ARISTOTLE – NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
TEXT PAGES: 275, 278-280, 283-285, 287-289, 324-325 (CLASSICS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 8TH EDITION, STEVEN M. CAHN, EDITOR (HACKETT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 2012) • Ethically, the “best good” for humans is “happiness,” which is an end-in-itself; happiness, eudaimonia, is understood as “… the whole of well-being and the good, [a] flourishing life” • The “best good” is an “activity of the soul in accord with virtue” which must involve reason; virtue is aligned with virtuosity, excellence – here, what is morally “excellent” over a “complete life” • The “soul” has two major components, which, in turn are divided into two parts: (1) the “rational,” comprised of the theoretical (scientific) and the practical (contemplative/deliberative); (2) the “nonrational,” made up of the “plantlike” (vegetative) and [appetitive]. In humans, the appetitive has a “share in reason” though can [clash] with it • There are two types of virtue: “… thought… and… character.” The former is taught while the latter results from “habit” (ethos), requiring practice and instillation while young • Virtue is a “state” (a disposition), not a “feeling” or a “capacity… [and] [e]very virtue causes its possessors to be in good state and to perform their functions well.” For “character,” that state is “intermediate” (a “mean”) between “deficiency” and “excess,” recognized by reason and “relative” to an individual’s situation • Not every “action or feeling” has a mean: “… spite, shamelessness, envy… among feelings… adultery, theft, murder, among actions”; they are wrong in themselves, easily recognized as such • The “best happiness” involves “study” or “understanding” (exercises of the mind, “wisdom”) and is a source of the finest “pleasure”; philosophy is the paradigmatic example and even produces self-sufficiency as it can be practiced while alone