The Nicomachean Ethics
In his ethical treatises Aristotle offers a defense of the idea of eudaimonism (human flourishing or happiness) which is achieved as a result of human choice in search of excellence and the good life.
The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. F.H. Peters, M.A. 5th edition (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., 1893).
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- Author: Aristotle
- Translator: F.H. Peters
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Table of Contents
- PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
- CONSPECTUS.
- TABLE OF CONTENTS.
- 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 our nature; for (1) vice would still be as voluntary as virtue, (2) we help to make ourselves what we are.
- CHAPTER 6.—: THE SEVERAL MORAL VIRTUES AND VICES.
- 6.: Of courage and the opposite vices.
- 7.
- 8.: Of courage improperly so called.
- 9.: How courage involves both pain and pleasure.
- 10.: Of temperance.
- 11.
- 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?
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