Aristotle 384-322 B.C.
Courtesy of translator Giles Laurén, author of The Stoic's Bible from Aristotle. The Nichomean Ethics. W. D. Ross.
- Excellence of deliberation is not opinion. The man who deliberates badly makes mistakes while he who deliberates well does so correctly; correctness in deliberation is the truth that determines opinion. Excellent deliberation attains what is good which is the aim of the man of practical wisdom
ARIST. Nico. VI.9.
- Understanding is neither about things that are unchangeable nor about things changeable; it is about the objects of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom issues commands, its object is to do the right thing; understanding decides.
ARIST. Nico. VI.10.
- The equitable man is above all others a sympathetic judge who identifies equity with certain fact correctly.
ARIST. Nico. VI.11.
- No one is a philosopher by nature; people have by natural judgement, understanding and intuitive reason. We ought to attend to the sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom since experience has given them insight,
ARIST. Nico. VI.11.
- As health produces health, so does philosophic wisdom produce happiness. Wisdom is a part of virtue that once possessed makes a man happy.
ARIST. Nico. VI.12.
- The work of man is achieved in accordance with practical wisdom and moral virtue; virtue makes us aim at the right mark and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.
ARIST. Nico. VI.12.
- In order to be good a man must be in a certain state when he acts and must act by choice for the sake of the acts themselves.
ARIST. Nico. VI.12.
- Socrates was wrong in thinking that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom and right and in thinking they all implied practical wisdom. Socrates thought the virtues were rules or rational principles, while we think they involve a rational principle.
ARIST. Nico. VI.13.
- Three moral states are to be avoided: vice, incontinence, and brutishness. Their contraries are virtue, continence and godliness.
ARIST. Nico. VII.1.
- Both continence and endurance are included among the good things and incontinence and softness among what is bad. The continent man will abide by the result of his calculations while the incontinent will not and therefore the incontinent man in doing what he knows to be wrong is a bad man.
ARIST. Nico. VII.1.
- Socrates thought differently, he believed that people only act badly through ignorance.
ARIST. Nico. VII.2.
- The man asleep, mad or drunk may have knowledge and not use it, and this is the condition of men under the influence of passions.
ARIST. Nico. VII.3.
- The fact that men use language that flows from knowledge means nothing, even men in passion utter scientific proofs and verses of Empedocles, and those just learning a science can string together its phrases without understanding them. The language of the incontinent man is no more than the speech of actors on the stage.
ARIST. Nico. VII.3.
- We call self-indulgent rather than incontinent the man who, with but slight appetite, pursues the excesses of pleasure and avoids moderate pains.
ARIST. Nico. VII.4.
- Every excessive state, whether of folly, cowardice, self-indulgence, or bad temper, is either brutish or morbid. Foolish people who are by nature thoughtless and live by their senses alone are brutish.
ARIST. Nico. VII.5.
- Aristotle We pardon people more easily for following natural desires.
ARIST. Nico. VII.6.
- One who acts in anger acts with pain while one who commits outrage acts with pleasure.
ARIST. Nico. VII.6.
- The incontinence concerned with appetite is more disgraceful than that concerned with anger; continence and incontinence are concerned with bodily appetites and pleasures. Some are natural and human, others are brutish and others are due to injury or disease; only the first sort are subject to temperance and self-indulgence.
ARIST. Nico. VII.6.
- Brutishness is less evil than vice, though more alarming; the better part has not been perverted, as in man; they have no better part. It is like comparing the vice of a lifeless thing with that of the living. That badness which has no originative source of movement is always less harmful than a reasoned source. A bad man will do ten thousand times as much evil as a brute.
ARIST. Nico. VII.6.
- The state of most people is intermediate, even if they lean towards the worse state. The man who pursues to excess things pleasant or necessary by choice, is self-indulgent. Such a man is unlikely to repent, and is therefore incurable.
ARIST. Nico. VII.7.
- Incontinence has two sorts: impetuosity and weakness. Some men deliberate and fail owing to their emotion, others because they have not deliberated are led by their emotion. Keen and excitable people suffer especially from impetuous incontinence; the former by reason of the quickness of their passions and the latter, by the violence of their passions, do not await the argument because they are apt to follow their imagination.
ARIST. Nico. VII.7.
- The self-indulgent man is not apt to repent and stands by his choice, while the incontinent man is likely to repent, therefore the self-indulgent man is incurable and the incontinent man curable.
ARIST. Nico. VII.8.
- Incontinence is not vice for it is contrary to choice while vice flows from choice.
ARIST. Nico. VII.8.
- People who are strong-headed are the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish. The opinionated are influenced by pleasure and pain; they delight in the victory they gain if they are not persuaded to change and pained if their opinions are dismissed.
ARIST. Nico. VII.9.
- A man of practical wisdom has both knowledge and ability to act; the incontinent man has knowledge but lacks the ability to act.
ARIST. Nico. VII.9.
- The incontinent man is like the city that passes the right decrees and has good laws, but makes no use of them. The wicked man is like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to use.
ARIST. Nico. VII.10.
- I say that habit's but long practice, friend, And this becomes men's nature in the end. Evenus.
ARIST. Nico. VII.10.
- There are pleasures that involve no pain or appetite, such as contemplation. Neither practical wisdom nor any state of being is impeded by the pleasure arising from it; it is foreign pleasures that impede, for the pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more.
ARIST. Nico. VII.12.
- The self-indulgent man exceeds himself in the bodily pleasures, whereas the temperate man avoids them and finds his pleasures elsewhere.
ARIST. Nico. VII. 12.
- No activity is perfect when it is impeded and happiness is a perfect thing; this is why the happy man needs the goods of the body and external goods so that he may not be impeded. Those who say that the victim on the rack, or the man who falls into great misfortune is happy if he is good, are talking nonsense. Because we need fortune as well as other things, some people think good fortune is the same thing as happiness. It is not, even good fortune in excess is an impediment and its limit is fixed by happiness.
ARIST. Nico. VII.13.
- We consider bodily pleasures first because we most often steer our course on their account and because all men share them; because they are familiar men think there are no others. The life of the good man will not be more pleasant than that of others if his activities are not more pleasant.
ARIST. Nico. VII.13.
- Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.1.
- Friendship seems to hold states together as lawmakers care for it more than justice; unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy. The truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.1.
- Those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they hope to get from each other. Those who love for the sake of utility or pleasure love for the sake of what is good for themselves.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.3.
- The useful is not permanent and is always changing. When the motive for friendship dies so does the friendship. Older people pursue the useful rather than the pleasant and sometimes they do not even find each other pleasant and need little companionship except for utility; they are pleasant to each other only in so far as they rouse in each other hopes for something good to come. The friendships of young people seem to aim at pleasures whose nature changes; this is why they are quick to make and quick to cease friendships. Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good and alike in virtue, for these like each other for their goodness and are good themselves. Such friendships require time and familiarity.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.3.
- For the sake of pleasure or utility even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of bad, but for their own sake only good men can become friends. Bad men do not delight in each other unless some advantages come of the relation.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.4.
- Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily, for there is little that is pleasant in them.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.5.
- One cannot be a friend to many people in the same sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them. One must acquire some experience of the other person and become familiar with him, and that is hard. Friendship based on utility is for the commercially minded. The good man is at the same time pleasant and useful; such a man does not become the friend of one who surpasses him in station unless he is surpassed also in virtue.
ARIST. Nico. VIII. 6.
- There is another form of friendship that involves inequalities such as between father and son and elder and younger.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.7.
- Most people, owing to ambition, wish to be loved rather than to love, and this is why men love flattery. Most people enjoy being honoured by those in positions of authority because they hope to use them in the future.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.8.
- In every community there is a form of justice and friendship. Men address as friends their fellow-voyagers and fellow-soldiers and so too those associated with them in many other forms of community.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.9.
- There are three kinds of constitution: monarchy, aristocracy, and that based on property, timocratic. The best is monarchy, the worst timocracy. Monarchy deviates to tyranny; the king looks to his people's interest; the tyrant looks to his own. Aristocracy passes over to oligarchy by the badness of its rulers who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city; most of the good things go to themselves and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over to democracy since both are ruled by the majority.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.10.
- In democracies there is more friendship than under the other forms of governance since the citizens are equal and have much in common.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.11.
- Complaints and reproaches arise chiefly in friendships of utility as is to be expected. Friends by virtue are anxious to do well by each other and avoid conflict.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.13.
- Most men wish for what is noble and choose what is advantageous. It is noble to do well by others, but receiving benefits is advantageous. We should consider our benefactor and the terms on which he is acting so that we might accept the benefit on those terms, or else decline it.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.13.
- It is disputable whether we ought to measure a service by its utility to the receiver and make the return with that in view, or by the benevolence of the giver. Those who receive say they have received what meant little to the giver and what they might have got from others; while the givers on the contrary say it was the biggest thing they had and what could not have been got from others. If the friendship is one of utility, surely the advantage to the receiver is the measure.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.13.
- Differences arise also in friendships based on superiority; for each expects to get more out of them, but when this happens the friendship is dissolved. Not only does the better man think he should get more, since more should be assigned to a good man, but the more useful similarly expects this. They think, as in a commercial friendship, those who put in more should get more. What is the use of being the friend of a good man or a powerful man, if one is to get nothing out of it?
ARIST. Nico. VIII.14.
- It seems that each party is justified in his claim and each should get more out of the friendship than the other, but not more of the same thing. To the superior, more honour and to the inferior more gain, for honour is the prize of virtue, while gain is the assistance required by inferiority.
ARIST. Nico. VIII. 14.
- In civil arrangements likewise: the man who contributes nothing to the common stock is not honoured, for what belongs to the public is given to the man who benefits the public and honour lies in the hands the public. It is not possible to get wealth from the common stock and at the same time honour.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.14.
- The man who is benefited in wealth or virtue must give honour in return, and repay what he can; friendship asks a man to do what he can and not what is proportional.
ARIST. Nico. VIII.14.
- In the friendship of lovers, sometimes the lover claims his excess of love is not returned, while often the beloved complains that the lover who formerly promised everything now performs nothing. Such incidents occur when the lover loves for pleasure while the beloved loves for utility, and they do not each possess the qualities expected of them.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- Friendships are transient when they involve transient qualities. The love of character endures because it is self-dependant.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- Each looks to what he wants and it is for that that he will give what he has.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- Whenever Protagoras taught anything, he bade the learner assess the value of the knowledge and accepted the amount so fixed.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- Those who are paid first and then do none of the promised things naturally find themselves complained about, for they did not do what they agreed to. The sophists are perhaps compelled to do this because no one would give them money for the things they know.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- It seems one should make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy, for their worth cannot be measured against money and they can get no honour with which to balance their services, but still it is perhaps enough to give them what one can.
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- The law holds that it is more just that the person to whom one has given should fix the terms. Should not the receiver assess a thing not at what it seems to be worth when he has it, but at what he assessed it at before he had it?
ARIST. Nico. IX.1.
- We must return benefits rather than oblige friends and pay back loans rather than loan to a friend.
ARIST. Nico. IX.2.
- Discussions about feelings and actions have just as much definiteness as their subject matter.
ARIST. Nico. IX.2.
- Should a friendship be broken off when our friend has changed? There is nothing strange in breaking off a friendship based on utility when one party has lost his attributes. When a man deceives himself into thinking he is loved for his qualities, and the other person thought nothing of the kind, he must blame himself. If a friend is turning wicked and yet is capable of being reformed, one should come to his assistance as this is more characteristic of friendship. We ought to oblige friends before strangers and to our friends we ought to make allowance.
ARIST. Nico. IX.3.
- Friendly relations with one's neighbours and the marks which define friendship proceed from a man's relations with himself. We define a friend as one who does what is good for the sake of his friend; one who wishes his friend to prosper for his own sake; one who is a familiar; one who has the same tastes; one who shares another's grief and joy.
ARIST. Nico. IX.4.
- Virtue and the good man seem to be the measure of all things. The memories of his past are delightful and his hopes for the future are good. His mind is well stored with subjects for contemplation. He grieves and rejoices with himself for his sentiments are unchanging and he has nothing to repent of. Incontinent people choose, instead of things they think good, things that are pleasant but harmful. Wicked people seek for people with whom to spend their days and escape from themselves, for they remember many a grievous deed and anticipate others when they are alone and only forget themselves when they are with others. Bad men are laden with repentance.
- The bad man is not amicably disposed, even to himself, because there is nothing in him to love.
ARIST. Nico. IX.4.
- We may feel goodwill towards those who are not our friends.
ARIST. Nico. IX.5.
- A city is said to be unanimous when men have the same opinion about where their interest lies and choose the same action in common. Bad men cannot be unanimous any more than they can be friends, since they each aim at getting more than their share of advantages; In labour and public service they fall short of their share, and each wishing advantage for himself criticizes his neighbour and stands in his way. If people do not watch closely the common weal is soon destroyed. The result is a state of faction, all wiling to compel another, but unwilling themselves to do what is just.
ARIST. Nico. IX.6.
- It is human nature to be forgetful and to be more anxious to be treated well than to treat others well. Creditors have no friendly feeling towards their debtors and only a wish them well so they might repay what is owing. Every man likes his handiwork better than it would love him if it were to come alive. This is what benefactors feel towards their good deeds and how they are viewed in return. All men love more what they have won by labour; to be well treated seems to involve no labour, while to treat others well is a laborious task.
ARIST. Nico. IX.7.
- We criticize men for self-love, and yet, paradoxically, the good man is best able to love himself. If all were to strive for noble actions it would be best for the commonweal that everyone would secure for himself the goods that are greatest.
ARIST. Nico. IX.8.
- When we assign all good things to the good man, should we not include friends who are the greatest external good? It is better to spend one's days with friends than with strangers.
ARIST. Nico. IX.9.
- Happiness is found in the good man's actions. A good man delights in virtuous acts as a musician delights in good music. A certain training in virtue arises from the company of the good.
ARIST. Nico. IX.9.
- As to friends of utility and pleasure, there need be none beyond what is enough. As to true friends, they should be no more than could spend all their days together.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- Great friendship can only be felt towards a few people. We find many who are comradely, while famous friendships are between but two people.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- People with too many friends are said to be obsequious. It is possible to be a friend to many in a non-obsequious way, but a truly good friend who values character and virtue can have but a few.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- People of a manly nature guard against making their friends grieve for them. We ought to summon our friends to share our good fortunes, but summon them in our bad fortunes with hesitation. Enough is my misfortune. Proverb.
- It is fitting to go unasked and readily to the aid of those in adversity and especially to those who are in need and have not demanded aid. When friends are prosperous we should join in their activities, but be tardy in coming forward as objects of their kindness.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- Friendship is a partnership, and as a man is to himself, so he is to his friend.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- The friendship of evil men turns out an evil thing while the friendship of good men is good; for from each other they take the mould of the characteristics they approve. Noble deeds from noble men. Theognis.
ARIST. Nico. IX.10.
- As most people are not good at drawing distinctions, true arguments seem most useful, not only to attain knowledge, but in living life also.
ARIST. Nico. X. 1.
- Eudoxus thought pleasure was a good because he saw all things, both rational and irrational aiming at it, and because in all things that which is the object of choice is what is excellent, and that which is most the object of choice the greatest good. The fact that all things move towards the same object indicated that this was for all things the chief good (for each thing, he argued, finds its own good, as it finds its own nourishment); and that which is good for all things and at which all aim was the good. His arguments were credited more because of the excellence of his character than for their own sake; he was thought to be remarkably self-controlled, and therefore it was thought that he was not speaking as a friend of pleasure, but that the facts really were so. He believed that the same conclusion followed no less from a study of the contrary of pleasure; pain is an object of aversion to all things, and therefore its contrary must be an object of choice. That is most an object of choice which we choose not because or for the sake of something else, and pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks to what end he is pleased, thus implying that pleasure is in itself an object of choice. Further he argued that pleasure when added to any good, e.g. to just or temperate action, makes it more worthy of choice, and that it is only by itself that the good can be increased.
ARIST. Nico. X.2.
- Plato proves the good not to be pleasure; he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without, and that if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good cannot become more desirable by the addition of anything to it.
ARIST. Nico. X.2.
- Neither is pleasure the good nor is all pleasure desirable; some pleasures are desirable in themselves, differing in kind or in their sources from others.
ARIST. Nico. X.3.
- Each of the pleasures is bound up with the activity it completes. An activity is intensified by its proper pleasure, since each class of things is better judged and brought to perfection by those who engage in the activity with pleasure. As activities are different, so are the corresponding pleasures.
ARIST. Nico. X.5.
- Different things seem valuable to boys and men and so they should to good men and bad. To each man the activity that agrees with his disposition is most desirable; to the good man that accords with virtue.
ARIST. Nico. X.6.
- If happiness is an activity natural to virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accord with the highest virtue and that will be the best thing in us; the activity of contemplation.
ARIST. Nico. X.7.
- A philosopher, as any other man, needs the necessaries of life, yet unlike others, he is self-sufficient since he can contemplate alone. Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; we busy ourselves that we might have leisure just as we make war that we may live in peace.
ARIST. Nico. X.7.
- We must not follow those who advise us to think as human things, but we must as best we can make ourselves immortal and strain with every nerve to live according to the best thing in us. That which is proper to every thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for a man the life according to reason is best and most pleasant since reason more than anything else is man.
ARIST. Nico. X.7.
- Happiness extends just so far as contemplation does. Being human, one will need external prosperity for our nature is not self-sufficient and our body needs food and other attention. Still a man needs few and not great things and nothing to excess. Anaxagoras thought that the happy man would be neither rich nor potent when he said that he would not be surprised if the happy man were to seem to most people a strange person. Should not the benevolent gods approve in man that which most resembles themselves?
ARIST. Nico. X.8.
- Where there are things to be done, the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but to do them. Proverb.
ARIST. Nico. X.9.
- It is not enough to know of virtue, we must try to have and use it. If arguments were enough to make men good, they would as Thegonis says, have won great awards. The student must first be cultivated by means of noble habits for noble joy and noble hatred; for he who lives in a passion does not hear argument nor understand what he hears. It is difficult to get from youth onwards a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under the right laws. For this reason the nurture and occupations of youth should be fixed by law; they will not be painful when they have become customary.
ARIST. Nico. X.9.
- I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
ARIST. Stobaeus. Florilegium.
