[1220a]
[1]
and the reasoning faculty is a principle
controlling not reasoning but appetite and passions; therefore he must necessarily
possess those parts. And just as a good constitution consists of the
separate excellences of the parts of the body, so also the goodness of
the spirit, as being an End, is composed of the separate
virtues.And goodness has two forms, moral virtue and
intellectual excellence; for we praise not only the just but also the
intelligent and the wise. For we assumed1 that what is praiseworthy is either goodness
or its work, and these are not activities but possess activities.
And since the
intellectual excellences involve reason, these forms of goodness
belong to the rational part, which as having reason is in command of
the spirit; whereas the moral virtues belong to the part that is
irrational but by nature capable of following the
rational—for in stating a man's moral qualities we do not
say that he is wise or clever but that he is gentle or rash.After this we must first consider Moral Goodness—its
essence and the nature of its divisions (for that is the subject now
arrived at), and the means by which it is produced. Our method of
inquiry then must be that employed by all people in other matters when
they have something in hand to start with—we must endeavor
by means of statements that are true but not clearly expressed to
arrive at a result that is both true and clear. For our present state is as
if we knew that health is the best disposition of the body and that
Coriscus2 is the
darkest man in the market-place;
[20]
for that is not to know what health is and who Coriscus
is, but nevertheless to be in that state is a help towards knowing
each of these things.— Then let it first be taken as granted that the best
disposition is produced by the best means, and that the best actions
in each department of conduct result from the excellences belonging to
each department—for example, it is the best exercises and
food that produce a good condition of body, and a good condition of
body enables men to do the best work; further, that every disposition is both
produced and destroyed by the same things applied in a certain manner,
for example health by food and exercises and climate; these points are
clear from induction. Therefore goodness too is the sort of
disposition that is created by the best movements in the spirit and is
also the source of the production of the spirit's best actions and
emotions; and it is in
one way produced and in another way destroyed by the same things, and
its employment of the things that cause both its increase and its
destruction is directed towards the things towards which it creates
the best disposition. And this is indicated by the fact that both
goodness and badness have to do with things pleasant and painful; for
punishments, which are medicines, and which as is the case with other
cures3 operate by
means of opposites, operate by means of pleasures and pains.It is clear, therefore, that Moral Goodness has to do with pleasures
and pains. And since moral character is,
1 Cf. Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1218a 37ff., Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1219b 8ff., 15ff.
2 Cf. Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1240b 25 n.
3 e.g. fever, which is caused by heat, is cured by cold (the contrary doctrine to homoeopathy, similia similibus curantur).
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.