Fundamental Aristotle: A Practical Guide to the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics

By M. James Ziccardi

This book is one in a series that has been extracted in its entirety from M. James Ziccardi's "Fundamentals of Western Philosophy".

It is intended to serve as a primer for students of the moral and political ideas of Aristotle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. James Ziccardi
• Release date: Feb 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301091133

M. James Ziccardi

M. James Ziccardi lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter and has been a software analyst for over twenty-five years. Reading and writing about philosophy is his passion.

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Fundamental Aristotle: A Practical Guide to the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics

M. James Ziccardi

Copyright 2011 by M. James Ziccardi

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Preface

The following is one in a series of reviews that has been extracted in its entirety from M. James Ziccardi’s Fundamentals of Western Philosophy.

It is intended to serve as a primer for students of the moral and political ideas of Aristotle.

Section 1 - Aristotle (Biography)

(384 BC – 322 BC)

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name a philosopher who has had more of an impact on Western thought, or one whose influence has spanned a longer amount of time than Aristotle. With works that cover the complete spectrum of philosophical disciplines, as well as his works on the sciences, nature, and the arts (including literature, poetry, and rhetoric), Aristotle’s name has remained at the forefront of the academic world for well over two thousand years. So much so that from the end of the Classical Greek period to the end of the Middle Ages, Aristotle was regarded as the authority on virtually all intellectual matters, and it wasn’t until the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment that anyone made any serious attempts to challenge any of his ideas.

Aristotle was not a native Athenian, but was born instead in the city of Stageira in Northern Greece in the year 384 BC - fifteen years after the trail of Socrates. At the age of seventeen he was sent by his father to Athens to be educated at Plato’s Academy, and there he remained for the next twenty years. However, due to an anti-philosophy sentiment that was spreading throughout Athens, Aristotle left the Academy in 348 BC (the year of Plato’s death) and travelled to Asia Minor. There, and at the behest of Philip II of Macedon, Aristotle briefly became the tutor to Philip’s son, the soon to be Alexander the Great. In 335 BC, he returned to Athens and founded his own school, the famous Lyceum, which was established to rival to Plato’s Academy, and it was there that he wrote many of his most famous works.

Of the vast volumes of works which Aristotle wrote over the course of his lifetime, it is unfortunate that only about one-fifth of it remains to this day, all of which consists of detailed treatises and lecture notes. Regrettably, all of his literary works, many of which were written in the style of Plato’s Socratic Dialogues, have been lost. Still, with the twelve volumes that are still in existence, we can come to appreciate the depths to which Aristotle went to understand the world around him. He was one of the first persons to attempt a mapping out of the separate branches of the physical sciences, which included astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, physics, optics, botany, zoology, and especially biology. And with regard to what we now call philosophy, Aristotle was the first to form what could be considered a complete philosophy, which consisted of his ideas on metaphysics, ethics, politics, economics, and aesthetics. (Prior to the time of Aristotle, the physical sciences, as we know them today, were known collectively as natural philosophy.)

In this section, however, we are only concerned with Aristotle’s views on ethics, which he put forth in his famous treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics. And because Aristotle is considered by many to be one of most influential moral philosophers of all time, over the next several pages I will present in outline form some of the more important ideas contained within this work.

Section 2 - Nicomachean Ethics

Book 1 (Ethics)

Every art, science, action, and moral choice aims at some good; therefore, the Chief Good may be described as that which all things aim at.

The ultimate end, i.e., purpose, of action is the good of man. This applies both to the individual as well as to the community, with the good of the community being the more important of the two; for while the good of the individual is a matter for contentment, the good of the community is noble and godlike.

In order to be a good judge of something, one must know it well; and since moral philosophy deals with the actions of life, a young person is not fit to be either a judge or student of it. By young, Aristotle refers both to those who are young in years, as well as to those who are youthful in temper and disposition. This is because knowledge comes to be profitable only to those who act in accordance with reason, and not to those who live at the beck and call of passion.

Happiness, or as some call it living well or doing well, is the highest of all the goods which are the objects of action. How happiness is defined, however, is and has been a subject of dispute.

People form their notion of happiness from their mode of life, and for Aristotle, there are three such modes: the low, which is the mode of the many; the life in society; and the life of contemplation.

The low conceive of happiness as being pleasure, and therefore are content with the life of sensual enjoyment. As such, they are plainly quite slavish, choosing a life like that of a brute (animal).

The refined and active, or the life in society, conceive of happiness to be honor, which for Aristotle is too superficial. This is because for these individuals, honor is thought to rest more with those who pay it than with those who receive it. (Aristotle chooses to leave the topic of the life of contemplation to his sequel, presumably his Politics.)

The life of money-making, though it is one of constraint, is not the good that Aristotle is seeking, for money is only the means to some other end, while happiness is an end in and of itself.

A Universal Good, which some have claimed to exist, is denied by Aristotle. This is because good is predicted in as many ways as there are modes of existence, and if there were such a thing as a universal good, then good could only be predicted in one category of existence.

Happiness is something which is pursued for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further. As such, things like honor, pleasure, and intellect, while they may also be pursued for their own sake, are nonetheless also pursued because they lead to happiness. Happiness, however, is never pursued in the hope that it will lead to anything further.

Happiness is manifestly something final and self-sufficient. In this sense, self-sufficiency is not meant to imply a single individual leading a solitary life, but one that includes "his parents also and children and wife, and in general, friends and countrymen; for a man is by nature adapted to a social