The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• 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?

7.

Of truthfulness.

The moderation which lies between boastfulness and irony (which virtue also lacks a name) seems to display itself in almost the same field.

It will be as well to examine these qualities also; for we shall know more about human character, when we have gone through each of its forms; and we shall be more fully assured that the virtues are modes of observing the mean, when we have surveyed them all and found that this is the case with every one of them.

We have already spoken of the characters that are displayed in social intercourse in the matter of pleasure and pain; let us now go on to speak in like manner of those who show themselves truthful or untruthful in what they say and do, and in the pretensions they put forward.

First of all, then, the boaster seems to be fond of pretending to things that men esteem, though he has them not, or not to such extent as he pretends; the ironical man, on the other hand, seems to disclaim what he has, or to depreciate it; while he who observes the mean, being a man who is “always himself” (αὐθέκαστός τις), is truthful in word and deed, confessing the simple facts about himself, and neither exaggerating nor diminishing them.

Now, each of these lines of conduct may be pursued either with an ulterior object or without one.

When he has no ulterior object in view, each man speaks and acts and lives according to his character.

But falsehood in itself is vile and blamable; truth is noble and praiseworthy in itself.

And so the truthful man, as observing the mean, is praiseworthy, while the untruthful characters are both blamable, but the boastful more than the ironical.

Let us speak then of each of them, and first of the truthful character.

We must remember that we are not speaking of the man who tells the truth in matters of business, or in matters which come within the sphere of injustice and justice (for these matters would belong to another virtue); the man we are considering is the man who in cases where no such important issues are involved is truthful in his speech and in his life, because that is his character.

Such a man would seem to be a good man (ἐπιεικής). For he who loves truth, and is truthful where nothing depends upon it, will still more surely tell the truth where serious interests are involved; he will shun falsehood as a base thing here, seeing that he shunned it elsewhere, apart from any consequences: but such a man merits praise.

He inclines rather towards under-statement than over-statement of the truth; and this seems to be the more suitable course, since all exaggeration is offensive.

On the other hand, he who pretends to more than he has with no ulterior object [the boaster proper] seems not to be a good character (for if he were he would not take pleasure in falsehood), but to be silly rather than bad.

But of boasters who have an ulterior object, he whose object is reputation or honour is not very severely censured (just as the boaster proper is not), but he whose object is money, or means of making money, is held in greater reproach.

But we must observe that what distinguishes the boaster proper from the other kinds of boasters, is not his faculty of boasting, but his preference for boasting: the boaster proper is a boaster by habit, and because that is his character; just as there is on the one hand the liar proper, who delights in falsehood itself, and on the other hand the liar who lies through desire of honour or gain.

Those who boast with a view to reputation pretend to those things for which a man is commended or is thought happy; those whose motive is gain pretend to those things which are of advantage to others, and whose absence may escape detection, e.g. to skill in magic or in medicine. And so it is usually something of this sort that men pretend to and boast of; for the conditions specified are realized in them.

Ironical people, on the other hand, with their depreciatory way of speaking of themselves, seem to be of a more refined character; for their motive in speaking thus seems to be not love of gain, but desire to avoid parade: but what they disclaim seems also* to be especially that which men esteem—of which Socrates was an instance.

But those who disclaim† petty advantages which they evidently possess are called affected (βαυκοπανο[Editor: illegible character]ργοι), and are more easily held in contempt. And sometimes this self-depreciation is scarcely distinguishable from boasting, as for instance dressing like a Spartan; for there is something boastful in extreme depreciation as well as in exaggeration.

But those who employ irony in moderation, and speak ironically in matters that are not too obvious and palpable, appear to be men of refinement.

Finally, the boaster seems to be especially the opposite of the truthful man; for he is worse than the ironical man.

[* ]The things that the boaster pretends to are also the things that the ironical man disclaims.

[† ]Omitting προσποιούμενοι. See Bywater.