529,1 [Michael of Ephesus] on book 10 (K) of the same Ethics.1
The present book, which is the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics and customarily labelled by the Peripatetics with [the Greek letter] kappa, is the final book of this particular treatise. For the inspired Aristotle completed the 5 present philosophical project in ten books. In this book he expounds who the true human being is and what the life (zôê) is that is fitting to him, namely that it is the way of life in accordance with intellect, which could also be called happiness in the strictest sense. For the happy man is two-fold:2 There is both the political man, who stands in need of goods deriving from chance, too, if his activity is to be unimpeded,3 and the man who devotes himself especially to the contemplation of the real Beings.4 But [Aristotle] has already said a great deal 10 about the happy political man,5 and in the present book [he discusses] the contemplative man. Now given that political happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life with pleasure or not without pleasure, as we have learned,6 what should we suppose about the happiness connected to contemplation? Is it the case that some pleasure accompanies this intellectual life and our stretching upwards7 towards the things that 15 are always the same and unchanging,8 or is it full of agitation and disturbance and filled with unpleasantness? It is simply not permitted to think that the life in accordance with intellect is unpleasant. Therefore, it is with pleasure or not without pleasure. For if pleasure accompanies our noble practical actions, this is much more the case when it comes to the best of the activities, namely the intellect’s occupying itself with the intelligible, and the pleasure that follows upon this activity will also be nobler to whatever extent that 20 contemplation is itself more valuable than practical action. Since, then, this activity of intellect is even with pleasure – and those who have been engaged in this kind of activity know what sort of pleasure this is, as Plotinus says9 – pleasure, what it is and what sort of thing it is,10 must necessarily be examined beforehand, both for this reason and for the other reasons that Aristotle is going to introduce, and then we must go through the present [statements].
530,1 1172a19 What comes next after these things is perhaps to discuss pleasure.
Either it is due to philosophical caution that Aristotle said ‘perhaps’, or it is because he is showing [the contingency of the topic’s relevance]: if, on the one hand, pleasure is a part of virtue, in the same way as non-rationality is a part of horse, then one does not ‘perhaps’ discuss pleasure, rather one must necessarily discuss it; for it is necessary for those who want a correct understanding of what exactly the whole is to know the parts 5 of which the whole is composed; if, on the other hand, [pleasure] is not a part but, as it were, a kind of symptom and shadow11 that happen to supervene on the most noble activities, then one should say ‘perhaps’ about [discussing] pleasure. Why ‘perhaps’? Because it is possible to come to understand the things that such symptoms accompany even apart from what happens to supervene [on them]. For it is possible to know a three-day fever’s nature 10 even without the symptoms that accompany it (vomiting bile, perspiration, etc.), and it is possible to know the substance of happiness apart from knowing what pleasure is, if pleasure is not a part of happiness but one of the accidents that belong to it.
‘For [pleasure] seems most of all to be properly connected to our kind’ (1172a19–20). Through these words it appears that it was due to caution that Aristotle put down the word ‘perhaps’. For what he should have said is: ‘After these things it is 15 necessary [to discuss] pleasure’. For Aristotle was wary of the masses’ contempt [for pleasure],12 and on account of this caution he put down ‘perhaps’ instead of ‘necessarily’. That it is necessary for the one who is discussing the virtues – both those of the non-rational part of the soul and those of the rational part – to speak about pleasure is clear to those who are paying attention to what is being said.13 For if [pleasure] is proper to our nature and we all 20 choose it and pursue it because it is proper, then it is no matter of ‘perhaps’; rather, it is necessary for us to know what exactly this is that is properly connected to our kind and is most proper to us in the sense that it is pursued and loved by us more than the other things that are properly connected to us. And thanks to this proper connection to and love of pleasure we hasten to educate our young by ‘steering [them] by pleasure and pain’ (1172a20–1), and ‘steering’ here means the same as 25 ‘setting a course and navigating’. For just as ships are preserved by being turned around by means of their tillers towards their harbours and in this way set on the right course, so too are the young [preserved] in the virtues as if in a harbour by the means of pleasure. For getting them habituated to experience pleasure in what they should enjoy and to experience pain if they do not do what they should do is navigating them to harbour, that is, to virtue.14 Just as 30 enjoying and being pained by things one shouldn’t is the road to vice, Aristotle says that ‘enjoying the things one should is most important to the virtue of character’ (1172a21–2), and by ‘virtue of character’ he means virtue itself, just as if he had said: ‘Enjoying the things one should and fleeing the things one should appear to contribute the most towards the acquisition of virtue of character’. And this has been shown earlier in the treatise.15
The statement ‘For these things extend throughout the whole life’ (1172a23) is 35 equivalent to ‘These things, that is pleasure and pain, are coextensive with our life’. For it is not the case that we experience pleasure and pain in our childhood, let’s say, while in the other stages of life we are in a state of quiet, living out our lives without pain and without pleasure. Surely not this! Rather, as long as we are in the 531,1 ‘perforated pot’,16 viz. the body, we partake in pleasure and pain, and it is necessary to examine what they are and not to skip over contemplating these things.
‘For these things extend throughout the whole life, having a pull and power towards virtue’ (1172a23–4).17 The expression ‘having power’ gives us the meaning of the expression 5 ‘having a pull’. For the noblest of the pleasures, as well as the pains associated with not performing noble practical actions, these have the force to pull and to impel the life and way of life that leads to virtue and happiness. And if this is so, then we must know which of the pleasant and painful things turn out to contribute to virtue and which are impediments to it, and we must not irrationally hasten to 10 everything pleasant and flee everything painful, as happens nowadays when men go after pleasant things and flee painful things and thereby act without any discrimination.
1172a27 Especially as they are the subject of great dissent.
Aristotle says that it is necessary to consider pleasure both for the reasons mentioned and especially because of the dissenting arguments that arrive at contrary conclusions about 15 it. For Eudoxus thought that pleasure is the same as the Good.18 For he posited [pleasure] as a formal principle and cause of all the goods in the same manner that those who champion the Forms [posit] the Living Thing Itself [as the formal principle and cause] of living things, Being Itself for beings, Human Being Itself for human beings, and Beauty Itself for beautiful things, yet others have maintained that pleasure is, on the contrary, most base. And those who maintain that pleasure is the same as the 20 good have asserted that it is such because they have been convinced by certain arguments, and the following are some of the arguments in question.
Everything seeks pleasure, and what everything seeks is good; therefore, pleasure is good. [Here is the same argument] again: What all things seek and aim at for its own sake and not for the sake of something else is good, and [everything]19 aims at pleasure itself for its own sake; therefore, pleasure is good. For one chooses wealth for the sake of something else, e.g. as an instrument to engage in noble activities 25 without impediment,20 but one also chooses surgery, cauterization and consuming medicine for the sake of health, and walls and a house for the sake of protection and shelter, but one chooses pleasure for its own sake. Therefore, pleasure is an end of the most final variety, and the end of all ends and the most final of these is the Good. Therefore, pleasure is the Good. There are many other arguments that plausibly establish that pleasure is the same as 30 the Good Itself, and Aristotle will set out these arguments below.
By contrast, those who maintain that pleasure is most base have maintained this without having been convinced by plausible arguments. Rather, it is because they have seen the masses sinking into pleasure and neglecting the most noble [activities] and because they wish to lead the masses away from the unchecked charge and advance (phora) into pleasure that they make pleasure appear to be one of the most base things, even if it is not most base. 35 For it is necessary, they maintained, to lead bad men away from pleasure to its contrary, just as it is necessary to lead the over-bold towards cowardice and the avaricious to 532,1 refusing all gains and all of the others who exceed the mean and the harmonius measure. For in this way [the bad men] would reach the mean, that is, the harmonius measure. For when lovers of pleasure are led towards a total abstention from enjoyment they should reach the mean, which is to enjoy and take pleasure in the things one should; and when the over-bold are drawn towards cowardice they should 5 reach the mean, viz. courage, and the avaricious similarly will reach justice. But it would be impossible for anyone to lead the lover of pleasure away from pleasure or the avaricious away from gain without making pleasure or gain or over-boldness appear as a thing most base. As a result, even if pleasure is not most base, he who is going to lead the lovers of pleasure away 10 from pleasure must say that it is most base.
1172a33 But perhaps this is not the correct thing to say. For assertions concerning the sphere of affections and practical actions are less credible than deeds.
Aristotle says that it is not correct to say that we should reproach and condemn as bad that to which we are inclined, if this is not in fact reproachable 15 or bad. For it is not right to make what is not without qualification bad to appear indiscriminately to be such [i.e. bad] without qualification; rather, if [pleasure] is among those words that are said in many ways, we should be differentiating and teaching the number of ways in which it is said as well as which of the term’s meanings are good or beneficial and which are bad or harmful. [To apply this] directly to the case of pleasure: the pleasure of 20 the men who are licentious and gamblers and addicted to alcohol and wantonness is bad and harmful, and this pleasure is not even pleasure in the strict sense but only appears [as such] to those who have never tasted true pleasure; but the pleasure that accompanies the activities in accordance with virtue and the contemplation of the Beings21 is best and good, and this we should welcome and pursue with serious interest. It is right [to say] this, but 25 making it appear that there are no distinctions is wrong and not reasonable. For to reproach pleasure without qualification is to obstruct and to lead away from the noblest pleasures. And Aristotle provided the reason why it is not right to condemn as bad without qualification what is not without qualification bad. For we place greater credence in acts than in assertions. For it is actions that make assertions credible, and not assertions that make actions credible. For if one should say that 30 love of money is bad but then is seen accumulating cash wherever and however one can, who would believe this person [when he claims] that love of money is something bad? Likewise, the person who says that pleasure is bad and then sinks into it, shows by his actions that pleasure is good and not bad (as he claims). Therefore, practical actions confirm one’s assertions, and not the other way around.
Aristotle says that pleasure, pain, love and anger are 35 affections,22 and that the activities that [arise] from them – acts of insolence, gain and honor – are practical actions, and he repeatedly discussed them in the 533,1 preceding books.23 Whenever, then, our assertions are not in agreement with the observable facts, that is, with our actions, that is, the actions of those making these assertions, then these assertions are not taken seriously, and in addition to appearing unconvincing they even obscure the truth. For the one who says without qualification and indiscriminately that pleasure is bad and then is seen to incline towards and pursue 5 it with serious interest, does away with the truth. For there truly is a kind of pleasure that is bad, and the one who says this is bad speaks the truth, but he appears to be speaking falsely because of those who claim that pleasure is bad and then, by their pursuing it, make it appear to be good. For the masses think the bad pleasure is good because they are not able differentiate the number of ways in which each [term] is said and they are focusing on the person who reproaches 10 pleasure without qualification and indiscriminately and yet is impelled towards it. In cases of words that are said in many ways, then, one should not make them appear as if there were no distinctions, rather one should differentiate them, for example, that x, y and z are pleasures, and x is good pleasure, y is bad pleasure and z is pleasure that is neither good nor bad. For knowledge of the truth is intrinsically choiceworthy, but it also makes a major contribution to the correct manner of life for those who hear it. 15 ‘For since they harmonize’ and are in agreement ‘with deeds, they carry conviction’ (1172b5–6) and force those who hear them and are convinced by them to live as they command.
After having said this, Aristotle adds ‘enough of discussions of this sort’ (1172b7) and turns to the views that have been made out about pleasure. And it is the arguments by which Eudoxus attempted to establish that pleasure is the Good that he puts first.
20 1172b9 Eudoxus, then, thought that pleasure is the Good because he observed all things are seeking it.
It is a convention among Platonists to indicate what they call24 ‘formal’ principles, which25 are in a primary manner that very thing that is said, by means of either adding the letter tau or adding the expression ‘Itself’ (auto).26 By means of 25 the tau [they indicate] the Good, which is nothing other than solely good and good in a primary manner, while other things (e.g. intellect, soul, knowledge and virtue) are said to be goods but not in a primary manner; rather, these are said to be goods because they participate in the nature of the Good.27 That is (kai), the intellect is a good, but it is not the Good. Likewise, knowledge, too, is a good, but it is in no way the Good. But pleasure [according to Eudoxus] is not a good 30 but the Good. For the principle and source of goodness, that is the Good, is pleasure according to Eudoxus. In this way, by means of the letter tau they indicated the first principle and cause and root and center point, as it were, of all goods,28 and by means of the expression ‘Itself’ they indicated the One Itself, the Living Thing Itself, and Being Itself. The One Itself is the principle and source of the henads and monads. 35 For according to them henads and monads are different things.29 Yet the 534,1 Platonists maintained that the One Itself and the Good are the same and not different things. For they called the most primary principle of all the One Itself and the Good Itself (to autoagathon) and the Good (t’ agathon), whereas they said Being Itself is [the] most primary principle of all beings, though second to the One Itself. For the One Itself is most primary of all, and then 5 Being Itself, and then Life Itself, and then the Living Thing Itself.30 But it suffices to discuss these things as Aristotle himself does.31
Eudoxus attempted to establish that pleasure is the Good32 by observing that both those [living things] endowed with reason, that is the rational [living things], and the non-rational ones seek pleasure. What all things choose and all things pursue is decent and good. And the most decent is most excellent, that is, a first principle and a 10 first cause. If, then, pleasure is what is most decent, and if what is most decent is most excellent, and if what is most excellent is the most primary principle of all, and if the most primary principle of all is the Good; then pleasure is the Good. But how has it become clear that pleasure is what is most excellent? Well, he says, from the fact that all things move towards it and all things want to experience pleasure. For by nature each thing discovers what is good for itself and 15 advantageous to itself, which is pleasant, ‘just as [each thing discovers its own] nourishment, too’ (1172b13–14). For in all things there is either intellect or some ray and illumination of intellect, as [Aristotle] himself has shown elsewhere,33 and as Hippocrates said, ‘natures of living things are untaught’.34
‘For the arguments [of Eudoxus] have managed to convince more because of his virtue of character than by their own merits (di’ heautous)’ (1172b15–16). If the one who maintains that pleasure is the Good is someone licentious, he would not manage to convince, but since [Eudoxus] was 20 temperate in the highest degree and seriously good in the highest degree he justly managed to convince when he claimed pleasure to be the Good. For he did not appear to be valuing and celebrating pleasure as a lover of pleasure nor as a slave to it, but because he truly believed that pleasure was such as he claimed.
But it was not only from the fact that all things move towards it that [Eudoxus] made pleasure out to be a good, but also from its contrary, pain. For if 25 pain, being the opposite of pleasure, is an evil, then pleasure is a good. That pain is an evil is clear from the fact that all men flee it and hate experiencing pain. In this way Eudoxus concluded that pleasure is generally a good, and in the following way [he concluded] that it is the Good. He says that what we choose for its own sake and not for the sake of something else is most choiceworthy and good to the highest degree. And pleasure is of this sort. 30 For no one asks one who is experiencing pleasure why he is experiencing it in the way [that we do ask] one who is cleansing himself, or who wants to subject himself to blood-letting or35 to take [cathartic] medicine why he is choosing each of these. For if someone should ask the one man why he is eager to consume medicine, perhaps he would say in order to be healthy, but if someone should ask the other man36 why he is pursuing pleasure, he would say for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. If we do indeed choose pleasure for its own sake, and if what is choiceworthy 35 for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else is good in the highest degree; then pleasure is good in the highest degree. But what is good in the highest degree and the Good are the same. Therefore, pleasure is the Good.
His argument goes like this: Pleasure is choiceworthy for its own sake. What is choiceworthy for its own sake is choiceworthy in the highest degree. What is choiceworthy in the highest degree is good in the highest degree. What is good in the highest degree and the Good are the same. Therefore, pleasure is the Good.
[Eudoxus] attempts to establish that pleasure is choiceworthy 535,1 in the highest degree, that is that it is most choiceworthy, by means of [the premise] than pleasure, when added37 to anything choiceworthy, makes38 that thing more choiceworthy (1172b23–4). For just action with pleasure is more choiceworthy than just action without pleasure, but even contemplation with pleasure is more choiceworthy that contemplation without pleasure,39 and in general every practical action and every 5 act of creation with pleasure is better than the practical action and act of creation without pleasure. And further, he says, it is clear that it is most choiceworthy because what occurs with it and is accompanied by it admits of augmentation. For acts of learning with pleasure are sooner augmented than those without pleasure or even with pain, and so are the activities in accordance with virtue and, in general, everything. 10 This is the overall meaning of the present [lines of text].40
But in the phrase ‘indeed what is itself good (to agathon auto) is increased by it (autô[i])’ (1172b25)41 we should write the first pronoun with a short ‘o’ [viz. auto] and put a comma here and then add the second pronoun with a long ‘o’ [viz. autô(i)]. It would have been clearer if the feminine form autê(i) had been written instead of autô(i), like this: ‘indeed, what is itself (auto) good is increased by it (autê[i])’, that is by pleasure. This is what he is saying:42 and 15 indeed, what is itself good, that is every (pan) good [thing], is increased by pleasure itself. For every (pan) good [thing], when it occurs or is done with pleasure is increased and extended. What is good, then, is increased by it (autô[i]), that is: every good [thing] [is increased] by pleasure itself. For the auto [viz. ‘itself’] has been adopted in place of pan [viz. ‘every’].
1172b26 This argument seems to make pleasure out to belong among the goods.43
20The argument, he says, that maintains that when pleasure is added to something, for example to temperance, it makes temperance more choiceworthy than it is without pleasure, does not reach the conclusion that it purports to prove, but some other [conclusion]. For it does not prove that pleasure is the Good, but that it is among the goods, that is to say, that even it is a certain individual item among the goods and belongs to the nature of these goods and is of the same nature as they are – but 25 surely not that it turns out to be these goods’ form (idea) and source and center point.44
‘For everything [that is] more choiceworthy in combination with another good than in isolation <would not be such>’ (1172b27–8),45 then, means something like this: If any good which is such as to be the Good,46 when added to something else, makes the combination of both greater and better and more choiceworthy, then [that good] would not be such, that is: would not be the Good. For instead of saying ‘would not be 30 the Good’ [Aristotle] said ‘would not be such’. For example, if prudence, which is a good, is added to courage, which is a good, and the whole that arises from courage and prudence becomes a greater good than courage alone, then prudence would not be the Good but something good. If, then, when pleasure is added to prudence or to courage, it also renders the combination of pleasure and prudence or of 35 pleasure and courage a greater good, pleasure would not be the Good.
For saying that pleasure, while being the Good, when added [to something], makes the whole a greater [good], is like saying – if we must give a likeness – that the entire earth including the mountains in it 536,1 and its manifold waters and seas and plants, when added to the ten-thousandth part of a grain of millet, has made the whole [arising] from this ten-thousandth part and the entire earth heavier.47 For just as the whole earth is related to the ten-thousandth part of a grain of millet, so is the Good itself related to any one of the other goods, for example, to 5 prudence, wisdom or any other [good]. To be sure, even this [likeness], which maintains that the Good’s relation to prudence is like the earth’s relation to the ten-thousandth part of a grain of millet, is false. For the superiority48 of the Good49 in relation to prudence is infinitely greater than that of the weight of the entire earth in relation to the weight of ten-thousandth part of a grain of millet. Just as, then, it is ridiculous to say that the weight of the ten-thousandth part of a grain of millet, when it receives the weight of the entire earth as an addition, has become heavier, it is still more ridiculous to say that prudence, when 10 it receives the Good, i.e. pleasure, as an addition has become a greater good. But it surely does become greater; for prudence with pleasure is better than prudence without pleasure. But if it becomes greater (as indeed it does), pleasure is not the Good but something good.
‘In fact it is with an argument like this 15 that Plato does away with the view that pleasure is the Good’ (1172b28–9): the argument by which they, like Eudoxus’ followers, deduce that pleasure is the Good, Plato uses to show that pleasure is not the Good.50 Therefore, Eudoxos did not [really] conclude that pleasure is the Good but that it is something good. And the argument would go like this: Pleasure, when added to one of the goods, 20 makes the resulting combination of both more choiceworthy; none of the goods is such that the Good, when added to it, makes the resulting [combination] more choiceworthy; therefore, pleasure is not the Good.
And [Aristotle] made the first premise, which states ‘pleasure, when added to one of the goods, makes the whole more choiceworthy’, clear by saying: ‘For the pleasant life with prudence is more choiceworthy’ (1172b29–30), which is the same as saying: ‘For the 25 life that results from a combination of pleasure and prudence is more choiceworthy than the life that results from prudence alone’. And [Aristotle] indicated the second premise, which states ‘none of the goods is such that the Good, when added to it, makes the resulting whole more choiceworthy’ by saying: ‘For there is nothing such that, when added to it, the Good51 becomes more choiceworthy’. (1172b31–2). If then, when one of the goods is added to pleasure – for we should also put it this way – the resulting combination of both turns out to be more choiceworthy, and if one of the goods, when added to the Good itself, does not make 30 the whole more choiceworthy, then pleasure is not the Good. And I said that ‘for we should also put it this way’ because it amounts to the same thing, regardless of whether one of the goods is added to the Good or the Good is added to one of the goods.
And this is why Aristotle, instead of saying ‘there is nothing such that the Good itself, when added to it, makes the whole more choiceworthy’, says: ‘For there is nothing such that, when added to it, the Good52 […]’ (1172b31–2).53 What he means is this: 35 when any of the other goods comes together with and is joined to the Good itself (autô tô agathô), that is the Good itself (tô autoagathô), in no way does the Good itself make [the resulting whole] more choiceworthy.54 For just as when the weight of the ten-thousandths part of a grain of millet is added onto the weight of the whole world, it does not make the total weight heavier, neither will any of things that are good by participation 537,1 in the Good itself, the transcendent55 source of the goods, when added to the Good itself, make the [combination] that results from both more choiceworthy. By contrast, when any of the goods is entwined with pleasure, it makes pleasure more good (agathôteran). Therefore, pleasure is not the Good itself.
But this text in the premise ‘For nothing, when added to the (tô),56 the good itself [becomes more choiceworthy]’ contains a certain obscurity – both because something is missing and 5 because it does not say ‘the Good itself’ (auto tagathon) or ‘itself the Good itself’ (auto to autoagathon) but states the words separately: ‘the good itself’ (auto to agathon).57 But we should mentally supply [as follows]: to ‘for nothing’ (oudenos gar) we should supply ‘of the other goods’ (tôn allôn agathôn);58 to ‘when added to the’ (prostethentos tô) we should supply ‘Good itself’ (autoagathô); and to ‘the good itself’ †† ‘becomes more good’.59 In this way the completely filled-in text would be like this: for none of the other 10 goods is such that by being added to the Good itself, the Good itself becomes more good.
1172b32 It is clear that neither could anything else that [becomes more choiceworthy] when taken together with any [of the things that are intrinsically good] be the Good.
Plato says60 that we cannot say that pleasure is the Good because when pleasure is added to any of the [other] goods the resulting combination of both becomes more choiceworthy, and that 15 likewise nothing else that by coming together with any good thing renders the whole more choiceworthy than its part could be the Good either. Nevertheless, [pleasure or any other such thing] will be called a good, but it is a certain good and the kind of good ‘in which we, too, have a share’ (1172b34–5) – and this is the kind of good that virtues and sciences are. For every virtue and science is more choiceworthy with pleasure than without pleasure.61 And ‘for it is something of this sort that is sought’ (1172b35), is equivalent to [saying]: for the argument is inquiring about the 20 kind of goods ‘in which we, too, have a share’ (1172b34–5), namely whether pleasure is one of these [goods], for example, whether pleasure is temperance or courage or prudence or any of the sciences.
‘But the [argument] that objects62 that it is not the case that what all [living things] seek is a good’ (1172b35–6). This syllogism [being objected to] has two premises. The minor premise states that all [living things] seek pleasure, and the major premise states that what all [living things] 25 seek is the Good. Some men have objected63 to this major premise, claiming that it is false that what all [living things] seek is a good,64 and if it is not a good, it is still more the case that it is not the Good, either. He says, then, that the argument that objects that the major premise is not true is saying nothing at all, that is, it goes against what appears to be the case to everyone. For it is false, and what is false is not [the case], just as what is true is [the case], and accordingly 30 the [argument] that states what is false states nothing at all. For how could one maintain a truth or say something more convincing than this conviction, that is, than this premise that states that what all [living things] seek is a good? For what could be so much more true than what appears to be the case to all human beings – laymen, the wise and those who are well-versed in philosophy – that one could be moved by this to reject what appears to be the case to all, namely that what all [living things] 35 seek is a good?65 For if saying ‘it is not the case that what all [living things] seek is a good’ were more credible and truer than saying ‘what all [living things] seek is a good’, the former statement would have appeared to everyone to be the case, and everyone would have affirmed this unanimously. But in fact, on the contrary, everyone affirms in unison that ‘what all [living things] seek is a good’, 538,1 but that ‘it is not the case that what all beings seek is a good’ [is claimed by] perhaps one or two. Thus, he who maintains this is voicing false views.
And further: if <only>66 ‘the unintelligent [living things] desired’ (1173a2) pleasure – meaning by ‘unintelligent’ the non-rational [living things] (ta aloga) – then the one objecting to this [major] premise would have had a point. For it would not be universally true that what all [living things] seek 5 is a good, though perhaps [it would be the case that] what all rational [living things], for example human beings, seek [is a good]. But if not only the non-rational [living things] desire pleasure but also ‘the prudent ones’ (1173a3), that is, human beings, how could the one opposing this premise be right? At any rate, if it is because he is focusing on bad human beings who enjoy licentiousness and on their appetites that he says that it is not the case that what all [living things] seek is a good and consequently that pleasure is not a good, either, 10 this has no bearing on the argument. For even in licentious people ‘there is some natural good’ (1173a4), namely their intellect,67 which by nature pursues pleasure in the strict and unqualified sense, and such pleasure is a good. For as has already been said,68 every intellect by nature pursues its proper good, and [the intellect] divines this good or dreams of it,69 but it falls into brutish and vulgar pleasures (which turn out not even to be pleasures in the strict sense) on account of a wretched 15 upbringing and on account of the ignorance of true pleasure that necessarily follows from such an upbringing. For [the wretched upbringing] has blinded intellect, the judge of true pleasures and those which are not of that sort. For just as the one whose bodily capacity for vision has been crippled is unable to distinguish the threshed and treaded corn from the unthreshed and thorny, so too the one who was reared in a wretched and bad manner is not able to discern what 20 true and real pleasure is – and this is also good [pleasure] – nor what is called pleasure but is not [really] pleasure.70
If, then, in the text that states: ‘Perhaps even in bad [living things] there is [some] natural [good]’ (1173a4)71 he means bad human beings, I may rest my case with the above remarks. If, on the other hand, it is the non-rational living things, which he also called ‘unintelligent’ (1173a2), that are bad – if he means these are bad because he is focusing on the value of the rational soul [which these living things do not have] – he would be saying 25 the following: not even on the assumption that only the non-rational living things desired pleasure and they alone pursued it would the premise that states ‘what all [beings] seek is a good’ be false. For there is in all of them – to a greater or lesser degree – something divine, i.e. an illumination of intellect, by means of which [each of them] by nature seeks and discovers its own proper good, that is, its own proper end.72 For each attains this [end] by nature, and accordingly [each] welcomes 30 pleasure, too, as conducive to the attainment of this [end].73 Regarding the reasons why [each] flees what is harmful and accepts what is beneficial – these topics have received their fullest and finest treatment by this philosopher in his treatises On Living Things,74 and whoever doesn’t shy from a little hard work is encouraged to read about these things in those works.
1173a5 The [argument about] the contrary would also seem to be not correctly put.
35 The argument from the contrary that establishes that pleasure is good went like this: If pain, being the contrary to pleasure, is bad, then pleasure is good. Whence [do we derive the premise] that pain is bad? From the fact that all men flee it. Speusippus objected to this argument that establishes from the contrary that pleasure is good, saying: Just because pain is bad, it does not necessarily [follow] that the pleasure that is opposed to it is good; for not everything that 539,5 is opposed to bad is good. For cowardice is opposed to over-boldness, which is bad, and cowardice is not good but bad; and licentiousness is opposed to folly, which is bad, and this [licentiousness] is similarly bad; and avarice is opposed to wastefulness yet both are bad.
Speusippus says: ‘There is an opposition, then, of bad to bad and of both to what is neither’ [1173a8], and that is to say, of both bad [things] to what is good. 10 For he said that what is good is neither of the two. For the virtues, being means, are neither of the extremes.75 For courage is neither cowardice nor over-boldness, and temperance is neither licentiousness nor folly, and similarly in the case of the other virtues.76 And these things he says correctly. For it is true to say that there is an opposition of bad to bad and of both bad [extremes] to what is good. This, then, they say correctly. 15 But they77 are not correct to say that pleasure is opposed to pain as one bad [thing] is opposed to another. For pleasure is not opposed to pain as one bad [thing] is opposed to another, but as a good [thing] is opposed to a bad [thing]. For if pleasure were bad, it would be something to flee from and to hate, just as pain is. But in fact all things flee and turn away from pain as [something] bad, whereas they pursue and run after pleasure as [something] good.78
‘But of the things that are neither [good nor bad], either neither 20 or in the same way’ (1173a11). We all – [that is, either] all men or all [living things] – equally pursue the things that are good and delightful, and we similarly just about equally avoid and turn away from things that are bad and painful. And regarding the things that are neither, as they are neither bad nor good, [Aristotle says] ‘neither or in the same way’ (1173a11), that is, we neither avoid them nor pursue them; ‘or in the same way’, that is, we pursue them or avoid them equally. For our impulse to attain them is neither greater than 25 nor less than our impulse to avoid them, rather we are in a kind of intermediate condition79 insofar as we have do not verge or have a tendency more towards one than the other. Therefore, if pleasure were one of the bad [things], we would flee from it; and if pleasure were one of the things that are neither good nor bad but rather one of those things that are neither, we would neither desire it nor pursue it. [In point of fact, we do not flee pleasure, and we do desire it.] Since, then, [pleasure] is neither [one] of the bad things nor [one] of the things that are neither [good nor bad], it follows that it is [one] of the good things.
30 ‘But surely it is also not the case that, if pleasure is not a quality, it is also not one of the goods’ (1173a13–14). The argument that concludes that pleasure is not a good from the fact that it is not a quality, is a second-figure syllogism that goes like this: Pleasure is not a quality, every good is a quality; therefore pleasure is not a good. But [Aristotle] finds fault with the premise that states that every good is a quality (poiotês) or a qualification (poion).80 For there are 35 some goods that are not qualities or qualifications. Therefore, what is to prevent pleasure, too, from being a good, even if it is not a qualification or81 a quality? As to which goods are goods without being qualities, [Aristotle] provides [the answer]: the activities (energeias) according to virtue, which82 are goods, are not qualities,83 since an activity is an active (drastikê) motion (kinêsis) and a motion is not a quality. And happiness is an activity, as [Aristotle] has said and 40 will say,84 surely not a quality, and it is good.
540,1 1173a15 And they say that what is good is determinate while pleasure is indeterminate
And this second-figure syllogism reaches its conclusion in this way: Pleasure is indeterminate, every good is determinate, therefore pleasure 5 is not a good. But in this syllogism [Aristotle] objects to the premise that states that pleasure is some indeterminate thing (pragma) and says: ‘If it is derived from the fact that experiencing pleasure’ (1173a18) is indeterminate – for some people experience pleasure more, others less, some are slow to feel any impulse towards pleasure, for others this inclination comes more quickly – ‘if it is derived from the fact that experiencing pleasure’ (1173a18) is indeterminate that they maintain that pleasure, too, is something indeterminate, they are evidently making a mistake. For 10 they will have to bring this [same charge] against the virtues, which are goods, and against health and against the sciences. For in their case, too, one can see indeterminacy: for some people are healthier, and [some] are more literate, and [some] are more temperate and more courageous and participate more in the virtues, habitual states and the sciences, and others less so. Therefore, according to this argument it will turn out that each 15 of the virtues and sciences as well as health will admit of degrees of more and less, because some people participate in them more or are more active according to them, and others less. Accordingly, it will turn out that these, too, are indeterminate and bad.
If, on the other hand, they are predicating indeterminacy not of the experience of pleasure but of pleasure itself, here again the fallacy is obvious. For85 just as the form 20 of health and the essence of health86 are one and the same thing that is determinate and does not admit of the more and less – for the <form> of health and the essence of health cannot be increased or decreased. For each of these is just what it is and does not admit of any increase or decrease, just like courage, temperance and each of the sciences. It is rather among the things that are spoken of as qualified by them that degrees of more and less 25 are observed – so, too, the form of pleasure and the essence of pleasure cannot be increased or decreased. And it is, therefore, determinate, and therefore a good.
And by ‘unmixed’ pleasures (1173a23) [Aristotle] means the form of pleasure considered all by itself apart from any underlying substratum, as is generally the case for every other form, like whiteness, blackness, or health. And [Aristotle calls those pleasures] ‘mixed’ that are thought of together with an underlying substratum, for example, the pleasures that are in 30 me and you and others. The mixed pleasures, then, are those that are in me and you and are set in the domain of increase and decrease and are filled with indeterminateness, whereas the forms themselves, like health and pleasure and the others, are established to be without increase or decrease, as has been said. Yet the mixtures of health make clear that the indeterminateness is great and that the indeterminateness in individuals is nearly incomprehensible. 35 For if health is such-and-such a mixture of the elements in us,87 and if the mixtures, i.e. (kai), the degree of more and less in the mixtures, is indeterminate, then it is clear that the [individual] healthy states that follow upon these [mixtures] are also indeterminate. And why am I speaking of the [various] mixtures of all [living things], given that even the health of one and the same person, e.g. Socrates, will, so to speak, experience seasonal fluctuations of increase and decrease?
541,1 1173a29 They posit88 that the Good is complete, but movements and comings-to-be are incomplete
And this argument for [showing] that pleasure is not the Good was constructed within the first figure: pleasure is a movement and a coming-to-be, every movement or coming-to-be is 5 incomplete; therefore, pleasure is incomplete. The argument then takes the conclusion that pleasure is incomplete, and by adding another premise that the Good is not anything incomplete, concluded that pleasure is not a good. [Aristotle] made this [premise], that the Good is not anything incomplete, clear with his statement: ‘they posit89 the Good is complete’ (1173a29). If, then, the Good is complete, what is incomplete is not a good. And he indicated the [claim] that pleasure is a coming-to-be or a movement with 10 his statement: ‘Every pleasure is a coming-to-be, and every pleasure is a movement’.90
After establishing this, [Aristotle] immediately shakes [the credibility of] the premise stating that pleasure is a movement by saying: every movement is faster and slower (1173a32). For sometimes a man walks faster and sometimes more slowly, and the sphere of fixed stars moves faster, with each of the planets moving more slowly than it. If, then, faster or slower 15 is entwined the fabric of movements, and if a pleasure is not faster or slower than a pleasure, then pleasure could not be a movement. For it is possible, he says, to have experienced pleasure (1173a34) more quickly or more slowly, which is to say that sometimes a person more quickly ceases experiencing pleasure, and sometimes more slowly. But pleasure itself is not faster and slower. But we should also put it in the following way: when someone is walking 20 or running from one place to another, the parts of the walking or the parts of the running are not all equally fast; rather, some of them are quicker and faster, and others less so. But all the parts of pleasure, from beginning to end – if we should [even] be talking of ‘parts’ (for it is one and the same [pleasure]) – are alike;91 none is more intense and quicker than any of the others. Rather, the entire pleasure from beginning to 25 end is, as we have said,92 uniform, since it admits of no additional increase or decrease in the time during which we are experiencing it.
And after he said that ‘quickness and slowness appear to be proper to every’ motion (1173a32), he provided [the statement] ‘and if not in itself, as for instance that of the cosmos, [then] in relation to something else’ (1173a32–3).93 What he is saying is: although not every movement itself admits of [being] faster in itself, ‘as for instance the movement of the cosmos’94 (1173a33) – right now by ‘cosmos’ [Aristotle] means 30 the sphere of the fixed stars (for it does not admit of fast and slow, because this kind of sphere is moved in a uniform manner, as he has shown in On the Heavens)95 – even so, if someone should compare it to the movements of the planets, he will discover that it is much faster than their movements. Such, then, is [Aristotle’s intended meaning].96
What was said at the beginning of this passage of text, [namely] ‘they try to make [pleasure] out to be a movement and 542,1 a coming-to-be’ (1173a30–1), is equivalent to ‘they try to make [pleasure] out not to be the Good’. For saying that pleasure is a movement or a coming-to-be is the same as saying that pleasure is not the Good. In fact, as we maintain, pleasure is not a movement or a coming-to-be, but here is what might have impelled them to say that it is a 5 movement and a coming-to-be. Surely (dê) they are saying: if ‘movement is the actualization (entelecheia) of the movable qua movable’, as is said in the third book of the Physics,97 that is, [the actualization] from potentiality into actuality (energeia(i)), and if the one who experiences pleasure changes into being active, it is clear that pleasure, too, is the actualization of the one who is able to experience pleasure qua such. And if this [is true], then pleasure 10 should be a movement.
But Aristotle says98 that what these men claim [about pleasure] is not the same as what happens when something is in movement. For in the case of movement, whenever what is being moved is changing and is moved from (a) the condition of suitability to (b) the condition into which it is able and suitable to change and be moved, the potentiality still remains in it.99 For example, whenever what is potentially white is changing from 15 potentiality to actuality, it is said to be moved as long as the potentiality still remains in it;100 but whenever it relinquishes this potentiality and is just actually white, with its starting condition101 no longer present in it, then there is no longer a movement nor is it being moved; rather, it is in some state of being (en tini onti), for example, the state of being white (tô leukô). For as long as it is being whitened, there is some bit (ti) of blackness in it (if the change is going from black 20 to white), and as long as there is some bit of blackness in it, it is potentially white and is being moved, as was said. But in the case of the man experiencing pleasure, there does not remain in him any bit (ti) of not-experiencing-pleasure (from102 which he changes to experiencing pleasure), nor has he come to an end in relation to some end-point (as in the former case where what is being whitened reaches the state of being white (eis to leukon). This is the reason, then, why pleasure could not be a movement.103
25 1173b4 And how could [pleasure] be a coming-to-be? For it seems that not any chance thing comes to be from any chance thing.
After having said what impelled Plato to call pleasure a movement and having opposed him [on this count], now [Aristotle] also tells us how Plato was misled into calling pleasure a coming-to-be. For pleasure, Plato says, is not an end but one of those things that are directed towards an end: a kind of route and 30 a change.104 For just as recuperation is directed towards health and whitening is directed towards whiteness, so too is pleasure directed towards one’s natural restoration105 and well-being.106 For pleasure, Plato says, is a perceived coming-to-be into a natural state.107 For it leads, Plato says, our state that has been corrupted into an unnatural condition towards its natural good order. Or rather, it is not that pleasure itself is leading; but through pleasure – in the sense of through 35 [a process of] coming-to-be – bodies of living things return to their natural state. Since, then, [pleasure] is a coming-to-be, and comings-to-be are not ends but are among those things that are directed towards ends, pleasure is not of the 543,1 same kind as its end. For in general, no coming-to-be is of the same kind as ends. For house-building is not of the same kind as a house, nor is recuperation of the same kind as health. Neither, therefore, is pleasure. And ends are goods; therefore, pleasure is not a good. For it is not an end. For if the end is good, what is not of the same kind 5 as the end is not good.108
But these sorts of arguments against pleasure have no force, as Aristotle has already shown and now shows by saying that nothing ‘seems to come to be from any chance thing’ (1173b5), rather what is now actually f comes to be from what is potentially f. For example, this flesh here, which at present is actually flesh, did not come to be from stone or wood or any chance thing but from that which was potentially flesh, and it was blood that was 10 potentially flesh. If wood were potentially flesh, then flesh would have come to be from wood. This is why flesh does not come to be out of wood, but does come to be from blood, because blood is potentially flesh. Blood, in turn, came to be from bread. For this was potentially blood.109 And further, everything that comes to be, comes to be from that into which it is also able to be dissolved through the process of destruction (which is opposed to coming-to-be). 15 For example, plants come to be from the elements, into which they are also dissolved through the process of destruction (which is the opposite of their coming-to-be), and [likewise for] all other things.
If, then, pleasure, too, were a coming-to-be, it would be a kind of route and a change from something to something, just as blackening is from white to black and falling sick is from health to sickness. But in the case of pleasure there is neither starting point nor endpoint. For there is neither 20 anything that is transforming and changing and coming to be something through pleasure, nor is there any end-point at which the pleasure comes to an end, just as recuperation [comes to an end] at health and heating [comes to an end] at heat. And this is reasonable. For [pleasure] is not a coming-to-be but an activity, as he will show, and activities are ends and not routes to ends.
We may come to understand that pleasure is an end and not a coming-to-be 25 from the following. For in the case of comings-to-be, it is not the case that something is simultaneously coming to be and being while it is coming to be. For it is not the case that flesh is simultaneously coming to be and being while it is coming to be, nor is it the case that, at the time when the house is coming to be [a house] at that very time it [already] is [a house]. By contrast, in the case of activities, e.g. seeing, one simultaneously sees and has seen.110 In the case of pleasures, too, one simultaneously experiences pleasure and has experienced pleasure. Therefore, pleasure is an activity and not a coming-to-be. And if it is an activity, it is also an end 30 and not some kind of route and change to an end. For there is no part of the time during which pleasure is experienced in which the pleasure is not complete in the one experiencing it. And what is complete in all the parts of time, being a kind of entire whole, is not a coming-to-be but an activity. For it is when what is coming to be is completed that a coming-to-be is said to be and is complete, but as long as it is coming to be, what is coming to be is incomplete, and so is 35 the coming-to-be [itself]. And pleasure is immediately present as a complete whole in the first part of the whole time during which pleasure is experienced, and in the same way also in the next part and in the part after that and in general in all the parts of time, even the very shortest of them. Therefore, pleasure should not be a coming-to-be but an activity.
But even if [pleasure] were a coming-to-be, it would be a change of some substratum that is potentially that into which it 40 is changing, for example, haematogenesis, being the coming-to-be of blood, is a change of, 544,1 let’s say, bread, which is potentially blood. But there isn’t any [substratum] that, in the case of pleasures, changes from the form to which [the substratum] belongs (en hô estin) into some other form that [the substratum] prior to the pleasure was potentially but not actually, and yet which it afterwards has come to be actually through the pleasure, just as in the case of the bread. For prior to the coming-to-be, that is, prior to the 5 haematogenesis, this [bread] was blood potentially but not actually, and afterwards it has come to be blood through haematogenesis. What, then, do those who claim that pleasure is a coming-to-be have to offer us that is analogous to the bread and the blood, which through the pleasure – in the sense of through a [process of] coming-to-be – changed from what it was into what it was potentially but not actually? Will they say that it is the body or the soul that is analogous to the bread, and will they posit that [these] 10 change when pleasure is present to them? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to take this view completely seriously?111 Moreoever, just as falling sick destroys the end of recuperation, which is health, and recuperation destroys the end of falling sick, sickness, it would have to happen in the same way in the case of pleasure: what came to be through pleasure would have to be destroyed through pain, and what pain brought about would in turn 15 be undone through pleasure. Just let them try to tell us what these ends are that pain and pleasure generate and destroy!
1173b7: And they say that pain is the lack of being in accordance with nature, and pleasure is its replenishment.112
And through these [arguments] they attempted to show that pleasure 20 is a coming-to-be, and if it is a coming-to-be, it could not be the Good. Indeed, they said: pleasure is a replenishment, replenishment is a coming-to-be, therefore pleasure is a coming-to-be. Further, pleasure is a coming-to-be, a coming-to-be is a change, change is incomplete, therefore pleasure is incomplete. And since pleasure is incomplete, it could not be the Good. For the Good is something wholly complete (panteleion) and not [something] incomplete. But why [do they think] it is clear that pleasure is replenishment? Well, they say, because pain, which is opposed 25 to pleasure, is a lack, pleasure should be a replenishment. For if white is separating, black is compressing,113 and should pain be a lack, pleasure [should be] a replenishment. ([This is] the topos from contraries).114
And they established that ‘pain is a lack’ (1173b7) in the following way. If, they say, the living thing experiences pain when it is hungry or thirsty, hunger and thirst are pains; but surely hunger and thirst are lacks with respect to the natural state30 ; therefore, pain is a lack. For, they say, whenever the body comes to be lacking dryness or moisture, it departs from the natural state; but when it departs [from the natural state] it experiences pain and desires replenishment; and when it desires, it eats and drinks; and when it eats and drinks, it is replenished.
If this is true, lacking and filling are ‘affections of the body’ (1173b9); therefore, the body should also be what is experiencing pleasure and pain. For 35 the body is what is being replenished. Therefore, the body is also what is experiencing pleasure. For if replenishment is in the body, and replenishment is pleasure, it follows that pleasure is in the body; and it is necessary that that to which pleasure belongs also be experiencing pleasure. 545,1 But surely it is not the body that is experiencing pleasure. ‘Therefore, pleasure is not replenishment’ (1173b11).115
But how, they ask, does pleasure come to be? Just listen to how [it comes to be]!116 When the things that nourish the body – food and drink – enter the body at mealtimes and the nutritive soul is active in connection with the body in an unimpeded manner, we experience pleasure. For the pleasure that comes to be after the 5 lack is an unimpeded natural activity of the nutritive soul. Or to put this more universally: every unimpeded natural activity is very pleasant. Certainly, the activity of the nutritive soul fills and restores [the body] to the natural state, and this activity is pleasant. It is the soul that is experiencing pleasure, and pleasure is its unimpeded activity.
545,10 Aristotle says that pleasure is an activity – not in the sense of pleasure properly being an activity by definition, but in the sense that it has its being upon activity and cannot be separated from activity.117 Pleasure, then, is said to be an unimpeded activity of the soul118 because it accompanies an unimpeded activity of soul and is inseparably present with the activity upon which it comes to be. And just as pleasure follows upon (epakolouthei) virtue and knowledge, which are states (hexeis) 15 of the soul, <or rather> upon their activities119 (for the activities in accordance with virtue are pleasurable), in the same way the activities of the nutritive soul, too, are most pleasant when they are engaged in an unimpeded manner. And the nutritive soul is a state (hexis) of the body, and this soul’s activities are certain acts of completion (teleiotêtes tines) and acts of restoration (apokatastaseis)120 to the natural state. Yet it is that which is doing the restoring121 back to nature that is pleasant, and accordingly 20 the pleasure is not a (process of) restoration (apokatastasis)122 but an activity of the nutritive power and state, or an activity of the nutritive soul, or however one wishes to call it. When this nutritive state is pleasantly active, then, the replenishment and the (process of) restoration to the natural state follows. For just as when the builder is active, for example, in building a house, the raising of the wall follows, and when we 25 are pouring into the cistern, it happens that the cistern is filled; so too, when the nutritive state is active in connection with the things that nourish the body, the body is replenished. Therefore, there is a great difference between saying that pleasure is replenishment and saying that replenishement follows upon pleasure, that is, that replenishment follows upon the activity of the nutritive soul. And the nutritive soul is a state of the 30 body, but pleasure is an activity of the state in connection to the things that nourish the body. And the replenishment that follows this activity, that is, that follows pleasure, is a coming-to-be. For to be replenished is to come to be.
1173b13: This opinion seems to have arisen from the pains in connection with nourishment.123
35 [Aristotle] says that the opinion that pleasure is a replenishment came to them from the pains in connection with nourishment. For replenishment follows upon the nutritive soul’s 546,1 unimpeded activity, which is pleasant, and because of this they thought that pleasure is a replenishment, thinking124 that which follows to be the same as that which is being followed. For the living thing is pained when it is lacking [something]. But when, once food has been obtained, the nutritive soul begins to be active in connection with the things that nourish the body,125 [the living thing] is no longer in pain 5 because it is being replenished. To say, then, that the replenishment that follows the pleasure is pleasure is comparable to saying a thing and its shadow are identical. For just as a shadow necessarily follows the man who is walking in the open air and illuminated by the sun,126 so too does replenishment [necessarily follow] the unimpeded activity of the [nutritive] soul, that is, [it necessarily follows] pleasure. And the sense in which pleasure is said to be an activity has been discussed.127
10 But that replenishment is not pleasure but a symptom of pleasure or, if you prefer, a symptom of the activity upon which the pleasure [comes to be], [Aristotle] shows this by means of the other pleasures, [namely] those that [supervene] upon acts of contemplation and sensation,128 which are not followed by replenishments. For if, according to them, pleasure is a replenishment, and this replenishment comes to be after the pain that came to be upon the lack, no one who is without lack 15 and therefore without pain should experience pleasure. For if, as they themselves maintain, pleasure and replenishment are the same, like the human being and the mortal [are the same], and for this reason the man who is experiences pleasure and the man who is being restored are the same, how would it be possible for anyone to ever experience pleasure without being replenished? But surely those who live in contemplation experience even a great deal of pleasure, as do those who are listening to harmonious melodies and those who are experiencing the sensation of certain nice fragrances 20 and those who are observing the most beautiful objects of sight, even though no replenishment is taking place in them. How are we sure that [these men] are not undergoing restorations? Well, from the fact that they experience pleasure without any preceding pain or lack. For since pain follows upon lacks, where there is no pain, there is also no lack; and where there is no lack, there is no replenishment, either; and where there is no replenishment, there is no pleasure, either, if pleasure and replenishment are 25 the same, as they claim. This is the meaning of the present passage.129
The passage of the text [that runs] ‘it happens that when [we] become lacking and experience a prior pain, [we then] experience pleasure thanks to replenishment’ (1173b14–15)130 is expounding the opinion of those men who claim that pleasure is a replenishment. [The passage] is saying that those who have experienced a prior pain due to a lack experience pleasure when they are replenished. But if 30 pleasure is simultaneous with replenishment and it is in tandem with replenishment that it is caused to exist, then replenishment is the same as pleasure. Therefore, pleasure is a replenishment.
Aristotle objects to this by saying ‘but we also experience pleasure when we have remembered [something]’,131 and what, he asks, are these pleasant memories comings-to-be of? 35 That is to say, what are they replenishments of? For, since replenishment is a coming-to-be, instead of saying ‘What are the memories replenishments of?’ he said ‘What are they comings-to-be of?’ (cf. 1173b19). But that the pleasures in memories are not replenishments is clear from the fact that there had been no prior lack, and that there had been no preceding lack is indicated by the fact that there had been no pain. Yet the memories of the most noble actions that one has performed and from which one has benefitted are pleasant.
547,1 1173b20 To those [people] who cite the reproachable pleasures [one] should reply.132
It is clear that the pleasures are of the same kind as the pleasant objects that they derive from. But if this is the case, and if there are bad objects of pleasure, then there are also bad pleasures. Therefore pleasure is 5 not a good. This argument, however, does not [in fact] conclude that pleasure is not a good, but that there exist several kinds of pleasure and that they differ from each other in the same way that the pleasant objects from which they derive do. And just as some of these pleasant objects are good, some are bad, and some are neither [good nor bad], so too will the pleasures be differentiated into three kinds133 in a manner analogous to the pleasant objects, and it will not be the case that every pleasure is 10 bad.
But Aristotle did not provide this [objection] against these men, instead he immediately objected [to them] by saying that bad things are not pleasant, and the [experiences] that result from them are not pleasures. For the things that appear to be pleasant to wretched human beings are not truly pleasant; rather [these things] are pleasant to those people but not pleasant simpliciter. For just as the things that promote health in those having a fever do not promote health simpliciter, and the things that are bitter to those suffering jaundice are not 15 bitter simpliciter but only to them, and just as the things that are white or black to those suffering from ophthalmia (1173b25) are not simpliciter such as they appear to those people, so too the things that are pleasant for those who are in a bad condition are not for this reason pleasant [simpliciter]. For to the queen of Lybia called Lamia,134 who cut up pregnant women and devoured their foetuses raw, such a 20 ‘feast’ was pleasant – but it was pleasant to her, while being unpleasant simpliciter.
‘Or one could reply in this way that pleasures are choiceworthy, but surely not those deriving from these [objects]’ (1173b25–6).135 He says ‘deriving from these [objects]’ (1173b26) instead of ‘deriving from the reproachable objects’. And what [Aristotle] means is something like this: one should say that those pleasures deriving from objects that are truly pleasant (and the sciences and virtues are truly pleasant) are good and choiceworthy, whereas regarding those ‘pleasures’ that derive from 25 reproachable objects of pleasure, i.e. those deriving from the sexual desire for males136 and other such things, one should not say that these are pleasures simpliciter, but that they appear to be pleasures but are not pleasures. For just as growing rich from farming is choiceworthy while [growing rich] from robbing temples or betraying one’s country is most wicked, so too is experiencing pleasure deriving from genuinely pleasant objects most noble, while [experiencing pleasure] deriving from 30 reproachable objects is most wicked.137
Either, then, we must deny that reproachable things are pleasant and that the affections deriving from them are pleasures, or else, if we must follow custom and the opinions and labels of the masses by saying that reproachable things are ‘pleasant’ and ‘pleasures’, then we must say that pleasures differ in kind. For the pleasures of seriously good human beings and of those who are living in accordance with nature are different in kind from those of licentious and bad people. 35 For whatever it is that distinguishes seriously good human beings from bad ones, this is also what distinguishes the pleasures they pursue 548,1 and want to experience, and this will be shown through several arguments in the present book.138 That pleasures differ is clear from the fact that the unjust do not care to experience the pleasures of the just, nor do the just care to experience those of the unjust. For the activities of those who differ in kind are themselves different in kind, and accordingly the pleasures that come to be upon these activities are different in kind, too.
5 1173b31 And the friend, being different from the flatterer, seems to be evidence.
They also attempted to conclude on the basis of the flatterer that pleasure is not a good. For if the flatterer belongs to the class of pleasant things that are bad and reproachable, then the pleasure that results from him will also be bad. Therefore, pleasure is not a good.
And 10 Aristotle deals with this objection by effectively139 saying that the case of the flatterer does not show that pleasure is bad but that, because [the flatterer] differs from the friend, the pleasures resulting from them are also different, and the pleasure of the friend is different in kind from the pleasure of the flatterer. What difference, then, is there between the friend and the flatterer? A very big difference, and Aristotle talked about it in his discussion of the flatterer.140 But they also differ on account of the fact that the friend does not always say 15 or do the things to his friend that promote pleasure; rather, there is a way in which he even causes pain, when he sees that by causing a bit of pain he is likely going to benefit his friend. By contrast, the flatterer is always aiming at what is pleasant, and this is his ultimate goal. And this is also the reason why the friend is praised for wanting the very best for his friend and [wanting it] for the friend’s own sake, while the flatterer is reproached. But 20 it would not be the case that the former is praised while the latter is reproached, if there were no difference between them. And if they are different, the pleasures deriving from them [are different], too.
They also differ on account of the fact that the flatterer has ulterior motives for his association,141 and his professed motives are not what he is [really] thinking (for he says one thing but is thinking something else). By contrast, what the friend says is in agreement with what his soul is thinking.
‘But nobody would choose to live having the [level of] rational thought of a child’ (1174a1–2).142 If, then, pleasure was a good, then every pleasant 25 way of life (bios) and every pleasant life (zôê) would be good. But surely there are pleasant ways of life that are bad, and similarly there are pleasant lives that are bad. Therefore, pleasure is not a good. For this argument also reaches the [conclusion] that pleasure is not a good. But from what [consideration] is it clear that there are pleasant lives and ways of life that are not good? [Aristotle] says that the life and way of life of children makes this clear. For they are continuously experiencing pleasure, and 30 their ways of life are not good. For who would ‘choose to live’ (1174a1) and think (phronein) like children? This is equivalent to asking: For who would choose to experience the pleasure of children? For whoever should choose to experience the pleasure of children is one who thinks (phronein) like they do, if we must say that children think (phronein). [Aristotle] has assumed this and has not opposed it because it is clear that not even by means of this thesis is 35 pleasure shown to be something bad, but that there are different kinds of pleasure.
‘Nor would anyone enjoy doing any of the most shameful things’ (1174a3). They brought this forward as contributing towards the conclusion that pleasure is bad, and what Aristotle says is something like this: it is not that we take a serious interest in attaining what is good by one means but do not 549,1 eagerly pursue it by another means, rather we choose every means by which we believe to be able to accrue what is good. And we do not say that what is good should be obtained by this means or by this action but should not be obtained by that one or the other one; rather, we take a serious interest in attaining what is good by every means, i.e. by every action and every activity from which 5 it may arise. For example, if victory over our enemies is a good, and if it is possible for us to achieve victory not by openly waging war but by some form of trickery, then we will not discard this [trickery] and choose war! Rather, we will bid farewell to war and choose deception. And if things are the other way around and it is not possible by means of trickery [to achieve victory over our enemies] but it is possible by means of war, then we hasten towards 10 war. And if both are possible means, then we will have an inclination in both directions. This, then, is also how it works in the case of pleasure. If [pleasure were] a good, then, and if it were possible for us to accrue it both through the most shameful and reproachable practical actions and through noble and praiseworthy ones, we would be performing all actions equally without being the least bit ashamed. But in fact, we do not perform the most shameful acts for the sake of pleasure, even though it is at times easier by these means 15 to experience a great deal of pleasure than it is by means of noble practical actions and doings. Therefore, pleasure is not a good. For if pleasure were a good, we would hasten, as has been said, to experience pleasure by every means and to procure it from any such object of pleasure – both reproachable and praiseworthy – by means of which the attainment of pleasure was clearly either easier or at all possible.
20 1174a4 And there are many things that we would be eager for even if they bring no pleasure.143
After the argument that was just stated, which says that if pleasure were indeed a good, we would hasten to its attainment by every means (for it should not be the case that what is good is procured by one means but not acquired by another, but rather by every means by which it is 25 possible for us to procure it), [Aristotle] introduces the present [considerations] on this point, which turn out to be rather impressive. The force of what he says is something like this: Just as we do not avoid everything that does not produce delight and pleasure, so too we do not welcome everything that is accompanied by pleasure. For who does not want to see or hear, even when [these activities] do not bring any pleasure? And if someone does not accept this, at 30 any rate those who recall their acquisition of the virtues know that it is toilsome and a great deal of work. For the Lord of all that is says: ‘The road that leads away to life is hard and narrow’ (Gospel of Matthew 7:14). This acquisition of virtue, then, even though I myself maintain that it is unpleasant, has nevertheless been vitally connected to the most blessed end of all things holy, and we have approached [this end] by means of it;144 and we want to recall it, 35 even if the recollections should turn out to be unpleasant. And if someone claims that we necessarily experience 550,1 pleasure when we see and when we walk the road that leads us to the virtues and when we recall [this acquisition of virtue], Aristotle says ‘it doesn’t matter’ (1174a7). ‘For we would choose’ them even if it should bring no pleasure (1174a7). [And here is] an indication of this: those who have been enclosed in dark prisons, although they do not experience any pleasure when they see darkness, nevertheless 5 choose to see, even if the darkness that they are seeing happens to be unpleasant.
After having said these things, he concludes his discussion of whether pleasure is good or not by saying that it is ‘clear that pleasure is not a good and that not every pleasure is choiceworthy’.145 But the text is missing something, and the full passage could go like this: it is clear that if we should agree that the affections that arise from the reproachable activities are 10 to be called ‘pleasures’, [then] neither is every pleasure a good nor is every [one] choiceworthy. And that they differ in kind and are not all of the same kind, this is also clear.
1174a13 What [pleasure] is (ti d’ esti) or what sort of thing it is (poion ti) should become clearer to us if we start from the beginning.146
After having dislodged the arguments that maintain that pleasure is not a good, [Aristotle] here 15 is inquiring what its nature and substance (ousian) is. For from its nature and substance we also shall be able to know whether it is good or bad. For in the case of time, too, it was by having discovered what it is that Aristotle discovered accordingly what sort of thing it is.147 Either then, what he is saying is something like this: we must first discover what [pleasure] is (to ti esti) and what its nature is, that is, its form (eidos) and essence (to ti ên einai), and then accordingly what sort of thing it is, for example good or bad. (20 For the arguments that were discussed [above] made it appear to be no more good than bad.) Or else the expression ti esti148 is said instead of ‘is one of the things that are simple and are thought of by themselves, like seeing and smelling or rather like white and149 black’, and [Aristotle] said ê150poion ti151 instead of ‘or one of the things that are necessarily thought of together with others’, such as the things that are in determined substrata, like snubness, 25 like oddness and like breadthlessness. For we are able to think of white in separation from any determined substratum, but we cannot think of snubness divorced from nose, or oddness or breadthlessness in separation from number and line. We must, then, also examine whether pleasure belongs to the things that have their being in indeterminate substrata or to the things [that have their being] in a determined [substratum]. [Aristotle] will show that [pleasure] belongs to the things that have their substratum determined, and that its 30 substratum is the activity of the soul. For natural activities are the conditions for pleasure’s being and not being. For this reason [pleasure] seems to be an activity, too; I mean by reason of [pleasure’s] being present or absent simultaneously with activities and because just as each activity is whole and complete in each moment of the interval of time, as we shall learn,152 so too is the activity.
551,1 1174a14 For seeing appears to be complete at any given time.
[Aristotle] called the durationless moment (to aplates nun) ‘time’ because it is something of time. For in each moment seeing is complete and actually existing. For if we see a definite thing (tode ti) in some [interval of] 5 time, we are nevertheless totally seeing it in each of the parts of time and in the indivisible moment itself and sight does not receive anything in the subsequent moment that it did not [already] have in the previous moment. For [sight] is present as a simultaneous whole,153 and its being is not incomplete. And pleasure, then, is like sight. For pleasure is not a kind of build-up or accumulation of 10 many pleasures, nor does the subsequent pleasure, and the next one after that, supervene while the previous pleasure persists, with the preceding and subsequent parts being present simultaneously with it, as occurs in the case of a straight line being drawn, where the line is completed by the subsequent parts being established while the previous parts persist. Rather, in all of the moments [the pleasure] is wholly complete, and whatever it was like in the previous moment, 15 this is also what it is like in the next moment, and in the one after it, and in the one after that one, and it is one and the same pleasure in all moments.154 Let these remarks be said as a clarifying prelude to what is about to be said.
This is the inference [Aristotle] wants to make: Since pleasure is in a way an activity because it is established upon activities, and since activity is not a coming-to-be, then neither is pleasure a coming-to-be. But 20 from what [consideration] has it become clear that an activity is not a coming-to-be? It is from [the consideration] that whereas a coming-to-be turns out to be incomplete as long as what is coming to be is coming to be, an activity is whole and wholly complete at each moment. For at no moment is anything lacking in sight that makes sight complete by being added to it later on; rather [one] is seeing the same thing in the same way now and before. For [the activity] exists always as a whole and complete. 25 And it is the same way with pleasure, and whoever has paid attention to the experience (tô pathei) [of it] knows this. Consequently, pleasure, too, is in a way an activity and not a movement or a coming-to-be. For ‘every movement’ and coming-to-be ‘is in time’ (1174a19) and proceeds from incompleteness to completeness. For when we walk from Thebes to Athens we are not walking the same walk we walked before when we walked from Thebes to Athens; rather, in the past we walked one walk, and now 30 we are walking a different one. Nor does the walking from Thebes to Athens exist all together as a whole; rather, different parts of it [exist at different times]. For this is how all incomplete movements are.
Further, all of the movements that proceed towards an end are incomplete. For consider house-building: the house155 is finished as a whole over the course of house-building in its entirety; the parts of house-building are incomplete, while the whole house-building is complete. For just as the parts of the house are incomplete relative to the whole house, so too are 35 the building of the foundation and the building of the wall and the building of each of the house’s parts incomplete relative to the whole house-building (over the course of which the whole [house] was finished and received its completion). All of these [partial activities], Aristotle says, are different in form from one another 552,1 and from their whole (1174a22–3). For just as the foundation is different in form from the wall, and this is different from the house, so too is the coming-to-be of the foundation different from that of the wall and both are different from the coming-to-be of the whole house. By the rhabdôsis of the column (1174a24) [Aristotle] means the fixing the column lengthwise, which occurs when it is set up at right angles.156 5 And the coming-to-be of the whole and wholly complete temple is complete and whole, while the comings-to-be of its parts are incomplete. And triglyphs (1174a26) are the [pieces of] wood that are carved with three channels in their ends (most people call these moutla),157 and the movement or coming-to-be of these triglyphs differ from that coming-to-be over the course of which the whole temple received its completion.
And [Aristotle] differentiates advancing motion into 10 flying, walking and leaping (1174a31), as he did in On the Progression of Living Things.158 And he says that not only is walking different from flying, but even within walking each of its parts is made out to be different from the other (1174a32). For walking the third-length of the race course is different from walking the half-length, and this is different from walking the two-thirds length, and these three are each individually separate from walking159 the whole length. Similarly, walking 15 in a line in the theatre (for every line is in a place) is different from the walking that occurred in a line in the agora. And he says that he has discussed movement ‘in detail’ (1174b2) in the treatises On Motion, that is in the sixth, seventh and eighth books of the Physics,160 but we should be aware that he has derived (parestêsen) the differences and distinctions of the movements relative to each other from the 20 difference of the parts with which we move, for example walking and flying from feet and wings (although [he did derive] leaping from the manner of the movement), and quite simply [he derived] the comings-to-be from the difference of the parts and the whole.
And [Aristotle] said that the manner in which they differ is not trivial, rather it serves to show that pleasures, too, differ in accordance with their activities, and the activities in accordance with the things performing the activities. And just as house-building is not 25 separated from the house being built, rather there is simultaneously a house being built and house-building (for it is impossible for there to be a house being built if there is no house-building), so too is pleasure simultaneous with the unimpeded natural activity, and the unimpeded natural activity is simultaneous with pleasure.
1174b3 It seems that [movement] is not complete at every time, but that 30 most [movements] are incomplete.
The word ‘most’ is added on account of circular motions. For these motions are always in completion, and [Aristotle] explained how so in the first book of On the Heavens.161 For the motion in a straight line is not complete at every time, rather the motions of the parts differ in form, and they are incomplete as 35 compared to the whole [line]. For the motions of lines differ because the starting point from which what is moved began to move differs from the end-point at which it came to rest. And if 553,1 the starting point and the endpoint differ, it is clear that the part closer to the starting point is also different from the part further away from the starting point, and certainly different from the one at the end. The parts of motion [in a straight line], then, differ, and for this reason [this motion] is incomplete until all of its parts come to be. And the form of pleasure, as was said,162 is complete in all 5 parts of time, and pleasure is something whole and complete and not anything that acquires its form and completion by the accumulation of one part after another.163
In the remark ‘And it is clear that they are different from one another’ (1174b6–7)164 [Aristotle] was talking about pleasure. He is saying: for it is clear that pleasure is different from motions and comings-to-be.
‘This would also seem to be the case because it is 10 impossible to be moved except in time’ (1174b7–8). [Aristotle] has said that the indivisible unit (to atomon) is not time but a moment (nun). In the sixth book of the Physics165 he has shown that in the partless and indivisible moment it is impossible for there to be any motion or rest, nor any coming-to-be or destruction. If, then, it is possible to experience pleasure in the indivisible moment, that is, if pleasure is complete in a moment, but it is impossible for 15 motion or coming-to-be to take place [in a moment], then pleasure is not a motion or a coming-to-be. If, then, someone persists in a state of excessive joy over one whole hour, and if something was coming to be during this hour, then what was coming to be was incomplete in all of the parts and moments of the hour, but the pleasure was whole and wholly complete. Therefore, pleasure is not a motion or coming-to-be. This, then, is the intended meaning.166
In the passage of text: ‘For these are not 20 said [of] everything’ (1174b10–11), the addendum kata is missing, which would give us: ‘[For] these are [not] said of everything’.167 With the term ‘these’ [Aristotle] means motion and coming-to-be. For motion and coming-to-be are not predicated of all things, but of ‘things that are divisible and not whole’ (1174b11–12). And those things are divisible and not whole that go from being incomplete to being complete by means of coming-to-be and that do not have their being in its entirety in a moment. And neither pleasure nor seeing nor a point 25 come to be in time, as a house does, but in a moment. Likewise, both the point and contiguity are and are not, and Aristotle has shown this, too, in his [arguments] On Motion.168 Aristotle’s claim, then, that there is no motion or coming-to-be of either of these, [that is] of the point and the monad (1174b12–13), is equivalent to saying that these, too, do not go from not being to being by means of motion or coming-to-be.
30 This ‘sense’, (1174b14)169 that is, seeing, is an apprehension of an object of sight and is extended in time. For it is not the case that upon having seen something we immediately discontinue looking [at it]; rather there is an interval during which we persist in seeing what we initially saw in a complete manner in the indivisible moment. It is in this sense then – I mean insofar as we persist in seeing for a certain time – that the object of sight is in time and seeing is in motion. Time and motion, then, are superimposed in thought when ‘any 35 sense is active in relation to its object of sense’ (1174b14)170 even though the seeing itself is complete in all parts of time. Perhaps, then, something is missing in the passage ‘of every sense that 554,1 is active in relation to its object of sense’ (1174b14), and the missing bit would be ‘there is no motion nor coming-to-be’. And we should correspondingly add this and mentally supply the negative particle ou and the conjunctive particle de to ‘sense’, thereby rendering the entire passage into something like this: ‘Nor of any sense that is active in relation to its object of sense is there a motion or coming-to-be’.171 5 For there is no coming-to-be of pleasure, as was said, nor of sense in actuality.
Or else what is meant by ‘of every sense that is active in relation to its object of sense’ (1174b14) might be something like this: of every sense – not sense that is observed to be in a [mere] state [of potentiality] but sense that is in actuality and is already active in relation to its object of sense – there is a proper pleasure. For we must mentally supply ‘there is a proper pleasure’. For a proper pleasure is entwined with every 10 sense that is in actuality and is active in an unimpeded and natural manner in regard to its proper object of sense. And the pleasure that is present together with seeing and the one present together with smelling and the one present together with tasting are all different. And we ought to write the conjunction dê instead of the conjunction de, e.g.: ‘In fact (dê), of every sense that is active in relation to its object of sense’ (1174b14). And [Aristotle] would 15 effectively172 be saying something like this: It is certainly clear from what has been said that a certain pleasure is yoked together with every sense that is in actuality and active in an unimpeded manner. And since in each part of time and in each moment seeing is whole and complete, and pleasure likewise, the sense in actuality is in a way identical to the accompanying pleasure and is not separate from it. But if [the pleasure] 20 is present together with it in an inseparable manner, it is clear that deriving from every sense that is active in relation to its proper object of sense there is a proper pleasure. And this is the interpretation that is in greater accord with the [material] that Aristotle brings forward next.
1174b15 And the [sense] that is in a good condition in relation to the most beautiful of the [objects] falling173 under the sense.
25 Not all objects of sight are equally beautiful, nor does beauty and splendor appear in all things in the same way. For the orderly arrangement of the heavens, which is so very rounded off on all sides and has been rendered with all excellence in measure and order, and the golden or wooden sphere are not equally beautiful; nor are the light-bringing power of the sun that shines upon all things and 30 fills them with its own splendor and the bright light coming from the moon beautiful in the same way; and neither are the peacock and the jackdaw [equally beautiful]; nor again do the spoken word – for there is a form of beauty in words, too – and the intervallic voice that is observed in all musical melodies and rhythms participate in the same beautiful nature and sublimity.174 And we will discover that this also holds in the case of the objects of taste, smell and 35 touch.
But if this is so, then it is evident that not all objects of sense draw [our senses] to themselves, nor do they all charm and 555,1 move and delight our senses in like manner. Nor is someone who sees a body that has its parts in an harmonious relation to one another coupled with a healthy complexion175 and the body of the contrary kind gladdened in the same way. Rather, it is clear that from the most beautiful objects of sight there supervenes upon the activities a certain pleasure that is different from that deriving from inferior [objects of sight]. And similarly in the case of the 5 objects of hearing.
Further, [Aristotle] says that upon every sense in actuality – a sense is in actuality when it is already active in relation to its proper object of sense, for example the sense that is currently seeing the object of sight and tasting the object of taste – upon every sense in actuality there follows a pleasure, and that every sense experiences pleasure when it apprehends its proper object of sense, and that when [the sense] is active in a complete manner – it is the [sense] in a good condition that is active in a complete manner, and it 10 is in a good condition when its proper sense-organ is healthy – when [the sense] is active in a complete and unimpeded and natural manner it also experiences pleasure in a complete manner, and that it experiences the most pleasure when it apprehends the most beautiful of its proper objects of sense. For when the object being seen is the most beautiful of the objects of sight but sight does not apprehend it in a correct and irreproachable manner because it is not healthy, it will not experience pleasure in a complete manner; and when the sense is 15 in a good condition but what is being seen is not most beautiful, in this case the pleasure will also not be complete. And [Aristotle] says that a complete <pleasure>176 is the one that cannot admit of an increase. For just as what is extremely hot, e.g. fire, that is, that than which it is impossible for anyone to conceive of something hotter, is said to be completely hot, so too is a complete pleasure that than which there is no pleasure more intense and capable of producing more delight. This, then, is the intended meaning of what 20 is being said.177
The passage of text that says ‘but178 complete activity seems [to be]179 especially something like this’ (1174b16–17) may indicate that the complete activity seems to be pleasure. And it not only seems [to be pleasure]; it really is pleasure. The incomplete [activities] do indeed contain pleasantness and are indeed pleasant, but they are not most pleasant; and yet, even if [the activities] are incomplete, however much activity is present at the time – and however much pleasure is [supervening] upon that activity – is nevertheless a certain whole and in a sense complete over 25 all parts of that time.180 For just as a greater state comes to be from a lesser state and nevertheless both the greater and the lesser are – and are said to be – states, and in this very respect – [that is,] qua states – they are complete; so too both the lesser pleasure and the greater pleasure are observed to be in a sense certain wholes and in a sense complete for the time during which we are experiencing them.
30 1174b17 And it doesn’t matter whether we say that it is active or that in which it resides.
Since we, that is, the ones who are experiencing sensation and pleasure, are sense in actuality and pleasure in actuality, and since Aristotle said that it is sense that is active and experiencing pleasure, he says that it doesn’t matter whether someone says that sense itself 35 is active and experiencing pleasure or the living thing in which the sense resides. For whenever the person who is seeing is in a state of well-being with respect to this sense and is active in connection with the most beautiful objects of sight, he is completely active and completely experiencing pleasure. For the 556,1 activities that derive from the most complete states and that arise in connection with the most beautiful of the sense-objects falling under that sense are most complete and most pleasant. Regarding each [person] who is experiencing sensation, when they are in the best condition and a healthy state, and of course when the object of sense is best, the activity is best, and this best activity is most complete and is therefore 5 most pleasant. For what is best is both most complete and most pleasant. Surely, then, the activity of this most complete state – [Aristotle] calls [that state] ‘most complete’ (teleiotatên) that is ultimate and wholly complete and allows no excess – when it arises in connection with the most beautiful object falling under that sense, is most pleasant and most complete. By contrast, the activity of the complete [state] – [Aristotle] calls [that state] ‘complete’ that is not yet the ultimate and most complete form; this is 10 indeed a state, insofar as it possesses some form, yet it is a road to the complete state – is also pleasant, but it is not most pleasant. And the cases of rational thought and contemplation are like that of sensation. What he calls ‘rational thought’ (dianoia) would be scientific knowledge (epistêmonikên gnôsin), and ‘contemplation’ (theôria) would be intellectual life and activity (noeran zôên kai energeian). For even in these there are degrees of more and less. And 15 some men are wholly complete in terms of these states, while others are inferior to them. As a result, [men] will also be active in accordance with either the superiority or the inferiority of their states. For the man who has set sensation aside and turned towards himself and <by>181 this manner of reversion has established himself among the intelligibles will be active in one way, and the man who is looking to the external world will be active in another way, and the man who is moving up from premises182 to conclusions will be active in yet another way.183 Accordingly, the 20 pleasures of these men will also be different and not the same. And the intellectual life is most complete and most pleasant, while the other lives are complete and pleasant but in no way most pleasant.
1174b23: Pleasure completes the activity. But the way in which pleasure completes [the activity] is not the same as the way in which the object of sense and the sense complete [it], when they are both seriously good (spoudaia)
25 ‘The object of sense’ and ‘the sense’ are being used interchangeably. For Aristotle customarily calls the products of art ‘art’ and the objects of sense ‘senses’. He might be leaving [a second] ‘the sense’ out of the passage, in which case the full passage would go like this: ‘But the way in which pleasure completes the activity is not the same as the way in which the object of sense and the sense complete the sense’.184 But perhaps we need to write 30 ‘the sense’ (tên aisthêsin) instead of ‘and the sense’ (kai hê aisthêsis), so that the passage would go like this: ‘Pleasure completes the activity. But the way in which pleasure completes [the activity] is not the same as the way in which the object of sense completes the sense’. If the passage goes like this, then nothing would be missing.
But how does the object of sense complete the sense? Surely in that it leads the sense from potentiality to being active and renders it an activity, whereas before – prior to apprehending the object of sense – it was in a state of potentiality.185 35 For as it was shown in On the Soul,186 sense in actuality is identical to the object of sense in actuality, that is, it is identical to the form that is in the matter. For the sensitive soul is a faculty by means of which the possessor of the faculty 557,1 is capable of judging the objects of sense by becoming like them through a kind of transformation (tinos alloiôseôs) by means of the activity directed at them. And just as the nutritive faculty requires nourishment in order to be active (for its activity is connected to nourishment), so too does the sensitive faculty require the objects of sense. For 5 this faculty’s activity is connected to them and is capable of apprehending and judging these187 objects of sense. This is the reason why [the faculty] is not active if the objects of sense are not present, but it is [still] sense in potentiality and is analogous to those who are in possession of a certain knowledge but are not active with respect to it.188 For the way in which those men are knowers in potentiality is similar to the way in which the inactive sense, that is the living thing itself that is capable of sensation, [is sense in potentiality]. For just as the one who knows is himself the knowledge, 10 so too is the one in whom the sense exists himself the sense. For he is the one who is active with respect to it. For in all things, it is the ones that have the faculties and the states that are active with respect to those faculties and states. Accordingly, saying that the object of sense leads the potential sense to activity is the same as saying that [the object of sense] makes the man who has the sense and is not active, though he is potentially sensitive, 15 actually sensitive and completes him.189 The activity is a faculty’s end and, as it were, form. For it is for the sake of (dia)190 the activities that the faculties have been given to us by the Creator, in order that we might be active with respect to them.
The object of sense is both external to the one who is experiencing sensation and being active and prior to the sense in actuality, but this is not how pleasure is related to activity. For [pleasure] is not 20 external to activity nor prior to it, rather it both is and is not simultaneous with it, and cannot be separated from the activity upon which it exists.
Pleasure is said to complete the activity in the sense of increasing it.191 For the pleasure that [supervenes] upon doing geometry increases one’s activities in geometry,192 and the [pleasure that supervenes] upon playing the lyre [increase] one’s activities in lyre-playing.193 For the physician, [Aristotle] says,194 and health are a cause of the living thing’s 25 being healthy, yet the physician qua physician is external to the healthy [living thing] and prior. (For when the [patient] whose health had begun to be restored by the physician was still sick, the physician had [already] begun restoring the sick patient’s health, but the patient whose health had begun being restored was not [yet] healthy.) But health195 is not external to the healthy [living thing] but rather in it as a part or a state. For health and being healthy196 lies in the harmony of the humours in the living thing, and health is inseparably present together with 30 the living thing, as long as it is healthy. In the same way, pleasure also exists together with the activity upon which it comes to be, for as long as the activity is maintained and exists.
The way in which the physician is a cause of the living thing’s being healthy, then, is different from the way in which health [is a cause]. For the physician was a cause of health’s having supervened in the living thing, while health [is a cause] of [the living thing’s] being active in a natural and irreproachable manner,197 and the physician is separate from 35 the healthy [living thing], while health exists together with it as a kind of state or form of it. For health is the form of the healthy [man] qua healthy [man], just as white [is the form] of the white [man] qua white [man]. For a white [man] divorced from white cannot be a white [man], and neither can a healthy man divorced from healthy [be a healthy man]. By the same token, the object of sense and pleasure do not complete the sense in the same way. Rather, the object of sense completes it in the sense of 40 provoking it198 and leading it from potentiality to activity, being itself external to and prior to the activity connected to it. For [only] at that time 558,1 does [the sense] become capable of apprehending and judging the object of sense. Pleasure, however, completes the activity in the sense of increasing and prolonging (suntêrousa) it and, as it were, persuading it to persist.199
No one, I think, fails to recognize that corresponding to (kata) each sense that is active in a natural manner and in relation to the most beautiful of the sense-objects falling under that sense there follows a pleasure.
And since the object of sense and 5 the sense are opposed as relatives, where the sense is passive and the object of sense is active, it must be that when both are simultaneously present the object of sense is active and the sense is passive, and that means that200 it must be that the activity is most excellent and most pleasant. And it is common knowledge (tôn kathômilêmenôn) that there are two ways of being passive:201 one involves being destroyed and the other involves being led to a kind of completion and form and from potentiality to activity. And it has been said a thousand times that the 10 former kind of passivity, the one that involves departing from one’s own nature and leads to destruction, is distressing and painful, while the other kind is pleasant and agreeable.