Nicomachean Ethics (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Aristotle
• N. E.
• Viii
• A. Grant
• Dr Jackson
• Hector
• Mr Bywater

Quotes edit see section history

• “Our account of this science will be adequate if it achieves such clarity as the subject-matter allows; for the same degree of precision is not to be expected in all discussions, any more than in all products of handicraft.”

  This statement, which appears in Book I, Chapter 3, is the first of a number of caveats with which Aristotle warns us not to expect any precise rules or codes of conduct.

• “Contemplation is both the highest form of activity (since the intellect is the highest thing in us, and the objects that it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also it is the most continuous, because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.”

  Near the end of the Ethics, in Book X, Chapter 7, Aristotle concludes that contemplation is the highest human good.

• “Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense. It is not only a necessary thing but a splendid one.”

  Aristotle makes this assertion in Book VIII, Chapter 1.

• “So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, by that which a prudent man would use to determine it.”

  This quotation from Book II, Chapter 6, gives us a clear expression of Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean: virtue is a mean disposition between the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency.

• “The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.”

  This quotation from Book I, Chapter 7, connects Aristotle’s conception of happiness and the good life with his conception of virtue.

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• There being three objects of choice and three of avoidance, the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant, and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful,

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• human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting virtue,* and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.*

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• Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.*

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• Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or involve choice.*

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• the self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing;

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• The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and 11103a31—b25, 1104a27—b3. thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.

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• though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states.

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• There remains, then, an active life of the element that has reason; of this, one part has it in the sense of being obedient to reason, the other in the sense of possessing reason and exercising thought.*

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• Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.

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• the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.* But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Euripides
• Solon
• Athens

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Aristotle (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Harold H. Joachim (Author)
2. Nicomachus (Editor)
3. D. P. Chase (Translator) - From Greek to English, published in 1911
4. Hugh Tredennick (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 171.3

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Foreign Language Nonfiction › More Languages › Greek
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Greek & Roman
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Ethics & Morality
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Ancient

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia: Learn more about this book at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Wikisource: Read this book online at Wikisource, the free library.

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