CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION	33
Happiness is the noblest, the best, and the most pleasant of human goods.	33
How is it acquired? By nature, by learning, by training, by divine inspiration, by fortune?	33
In what will it consist? Wisdom, virtue, or pleasure?	33
Happiness to be distinguished from its essential conditions.	34
How is happiness to be attained, and what hope do we have of attaining it?	35
The three lives: of the philosopher, the politician, and the voluptuary; related to wisdom, virtue, and pleasure.	35
Pace Socrates, knowledge is not virtue: we want to be virtuous, not just to know what virtue is.	38
The method of inquiry: evaluate beliefs, and seek to make more illuminating the beliefs that are true.	39
1: HAPPINESS AND THE HUMAN GOOD	41
Happiness is the best of human goods.	41
What is the chief good? Is it the Idea of good, or a common or general good, or the end of human action?	41
The theory of Ideas is incoherent and has no bearing on practice.	42
The common good is not what we are looking for, but rather the good that is the end of matters of human action.	44
Goods in the soul include states and capacities as well as activities and movements.	45
Virtue is the best state of something that has a use or task.	45
The task of the soul being life, the task of virtue is a virtuous life.	46
Happiness is the activity of a complete life in accordance with complete virtue.	46
2: VIRTUE	48
The soul has two rational parts, one that orders and one that obeys.	48
Correspondingly, there are two kinds of virtue, one intellectual and one moral.	48
Virtue is produced by, and produces, the soul’s best deeds and emotions.	49
Moral virtue is concerned with pleasure and pain.	50
Moral character arises from habit and is concerned with emotions and capacities.	50
In every continuum there is to be found excess, deficiency, and a middle state, and moral virtue has to do with things in the middle and is a sort of mean.	51
A table of virtues and vices exhibits the pattern of excesses, deficiencies, and means.	51
Some kinds of acts are in themselves depraved, and do not admit of a mean.	53
Further proof that moral virtue has to do with pleasures and pains, and the mid-point of them.	54
Sometimes one extreme is more opposed to the mean than the other.	55
3: ACTION	57
Among living things man alone is an originating principle of action.	57
Human actions concern the things that are in a man’s power to do or not to do, and it is for these that he is responsible.	58
Virtue and vice, then, are concerned with what is voluntary.	58
Is voluntariness to be defined with reference to desire, or to choice, or to thought?	58
Desire is either will, passion, or appetite.	59
Two arguments to show that what is in accordance with appetite is voluntary.	59
Two arguments to show that what is in accordance with appetite is involuntary.	59
Parallel considerations about passion and will show that the voluntary cannot be defined by reference to desire.	60
The possibility of unpremeditated action shows that the voluntary equally cannot be defined by reference to choice.	61
Voluntariness contrasted with force and compulsion: something is enforced when an external agent moves a thing against its own internal impulse.	61
In continent and incontinent people one part of the soul uses force upon another, but the soul as a whole acts voluntarily.	62
We also speak of compulsion when a man does something base to avoid a greater evil.	63
The voluntary is what is in accordance with thought: it is ignorance of relevant items that makes an act involuntary.	65
What is choice? It cannot be identified either with desire or with belief, but is compounded of both.	65
Choice arises out of deliberation, which is concerned not with ends, but with means.	67
Everything that is chosen is voluntary, but not everything that is voluntary is chosen.	68
Deliberation starts from an end, which by nature is what is really good, but by perversion may be a merely apparent good.	69
It is virtue, and not reasoning, that makes the end correct, and choice is not of the end, but of the things done for its sake.	71
We judge a man’s character by his choices.	72
4: THE MORAL VIRTUES	73
Courage is the mean between over-confidence and cowardice.	73
The courageous man faces things that are fearful to most people and to human nature.	74
The sphere of courage is what is capable of causing destructive pain, is close at hand, and is humanly endurable.	74
There are five unreal forms of courage: political courage, the courage of experience or of inexperience, the courage of hope, and the courage of passion.	75
True courage is due not to shame but to a choice of what is noble.	78
Temperance is concerned with the pleasures of taste and touch—or rather with touch alone.	79
Temperance is a mean between self-indulgence and insensibility.	81
The good-tempered person is midway, in respect of rage, between the bad-tempered and the slavish.	82
Liberality is shown in the acquisition or expenditure of wealth, and is a mean between prodigality and illiberality.	82
Pride accompanies all the virtues, and is itself accompanied by disdain.	83
The proud man is worthy of great things and thinks himself worthy of them.	84
Pride is a mean between vanity and diffidence.	86
Magnificence consists in spending on a large scale in good taste.	87
There are praiseworthy means that are not virtues, since they do not involve choice: indignation, modesty, friendliness, dignity, candour, and conviviality.	88
5: JUSTICE	91
Justice and injustice are spoken of in more than one way, but not merely homonymously.	91
There is the just as the lawful, contrasted with lawlessness: it is complete virtue, exercised in relation to others.	92
There is also a particular virtue of justice, contrasted with unfairness and covetousness, concerned with goods that are matters of fortune.	94
Of particular justice there are two kinds: distributive justice and rectificatory justice, and the latter can be further subdivided.	95
Justice in the distribution of goods is to be in accordance with the worth of the recipents, and is to be determined by geometrical proportion.	96
The justice that rectifies injustice (whether in voluntary or involuntary interactions) treats both parties on the same terms and restores equality between them in accordance with arithmetical proportion.	98
Justice in the exchange of goods consists of reciprocity in accordance with the value of the goods, which are made commensurable by the institution of money.	100
Justice is a mean, but not in the same way as other virtues (it is flanked on both sides by injustice).	103
Political justice and household justice.	104
Political justice is partly natural, and partly legal or conventional.	105
The scale of degrees of wrongdoing: one may do harm by misfortune, or by mistake, or out of passion, or out of choice.	106
Can a man be voluntarily treated unjustly? Can a man treat himself unjustly?	108
If a distribution is faulty, is it the distributor or the recipient that is guilty of injustice?	110
Justice and injustice are not merely matters of doing certain acts, but involve a particular state of character.	111
Equity: a corrective of the universal norms of legal justice in order to take account of particular circumstances.	112
A man cannot treat himself unjustly, if we are talking about particular justice; and if he harms himself voluntarily that is an injustice not to himself but to the State.	113
6: THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES	116
How is the mean determined? To answer this, we must study intellectual virtues.	116
Of the rational element in the soul, one is scientific and one calculative.	116
The good of the former is truth, the good of the latter is truth in agreement with correct desire.	117
There are five states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth: knowledge, craftsmanship, wisdom, intelligence, and understanding.	118
Knowledge is concerned with what is necessary and eternal, and is based on demonstration.	118
Craftsmanship is awareness of how to make things.	119
Wisdom is concerned with action with regard to the things that are good or bad for man: it is the virtue of one part of the rational soul.	120
Intelligence is the grasp of the principles from which demonstration proceeds.	121
Understanding is the union of intelligence and knowledge and is concerned with what is most valuable in the universe.	122
Wisdom is concerned primarily with one’s own good, but it can also be exercised in political activity.	124
There are other minor intellectual virtues concerned with action: skill in deliberation, judgement, and sense.	125
Wisdom and understanding are the virtues of the two parts of the intellectual soul, and as such contribute to happiness.	129
Wisdom and moral virtue combine to make a man good: wisdom without virtue is mere cleverness, and without wisdom only natural virtue is possible.	131
7: CONTINENCE AND INCONTINENCE	133
There are three undesirable types of character: vice, incontinence, and brutishness; and three contraries: virtue, continence, and heroic virtue.	133
The incontinent man, aware that what he does is base, does so as a result of his emotions.	134
What is it that the incontinent man acts against? Knowledge, belief, or wisdom? Each of these answers presents problems.	134
What is the sphere of incontinence—is it restricted to the appetites of the self-indulgent?	136
Knowledge can be habitual or exercised, and can be universal or particular. These distinctions explain in what way the incontinent man acts against knowledge.	137
Incontinence in the narrow sense is concerned with the same objects as temperance and self-indulgence. In a broad sense there is also incontinence of rage, honour, and profit.	139
Incontinence has a brutish and morbid form.	142
Incontinence in respect of rage is less ignoble than that in respect of the appetites.	143
Two forms of incontinence—weakness and impetuosity.	145
Self-indulgence is worse than incontinence, because the former is the pursuit of bodily pleasures on principle.	148
Other states of character that resemble continence and incontinence.	149
Wisdom is not compatible with incontinence, but cleverness is.	151
8: PLEASURE	153
Is pleasure good? Some say that no pleasures are good, others that not all pleasures are good, others that pleasure is not the chief good.	153
Their arguments do not prove that no pleasure is good. Pleasures may be good for particular persons, and not all pleasures are processes.	154
Pleasures in good activities promote, rather than impede, these activities.	155
If certain pleasures are base, that does not prevent the chief good from being some pleasure, nor the happy life from being a pleasant life.	156
It is a mistake to identify bodily pleasures with pleasure in general. There are pleasures that do not involve pain, and do not admit of excess.	157
9: FRIENDSHIP	160
Friendship a state of character akin to justice and one of the greatest goods.	160
Problems: Is friendship based on likeness or on contrariety? Can bad men be friends? Is it easy to make friends? Is it the pleasant or the good that is loved?	160
Some things are good in the abstract, and some to a particular person; pleasant things may be similarly divided.	162
There are three species of friendship: one based on virtue, one on utility, one on pleasure. That based on virtue is primary, but the others are friendships too.	163
The primary friendship, found only in humans, is a mutual returning of love, and a mutual choice of what is good and pleasant.	165
The relation between pleasure and the primary friendship: the pleasure is not in being loved, but in loving the friend for what he is in himself.	165
Stable friendship demands time and trust, so you cannot have a large number of friends.	168
In friendships between unequals, the superior is not expected to love as much as the inferior. There may be friendships between unequals (e.g., father and son) but they are not each other’s friends.	171
The friendship of contraries is based on utility, and on the pursuit of the mean.	174
Can a man be a friend to himself? Friendship implies a desire for someone’s existence and good, a choice of his company for his own sake, and sympathy with him in sorrow and joy. All these things are true of a good man’s relationship to himself.	175
A vicious man can be his own enemy, because the parts of his soul are at war with each other.	177
The relationship between concord, benevolence, and friendship.	178
Why do benefactors love beneficiaries more than beneficiaries love benefactors?	179
Different types of association, each with their own specific form of justice and friendship, corresponding to different types of political constitution.	180
Comparison between the relationships of soul and body, craftsman and tool, and master and slave.	181
Sources of dispute among friends, especially in friendships of utility.	184
How is self-sufficiency compatible with the need for friendship? Why should a happy man need friends?	188
Humans are not godlike, but need to share perception and knowledge with each other. In knowing one’s friend one gets to know oneself.	190
How far should we want our friends to share our misfortunes?	192
10: VIRTUE IN GENERAL	194
Many things, including knowledge, have unnatural as well as natural uses.	194
This, however, is not true either of virtue or of wisdom: we cannot use justice unjustly, or wisdom foolishly.	195
11: GOOD FORTUNE	197
Do fortunate people owe their good fortune to an inborn quality, or to divine favour, or to wisdom? The last two can be excluded: so is it caused by nature?	197
But nature, unlike fortune, produces regular results, and if fortune were to be something natural it would cease to be fortune.	198
There are initial irrational impulses in the soul. Those who do well on the basis of these are fortunate—so in that way fortune would come from nature.	199
Perhaps there are two kinds of good fortune—one arising from nature, the other from something higher than reason, namely god.	200
12: GENTLEMANLINESS	203
There is a perfect virtue which combines the particular virtues: we may call it gentlemanliness.	203
For a virtuous man the natural goods are good, and some may think that these goods are the point of virtue. If so, they lack gentlemanliness.	203
For the gentleman, things that are good are also noble, for he uses them to perform noble deeds.	204
13: CONCLUDING REMARKS	205
What is pleasant in the abstract is also noble and what is good in the abstract is pleasant.	205
The standard by which to judge the possession and use of external goods is given by whatever is most conducive to the service and contemplation of god.	206