appetite and pain (bodily pleasures) and their excess, which constitute the profligate.
Temperate man avoids these pleasures, but has his own pleasures.
Prudent man pursues freedom from corresponding pains.
Pleasures pursued by brutes/children are of a certain kind.
Chapter 13: Pleasure Is Good, and the Pleasure That Consists in the Highest Activity Is the Highest Good. All Admit That Happiness Is Pleasant. Bodily Pleasures Not the Only Pleasures
Pain is Undesirable: All admit pain is bad/undesirable; partly bad in itself, partly as impediment to activity.
Pleasure as Good: What is opposed to undesirable is good. Thus, pleasure is good.
Speusippus' Objection: Analogy of greater opposed to equal and less, to say pleasure not good.
Aristotle's rebuttal: No one says pleasure is essentially bad (Speusippus wanted neutral state as good).
No Reason to Deny Supreme Good: No reason why particular pleasure (or knowledge) shouldn't be supreme good, even if some kinds are bad.
Unimpeded Exercise is Desirable: Every formed faculty admits unimpeded exercise.
Happiness must be exercise of all/some faculties.
Most desirable when unimpeded: this is pleasure.
Conclusion: A certain kind of pleasure will be supreme good, even if most pleasures are bad.
Happiness and Pleasure: All men suppose happy life is pleasant, happiness involves pleasure.
Reason: No faculty exercise complete if impeded. Happiness is complete.
External Goods: Happy man needs bodily goods, external goods, good fortune for unimpeded faculty exercise.
Those who claim a tortured good man is happy talk nonsense.
Good Fortune: Some equate with happiness, but not so.
Excessive good fortune can be an impediment.
Good fortune defined by relation to happiness.
Universal Pursuit of Pleasure: All animals and men pursue pleasure (some indication it's highest good).
"Not wholly lost an e'er that saying be / Which many peoples use."
Variability of Pleasure: Man's best development not same for all, so pleasure pursued not same (though all pursue some pleasure).
Perhaps unconsciously pursue same pleasure: something divine implanted in all beings, striving for proper good.
Bodily Pleasures as Sole Claimants: Regarded as only pleasures because most often attained, shared by all (only pleasures they know).
Conclusion: Pleasure is Good: Unless pleasure (unimpeded exercise) is good, happy man doesn't lead pleasant life.
Why need it if not good? Might as well lead painful life (pain neither good/bad if pleasure neither, so why avoid?).
Good man's life no pleasanter unless exercise of faculties is pleasanter.
Chapter 14: Of the Bodily Pleasures, and the Distinction Between Naturally and Accidentally Pleasant
Nature of Bodily Pleasures: Those who say noble pleasures are desirable, but bodily pleasures (profligate concerned with) are not, should consider their nature.
Opposite Pains: Why (if some pleasures are bad) are opposite pains bad? Opposite of bad is good.
Are "necessary" pleasures good because not bad? Or good up to a point?
Excess in Pleasures/Pains: Faculties/activities not admitting excess in good don't admit excessive pleasure.
Faculties admitting excess admit excessive pleasure.
Bodily Goods and Excess: Bodily goods admit excess.
Bad man is bad for pursuing this excess, not merely necessary pleasures (men delight in meat/drink/sex, but not always as ought).
Pain Reversal: Not excess of pain bad man avoids, but pain generally.
(Consistent: opposite of excessive pleasure is not painful, except to man pursuing excess).
Truth and Cause of Error: State truth, but also cause of error (helps conviction).
Why bodily pleasures seem more desirable.
Reason 1: Expelling Pain: Efficacy in expelling pain, excessiveness of pain it counteracts.
Remedies produce intense feeling, pursued due to strong contrast to pain.
Reason 2: Bad Nature/Want: Some pleasures are bad (brutes from birth, bad men by habit).
Remedial pleasures imply want; better a natural state than transition to it.
Felt during replenishment, therefore accidentally good.
Reason 3: Intensity: Pursued by those unable to delight in other pleasures.
Make themselves thirsty on purpose.
Harmless pursuit: not blamed. Hurtful pursuit: bad.
No other sources, neutral state is painful (animal always labouring, physical science: seeing/hearing is labour/pain, we're used to it).
Youth and Melancholic Nature: In youth, men like drunk, youth is pleasant.
Melancholic nature: always wanting to restore balance, body vexing, violent desire.
Pain expelled by opposite pleasure or strong pleasure.
Reason why such men become profligate/worthless.
Pleasures without Antecedent Pain: Don't admit excess (derived from naturally, not accidentally, pleasant things).
Accidentally pleasant: restorative effect (restoration requires healthy part active; restoration seems pleasant, but pleasure attributed to medicine).
Naturally pleasant: stimulate activity of healthy system.
Incapacity for Continuous Pleasure: Nature not simple, contains mortal element.
One element active, contrary to other.
Equilibrium: neither painful nor pleasant.
Simple Nature: If simple, same activity always most pleasant (God enjoys simple pleasure).
Rest admits truer pleasure than motion.
Change is Sweetest: Due to a certain badness in us (bad man apt to change, bad nature needs change).
Conclusion: Continence, incontinence, pleasure, pain explained; good/bad discussed.
Transition: Remains to consider friendship (Book VIII).
Book VIII: Friendship or Love
Chapter 1: Uses of Friendship. Differences of Opinion About It
Importance of Friendship: Sort of virtue, or implies virtue; most necessary to life.
No One Would Live Without Friends: Even with all other good things.
Rich/Powerful: Most need friends (opportunity for benevolence, maintaining position, avoiding danger).
Poverty/Misfortune: Friends as only refuge.
Young: Prevent error. Old: tend, execute plans.
Prime of Life: Help in noble deeds (Homer: "two together"; more efficient thought/action).
Natural Implant: Love implanted by nature (parent-offspring, within race).
Especially among men (commend those who love fellow-men; man akin/dear to man).
Bond of Society: Holds states together; lawgivers eager for it more than justice.
Concord resembles friendship; wish to retain concord, banish dissension.
Conclusion: If citizens are friends, no need of justice. If just, still need friendship.
Completest justice is realization of friendship.
Noble Thing: Friendship is indispensable and noble.
Commend friends, having many is noble.
Some think good man == friend.
Differences of Opinion: Some hold it's likeness, like to like, birds of a feather.
Others: opposites attract, "two of a trade never agree."
Euripides: "Parched earth loves the rain, / And the high heaven…loves / Earthwards to fall."
Heraclitus: "Opposites fit together," "fairest harmony from discordant elements," "by battle all things come into the world."
Empedocles: like desires like.
Scope of Inquiry (Human Nature): Dismiss universal constitution questions.
Discuss human nature, character, affections.
E.g., friendship in all men? Impossible for bad men? One form or many?
Critique of Single Form: Those who suppose one kind (due to degrees) rely on insufficient grounds.
Things differing in kind can also differ in degree.
Chapter 2: Three Motives of Friendship. Friendship Defined
Clarification of Difficulties: Ascertain nature of the lovable.
Lovable Objects: Good, pleasant, or useful.
Useful: Appears to be means to get good or pleasure.
Conclusion: Good and pleasant only loved as ends.
Good vs. Apparent Good: Do men love what is good or what is good for them?
Each loves what is good for himself.
Good is lovable in itself; what is good for him is lovable to each.
It may be apparent good; no difference (lovable is apparently lovable).
Inanimate Things: Love for inanimate things not friendship (no return of affection, no wish for object's good).
Absurd to wish wine well; wish it to keep well for our use.
Wish Friend's Good for Own Sake: Must wish friend's good for his own sake.
Well-wisher: One who wishes good of another, if not reciprocated.
Friendship: Mutual well-wishing, each aware of other's feelings.
Awareness of Mutual Well-wishing: Must be aware.
Can wish well to unknown, who may return sentiment. They are well-wishers, but not friends (unaware of feelings).
Definition of Friends: Well-wishers of one another, wish each other's good from one of three motives, and aware of each other's feelings.
Chapter 3: Three Kinds of Friendship Corresponding to the Three Motives. Perfect Friendship Is That Whose Motive Is the Good
Three Motives, Three Kinds of Friendship: Motives are specifically different, so affections/friendships are too.
Good, pleasant, useful: any can be basis of mutual, aware affection.
Motive and Wish: Friends wish each other's good in respect of the motive of their love.
Useful Friendship: Not for what they are, but only in so far as each gets some good from the other.
Pleasant Friendship: Not for what he is, but as source of pleasure to themselves.
Love in These Friendships: Each loves the other not as being what he is, but as useful or pleasant.
Accidental Friendships: These type.
Object of affection loved not for being person/character, but as source of good/pleasure.
Easily dissolved: persons don't continue unchanged; if no longer pleasant/useful, love ceases.
Useful is not permanent, varies.
Friendship dissolved when motive disappears.
Useful Friendship (Age and Type):
Found among elderly (pursue useful more than pleasant) and middle-aged/young with keen eye on profit.
Don't generally live together (not pleasant, don't want constant intercourse unless useful).
Pleasant only as far as hopes of good.
Includes host-guest friendship.
Pleasant Friendship (Young Men):
Based on pleasure.
Young men live by impulse, pursue what's pleasant now (changes with age).
Quick to make/drop friendships (changes as object of pleasure changes).
Pleasure of this kind rapidly alters.
Love in Young Men: Apt to fall in love (impulse, based on pleasure).
Quick to love/cease loving, many times a day.
Living Together: Friends of this kind wish to spend time/live together to attain object of friendship.
Perfect Friendship: Of good men who resemble one another in virtue.
Both wish well to one another as good men.
Their essential character to be good.
Truest Friends: Wish well for friends' sake, as being what they are, not accidentally.
Lasts as long as virtue (lasting thing).
Benefits of Perfect Friendship: Each good simply and good to his friend.
Good men are both good simply and useful to one another.
Pleasant: Pleasant too; delight in proper acts (similar acts).
Lasting Nature: Lasting, as it unites all conditions of true friendship.
Motive: good or pleasure (in itself or relative to lover).
Founded on similarity.
All requisite characteristics in their own nature.
Similarity, good simply, pleasant simply (most lovable things).
Truest and best love/friendship here.
Rarity and Requirements: Uncommon due to rare people.
Requires long and familiar intercourse.
Proverb: can't know till consume requisite quantity of salt.
Can't be friends until each shows/approves self as worthy.
Wish to be Friends vs. Friendship: Quick to wish, not quick to be friends.
Completeness: Complete relation in duration and all points.
What each gets is identical or similar.
Chapter 4: The Others Are Imperfect Copies of This
Appearance of Resemblance: Friendship based on pleasure resembles perfect friendship (good men pleasant).
Friendship based on useful resembles perfect friendship (good men useful).
Endurance of Imperfect Friendships: Most likely to endure when what each gets is the same (e.g., pleasure) and from same source (two wits, not lover/beloved).
Lover/Beloved: Different sources of pleasure (lover: looking; beloved: attentions).
Friendship sometimes vanishes when youth fades (one misses beauty, other attentions).
Can continue if intercourse leads to caring for character and similar character unfolds.
Love vs. Profit: Exchange profit not pleasure: less true/permanent.
Profit Friendship Ceases: When advantage ceases; didn't love other, but profit.
Bad Men as Friends: For pleasure/profit, even bad men can be friends, good with bad, etc.
Truest Friendship (for self): Only possible between good men.
Bad men don't delight in each other unless advantage gained.
Good Men's Friendship Defies Calumny: Not ready to accept testimony against those tested.
Implies mutual trust, no wronging each other.
Other friendships lack this security.
Application of "Friends" Term (Broader Sense): To those loving for profit (states making alliances), or pleasure (children).
Distinction: Primary/strict sense: good men as such.
Secondary sense: called so due to resemblance to primary (involves some good, e.g., pleasant is good to those loving pleasant things).
Non-Coincidence: These two latter kinds (profit/pleasure) not apt to coincide.
Accidental properties not apt to combine in one subject.
Summary: Bad men friends for pleasure/profit (resemble each other).
Good men friends for what they are (good men).
Good men are friends simply; others accidentally, by resemblance.
Chapter 5: Intercourse Necessary to the Maintenance of Friendship
Virtues: Character vs. Manifestation: As with virtues, distinguish possession of friendship (habit/faculty) vs. manifestation (exercise).
Friends living together: take pleasure, do good.
Asleep/distant: not acting as friends, but have disposition.
Distance doesn't destroy friendship, but its manifestation.
Prolonged absence: obliterates friendship ("Full many a friendship hath ere now been loosed / By lack of converse").
Old/Morose Men: Not apt to make friends.
Little in them to give pleasure.
Cannot pass days with what is painful/not pleasant.
Nature shuns painful, seeks pleasant.
Well-wishers vs. Friends: Accept company but don't live together: well-wishers, not friends.
Characteristic of Friendship: Living together (not just same roof for Greeks).
Needy seek help thus; happy desire company (solitary life suits least).
Cannot live together unless pleasant to each other, delight in same things (necessary condition of comradeship).
Truest Friendship: Between good men (repeatedly stated) based on good/pleasant in itself, and good/pleasant to them.
Friendship as Habit/Faculty: Inanimate things can be loved, but friends' love implies purpose (from habit/faculty).
Wishing well for their sakes: swayed by habit, not feeling.
Good for Self: Loving a friend is loving what is good for self (gaining good man = gaining good for self).
Each loves what is good for self, gives/gets equal good wishes/pleasure.
"Love and equality" (φιλότης ἰσότης) in highest degree in good men's friendship.
Love as Feeling: Love is a feeling; friendship is a habit.
Love of friends implies purpose, and purpose implies calculation or reasoning, which proceeds from a habit.
Chapter 6: Impossible to Have Many True Friends
Fewer Friends in Older/Morose Men: Less apt to make friends (harsher temper, less pleasure in society).
Delight in society characteristic of friendship.
Such people can be well-wishers but not friends (don't live together or delight in each other).
Impossibility of Many True Friends: Impossible to have true friendship for many at once.
Love is intense; intense feeling implies single object.
Hard to find many agreeable persons, perhaps not many good ones.
Requires testing and becoming accustomed (difficult).
Many Friends for Profit/Pleasure: Possible to find many agreeable persons for profit/pleasure.
Such people not rare; services rendered quickly.
Pleasure-based Friendship (Resemblance): More resembles true friendship when equal service, mutual pleasure.
Young men's friendships; generous spirit commoner.
Utility-based Friendship: Sordid souls.
Happy Men and Friends: Don't need useful friends, but pleasant ones.
Want people to live with.
Can't continually endure painful, even good itself if painful.
Require friends to be pleasant, but also good and good for them (combines all characteristics).
Friends of Exalted Positions: Distinct classes.
Useful friends, pleasant friends; seldom both.
Don't seek agreeable + virtuous, or useful in noble actions.
Seek witty for pleasure; clever for instructions.
Seldom united in one person.
Good Man as Pleasant/Useful: Good man pleasant and useful.
Doesn't make friends with superior unless inferior in virtue.
Only thus on equal terms (inferior in one, superior in another ratio).
Great men not wont to behave this way (implies criticism of rulers).
Friendships Hitherto: Equal persons (same deed, wish same, or exchange equal different things).
Pleasure/profit friendships less deserve name, less lasting.
Being both like and unlike, seem both to be and not to be friendships.
Resemblance to virtue-based friendship (pleasure, profit present).
Unlikeness (rapid change, different in many respects, not beyond calumny) seems not friendship.
Chapter 7: Of Friendship Between Unequal Persons, and Its Rule of Proportion. Limits Within Which This Is Possible
Unequal Friendships: Father for son, elder for younger, man for woman, ruler for subject.
Differences: Not same kind (parent-child ≠ ruler-subject, father-son ≠ son-father, man-woman ≠ woman-man).
Different excellence, function, grounds of affection.
Love/friendship also different.
Mutual Expectations: What each does not same, nor should it be expected.
Lasting Friendship: When children give what they owe to begetters, parents give what they owe to children.
Proportion in Unequal Friendships: Love on either side should be proportional.
Better/more useful person receives more love than gives.
Proportionate love establishes a sort of equality (necessary for friendship).
Justice vs. Friendship Equality: Justice: primary "equal" is proportionate to merit; secondary is equal in quantity.
Friendship: primary "equal" is equal in quantity; secondary is proportionate to merit.
(Good friends are equals, but if unequal, love should be proportionate).
Limits of Inequality: Friendship ceases if great distance in virtue, vice, wealth, etc.
No longer are, or expect to be, friends.
Most plain with gods (greatest superiority).
Princes: greatly inferior don't claim friendship; no consideration expect to be friends with best/wisest.
Indeterminate Limits: Impossible to determine limits precisely.
Many things can be removed, friendship remains.
But if too far removed (like God), can no longer be.
Objection: Friend's Greatest Good: Friend does not wish friend greatest good (to become a god: would lose friend, which is a good).
Reply: If friend wishes good for friend's sake, add "the friend remaining what he is."
Wishes greatest good compatible with being human.
But perhaps not everything that is good; everyone wishes good most to self.
Chapter 8: Of Loving and Being Loved
Desire to be Loved vs. Love: Most people desire to be loved more than to love (desire for honour).
Fond of flatterers (inferior friend, pretends to love more).
Being loved thought to be near being honoured.
Honour as Accidental: Desire honour not for its own sake, but accidentally.
Honor from authority: expectation (hope to get what they want; token of good to come).
Honor from good men/those who know: confirm own opinion of self (rejoice in assurance of worth).
Being Loved for Own Sake: Men delight in being loved for its own sake (better than being honoured).
Friendship Lies in Loving: Demonstrated by mothers' delight in loving (know children, love, not look for return).
Content to see children doing well, love them even if receiving nothing.
Virtue of a Friend: To love.
Lasting friends when love each other in proportion to worth.
Unequal Persons as True Friends: Can be most truly friends; make themselves equal.
Equality and similarity lead to friendship, especially similarity in virtue.
Such men little liable to change; continue similar to selves/each other.
Don't ask/do anything unworthy; restrain each other (good man neither goes wrong nor lets friend go wrong).
Bad Men as Friends (Instability): No stability; don't continue similar to selves.
Friends for short space, rejoicing in wickedness.
Useful/Agreeable Friends (Duration): Continue friends longer as long as furnish pleasure/profit.
Utility Friendship (Opposites): More than others, a union of opposites (rich/poor, ignorant/learned).
Man wants, gives something in exchange.
Lover/beloved, beautiful/ugly also in this class (lovers make selves ridiculous claiming equal love).
Opposites and Mean: Nothing desires its opposite as such, only accidentally.
Desire really for the mean (good).
Dry for intermediate state, not wet.
Dismissal: These questions foreign to present purpose.
Chapter 9: Every Society Has Its Own Form of Friendship As of Justice. All Societies Are Summed Up in Civil Society
Friendship and Justice: Subject matter/occasion are the same.
Every community/association gives occasion for justice and friendship.
Partners (voyage, campaign, etc.) are friends to extent of partnership (same for justice).
"Friends' Goods are Common Property": Proverb rightly says so; friendship implies community.
Types of Commonality: Some friends share all; others definite things (more/less).
Friendships differ in degree.
Justice also differs (parents-children, brothers, comrades, citizens).
Injustice and Friendship: Injustice takes different forms, increases with degree of friendship.
Grosser wrong to rob comrade than citizen.
Refuse help to brother than stranger.
Strike father than other man.
Justice claims increase as friendship increases, growing pari passu.
Associations as Parts of Political Community: All associations seem parts of civil community.
Men join for common interest, pursuit of needs.
Civil association for common interests of whole life (legislators' aim).
Includes festivals, gatherings, honouring gods, recreation.
Ancient festivals after harvest, fist-fruits; seasons of leisure.
Friendship and Association: Several kinds of friendship correspond to several kinds of association.
Chapter 10: Of the Three Forms of Constitution
Constitutions: Three proper kinds, three perverted forms (corruptions).
Proper: Kingly government, aristocracy, timocracy (most call constitutional government).
Perverted: Tyranny, oligarchy, democracy.
Ranking: Kingly government best, timocracy worst.
Kingly Government and Tyranny:
Perversion of kingly government is tyranny.
Both monarchies, vast difference.
Tyrant seeks own interest; king seeks subjects' interest.
True king: self-sufficient, abundantly good, aims at subjects' advantage.
Other character: king chosen by lot.
Tyranny as Worst: Opposite of kingly rule, seeks own good.
Opposite of best must be worst.
Degeneration of Kingly Rule: Kingly government degenerates into tyranny (bad king becomes tyrant).
Aristocracy and Oligarchy:
Aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy due to rulers' vice.
Instead of distributing property/honours by merit, take most for selves.
Offices to same people, value wealth most.
Small number of bad men in power (instead of best).
Timocracy and Democracy:
Timocracy degenerates into democracy.
Border closely: timocracy intended as government by multitude, property qualification makes all equal.
Democracy as Least Bad: Least bad of corrupt forms (slight departure from corresponding form).
Constitutional Change: Change in slightest direction, least resistance.
Family Patterns of Government: Likenesses in families.
Father-Son: Kingly rule (father cares for children).
Homer calls Zeus "father" (kingly aims at paternal).
Persian father-son: tyrannical (fathers use sons as slaves).
Master-slave: tyrannical (master's interest), legitimate tyranny (different beings need different government).
Man-Wife: Aristocratic (husband rules proportionately to worth in his province, entrusts wife with hers).
Man lording all: oligarchic (takes rule not entitled to).
Wife rules as heiress: authority not proportionate to merit, based on wealth/influence (like oligarchies).
Brothers: Resembles timocracy (equal except age).
If widely different in age, not brotherly friendship.
Households with No Master: Democratic (all equal, everyone does as likes).
Chapter 11: Of the Corresponding Forms of Friendship
Friendship in Each Government Form: To same extent as justice.
King-Subject Friendship: King shows friendship by transcendent benefits.
Does good, tends welfare (shepherd of peoples).
Father-Child Friendship: Similar to king-subject.
Benefits greater: author of existence, nurture, education.
Fathers rule children, forefathers descendants, kings subjects (in accordance with nature).
Superiority in These Friendships: Involve superiority of one side.
Parents receive honour as well as service.
Justice requires proportionate worth (rule of friendship too).
Man-Wife Friendship: Like aristocracy.
Both benefit proportionately to merit, better gets more, each what's fitting.
Rule of justice too.
Brothers' Friendship: Resembles comradeship (equal, like age).
Same feelings/character.
Timocracy: citizens wish to be equal/fair, take office in turn, share equally.
Friendship follows same rule.
Corrupt Forms (Little Justice/Friendship): Least in worst (tyranny).
Ruler and subject have nothing in common, no friendship/justice.
Workman-tools, soul-body, master-slave relations.
Tools/body/slave benefit from users, but no friendship/justice with inanimate objects, horse, ox, or slave as such.
Slave as Man: As a man, may have justice/friendship (can participate in law/contract).
Democracies: More friendship than other corrupt forms (citizens equal, many things in common).
Conclusion: Friendships and justice found to some extent.
Chapter 12: Of the Friendship of Kinsmen and Comrades
Friendship Implies Association: All friendship implies association.
Kinsmen and Comrades (Distinct): Separate from others (fellow-citizens, tribesmen, sailors) which are more about compacts.
Host-guest friendship also in latter class.
Kinsmen's Friendship: Several species, dependent on parent-child friendship.
Parents love children as part of selves; children love parents as source of being.
Parental Attachment: Parents know children better. That which gives birth more attached (offspring belongs to us, we don't belong to it).
Time Difference: Parents love from birth; children love after understanding/sense.
Mothers' Love: Why mothers love more than fathers.
Identity of Being: Parents love children as selves (second self when severed).
Children love parents as source of being.
Brothers love because from same source (identity of relation to source = identity between them).
Of same blood/stock; in a way identical, though separate persons.
Brotherly Friendship Furthered: Common nurture, similarity of age.
Same age naturally love each other.
Used to one another, make comrades.
Resembles comradeship.
Other Kinsfolk: Attachment based on same stock (closer/remoter founder).
Children for Parents (like men for gods): Friendship for what is good/superior, as source of greatest benefits (life, nurture, education).
Kinsmen Friendship (Pleasure/Profit): Brings more pleasure/profit than strangers (more community of life).
Brother's Friendship (Characteristics): All characteristics of comradeship, but to greater degree (if good/similar).
Belong more to one another, love from birth, more similarity of character (same stock, upbringing, education).
Longest/surest experience.
Other Kinsmen: Same elements proportional to relationship.
Man-Wife Friendship: Natural (humans form couples more than civil societies; family prior/indispensable; reproduction fundamental).
Other animals associate for reproduction alone.
Man/wife live together for children and life needs (functions clearly divided, supply wants, contribute to common stock).
Brings pleasure and profit.
Virtue-based: If good, based on virtue (each sex has own virtue, rejoice in like nature).
Children as Bond: Knit man/wife together (childless unions dissolve quicker).
Children as common good, holds them together.
Living Terms: How man lives with wife, friend with friend, same as asking what justice requires.
Required different for stranger, comrade, fellow-student.
Chapter 13: Of the Terms of Interchange and Quarrels Hence Arising in Equal Friendships
Three Kinds of Friendship (Recall): In each, equal and unequal friendships.
Equal persons (good, pleasant, profit-based) vs. better/worse.
Rendering equal or unequal services.
Equality in Friendship: Equal persons make equality by loving equally.
Unequal persons make equality by proportionate service to merit.
Accusations/Reproaches: Arise solely or mostly in profit-based friendships.
Virtue-based: Eager to do good to each other (office of virtue/friendship).
No accusations/quarrels (cannot be embittered against one who loves/serves).
Gracious nature requites like service.
Greater service provider won't reproach (gets what desires for friend's good).
Pleasure-based: Not apt to arise (both get what they desire, delight in company).
Ridiculous to accuse other for not being agreeable (no compulsion to associate).
Utility-based: Most fruitful in accusations.
Friends use each other for own advantage; each wants larger share, thinks less than due.
Reproaches other for not doing enough.
Impossible for service-giver to supply all others want.
Justice and Utility Friendship (Two Kinds):
Rules of Justice Twofold: Unwritten and written (laws).
Utility friendship: (1) disposition, (2) contract.
Accusations when one sense understood at start, other at end.
Contract (Specified Conditions):
Purely commercial (cash payments).
Less exacting in time (specified quid pro quo).
Latter: due is evident; friendliness in deferment of payment.
Some states: no recovery by law (given credit, take consequences).
Disposition (No Specified Conditions):
Gives presents as friend.
Later claims return (regards as loan, not gift).
Wishes to end relation differently from start, so accuses.
Most men wish for noble, but choose profitable (noble to give without return, profitable to receive).
Returning Benefits: If possible, make equivalent return.
Don't treat as friend if he doesn't wish it; mistake if accepted benefit from non-friend/disinterested person.
Terminate as if for stipulated consideration.
Return should be what would have agreed to repay.
If unable, donor wouldn't expect repayment (so repay if able).
Careful Consideration: At outset, consider who helps, on what understanding, accept/reject accordingly.
Measure of Requital (Debatable): Value of service to recipient or benefactor?
Recipients: small matter to benefactor, could get from others.
Benefactors: best they had, unobtainable elsewhere, given in need/danger.
Rule for Profit Motive: Benefit received as measure.
Recipient asks service, other gives in expectation of equal.
Amount determined by extent recipient benefited.
Repay as much (or more: nobler) as received.
Rule for Virtue Motive: Accusations don't occur.
Measure is purpose of him who does it (virtue/character by purpose).
Chapter 14: Of the Same in Unequal Friendships
Quarrels in Unequal Friendships: Each claims larger share, friendship dissolves.
Superior's Claim: Better of two claims larger share ("good man's share is larger").
More Useful's Claim: Useless person shouldn't share equally; friendship degenerates unless each receives proportional to value of what he does.
Fancy same rule as commercial partnership (more input, larger share).
Needy/Inferior Man's Claim: "Office of good friend to help in need; what use in good man/powerful man if no gain?"
Resolution (Both Claims Right): Each ought to receive larger share, but not of the same things.
Superior: more honour (tribute to virtue/benevolence).
Needy: more profit (succour in pecuniary gain).
Constitutional Recognition: No honour paid to one contributing nothing to common good.
Common stock distributed among community beneficiaries; honour is part of this.
Money-maker from community should not expect honour.
No one content with smaller share in everything.
Honour to one spending on public; money to one whose services paid in money.
Giving each proportionate to merit effects equality, preserves friendship.
Intercourse of Unequal Individuals: Regulated by same principles.
Benefited in purse/character must give honour in return (repayment in what he can command).
What is Possible vs. What is Due: Friendship exacts what is possible rather than what is due.
What is due sometimes impossible (honour to gods/parents; no one can pay full debt).
One who gives available service fulfills obligation.
Father-Son Disownment: Man may not disown father, father may disown son (debtor must pay, son can never repay father fully).
Creditor free to cast off debtor; father free to cast off son.
Unlikely to disown son unless very great scoundrel (natural affection, son's support).
Scoundrel son avoids assisting father (generality of men wish to receive benefits, avoid unprofitable ones).
Book IX: Friendship or Love—Continued
Chapter 1: Of the Rule of Proportion in Dissimilar Friendships
Dissimilar Friendships: Proportionate exchange maintains equality and preserves friendship.
Like citizens' association: shoemaker receives proportionate return for shoes.
Money supplies common measure, everything referred to it.
Sentimental Friendships (Complaints):
Lover: loves excessively, no love in return (maybe nothing lovable).
Beloved: other promised everything, performs nothing.
Quarrels from Different Motives: When pleasure for one, profit for other, both don't get what they want.
Friendship dissolves if motives not attained (not other's self loved, but something had).
Character-based friendship, being pure, lasts.
Getting Different from Desired: Quarrels when get something different (failing to get what you want = getting nothing).
Harper story: promise more for better play, pays pleasure for pleasure.
If both wished pleasure, fine. If one pleasure, other profit, unfair if one gets only what they want.
Man sets heart on what he wants, renders specific service for it.
Valuation of Service: Whose business to fix value? First giver or first receiver?
First giver seems to leave it to other.
Protagoras' Custom: Lessons, pupil estimates value, so much taken.
Payment in Advance: If paid in advance, fails to fulfill engagements (promised more than could perform) - rightly chargeable (doesn't fulfill contract).
Sophists adopt this (otherwise no one would pay).
No Express Agreement:
(a) Voluntary Help for Other's Sake: No accusation (virtue-based friendship).
Return regulated by purpose of first service giver (purpose makes friend/virtue).
Philosopher/disciples: merit not measured in money, no honour adequate.
Possible accepted as sufficient (like gods/parents).
(b) Gift with Expectation of Return: Return should be mutually proportionate if possible.
If not, recipient assesses (whatever advantage received, or what would have paid for pleasure).
Like sales: common.
Some states no recovery in voluntary contracts (given credit, conclude in same spirit).
Fairer for trusted to value than truster.
What is ours/given away seems precious.
Return measured by receiver's valuation, not what it seems worth when he has it, but value he set before he had it.
Chapter 2: Of the Conflict of Duties
Questions: Father's claims unlimited? Obey physician, military general? Help friend rather than good man? Repay benefactor rather than gift comrade?
No Precise Rules: Scarcely possible to lay down rules for all cases (differ in importance, nobility, necessity).
General Rule: No single person's claims override all others.
Repay benefits received before favour to comrade (like repaying creditors before giving gifts).
Exceptions to Rule: Not always hold.
Ransom: should ransom father before ransomer (even if ransomer is whoever he may be).
Priorities (Nobility/Need): If giving more noble or meets more pressing need, right to incline that way.
Sometimes unfair to repay original service (e.g., helping a bad man in return for help from a good man).
Not bound to lend in turn: A lent to B (honourable), B has no hope from A (rascal). Demand for loan unfair.
If they think differently, their conduct natural.
Indefiniteness: Statements about human affections/actions share indefiniteness of subject.
Conclusion: Claims not same for all; father's claims don't override all others (Zeus doesn't get all sacrifices).
Parents, brothers, comrades, benefactors: all different claims.
Each rendered what is own and due.
Practice: Invite kinsfolk to wedding (share family, related acts); for funerals (more claim).
Parents' Special Claim: Sustenance (owe it, nobler to preserve life of those we're indebted to).
Honour parents (as gods), but not all honour (father vs. mother, not wise man/general).
Elders: Honour due to age (rise, place of honour at table).
Comrades/Brothers: Freedom of speech, commonality.
Other Person: Try to give due, assign what belongs to him (closeness of connection, goodness, usefulness).
One kind person: easy; different kinds: harder.
Don't shirk difficulty, distinguish best.-
Chapter 3: Of the Dissolution of Friendships
Question: Break off friendship with those who change?
Profit/Pleasure Friendships: Naturally part when these cease (loved these, not self).
Expected for love to cease.
Complaints arise if one pretends character-love but motive was profit/pleasure.
Quarrels from real vs. supposed motives.
If one deceives self (supposes beloved for character), only self to blame.
If deceived by other's pretence: fair grounds for complaint (worse than counterfeiting coinage, more precious thing tampered with).
Friend Becomes Bad: If admitted as good, becomes/shows bad, should still be loved? Impossible, only good is lovable.
Ought not to love bad, nor make self like worthless (like makes friends with like).
Breaking Off: Not in all cases, only for incurably bad.
If reformation possible, more bound to help character than fortune (character nobler, more to do with friendship).
Man withdrawing friendship: not unnatural (not made friends with such a man; friend is another man).
Cannot restore, so stands aloof.
One Improves, Other Stays Same: One remains, other becomes superior in virtue. Still friends?
Hardly possible.
Plainest if great interval (boyish friendship: one remains child, other man).
No longer friends if tastes don't agree, sources of joys/sorrows different (cannot live together).
(Already discussed).
Obligations to Former Friends: Regard former as stranger? No.
Should not entirely forget former intercourse.
Former friends have claims based on past friendship, unless extraordinary depravity was cause of parting.
Chapter 4: A Man's Relation to His Friend Like His Relation to Himself
Friendly Relations from Self-Relations: Characteristics defining friendship derived from relations towards ourselves.
Definitions of a Friend: Wishes/does good/seems good for other's sake.
Wishes friend to exist/live for friend's sake (mothers towards children, friends after difference).
Lives with another, chooses what he chooses.
Sympathizes with griefs/joys (especially mothers).
Good Man's Relation to Self: All these characteristics found in good man's relations to himself.
Good man and virtue are standard.
Self-Consistency: One mind with self, desires same things with whole soul.
Wishes for self what is and seems good, does it for own sake (rational part is man's self).
Wishes self to live/be preserved, especially thinking part (existence is good to good man).
Self-Love: Each wishes good for self; wouldn't choose all good things on condition of becoming someone else, only remaining self.
Reason is man's truest self.
Solitude of Good Man: Wishes to live with self (own company pleasant).
Sweet memory of past, good hopes for future (pleasant).
Mind well-stored for contemplation.
Sympathizes with self in sorrow/joy (same things pain/pleasure, not apt to change mind).
Friend as Second Self: All these characteristics in good man's relations to self, and same (or nearly so) in relations to friend (friend is another self).
Friendship described by these characteristics.
Friendship Towards Self: Possible as far as one has two or more selves (follows from above, and extreme of friendship for other likened to self-friendship).
Generality of Men (Not Good): Characteristics appear, but not truly.
Share characteristics only so far as agreeable to self, believe they are good.
Utterly worthless/impious never truly have.
Why Wanting in Not Good: Not at one with selves.
Desire one thing, wish another (incontinent: choose pleasant though injurious over good).
Cowardice/laziness: shrink from best.
Wickedness: hate life, wish to get rid of it (destroy selves).
Bad Men and Company: Try to find people to spend time with, eschew own company.
Painful past/future thoughts, company diverts.
Nothing lovable in them, no friendly feelings to selves.
Bad Man's Soul Divided: Cannot sympathize with self in joy/sorrow.
One part pained at deprivation, another pleased.
Pulls different ways, tearing him.
If not simultaneously, then pained later for pleasure, wishes had not partaken (full of remorse).
Conclusion: Not good has no friendly feelings for self.
If miserable, strain to avoid vice, be good.
Friendly to self, make friends with others.
Chapter 5: Friendship and Good-Will
Well-wishing (εὔνοια) vs. Friendship: Well-wishing seems friendly but is not friendship.
Can wish well to unknown, who are unaware; no friendship in such cases.
Well-wishing vs. Love: Not same as love.
No intense emotion/desire of love.
Intimate Acquaintance: Love implies intimate acquaintance; well-wishing can be instant (athletes).
Wish well to competitor, eager for success, but not helping him.
Suddenly become well-wishers, superficial affection.
Well-wishing as Germ of Friendship: Like pleasure in sight is germ of love.
No love without being pleased by beauty; but delight not love unless feels absence and desires presence.
No friendship without well-wishers first.
Well-wishers not friends on that account; merely wish good, wouldn't help/put selves out.
Extended Meaning: Well-wishing as undeveloped friendship, becomes proper friendship with time/acquaintance.
Not profit or pleasure friendship (well-wishing no element).
Benefited person gives good wishes to benefactor (just).
Wishes another prosperity for own gain: doesn't seem to truly wish well to other, but self.
Not really a friend if serves for profit.
Grounds of Well-wishing: Generally grounded on excellence/goodness.
Arises when person seems beautiful/brave/good (like athletes).
Chapter 6: Friendship and Unanimity
Unanimity (ὁμόνοια) as Element: Seems element in friendship.
Not mere agreement in opinion (possible between strangers).
Scope of Unanimity: Not agreement on any subject (astronomy -- nothing to do with friendship).
Prevails in state when citizens agree on common interest, choose same course, carry out community decision.
Practical Matters: People of one mind regarding practical matters, especially important ones, and things given to all concerned.
State unanimously: magistrates elective, alliance with Sparta, Pittacus governor (willing).
Discord: When each wishes government for self (e.g., brothers in Phoenissae).
One mind: each thinks of same thing under same conditions (populace/classes agree best men govern; all get what they want).
Good Men and Unanimity: Found in good men.
Common interest; things influencing life.
One mind with selves/each other, stand on same ground.
Wishes constant, not fluctuating like Euripus.
Wish just, common interest, united efforts.
Not Good Men and Unanimity: Cannot be of one mind (cannot be friends except briefly/slightly).
Strive for more profit, less labour/public service.
Each watches neighbour to prevent them getting more.
If not on guard, community ruined.
Result: discord, compel others to be just, but not willing themselves.
Chapter 7: Why Benefactors Love More Than They Are Loved
Observation: Benefactors seem to love those they've benefited more than receive benefits.
Appears irrational, seek cause.
Common Explanation (Debtors/Creditors):
Debtor: wishes creditor out of way.
Lender: anxious debtor preserved (hopes of repayment).
Benefactor: desires existence of benefited hopes of favours.
Benefited: not anxious to repay.
Epicharmus: View of "those who have bad places at the play" (cynical).
Seems true to life: men have short memories, eager to receive more than confer.
Aristotle's Deeper Cause: Lies deeper in nature; creditors not resemble.
Creditors: no real affection for debtors, only wish preservation for repayment.
Benefactors: real love/affection for benefited, even if no future service.
Craftsmen Analogy: Every craftsman loves his work more than it would love him if alive.
Poets love poems excessively (as if children).
Benefactor Anology: Those benefited have been made, so to speak, by benefactor.
Love that which they have made more than work loves its maker.
Reason (Desire for Existence): All desire existence and love it.
Existence lies in exercise of faculties, or realization of selves (living and doing).
What man makes is a realization of his self.
Therefore, he loves it, because he loves existence.
Natural Law: What is potentially exhibited in by realization (making/doing).
Beauty of Action: Manifestation of action is beautiful to benefactor, delights in person making it manifest.
Benefited: nothing beautiful in benefactor, at most useful (less pleasing/lovable).
Pleasure in Realizing Self: Pleasure in present, hopes for future, memories of past.
Realizing selves is most pleasant/lovable.
Benefactor: what he has done endures (beautiful is lasting).
Benefited: advantage soon passes away.
Memory of Deeds: Beautiful deeds are pleasant, profitable actions not so.
Expectation: reverse seems true.
Loving vs. Being Loved: Loving seems like doing; being loved like having something done.
Those with better part in transaction naturally feel/show more love.
Toil and Affection: More affection for what achieved with toil (money-makers vs. inheritors).
Receiving benefit involves no labour; conferring one is troublesome.
Mothers: more affection for children than fathers (more trouble in birth, fuller assurance they are their own).
Characteristic of benefactors too.
Chapter 8: In What Sense It Is Right to Love One's Self
Question: Ought we most to love ourselves or others?
Common Blame for Self-Loving: Blame those who love selves most (reproachful term).
Not good man has regard to self in everything (more so the worse he is).
Accuse him of doing nothing disinterestedly.
Good man: noble motive, guided by friend's regard, neglects own interest.
Conflict with Facts: Disagrees with facts.
Ought to love most who is most truly friend (wishes well for other's sake, even if unknown).
Self-Relations are Primary: All characteristics of friend found highest degree in man's relations to himself.
Friendly relations to others derived from self-relations.
Proverbs: "Friends have one soul," "Friends have all things in common," "Equality makes friendship," "Knee is nearer than shin."
Highest in self (best friend); so must love self better than anyone else.
Resolving the Puzzle: Make out difference in statements, determine how far/sense each is right.
Ascertain what "self-loving" means in each context.
Self-Loving (Term of Reproach):
Applied to those who take more than their due of money, honour, bodily pleasures.
Most men desire these, set hearts on as best, keenly compete for.
Those grasping for more indulge animal appetites/passions (irrational part).
Character of generality of men (not good).
Justly reproach such self-loving.
Self-Loving (Praiseworthy Sense):
If man's heart always on doing what is just/temperate/virtuous, claiming noble conduct.
No one would call him self-loving or reproach him.
Truly Self-Loving: Takes noblest/truest good for self, gratifies ruling power in self, obeys it.
Ruling part of state/system is most truly the state/system; ruling part of man is most truly man's self.
Loves/gratifies this part is most truly self-loving.
Continence/Incontinence (Reason as Self):
Call man continent/incontinent based on reason's mastery (implies reason is self).
Acts guided by reason are most fully done by self, of own will.
Good Man's Self-Love: This part (reason) is self, or most truly self.
Good man loves this part more than any other.
More self-loving than those reproached (difference between living by reason vs. passion, desiring noble vs. profitable).
Noble Deeds and Community Benefit: Noble deeds welcomed/praised.
If all vie for noble/act nobly: community wants perfectly satisfied, each gains greatest good (virtue).
Good Man Ought to be Self-Loving: By doing noble, benefits self and assists others.
Bad Man Ought Not: Injures self and neighbours by following bad passions.
Discrepancy (Bad Man): Between what he ought to do and what he does.
Good man: what he ought is what he does (reason chooses best, obeys reason).
Good Man's Self-Sacrifice: Does things for friends/country, will die for them.
Throws away money, honour, competing goods, claiming what is noble.
Prefers brief intense pleasure to long mild, one year noble life to many ordinary, one great/noble action to many little ones.
Gets noble on grand scale by giving life for others.
Surrenders wealth to enrich friend (friend gets money, he gets noble; takes greater good for self).
Same for honours/offices (deems noble/praiseworthy).
Possible to give up opportunity for action; nobler to cause friend to do deed than do it self.
Conclusion: In all praise-worthy cases, good man takes larger share of what is noble.
In this sense, man ought to be self-loving, not in sense of generality of men.
Chapter 9: Why a Happy Man Needs Friends
Disputed Question: Does a happy man need friends?
Argument Against: Blessed/self-sufficient need no friends (already supplied).
Friend is alter ego who procures what you
Book II: Moral Virtue
Chapter 1: Moral Virtue is Acquired by the Repetition of the Corresponding Acts
Two Kinds of Excellence: Intellectual and Moral.
Intellectual Excellence: Birth and growth mainly from instruction; requires time and experience.
Moral Excellence: Result of habit or custom (ἔθος).
Greek name for moral excellence (ἠθικὴ ἀρετή) is derived from ἔθος With a slight change.
Moral Virtues Not Natural: None are implanted in us by nature.
What is by nature cannot be altered by training (e.g., a stone falling downwards, fire moving upwards).
Acquisition of Power: In natural things, power comes first, then act (senses: see/hear first, then acquire faculties).
Acquisition of Virtues/Arts: Acquire virtues by doing the acts (like learning an art by doing it).
Become builders by building, harpers by harping.
Become just by doing just acts, temperate/courageous by doing temperate/courageous acts.
Attestation by States: Legislators make citizens good by training (their wish).
Failure distinguishes bad from good constitutions.
Same Acts Produce Virtues and Vices: Both moral virtues and corresponding vices result from and are formed by the same acts.
Arts Analogy: Harping produces good/bad harpers; building well makes good builders, badly makes bad ones.
Application to Virtues: Same principle.
Conduct in human intercourse makes us just or unjust.
Acting in danger, training to feel fear/confidence makes us courageous or cowardly.
Behaving regarding animal appetites/anger makes us temperate/gentle or profligate/ill-tempered.
Conclusion: Acts of any kind produce habits/characters of the same kind.
Importance of Early Training: Acts must be of a certain kind; resulting character varies. "Makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained from his youth up in this way or in that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference."
Chapter 2: These Acts Must Be Such As Reason Prescribes: They Cannot Be Defined Exactly, But Must Be Neither Too Much Nor Too Little
Purpose of Inquiry: Not merely speculative knowledge of virtue, but to become good (otherwise profitless).
Focus: What kind of acts are to be done, as they determine habits/character.
First Principle: Accordance with Right Reason: Acts must be in accordance with right reason (taken for granted, to be discussed later).
Inexactness of Practical Reasoning: All reasoning on matters of practice must be in outline merely, not scientifically exact.
Kind of reasoning varies with subject.
In practical/expediency matters, no invariable laws (like health).
Inexactness about Particular Cases: Even more inexact; no system of scientific rules or maxims.
Agent must consider special occasion requirements (medicine, navigation).
Help Provided: Nevertheless, will try to help.
Principle of Excess and Deficiency: In matters of this sort, both falling short and exceeding are fatal.
Analogy (Strength and Health): Too much/too little exercise destroys strength; too much/too little food ruins health.
Fitting amount produces, increases, preserves.
Application to Virtues: Same for temperance, courage, etc.
Shunning/fearing everything (cowardice); fearing nothing (foolhardy).
Taking all pleasure (profligate); shunning all (devoid of sensibility).
Conclusion: Temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and defect, preserved by moderation.
Virtues Produced, Preserved, Manifested by Same Occasions/Means:
Analogy (Strength): Produced by nourishment/hard work, strong man has capacity for these.
Application to Virtues: Abstaining from pleasure makes temperate, then best able to abstain.
Habituating to despise/face danger makes courageous, then best able to face danger.
Chapter 6: Viz. the Habit Of Choosing the Mean
Focus: Not just that virtue is a trained faculty, but what kind.
Function and Excellence: The virtue/excellence of a thing makes it good and perform its function well (e.g., eye's excellence makes it see well, horse's excellence makes it run well).
Man's Excellence: Proper excellence/virtue of man is the habit/trained faculty that makes him good and perform his function well.
Quantity and the Mean: Any quantity (continuous/discrete) admits larger, smaller, or equal amounts, either absolutely or relatively to our needs.
Equal/Fair Amount: A mean amount, between excess and deficiency.
Absolute Mean: Equidistant from both extremes, one and the same for all (e.g., 6 between 2 and 10).
Relative Mean: Neither too much nor too little for us; not one and the same for all.
Example: 6 pounds of food may be too much for some, too little for others (Milo vs. beginner).
Master of Any Art: Avoids too much/too little, seeks/chooses the relative mean.
Virtue's Aim: If art perfects work by looking to the mean (excellence destroyed by excess/deficiency, secured by mean), and if virtue is more exact and better than art, then virtue must aim at the mean (moral virtue specifically).
Concerns passions and actions, which admit of excess, deficiency, and the mean.
Example Emotions: Fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity, pleasure, pain.
Feeling too much/too little is wrong.
Virtuous Feeling: To be affected at the right times, on the right occasions, towards the right persons, with the right object, in the right fashion (mean course, best course).
Outward Acts: Also admit of excess, deficiency, and the mean.
Conclusion on Virtue's Domain: Deals with feelings/passions and outward acts.
Excess is wrong, deficiency is blamed.
Mean Amount: Praised and right (both characteristics of virtue).
Virtue as Moderation (μεσότης):
It is a moderation, aiming at the mean/moderate amount.
"Evil is infinite in nature…while good is finite" (Pythagorean figure).
Many ways to go wrong, only one to go right (easy to miss mark, hard to hit).
Excess/deficiency characterize vice; hitting the mean characterizes virtue.
"Goodness is simple, ill takes any shape."
Definition of Virtue: "A habit or trained faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in moderation or observance of the mean relatively to the persons concerned, as determined by reason, i.e. by the reason by which the prudent man would determine it."
Moderation (between Two Vices): Stands in the middle between two vices (one of excess, one of defect).
Choosing the Mean: While vices fall short/exceed due measure, virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Essence vs. Perfection: In its essence, virtue is a middle state; but in relation to what is best and right, it is the extreme of perfection.
Not All Actions/Passions Admit Moderation: Some actions/passions imply badness by their very names (malevolence, shamelessness, envy, adultery, theft, murder).
These are bad in themselves, not just in excess/deficiency.
Impossible to go right in them; always wrong.
Rightness/wrongness doesn't depend on person/occasion/manner; the mere act is wrong.
Absurdity of Mean in Badness: Equally absurd to seek moderation in unjust/cowardly/profligate conduct (would imply moderation in excess/deficiency).
No excess/deficiency in temperance/courage (mean is extreme of perfection).
Similarly, no moderation/excess/deficiency in inherently bad acts, they are wrong however done.