NICOMACHEAN ETHICS: ARISTOTLE
BOOK 1: THE HUMAN GOOD
● All human activities aim at some good; some
goods subordinate to others
○ It is the nature of products to be better
than activities
○ Highest ends (ends in themselves)
■ things we desire and pursue
for their own sake
○ Subordinate ends
■ Mere means to higher ends
● Politics
○ science of human good because it
decides which sciences should be
studied in a state
○ securing highest ends for human life /
overall human good
● Nature of the Politics
○ not precise, since what is best for one
person may not be best for another
○ noble/just actions are subject to
variety/fluctuation
○ Some: act for the end is aimed not at
mere knowledge, but action
○ Subject of ethics is complicated
■ Needs maturity of judgement
and familiarity with wide range
of facts
○ Educated men: a good judge in general
■ act with reason + knowledge
bring great benefits to us as
judges
○ Thus: good may only be rough outline.
○ Ethical inquiry results =/= exact
sciences
■ But the results are helpful in
guiding to a more adequate
understanding to live life at
best
● HUMAN GOOD
○ General: happiness (highest all goods)
and living well
■ Achievable by action
○ Multiple views of happiness
○ Plato: “Are we on the way to or from the
first principles?”
■ begin with things evident to us
(i.e: facts as a good starting
point)
● MISTAKEN SOURCE OF HAPPINESS:
○ Pleasure
■ Love the life of enjoyment
■ Three kinds of life:
● Life of Pleasure
● Political Life
● Contemplative life
○ Honor
■ Superior refinement people->
honor (end of the political life)
■ superficial bc it depends on
those who bestow honor
■ Only pursue honor for
reassurance.
■ Thus, virtue is better.
○ Wealth
■ merely useful for sake of
something else
● Is there even a Form of Good?
○ Doctrine: no priority or posteriority
○ Good has many senses of being (what
is good could be moderate, or useful)
○ Many sciences fall under good
○ Plato’s Theory of Forms
■ Some goods pursued for
themselves in a single form;
others: preserve prior
■ Thus, there are goods that are
pursued even when isolated
from others
○ Concern ourselves not with concept but
with how to be good
● CHIEF GOOD -> final and self-sufficient
○ Happiness -> for the sake of itself
○ Pleasure, honor, virtue, reason are
chosen bc they will make us happy
○ The “real” definition of what happiness
should be -> the characteristic, unique
function of man
● The “unique” good for man
○ Not unique: Life of nutrition/growth and
perception of our surrounding
○ Unique: RATIONALITY being obedient
to reason and exercising it in thought
○ Anyone is capable of carrying on and
articulating what is well outlines
○ Therefore: SUPREME GOOD -> Activity
of the rational soul related to virtue
(happiness = virtuous, rational, active)
○ Happiness is the best, noblest, and
most pleasant in the world.
● A “good” man
○ One who fulfills purpose for which
human beings exist (ability to reason)
○ exercise your ability to reason.
○ For critics, other unique characteristics
of men: Sociableness, aesthetic, sense
of duty, moral obligation
○ However for aristotle, these can’t
function properly w/o reason (mere
“activities” controlled by rationality)
● 3 KINDS OF GOOD
○ External, relating to soul or body, or
action and activity
○ Virtue, which we identify with
happiness, is in line with this for the
state of mind may exist without
producing any good result
○ For actions:
 ■ No rejoice in noble action =
not good
■ Virtuous actions = pleasant,
good, noble
● Need for external goods
○ impossible to do noble acts without the
right resources
○ lacking men = not likely to be happy
○ Happiness associated -> fortune/virtue
● Is happiness acquired by learning or habituation?
Is it sent by god or by chance?
○ Happiness -> not god-sent; result of
virtue, learning, training
■ virtuous activity of a soul
● Should no man be called happy while he lives?
○ Happy only until death
■ Paradox bc when do not wish
to call living men happy
■ Examined only when we
consider his life as a whole
○ Happy man -> throughout his life
■ contemplate what is excellent
■ Bear chances of a noble life
○ Activities determine character of life
■ Happy man = not miserable,
always do good acts
● Do the fortunes of the living affect the dead?
○ have some effect in the dead
○ Can not make the happy not happy or
produce any other kind of change
● Virtue = praiseworthy // happiness =above praise
○ Happiness = not a mere potentiality
○ For Eudoxus, there was the supremacy
of pleasure
● Kinds of virtue (Division of the soul and virtue)
○ Happiness - activity of the soul with
perfect virtue
○ Intellectual virtue vs. Moral virtue
(related to elements of the soul)
■ Intellectual: rational element
like understanding, acquisition
of wisdom, appreciation of
beauty, etc; it controls our
impulses
■ Moral: irrational elements like
bringing the appetites
(vegetative aspect- nutrition
and growth with little
connection to virtue) and
physical desires under the
control of reason (appetitive
aspect - for impulses)
● “Animal appetites” are not bad.
○ part of human nature
○ Bad when get out of control -> excess/
deficiency -> become harmful to soul
○ Guided by “golden mean” -> positive
○ Virtuous person w/ greater rationality =
control his or her impulses.
● Intellectual virtue are never in excess
○ They always enhance welfare of the
entire soul
BOOK 2: MORAL VIRTUE
● How we acquire moral virtue
○ Intellectual virtues: by instruction
○ Moral virtues: by habit and constant
practice although we are born with it
■ Behave right way, train
■ Learn by practice, not thinking
○ Not arise by nature
○ Possibilities for both good and evil up to
individual to determine that
○ States of character: arise like activities
○ Initially really hard and done by duty but
eventually will be easier and done by
habit (requires little effort)
● Good character
○ Good set of habits
○ Not until this has been formed can
someone be rightfully called good
○ While habits are formed, making
progress towards good life but not fully
arrived until it becomes nature
● No prescribed actions but never be excess/defect
○ act in accordance with correct reason
○ Agents: decide appropriate actions
○ mean between extremes of deficiency
and excess
■ Scared: coward
■ Fears nothing: rash.
■ All pleasure: self-indulgent
■ Shun pleasure: insensible
● Pleasure being virtuous= acquired disposition
○ Appropriate attitude towards pleasures
and pains
○ They are the reason why we do bad
■ abstain -> because of pain
● VIRTUE AND VICE
○ 3 choice: noble, advantageous, pleasant
○ 3 avoidance: base, injurious, painful
○ harder to fight against pleasure than
anger, but again, art + virtue concerned
with the harder
● Does one acquire virtues by doing virtuous acts?
○ Not always. Acts must be done justly or
temperately
○ Person: have knowledge, choose acts
for their own sake (based reason)
■ From established firm +
unchangeable character.
○ By doing just acts = produce just man
○ Temperate acts = temperate man
● CRITERIA: RIGHT WAY VS. ACCIDENT
○ know they are behaving in the right way
○ choose to behave right way for the sake
of being virtuous
○ behavior = fixed, virtuous disposition.
● MORAL VIRTUE
○ state of character, not passion/capacity
○ virtues have choices (unlike anger)
 ○ A disposition, not a feeling/faculty, to
behave in a right way
○ True moral virtue -> disposition to
choose the intermediate (equidistant)
○ Excess and defect = failures
○ Virtue brings excellence = done well
● INTERMEDIATES
○ Fear and confidence -> mean is courage
○ Pleasure and pain -> temperance
○ giving and taking money -> liberality
(defect: prodigality)
○ honor and dishonor -> proper pride
(excess: empty vanity, deficiency: undue
humility)
○ Passions -> righteous indignation is a
mean between envy and spite
● Characteristics: EXTREME & MEAN
○ Extremes -> opposed to other & mean
○ Vices -> excess and deficiency
○ Virtue -> the mean
○ Intermediate: some extremes = likeness,
two extremes = greatest unlikeness
○ Mean is hard to attain, grasped by
perception, not reasoning
○ Drag ourselves away from extremes
○ Ok to deviate little from goodness
■ extent is not easy to
determine by reasoning,
depends on facts + perception
● PRACTICAL RULES OF CONDUCT
○ Avoid extreme farther from the mean
○ notice susceptible errors, avoid them
○ Avoid pleasure bc it impedes judgment
BOOK 10: PLEASURE HAPPINESS
● Pleasure
○ intimately connected with human nature
○ Greatest bearing on virtue of character =
enjoy and hate things we ought
○ Pleasure -> not a movement
■ Some completed by long last
○ Best activity: best-conditioned organ
■ Not as permanent sate, but
with immanence as an end
○ No activity = no pleasure
● Pleasure as the supreme/chief good
○ Eudoxus: all things (rational/irrational)
aim for it, move towards it
○ Makes other good things more desirable
○ Pain -> an object of choice, aversion to
all things; opposite of pleasure
○ Plato: life more desirable with wisdom
○ Thus pleasure is not the ultimate
○ Criticisms:
■ Evil = pain /= pleasure = good
■ Commended for Eudoxus
character than arguments
● Pleasure as wholly bad
○ Pleasure = indeterminate bc of degrees
○ Judgment based on pleasures -> cannot
state cause of happiness
○ Pleasures differ in kind (from noble
sources vs base sources)
○ Other things to be kin w/o pleasure (eg.
seeing, remembering)
○ Not all pleasures are desirable
○ Criticism:
■ Pleasure is not a movement
from incomplete to complete;
we can’t be pleased quickly.
■ Complete pleasure is
hard/slow to attain
● No one is continuously pleased
○ incapable of continuous activity
○ delight us when new, but not much later
● Pleasure differ with the activities
○ Pleasure accompanies & perfects
activities, making it essential to life
○ Bound with activity completed
■ intensify activities altho
hindered by pleasures from
other sources
○ Pleasure do not completely differ, but
may vary in large extents
○ Enjoyed by a good person for the right
reasons are good
● HAPPINESS AS A GOOD ACTIVITY
○ Highest goal in life: happiness as an
activity that serves as an end in itself
○ not a state, desirable for its own sake
○ does not lie in amusement.
○ For a good man: valuable and pleasant -
> must be desirable activities
○ For Anacharsis: amuse yourself in order
that one may exert yourself, because
simple amusement is a type of
relaxation. Relaxation is however not an
end, but a means (not an ultimate end)
● CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE IS HAPPIEST
○ philosophic wisdom -> pleasantest of
virtuous activities
○ activity of our highest rational faculties
○ offers pleasures for purity & endurance
○ superior in worth because it aims at no
end beyond itself. It is the end
○ Philosopher contemplate truth best.
■ Most self-sufficient
○ Normal man: also can but needs others.
○ Reason -> Divine
■ Life according to it is divine
○ Practical wisdom -> virtue of character.
○ Will and deed -> essential to virtue
○ Contemplation is valuable
■ activity of god
○ External prosperity needed to nurture
○ Anaxagoras: happy man need not be a
rich man or a despot; just contemplate
● TO ATTAIN END: WE NEED LEGISLATION
○ to remold people bc we naturally pursue
our own pleasures, hardly have idea of
noble and truly pleasant.
 ○ Living according to passion -> close-
minded
○ Made good by: nature, habits, teaching
■ Thus, they must be fixed by
law to not be painful when
made customary.
● Practice and habituation also need laws
○ Good man:
■ well trained and habituated,
■ have occupations
■ neither willingly/ unwillingly
does bad actions
■ follows reason and right order
○ Individual education
■ advantageous over communal
■ Only for those w/ general
knowledge of what is good for
everyone
■ Parental supervision:
preferable to laws
● Thus, to be a master: be universal.
○ To do so, he needs laws.
○ Must be capable of legislating.
■ Inexperienced -> ok with
failure, incompetence. Many
things are valueless