THE NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS

THE NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS

1. THE NATURE OF THE GOOD

   • Every art, scientific inquiry, action and purpose, may be said to aim at some good.
     • Good has been well defined as that at which all things aim.
   • As there are various actions, arts, and sciences, it follows that the ends are also various.
   • The ends are sometimes activities, and sometimes results.
     • Where there are ends beyond the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities.
   • If it's true that there's an end which we wish for its own sake this will be the good or the supreme good.

2. HAPPINESS: LIVING AND DOING WELL

   • The masses and the cultured classes conceive that “to live well” or “to do well” is the same thing as “to be happy.”
   • The masses define happiness as something visible and palpable (pleasure, wealth, or honour).
   • Philosophers have held that there is an absolute good which is the cause of goodness in all goods.

3. VIRTUE

   • Intellectual virtue is originated and fostered by teaching, it demands experience and time.
   • Moral virtue is the outcome of habit.
   • The causes and means by which any virtue is produced and by which it's destroyed are the same.
   • We acquire the virtues by first exercising them.

4. DEFICIENCY AND EXCESS

   • Deficiency and excess are equally fatal.
   • A person who avoids and is afraid of everything and faces nothing becomes a coward
     • A person who is not afraid of anything but is ready to face everything becomes foolhardy.

5. THE NATURE OF VIRTUE

   • The qualities of the soul are three:
     • Emotions
       • Whatever is attended by pleasure or pain (desire, anger, fear, courage, envy, joy, love).
     • Faculties
       • Respect of which we are said to be capable of experiencing emotions.
     • Moral states
       • Respect of which we are well or ill-disposed towards the emotions.
   • The virtues must be moral states.

6. VIRTUE AS A MEAN

   • May be excess, deficiency, or the mean, in regard to actions.
   • Virtue is concerned with emotions and actions, and here excess is an error and deficiency a fault, whereas the mean is successful and laudable.
   • Virtue is a state consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves
     • The mean being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would determine it.

7. WHY IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO BE VIRTUOUS

   • The reason why it is so hard to be virtuous it's because always it's hard work to find the mean in anything.
   • Who aims at the mean must begin by departing from that extreme which is the more contrary to the mean.

8. SOME VIRTUES

   • Emotions, has its excess, its deficiency, and its mean state.
   • If a person errs on the side of excess, he may be called passionate, and if is on the side of deficiency, he may be called impassive

9. THE FUNCTION OF A PERSON

   • The function of Man then is an activity of soul in accordance with reason, or not independently of reason.
   • The good of Man is an activity of soul in accordance with virtue