Summary: Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is traditionally believed to be dedicated to Aristotle's father or son, both named Nicomachus. In this treatise, Aristotle sets out to determine the ultimate good. He concludes that this good is happiness — but how is it to be achieved? Along the way, he examines different ways of life and offers searching reflections on friendship and justice.
Other works: Physics Metaphysics On the Soul Poetics
Book I
Aristotle begins by giving his famous definition of the good as that which all things aim at
1. Every pursuit, action, science, and art aims at some good proper to it.
The good is, therefore, an end, and as there are various actions and fields of inquiry, there are different ends. For example, health is the end of medicine, and victory the end of strategy.
There is a hierarchy of sciences: the particular sciences are subordinate to a master science — or architectonic science. For example, the study of horses and weapons is subordinate to military science.
Likewise, there is a hierarchy of ends: some are pursued for the sake of others, which in turn serve yet further ends, and so on. There must be a supreme end because otherwise we would get lost in infinity and our tendencies would become empty of content and without effect
2.
Since the good is an end, the highest end must be the highest good. If we can grasp what it is, we will know what is right to do
3.
Two questions then arise: what is the nature of this good, and to which science does it belong?
For Aristotle, it belongs to political science, which is the master science, since it governs all the others by determining which sciences are to be pursued in the city. After all, does politics not lay down the ends to be pursued by the state? Yet the good of the state is greater than the individual good of each citizen:
The good is certainly desirable when it concerns a single individual, but it is nobler and more divine when it applies to a people and to entire states.
The science that studies the supreme good is therefore politics itself. Accordingly, Aristotle presents The Nicomachean Ethics as a political treatise.
This science, however, is not characterised by absolute certainty. Indeed, we do not find the same degree of precision across all disciplines: The beautiful and the just involve very wide divergences of interpretation and are so liable to error that they appear to have their being only by law and not by an effect of nature
5.
Aristotle illustrates these divergences with the example of wealth: wealth can save one person's life but cause another's death. Such cases make any formulation of absolute truths particularly fraught.
We must, therefore, be content with general truths, valid in the majority of cases: When we are only talking about general facts and consequences, conclusions can only be general
6.
Knowing how to gauge the appropriate level of precision in a given discipline is a mark of intellectual refinement. It would be misguided to expect rigorous proofs from a rhetorician or merely probable reasoning from a mathematician.
After describing the object and the degree of certainty of this science, Aristotle then seeks to identify its proper audience: mature individuals, since one must have some experience of life to engage with a science concerned with human affairs. Moreover, its conclusions must be put into practice: The aim of politics is not pure knowledge, but practice
7. The young, however, are governed by their passions and can only grasp the theory without putting it into practice.
This brings us to the essential question: what is the supreme good that constitutes the object of politics?
In fact, it is universally recognised as such: it is happiness. Yet, while all agree on the name, they differ widely as to its substance: On the very nature of happiness, we no longer agree
8.
1 Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1
2 I, 2
3 ibid.
4 ibid.
5 I, 3
6 ibid.
7 ibid.
8 I, 4