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Aristotle -
Nicomachean Ethics
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These two rational faculties may be designated the Scientific Faculty and the Calculative Faculty respectively; since calculation is the same as deliberation, and deliberation is never exercised about things that are invariable, so that the Calculative Faculty is a separate part of the rational half of the soul.
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Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue
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It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness);
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The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
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Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.
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The art of wealth-getting which consists in household management, on the one hand, has a limit; the unlimited acquisition of wealth is not its business. And therefore, in one point of view, all riches must have a limit; nevertheless, as a matter of fact, we find the opposite to be the case; for all getters of wealth increase their hard coin without limit.
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The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.
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All men, or most men, wish what is noble but choose what is profitable; and while it is noble to render a service not with an eye to receiving one in return, it is profitable to receive one. One ought therefore, if one can, to return the equivalent of services received, and to do so willingly; for one ought not to make a man one's friend if one is unwilling to return his favors.
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Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency...
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The man with a host of friends who slaps on the back everybody he meets is regarded as the friend of nobody.
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A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition; virtue therefore must be one of these three things.
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Personal beauty requires that one should be tall; little people may have charm and elegance, but beauty-no.
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Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent;... they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.
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No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.
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The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.
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In most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all.
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And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.
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Error is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery, and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed - easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue: Goodness is simple, badness is manifold.
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Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.
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We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.
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Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body;
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Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.
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It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.
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We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
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It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Aristotle
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Born:
383 BC
Died:
321 BC
(aged 62)
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