Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics
The ten books.
The chapters of this site wander the argument by theme. The Ethics itself is built in ten books, each handed to the next. This is the work as Aristotle ordered it — and where, on this site, you have already met each part.
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Book One — The Good for Man
1094a – 1103a
Every pursuit aims at some good; the good we seek for its own sake and never for the sake of anything else is happiness — eudaimonia. The function argument concludes that the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.
On this site Eudaimonia · The Eleven Virtues
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Book Two — Virtue of Character
1103a – 1109b
Moral virtue is not given by nature but formed by habit — we become just by doing just acts. Each virtue is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, fixed by reason.
On this site Virtue as Habit · The Golden Mean
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Book Three — Choice, and Two Virtues
1109b – 1119b
Voluntary action, deliberation, and choice — the ground on which praise and blame can rest. Then the first two virtues examined in full: courage and temperance.
On this site The Eleven Virtues
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Book Four — The Social Virtues
1119b – 1128b
Liberality and magnificence in the handling of money; magnanimity and proper ambition in the handling of honour; good temper; and the virtues of company — truthfulness, wit, and friendliness.
On this site The Eleven Virtues
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Book Five — Justice
1129a – 1138b
Justice in its widest sense is the whole of virtue exercised toward others. As a particular virtue it divides into the distributive — a fair share — and the corrective — a fair remedy.
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Book Six — Practical Wisdom
1138b – 1145a
The virtues of the intellect, and phronēsis above all: the practical wisdom that perceives the mean in the particular case, where no rule can reach. Virtue of character and practical wisdom need each other.
On this site Phronesis
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Book Seven — Weakness of Will
1145a – 1154b
Akrasia: how a person can see the good clearly and still fail to do it — against Socrates, who thought such a thing impossible. The book closes with a first account of pleasure.
On this site Akrasia
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Book Eight — Friendship
1155a – 1163b
Why no one would choose to live without friends, and the three kinds of friendship — those of utility, of pleasure, and the lasting friendship between good people who wish each other well.
On this site Friendship
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Book Nine — Friendship, Continued
1164a – 1172a
Self-love, goodwill, and concord; the friend as "another self"; and the question of why even a happy, self-sufficient person still needs friends to live well.
On this site Friendship
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Book Ten — Pleasure, and the Contemplative Life
1172a – 1181b
The true place of pleasure in a good life; then the final claim — that contemplation, theōria, is the highest happiness, the activity nearest the divine — and the turn toward politics that the Ethics leaves open.
On this site Theoria