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• Preface to the Fifth Edition.
• Book I.: The End.
• 1.: In All He Does Man Seeks Same Good As End Or Means.
• 2.: The End Is the Good; Our Subject Is This and Its Science Politics.
• 3.: Exactness Not Permitted By Subject Nor to Be Expected By Student, Who Needs Experience and Training.
• 4.: Men Agree That the Good Is Happiness, But Differ As to What This Is.
• 5.: The Good Cannot Be Pleasure, Nor Honour, Nor Virtue.
• 6.: Various Arguments to Show Against the Platonists That There Cannot Be One Universal Good.
• 7.: The Good Is the Final End, and Happiness Is This.
• 8.: This View Harmonizes Various Current Views.
• 9.: It Happiness Acquired, Or the Gift of Gods Or of Chance?
• 10.: Can No Man Be Called Happy During Life?
• 11.: Cannot the Fortunes of Survivors Affect the Dead?
• 12.: Happiness As Absolute End Is Above Praise.
• 13.: Division of the Faculties and Resulting Division of the Virtues.
• Book II.: Moral Virtue.
• 1.: Moral Virtue Is Acquired By the Repetition of the Corresponding Acts.
• 2.: These Acts Must Be Such As Reason Prescribes; They Can’t Be Defined Exactly, But Must Be Neither Too Much Nor Too Little.
• 3.: Virtue Is In Various Ways Concerned With Pleasure and Pain.
• 4.: The Conditions of Virtuous Action As Distinct From Artistic Production.
• 5.: Virtue Not an Emotion, Nor a Faculty, But a Trained Faculty Or Habit.
• 6.: Viz., the Habit of Choosing the Mean.
• 7.: This Must Be Applied to the Several Virtues.
• 8.: The Two Vicious Extremes Are Opposed to One Another and to the Intermediate Virtue.
• 9.: The Mean Hard to Hit, and Is a Matter of Perception, Not of Reasoning.
• Book III.
• Chapters 1–5.: the Will.
• 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.
• 2.: Purpose, a Mode of Will, Means Choice After Deliberation.
• 3.: We Deliberate On What We Can Do—not On Ends, But Means.
• 4.: We Wish For
• 5.: Virtue and Vice Are Alike Voluntary, Our Acts Are Our Own; For We Are Punished For Them; 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 Ou
• Chapters 6—12: the Several Moral Virtues and Vices.
• 6.: Of Courage and the Opposite Vices.
• 7. Of Courage (continued)
• 8. Of Courage Improperly So Called.
• 9.: How Courage Involves Both Pain and Pleasure.
• 10.: Of Temperance.
• 11. Of Temperance (continued)
• 12.: How Profligacy Is More Voluntary Than Cowardice.
• Book IV.: The Several Moral Virtues and Vices— Continued.
• 1.: Of Liberality.
• 2.: Of Magnificence.
• 3.: Of High-mindedness
• 4.: Of a Similar Virtue In Smaller Matters.
• 5.: Of Gentleness.
• 6.: Of Agreeableness.
• 7.: Of Truthfulness.
• 8.: Of Wittiness.
• 9.: Of the Feeling of Shame
• Book V.: The Several Moral Virtues and Vices— Concluded. Justice.
• 1.: Preliminary Two Senses of Justice Distinguished Justice (l) = Obedience to Law = Complete Virtue.
• 2.: Of Justice (2) = Fairness, How Related to Justice (1). What Is Just In Distribution Distinguished From What Is Just In Correction.
• 3.: Of What Is Just In Ditribution and Its Rule of Geometrical Proportion.
• 4.: Of That Which Is Just In Correction, and Its Rule of Arithmetical Proportion.
• 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).
• 6.: ( One Can Act Unjustly Without Being Unjust. ) That Which Is Just In the Strict Sense Is Between Citizens Only, For It Implies Law.
• 7.: It Is In Part Natural, In Part Conventional.
• 8.: The Internal Conditions of a Just Or Unjust Action, and of a Just Or Unjust Agent.
• 9.: Sundry Questions About Doing and Suffering Injustice
• 10.: Of Equity
• 11.: Can a Man Wrong Himself?
• Book VI.: The Intellectual Virtues.
• 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.
• 2.: The Function of the Intellect, Both In Practice and Speculation, Is to Attain Truth.
• 3.: Of the Five Modes of Attaining Truth: (1) of Demonstrative Science of Things Invariable.
• 4.: Of Knowledge of Things Variable, Viz. (2) of Art In What We Make;
• 5.: And (3) of Prudence In What We Do, the Virtue of the Calculative Intellect.
• 6.: (4) of Intuitive Reason As the Basis of Demonstrative Science.
• 7.: (5) of Wisdom As the Union of Science and Intuitive Reason. Comparison of the Two Intellectual Virtues, Wisdom and Prudence.
• 8.: Prudence Compared With Statesmanship and Other Forms of Knowledge.
• 9.: Of Deliberation.
• 10.: Of Intelligence
• 11.: Of Judgment of Reason Or Intuitive Perception As the Basis of the Practical Intellect.
• 12.: Of the Uses of Wisdom and Prudence. How Prudence Is Related to Cleverness.
• 13.: How Prudence Is Related to Moral Virtue
• Book VII.
• Chapters 1–10.: Characters Other Than Virtue and Vice.
• 1.: Of Continence and Incontinence, Heroic Virtue and Brutality. of Method. Statement of Opinions About Continence.
• 2.: Statement of Difficulties As to How One Can Know Right and Do Wrong.
• 3.: Solution: to Know Has Many Senses; In What Sense Such a Man Knows.
• 4.: Of Incontinence In the Strict and In the Metaphorical Sense.
• 5.: Of Incontinence In Respect of Brutal Or Morbid Appetites.
• 6.: Incontinence In Anger Less Blamed Than In Appetite.
• 7.: Incontinence Yields to Pleasure, Softness to Pain. Two Kinds of Incontinence, the Hasty and the Weak.
• 8.: Incontinence Compared With Vice and Virtue.
• 9.: Continence and Incontinence Not Identical With Keeping and Breaking a Resolution.
• 10.: Prudence Is Not, But Cleverness Is, Compatible With Incontinence.
• Chapters 11—14.: of Pleasure.
• 11.: We Must Now Discuss Pleasure. Opinions About It.
• 12.: Answers to Arguments Against Goodness of Pleasure. Ambiguity of Good and Pleasant. Pleasure Not a Transition, But Unimpeded Activity.
• 13.: Pleasure Is Good, and the Pleasure That Consists In the Highest Activity Is the Good. All Admit That Happiness Is Pleasant. Bodily Pleasures Not the Only Pleasures.
• 14.: Of the Bodily Pleasures, and the Distinction Between Naturally and Accidentally Pleasant.
• Book VIII.: Friendship Or Love.
• 1.: Uses of Friendship. Differences of Opinion About It.
• 2.: Three Motives of Friendship. Friendship Defined.
• 3.: Three Kinds of Friendship, Corresponding to the Three Motives Perfect Friendship Is That Whose Motive Is the Good.
• 4.: The Others Are Imperfect Copies of This.
• 5.: Intercourse Necessary to the Maintenance of Friendship.
• 6.: Impossible to Have Many True Friends.
• 7.: Of Friendship Between Unequal Persons and Its Rule of Proportion. Limits Within Which This Is Possible.
• 8.: Of Loving and Being Loved.
• 9.: Every Society Has Its Own Form of Friendship As of Justice. All Societies Are Summed Up In Civil Society.
• 10.: Of the Three Forms of Constitution.
• 11.: Of the Corresponding Forms of Friendship.
• 12.: Of the Friendship of Kinsmen and Comrades.
• 13.: Of the Terms of Interchange and Quarrels Hence Arising In Equal Friendships.
• 14.: Of the Same In Unequal Friendships.
• Book IX.: Friendship Or Love— Continued.
• 1.: Of the Rule of Proportion In Dissimilar Friendships.
• 2.: Of the Conflict of Duties.
• 3.: Of the Dissolution of Friendships.
• 4.: A Man’s Relation to His Friend Like His Relation to Himself.
• 5.: Friendship and Goodwill.
• 6.: Friendship and Unanimity
• 7.: Why Benefactors Love More Than They Are Loved.
• 8.: In What Sense It Is Right to Love One’s Self.
• 9.: Why a Happy Man Needs Friends.
• 10.: Of the Proper Number of Friends.
• 11.: Friends Needed Both In Prosperity and Adversity.
• 12.: Friendship Is Realized In Living Together.
• Book X.
• Chapters 1–5.: Pleasure.
• 1.: Reasons For Discussing Pleasure.
• 2.: Arguments of Eudoxus That Pleasure Is the Good.
• 3.: Argument That It Is Not a Quality; That It Is Not Determined; That It Is a Motion Or Coming Into Being. Pleasures Differ In Kind.
• 4.: Pleasure Defined: Its Relation to Activity.
• 5.: Pleasures Differ According to the Activities the Standard Is the Good Man.
• Chapters 6–9.: Conclusion.
• 6.: Happiness Not Amusement, But Life.
• 7.: Of the Speculative Life As Happiness In the Highest Sense.
• 8.: Of the Practical Life As Happiness In a Lower Sense, and of the Relation Between the Two. Prosperity, How Far Needed.
• 9.: How Is the End to Be Realized?

13.

Division of the faculties and resulting division of the virtues.

Since happiness is an exercise of the vital faculties in accordance with perfect virtue or excellence, we will now inquire about virtue or excellence; for this will probably help us in our inquiry about happiness.

And indeed the true statesman seems to be especially concerned with virtue, for he wishes to make the citizens good and obedient to the laws. Of this we have an example in the Cretan and the Lacedæmonian lawgivers, and any others who have resembled them. But if the inquiry belongs to Politics or the science of the state, it is plain that it will be in accordance with our original purpose to pursue it.

The virtue or excellence that we are to consider is, of course, the excellence of man; for it is the good of man and the happiness of man that we started to seek. And by the excellence of man I mean excellence not of body, but of soul; for happiness we take to be an activity of the soul.

If this be so, then it is evident that the statesman must have some knowledge of the soul, just as the man who is to heal the eye or the whole body must have some knowledge of them, and that the more in proportion as the science of the state is higher and better than medicine. But all educated physicians take much pains to know about the body.

As statesmen [or students of Politics], then, we must inquire into the nature of the soul, but in so doing we must keep our special purpose in view and go only so far as that requires; for to go into minuter detail would be too laborious for the present undertaking.

Now, there are certain doctrines about the soul which are stated elsewhere with sufficient precision, and these we will adopt.

Two parts of the soul are distinguished, an irrational and a rational part.

Whether these are separated as are the parts of the body or any divisible thing, or whether they are only distinguishable in thought but in fact inseparable, like concave and convex in the circumference of a circle, makes no difference for our present purpose.

Of the irrational part, again, one division seems to be common to all things that live, and to be possessed by plants—I mean that which causes nutrition and growth; for we must assume that all things that take nourishment have a faculty of this kind, even when they are embryos, and have the same faculty when they are full grown; at least, this is more reasonable than to suppose that they then have a different one.

The excellence of this faculty, then, is plainly one that man shares with other beings, and not specifically human.

And this is confirmed by the fact that in sleep this part of the soul, or this faculty, is thought to be most active, while the good and the bad man are undistinguishable when they are asleep (whence the saying that for half their lives there is no difference between the happy and the miserable; which indeed is what we should expect; for sleep is the cessation of the soul from those functions in respect of which it is called good or bad), except that they are to some slight extent roused by what goes on in their bodies, with the result that the dreams of the good man are better than those of ordinary people.

However, we need not pursue this further, and may dismiss the nutritive principle, since it has no place in the excellence of man.

But there seems to be another vital principle that is irrational, and yet in some way partakes of reason. In the case of the continent and of the incontinent man alike we praise the reason or the rational part, for it exhorts them rightly and urges them to do what is best; but there is plainly present in them another principle besides the rational one, which fights and struggles against the reason. For just as a paralyzed limb, when you will to move it to the right, moves on the contrary to the left, so is it with the soul; the incontinent man’s impulses run counter to his reason. Only whereas we see the refractory member in the case of the body, we do not see it in the case of the soul. But we must nevertheless, I think, hold that in the soul too there is something beside the reason, which opposes and runs counter to it (though in what sense it is distinct from the reason does not matter here).

It seems, however, to partake of reason also, as we said: at least, in the continent man it submits to the reason; while in the temperate and courageous man we may say it is still more obedient; for in him it is altogether in harmony with the reason.

The irrational part, then, it appears, is twofold. There is the vegetative faculty, which has no share of reason; and the faculty of appetite or of desire in general, which in a manner partakes of reason or is rational as listening to reason and submitting to its sway,—rational in the sense in which we speak of rational obedience to father or friends, not in the sense in which we speak of rational apprehension of mathematical truths. But all advice and all rebuke and exhortation testify that the irrational part is in some way amenable to reason.

If then we like to say that this part, too, has a share of reason, the rational part also will have two divisions: one rational in the strict sense as possessing reason in itself, the other rational as listening to reason as a man listens to his father.

Now, on this division of the faculties is based the division of excellence; for we speak of intellectual excellences and of moral excellences; wisdom and understanding and prudence we call intellectual, liberality and temperance we call moral virtues or excellences. When we are speaking of a man’s moral character we do not say that he is wise or intelligent, but that he is gentle or temperate. But we praise the wise man, too, for his habit of mind or trained faculty; and a habit or trained faculty that is praiseworthy is what we call an excellence or virtue.

BOOK II.

MORAL VIRTUE.