NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

· YouHui Culture Publishing Company
Ebook
326
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NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

by Aristotle

translated by W. D. Ross

BOOK I

1

EVERY art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit,

is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has

rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a

certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others

are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where

there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the

products to be better than the activities. Now, as there are many

actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of

the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of

strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall

under a single capacity- as bridle-making and the other arts concerned

with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this

and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts

fall under yet others- in all of these the ends of the master arts

are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the

sake of the former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference

whether the activities themselves are the ends of the actions, or

something else apart from the activities, as in the case of the

sciences just mentioned.

About the author

Aristotle, 384 B.C. - 322 B. C. Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, in 384 B.C. At the age of 17, he went to Athens to study at Plato's Academy, where he remained for about 20 years, as a student and then as a teacher. When Plato died in 347 B.C., Aristotle moved to Assos, a city in Asia Minor, where a friend of his, Hermias, was ruler. After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345 B.C., Aristotle went to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he became the tutor of the king's young son Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum Aristotle's works were lost in the West after the decline of Rome, but during the 9th Century A.D., Arab scholars introduced Aristotle, in Arabic translation, to the Islamic world. In the 13th Century, the Latin West renewed its interest in Aristotle's work, and Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a philosophical foundation for Christian thought. The influence of Aristotle's philosophy has been pervasive; it has even helped to shape modern language and common sense. Aristotle died in 322 B.C.

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