The Nicomachean Ethics

Introduction

• The strange way this book is structured.
• How the physical text came to be.
• Two of its most important philosophical ideas.

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What is the Nicomachean Ethics?

What kind of book is the Nicomachean Ethics? How was it created? How did it get its current form?

We don’t always need to ask these questions about a major philosophy book. But in this case, it’s important because we don’t really know the answers for sure.

For example, what does the odd title, Ēthika Nikomacheia, even mean? It was probably just a label used by librarians at the Lyceum. The Lyceum was the school Aristotle started in Athens. The title wasn’t meant to be an informative title for a published book. It has confused readers for thousands of years. Since ancient times, people have mistakenly thought it meant ‘A Book on Ethical Questions, Dedicated to my son Nicomachus’. Aristotle did have a son named Nicomachus. And Nicomachus probably is connected to the title somehow. But this book was definitely not dedicated to him.

Let’s set aside that part of the title for a moment. The other part, ēthika, seems simpler. The Greek word ēthika means ‘relating to character’. The Greek word for ‘character’ is ēthos. Ancient sources suggest ēthika was short for ēthika hupomnēmata. This means more than just ‘things relating to character’. It means ‘notes on character’ or ‘records on character’. And that probably means ‘records of Aristotle’s lectures on character’. Originally, especially in philosophy, hupomnēmata meant ‘records of a lecture’.

So, this book isn’t based on notes Aristotle used for his lectures. It’s also not notes he wrote himself and gave to students. Instead, these are records of the lectures as he gave them. Someone who attended the lectures wrote them down, and they were edited later.

Two Sets of Ethics Lectures

Aristotle’s surviving works include two similar sets of Ēthika:

1. The Nicomachean Ethics
2. The Eudemian Ethics

Interestingly, three books in the middle of both texts are exactly the same. These are often called the ‘common books’. Outside of these common books, the two sets of Ethics cover similar topics. They often make the same points, sometimes even using similar arguments and the same examples. However, they are not identical texts. They differ on important philosophical details in various places.

This suggests Aristotle taught basically the same course of lectures many times. He might have taught it every year, like a modern university professor. At least two different listeners wrote down these lectures, perhaps a few years apart, or even many years apart. This idea neatly explains both the big similarities between these two sets of ‘records’ and the fact that (outside the common books) they are two separate, distinct texts.

Origins in Lectures

Most of Aristotle’s surviving books started as his lecture courses. This is why they are very different from the great works of Greek literature. We believe these texts come from lectures he gave at the Lyceum in the 330s and 320s BC. This was during the last part of his career. They were probably written up in the decades after he died. They might not have been widely published until much later.

Aristotle did write other works meant for publication. These were widely read and admired, partly for their fine writing style, which is sadly missing here. He sometimes mentions these published works, almost with a bit of embarrassment. For some reason, none of those published works have survived to our time.

Signs of Live Speech

Because these texts come from lectures, you’ll notice Aristotle often refers to ‘listeners’ instead of ‘readers’. He was talking to the people actually present in his lectures.

Many other details also suggest these were live talks:

• Aristotle repeats himself.
• He backtracks or changes his mind.
• He starts an idea, then quickly decides it’s not relevant.
• His language can be informal, short, or frustratingly unclear.
• He wonders aloud about answers to difficult questions.
• He often says ‘we’ve said enough’ about a topic.
• Sometimes he seems to take questions from the audience.
• He makes obscure references and occasional inside jokes that only his live, familiar audience would have understood.
• He frequently quotes poetry, especially Homer. But he often gets the quotes wrong or gives incomplete, ungrammatical lines because he’s quoting from memory during the lecture.
  • For example, he quotes a line and says Calypso advised Odysseus to do something. In fact, Odysseus was passing the advice to his helmsman, and Circe gave him the advice, not Calypso.
  • He also messes up a line from Agamemnon and wrongly says Hector said it.

What’s striking is that neither Aristotle (who probably didn’t edit these records) nor his students (who did) bothered to fix even these easy-to-correct mistakes. Their attitude seems to have been: ‘That’s what he said, so it stays.’

The Value of “Raw” Aristotle

We should be grateful for this respectful attitude from his editors. It means the recorded lectures are lively and probably quite accurate in most ways. If they didn’t fix even small mistakes, we can be fairly sure they didn’t change his main arguments.

Some scholars worry that if students recorded and edited these texts, then what we have isn’t really written by Aristotle. That’s true. But it’s arguably even better to have such detailed records of the actual talks he gave in the private and relatively safe setting of his school. Even after editing, these notes were probably only meant for use within the school. So, they are likely less guarded and more direct than anything he wrote and edited for the general public. This is raw Aristotle.

Downsides of the Editing

However, this reverence from his editors also had a downside. They didn’t want to leave out any of their precious records, even when they probably should have.

• Some parts of the text read like collections of random points they didn’t know where else to put.
• Some sections seem to combine more than one version of the same part of a lecture. It’s like a movie where two different takes of the same scene mistakenly end up in the final version.
• Books V to VII (the ‘common books’) are particularly full of strange repetitions, duplicated arguments, and other glitches. This is likely because they are a somewhat messy combination of the two sets of records that were otherwise kept separate as the Nicomachean and Eudemian versions. In my opinion, this is why they are ‘common’ books—they belonged to both edited versions of the Ethics from the beginning.

Who Were the Editors?

So, who did this editing? The title of the Eudemian Ethics gives us a clue. It points to Eudemus of Rhodes, one of Aristotle’s well-known students. We know Eudemus was involved in preserving and editing Aristotle’s work. The title likely means ‘Lectures on Character, Eudemus’s version’. This could be because Eudemus edited that version, or it came from his own records, or probably both.

Aristotle’s most famous student, and the person who took over as head of the Lyceum after him, was Theophrastus. It’s a good guess that the other set of records—the Nicomachean Ethics—originally came from him. Nicomachus, Aristotle’s son, was reportedly Theophrastus’s student. It’s also said that Nicomachus did scholarly work on Aristotle’s material.

So, we can piece together a likely story for the title of the Nicomachean Ethics:

1. Theophrastus had his own valuable records of Aristotle’s lectures on ethical topics.
2. He asked one of his talented students, Nicomachus, to edit them, or at least to help him.
3. The result was the ‘Lectures on Character, Nicomachus’s version’.

Nicomachus’s Role

If this story is correct, Nicomachus died young in a war, not long after doing this editing work. He probably saw it as just a rather boring favor for his teacher. It was like a graduate student’s job: gathering, organizing, and copying out messy notes from many wax tablets. He didn’t do an especially great job. The result was a plain, dry, and somewhat choppy version of the lectures Theophrastus had heard about twenty years earlier. Yet, this work turned out to be one of the most influential books in Western philosophy.

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What Does “On Character” Mean?

The lectures are called “On Character” not because they discuss all aspects of human character (they don’t). They focus on one important aspect: what it means to be a good person.

For Aristotle, the term ēthos, or ‘character’, implies this focus. When he talks about your character, he means whether you are a good person or a bad one: “a decent man or a scoundrel.” He’s talking about your virtues or your vices.

That’s why it’s not misleading to say these are discussions of ethical or moral questions, much like we use those terms today. Some scholars carefully point out that when we say ‘moral questions’ in English, we often mean specific questions of right and wrong. They suggest that ‘things relating to character’ is a broader idea.

Well, yes and no. Aristotle does discuss topics beyond just right and wrong, such as:

• Friendship and love
• The nature of pleasure and pain
• What it means to live a good life, or to flourish as a human being

But the book isn’t called ‘the Ēthika’ because it discusses pleasure and human flourishing. It’s called ‘the Ēthika’ because it is mostly about good and bad people, what makes them that way, and the role of moral goodness in our lives. Other topics are included because they clearly relate to these central questions.

And, as Aristotle repeatedly tells us, good people consistently choose to do the right thing and behave honorably. Bad people do things that are wrong and shameful. So, while the main focus is on the good person rather than just the right thing to do, the book is very much about right and wrong, and honorable and shameful actions.

Aristotle’s Term: Political Philosophy

It was only later that the Greeks regularly started using ēthika, or ‘ethics’, to refer to a field of philosophy. They did this because of Aristotle. In a way, it’s his term. But he himself hardly ever seemed to use it that way.

In this book, he never calls his subject ēthika. He calls it politikē. This means ‘statesmanship’ or ‘political philosophy’. This might sound odd to us, as it doesn’t quite match how we use these terms in English. But it’s based on a fairly simple idea, which Aristotle got from Plato:

• It is the job of statesmanship, political thought, and political discussion to think about what is good and bad, and right and wrong for human beings. This is because statesmen are the ones who make laws.
• Statesmen also need to understand human flourishing, because their ultimate goal should be to help their citizens flourish.

So, for Aristotle, ethics is really a part of politics; politics includes ethics.

An Alternative Title: “The Philosophy of Human Things”

Right at the end of his lecture course, Aristotle offers another possible title. He calls everything he has discussed (along with the political questions he plans to address next) ‘the philosophy of human things’.

Both these labels – ‘Ethics’, given by the editors, and ‘On Human Things’, the title Aristotle might have chosen – are connected to some of his most basic ideas. They also relate to his disagreements with his teacher, Plato. Let’s look at each of these.

Virtues Begin as Habits

The first title, ‘Ethics’, comes from Aristotle’s habit of calling virtues ‘virtues of character’ (in Greek, ēthikai aretai). He called moral goodness ‘goodness of character’ (ēthikē aretē).

The virtues of character are what we call moral virtues. Our English word ‘moral’ comes from the Latin translation of Aristotle’s Greek word. Even though the meaning has faded a bit over time, it’s still basically accurate. It points us to the qualities Aristotle was thinking about: the ones that make you a good person and lead you to behave honorably and do the right thing.

But Aristotle’s term has an extra layer of meaning that our word ‘moral’ has lost. He calls moral virtues ‘virtues of character’ because he believed they are based in the non-rational parts of our minds:

• Our feelings and emotions
• Our likes and dislikes
• Our loves and hates
• Our pleasures and pains
• Our gut feelings or intuitions that we have before we reason things out

‘Character’ is his general term for all these things. So, it’s almost as if he’s calling moral virtues ‘the virtues of emotion, desire, and feeling’.

Aristotle disagreed with the famous view of Socrates, who thought virtues were mostly types of knowledge. (Aristotle discusses this disagreement directly in other parts of his work). For Aristotle, goodness depends on steady patterns of emotion and desire. It’s not just about what you know or how you reason, or at least, those play a smaller role. He said, ‘Our virtues involve reason, rather than just being forms of reason.’

This disagreement is built into his very words. Goodness is now ‘goodness of character’ (ēthikē aretē). Using this phrase itself was a way of stating his position. In his time, to use it meant you agreed with this newer idea. Plato, in all his many surviving writings, never once uses this phrase. This isn’t because the phrase didn’t exist yet, but because he deliberately ignored this new viewpoint.

Aristotle vs. Plato on Emotions

It’s easy to misrepresent Plato’s views when discussing Aristotle, often making Plato look worse. It’s also easy to overstate the differences between them. Both philosophers said that reason needs to ‘be in charge of’ our emotions and desires. Both often said that good people are also wise and always do what reason tells them. There are even places in these lectures where Aristotle sounds very much like Plato regarding the role of emotions (for example, when discussing selfishness).

However, Aristotle usually differs from Plato—and from most other Greek philosophers—in several clear ways regarding emotions:

1. Emotions are More Central for Aristotle:

   • Plato typically talked about our emotions and desires as if they were harmful and dangerous forces that just needed to be controlled, tamed, and limited. In one dialogue, he urged people to get away from them as much as possible. In The Republic, he defined a good person simply as someone whose reason completely rules their emotions and desires. This implied that reason and knowledge alone show a good person the way to go. When emotion and desire guide our actions, they are wrongly taking over reason’s job. Plato suggested we can only grasp the highest truths—including truths about right and wrong—by escaping the “dark cave” of our worldly attachments (the influence of our desires, emotions, pleasures, and pains).
   • Aristotle, on the other hand, tells us that truths about right and wrong, and indeed all ‘practical truths’ (truths about what we should do), wouldn’t even exist without desire. He believed that desire (in a broad sense), not reason, gives us our goals and motivates us to act. ‘Thought on its own doesn’t move or motivate anything.’ Correct desires, the right desires, push us in the right direction. Reason’s job is to understand and think about those goals and guide us wisely as we pursue them.

2. Reason as a GPS:

   • In Aristotle’s view, good reasoning is like a smart GPS. It’s full of useful facts, knows where you want to go, and shows you the best way to get there.
   • He thought Plato’s mistake was to think that your GPS (reason) can also tell you where you should want to go in the first place.

3. The Starting Points of Reasoning:

   • Aristotle said several times that it isn’t the job of human wisdom or reason to justify its own ‘starting points’. Reasoning has to begin somewhere.
   • Our starting points come from human character – from the things that we (as adults) already care about. These are the things we love or hate, praise or blame, fear or desire.
   • We shouldn’t look for an argument from reason to prove that it’s good to fall in love, or good to have friends, or that your friends and family matter to you. We don’t need reason to prove that being brave and fair is better than being a coward and a cheat.
   • While we often need to think hard about how to treat people fairly or how to be kind, we don’t need reason to tell us that we should be fair in the first place, or to explain the value of kindness.
   • If you’re an adult and still confused about these basic things, Aristotle suggests you don’t need an argument; you might need professional help.
   • We may need to reason very carefully about how to balance our different goals. But we can’t use reason to create those goals from a point outside all our existing desires.

4. Trusting Emotions:

   • Another way to think about Aristotle’s view is that he generally accepts what our emotions are telling us.
   • Plato and most other Greek philosophers, in contrast, repeatedly warn us that our emotions lie to us: they mislead, confuse, and trick us.

Fear of Death: Different Views

First, let’s think about the fear of death.

• Socrates, in a famous speech, argued that being afraid of death is a kind of ignorance. He said this fear, which almost everyone feels, tells us something false: that death is bad. In reality, Socrates claimed, we have no reason to think death is bad.
• Plato took this idea further. He said the fear of death is a delusion caused by not understanding philosophy. This fear makes ordinary people cowards. To be brave on the battlefield when facing death, Plato thought you must realize—against your fears and through philosophical understanding—that death is actually a good thing.

Aristotle had a very different view:

• He believed that if you are not afraid of death, there’s something wrong with you. You might be misinformed or even crazy.
• For Aristotle, death is a very bad thing. Your fear of it is not a delusion; it’s useful. Fear does an important job: it steers you away from danger and towards safety—away from death.
• Fear of death doesn’t make you a coward. In fact, Aristotle said if you aren’t afraid of death, you can’t be brave.
• A brave person isn’t someone who faces death because they think it’s not bad. (Someone like that is unafraid, but not brave. It’s like me facing a piece of buttered toast – I’m not afraid of it, but that doesn’t make me brave.)
• A truly brave person is someone who deeply loves life and is very afraid of death. However, they face death boldly when they have a strong and honorable reason to do so—for example, to save their family or defend their country.
• It’s precisely because death is so frightening that risking your life is such a brave act.

Anger: Is It Always Bad?

Now let’s consider anger.

• A few generations after Aristotle, Stoic philosophers (who were influenced by Socrates and Plato) argued that, ideally, we should never get angry with anyone.
• They thought anger, like the fear of death, basically tricks us. It makes us believe someone has done us real and serious harm.
• But the Stoics believed that if you think deeply, nothing someone else can do to you should ever count as real harm. Socrates once said, “Nothing bad can ever happen to a good man.”
• So, the Stoics were also against getting even, just like Plato before them. This same idea later appeared in Christianity. For example, Jesus said if someone hits you on one cheek, you should offer them the other cheek too.

Aristotle’s view on anger was different:

• He believed anger is not misleading. He saw it as a functional and perfectly normal emotion in good people.
• Of course, you can easily get too angry (and that’s the problem we usually notice). But you can also not get angry enough. And you can be just the right amount of angry.
• Aristotle said there are things you should get angry about. If you don’t feel any anger about things that deserve it, it doesn’t make you a better person. He thought it’s a serious moral weakness. It lets bullies get away with things and can often put people who depend on you in danger. It also makes you a bad friend (we need our friends to get angry with us, to the right degree, when we do shameful things or make terrible mistakes).
• And payback, which anger often drives us towards, is also important and valuable. Aristotle thought it’s essential for human society to exist. He said, “It’s the ability to pay people back that holds society together. People want to pay back harm, or benefits. And if they can’t repay harm, they feel like slaves.”
• He isn’t saying he approves of violent revenge. He’s saying something we all understand: one of the main jobs of law in any fair and well-run society is to allow people to get justice reliably when someone wrongs them.

How We Become Good: Training Our Habits

The most famous result of Aristotle’s view that virtues have a large non-rational part is his idea about how we get them. He believes you become a good person through habituation. This means training your emotions, your likes and dislikes, often without fully knowing why you’re acting that way at first.

He thinks virtues of character come to all of us naturally, to some extent. Then, they are activated and developed by the right kind of upbringing—that is, by good habits. Neither of these steps involves a lot of deep thinking.

This idea has held up well over time. It seems to fit nicely with what we now think we know about human evolution and human nature. It was an idea ahead of its time.

Becoming Good: Action Over Deep Thought?

Aristotle thinks becoming a good person is much simpler than that, but also much harder.

• To become brave, for example, you don’t need to study philosophy. You don’t need to have a vision of some perfect “Form of the Good.” You also don’t need the right religious beliefs.
• But you do need to put yourself in danger, over and over again. You need to get out there and do the things brave people do.
• So, in that sense, it’s much harder than talking to Socrates or having the correct view of the universe.

Does Thinking Make Us Good?

Aristotle is not saying that being a good person has no thinking component at all. (It’s likely his critics accused him of implying this.) He says that to be a fully and properly good person, you will certainly also need wisdom. This wisdom includes:

• Consciously held and clearly expressed moral beliefs.
• Common sense.
• An overview of life’s goals.
• The ability to reason well about how to achieve those goals and balance them in the best way.

But his view still turns the core Socratic and Platonic idea upside down. They thought some form of wisdom, knowledge, or higher philosophy would make us good people by giving us special, powerful reasons to be a certain way.

Socrates might say: “First, let’s get knowledge of what bravery is, or what generosity is. Let’s understand exactly why it’s good to be brave, or generous, or fair. Then, surely, that knowledge will make us act the right way every time. And without that knowledge, won’t we just be lost?”

Aristotle says no. You’ll never find that kind of ultimate moral knowledge that forces you to be good. If you aren’t already a generous person, no argument or philosophical discovery will make you become one. We have to approach it the other way around:

1. First, make yourself a generous person. (How? By doing lots of generous things.)
2. (But why am I doing them?) Don’t ask that yet. Just do them.
3. Then, once you are a generous person through long habit, once it’s part of your character, then you’ll easily see why we should be generous. You probably won’t even need to ask.

The key point is that wisdom, knowledge, arguments, rules, and principles cannot create character, whatever else they might do. Reading inspiring religious texts won’t make you a better person, any more than reading a biography of Muhammad Ali will make you a champion boxer.

Aristotle says your wisdom can’t even exist before basic goodness of character. Instead, the kind of “motivational muscle memory” we call good character must develop first. This happens long before we are any good at reasoning about anything. Then, this good character will feed into, inform, and provide the crucial ‘starting points’ for our wisdom. Wisdom will also guide, adjust, and refine character. Good character must develop first, as if “blind,” and only then can it “open its eyes” with understanding.

Humanism; right and wrong without God

Aristotle also calls his subject ‘human philosophy’.

He does this because he thinks all the questions he discusses here—questions of right and wrong, good and bad—are tied specifically to the human condition and to human nature. Therefore, they are purely human concerns.

In other words, he wants us to think about ethics without bringing God into it.

Let’s look at three or four ways these ideas appear in his book.

A Missing Virtue: Piety

First, Aristotle never discusses the virtue of piety. For most Greeks at that time, this must have seemed like a very strange thing to leave out. Piety was considered a central and important virtue. Plato discusses it several times. He also tells us (and I assume he’s reporting a common view) that piety is an absolutely essential motivator for morality. By ‘piety,’ Plato meant having the right views about the gods: believing that they exist, that they care deeply about human actions, and that they expect us to do what is right. Traditional Greek piety meant believing both that the gods are the foundation of right and wrong, and that they will somehow make sure good people always succeed.

But Aristotle does not believe that the gods are the foundation of right and wrong. He also doesn’t believe they take any interest in human actions. (Technically, he is a deist. He thinks God has no needs, emotions, or desires at all.) So, he also does not think that having the correct views about the gods, or God, or the wider universe, can make us better people. Therefore, he cannot accept that piety is a moral virtue.

His way of dealing with this potentially awkward fact is clever: he just never mentions piety at all. In these lectures, we enter a world that is otherwise very Greek, but where the virtue of piety seems to have never existed. All the terms associated with piety, which are so closely linked with morality in other Greek texts, have mysteriously disappeared.

This is even more striking when you consider the virtues or other qualities he does discuss. According to this book, things like having a sense of humor, spending money lavishly but appropriately, being honest about your achievements, and even talking in a deep voice are all more important than being religious (at least, they get mentioned). Most Greeks would have found this deeply strange.

Piety as a Joke?

Actually, there is one place where Aristotle mentions piety. He says it is a matter of piety—his religious duty—to disagree with Plato about the “Form of the Good.” I assume this is a joke. That famous part of Plato’s Republic (the story of the cave) claims that we need to study the whole universe and understand its principles. We need to see that it is beautifully governed, organized at the highest level according to what is good. Then, we must use that supreme knowledge in our ethics and our politics. This looks like a philosophically advanced version, a brilliant new take, on traditional Greek piety. (Plato is saying that facts about how the universe is governed must still be the foundation of human right and wrong.) And Aristotle says that his only duty of piety is to reject Plato’s view.

Two Kinds of Wisdom: Practical vs. Cosmic

There is another partial exception. Aristotle does talk about piety, in a way, in one section. But he does so carefully and indirectly. What he says is that we have to separate practical wisdom—called phronēsis, which includes our ideas about right and wrong—from another kind of wisdom called sophia.

But what does that mean? What is sophia? As it turns out, Aristotle uses sophia to refer to the highest branches of philosophy and science: our knowledge of the ‘parts of the universe,’ ‘the best things in the universe,’ and ‘things that are the most divine in their nature.’ And that, very clearly, includes our knowledge of the nature of God. So, when we understand the underlying meaning, we see that Aristotle is directly arguing for his humanistic idea itself. He is arguing that we have to separate theology (the study of God) from our ideas about right and wrong.

Sophia is what you eventually get when you do a lot of philo-sophia (love of wisdom). It is what Plato’s philosopher-kings are supposed to achieve through years of incredibly difficult advanced studies. Aristotle himself sees metaphysics (the study of the fundamental nature of reality) and theology as important sciences, related to cosmology, astronomy, physics, and biology. All of those, if done successfully, would count as forms of sophia.

And his point is that no matter how wonderful and uplifting that kind of knowledge is, it will not make us any wiser in a practical, moral sense. It will not make us morally better people, nor will it help us make better laws. Why? Because it isn’t about us. People with that kind of knowledge, he says, ‘know things that are extraordinary and amazing and difficult and marvelous—but useless, because they aren’t investigating what’s good for human beings.’

Science, Theology, and Moral Wisdom

Aristotle thinks it is not the job of science to give us our moral wisdom. That view is widely held today. But he also thinks, on what seem like reasonable grounds, that theology is a science. So, just like the other hard sciences, theology can’t tell us anything about right and wrong. In his view, human wisdom (about how to live) and correct theories and beliefs about God operate in separate domains; they don’t overlap in authority.

These expressions of his humanism are quite subtle. Readers sometimes barely notice them. It seems clear that Aristotle doesn’t want to be too obvious, or to offend people’s feelings, in his rejection of both traditional Greek ideas and newer Platonic ideas about piety.

A More Open Discussion: The Best Life in Book X

But there is at least one part of the book, a very important section in Book X, where he speaks more openly on this issue.

For most of the book, Aristotle has argued (or assumed) that we human beings flourish, or live well, mostly by using our moral virtues. But in Book X, he offers what seems like a different view. He now says—unexpectedly—that the very best activity available to us is exercising our higher intellect on purely scientific and philosophical subjects. More precisely, he argues that the best thing you can do in life is to contemplate the most supreme, eternal truths.

In making this case, he carefully compares a life of using your virtues with a life of contemplating the universe.

Scholars have written a lot arguing over whether we can easily match his description of human flourishing in Book I with these rather different claims in Book X. I have my own thoughts on this problem (and I share some in the notes for that section). But let’s put that debate aside for now. Something else Aristotle claims in the Book X passage is more relevant to the aspect of the Ethics we are discussing here.

As part of his argument for how wonderful contemplation is, he says that contemplative activity is better than moral activity because contemplation is divine. In contrast, ‘all the ways we exercise our moral virtues are human.’ That is to say, our moral virtues are specifically and uniquely human; they have no connection with God. He makes humanism itself one of the reasons for his argument about the value of contemplating the universe.

Gods and Human Actions: A Bold Claim

As far as I can tell, ancient Greeks had very little interest in debating whether it’s better to be a contemplator or a statesman. (This question only ever seemed to bother philosophers themselves, perhaps because they worried they had chosen the wrong career.) But many people at the time cared deeply about a related question that Aristotle slips into this part of the discussion: whether the gods share and approve of our virtues and take an interest in human affairs.

And Aristotle’s argument, which casually separates God from human virtues and human conduct, is one of the clearest, boldest rejections of traditional piety that has come down to us from ancient times:

We take it for granted that the gods are especially ‘blessed’; they’re an ideal of ‘flourishing’. But what kinds of actions are we supposed to imagine them doing? Can they do things that are fair and honest? Isn’t it a bit silly to imagine the gods making business deals, returning borrowed money, and things like that? Can we picture them performing brave actions? Should we imagine the gods facing frightening situations and dangers because it’s the honorable thing to do? Or generous actions? Who are they going to be giving things to? And it’s absurd to think of them using money or anything similar. And how could they do things that are moderate (showing self-control)? It’s pretty weak praise to say that the gods don’t have any shameful desires. In fact, if we go through all the virtues like that, it seems quite clear that all things related to actions are unimportant to the gods, and beneath them.

Most Greeks would have found this argument shocking.

Consider the claim that the gods would have no need for fairness. Why not? Why couldn’t the gods be fair, not in how they treat each other—obviously—but in how they treat humans? For example, why couldn’t their fairness show itself in rewarding good people and punishing wicked people? It seems a little insincere of Aristotle to ignore that possibility, as if it had never even occurred to him. Or think about his challenging question: ‘Who are they going to be giving stuff to?’ Just about every Greek who ever lived would reply: ‘Us!’

But Aristotle does have his deeper reasons for these views.

Let’s take just one example. Fairness, in his view, is something especially designed for our unique human problems. We human beings must struggle for food, shelter, health, money, and power—and everything else—because we are mortal, short-lived, fragile beings, living down here on earth.

We are social beings. The good things in life, like resources and opportunities, are not limitless. People compete for them. So, we have to share them, divide them, give them out fairly, earn them, and pay for them. This is why we need our natural love of fairness. It’s clearly a tool nature gave us. Our laws, institutions, and traditions nurture and express this fairness, fitting it to our particular way of life.

Why Fairness is for Humans, Not Gods

The gods, in Aristotle’s view, do not live anything like our lives.

• They are not mortal or fragile.
• They do not struggle for food, shelter, or safety.
• They do not need to share or divide up anything at all.

So why would they ever have developed the virtue of fairness? Why would they care about it, or be able to treat us, or anyone else, fairly? Why would they know the first thing about it? You might as well expect humans (just because they’re smart) to have learned the hunting techniques of a giant squid. Or expect them to have a koala’s skill for knowing which eucalyptus leaves are safe to eat.

Aristotle believed God cannot have our kind of wisdom or make our kinds of laws because God does not live our kind of life. God does not feel the emotions, or have the concerns or desires that, as Aristotle says, provide all the ‘starting points’ for our human form of wisdom.

Our Virtues, Our Responsibility

So, for Aristotle, our moral virtues belong to us. We human beings must develop them, understand them, and use them as best as we can. We must do this for ourselves and on our own, without any help or support from God. This is true even if studying the nature of God, and this amazing universe, is also one of the best things we can do—if we are lucky enough to get a break from our everyday struggles.

Valuing Everyday Human Life

Aristotle’s humanism also shows in how much more he accepts ordinary human interests, desires, sorrows, and loves. He respects and feels affection for his fellow human beings. He is happy to trust their opinions and feelings, at least when most people agree on something. He said things like, “Every animal moves towards its own good,” and “What seems to be true to everyone, we assume is true.”

His defense of common human fears, anger, and physical pleasures can be seen in this light. So can his deep interest in friendship, love, and family ties.

Emotions and What We Value

There is a link between accepting common human attitudes and respecting the role of emotions, which we discussed earlier.

• If you think (like Plato did) that most people are wrong most of the time about what really matters in life, you are likely to be suspicious of the emotions and feelings that clearly push people in those (supposedly) silly directions.
• Conversely, if you think that human emotions are functional, normal, and a key part of human goodness (as Aristotle did), then you are much more likely to value the things that our emotions so strongly attach us to.

Are Money, Health, and Luck Important for a Good Life?

This is why Aristotle is the only Greek philosopher (at least, that we know of) who defends the ‘material,’ ‘external,’ or ‘worldly’ goods. The rest of Greek philosophy seems to be very wary of these things. These goods include:

• Money
• Health
• Power
• Beauty
• Respect
• Reputation
• Children
• Physical pleasures
• Luck

Aristotle says that ordinary people can’t be completely wrong about these things. We might often value them too much. But there is a kind of wisdom in the common view. These things have their place in a flourishing life too. He wrote:

Human flourishing does seem to also need external goods… Because it’s impossible, or certainly pretty hard, to do honorable things if you don’t have any resources.

• There are many things we do by using friends, family, wealth, or political power as tools.
• And there are other things you need, because missing out on them spoils your happiness. For example, being born into a good family, having wonderful children, or being physically attractive.
• You’re far from the typical idea of ‘blessed’ or happy if you’re terribly ugly, from a low-status family, or lonely and childless.
• Perhaps you’re even further from it if you have really awful children or friends, or if they were good but have died. So, as we said, a flourishing life does also seem to depend on certain things like these going in your favor.

A Shocking Idea to Other Thinkers

These reasonable claims horrified other philosophers. Aristotle was fiercely attacked for them. They condemned his unacceptable embrace of worldly things. Here, for example, is an angry criticism by Atticus, a Platonist philosopher from the second century. (The Christian philosopher Eusebius enthusiastically shared this same attack, which is why it survived):

Aristotle’s discussions on these questions – the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics – offer us thoughts on human goodness that are trivial, low-class, and common. They are the sort of thing any ordinary person, uneducated fool, teenager, or woman might think up. He dares to strip moral goodness of its crown and royal power, given to it by Zeus himself. He denies that being a good man, on its own, is enough to make you happy. He puts goodness on the same level as mere wealth, reputation, noble birth, health, and beauty—and all the other things that evil men could just as easily have. According to Aristotle, while none of those things on its own will make you flourish if you aren’t also a good man, by the same token, merely being a good man apparently isn’t enough either, if you don’t have those worldly goods! With such a view, isn’t the value, the dignity, of virtue thrown down and destroyed?

This is one of the most revealing ancient discussions of Aristotle’s Ethics. It’s a bit dramatic. But it is also at least partly correct. And it’s an unintended, powerful compliment to Aristotle.

Aristotle thinks that what mostly makes your life go well is being a good person and using your moral virtues as fully as you can. He has an optimistic view that the quality of your life is therefore largely in your own hands. But he admits that other, purely external goods also have a role to play.

Why does Atticus find that thought so horrifying? To answer this, you need to see that a commitment to a certain kind of piety (religious devotion) is deeply woven into this reaction. (The elaborate reference to Zeus is a pretty good clue.) It is Aristotle’s humanism—his impiety, Atticus would call it—that Atticus is sensing and condemning as heresy, like some Platonic Grand Inquisitor.

If Life Isn’t Fair, What About God?

Think about beauty, money, power, health, and children—the things Aristotle mentions in the passage we just read. We can all agree that these things are not distributed very fairly in the grand scheme of things.

• Evil people can easily have more power and money than good people. (In fact, it’s a common view that evil people usually do have more power and money.)
• Anyone, whether good or evil, can be beautiful.
• Anyone can be struck down by illness in their prime, no matter how kind and decent they are, while some arrogant dictator enjoys ninety frustrating years of perfect health.
• Anyone’s child can be taken from them by tragedy.
• Innocent people die, or suffer horribly, every day.
• Most of us are lucky enough to be born with a body and mind well-suited for life’s activities. Others face cruel obstacles from the very start.

So, if we admit that all those kinds of things have real importance, we must conclude that life is not very fair.

Now, Aristotle says here that these kinds of things—by coming or going, by being given to us or taken away—can make a serious difference to our lives. He accepts that life is at least somewhat open to tragedy. He believes that really extreme misfortunes would, in any sane view, damage and spoil a human life.

But that view is impious, says Atticus. It is blatant impiety to claim that life, the universe, and its ruler distribute important goods unfairly. It’s impious to suggest that the universe could be so callous and indifferent to what we deserve.

Conversely, if you firmly believe that life is fair, that the world is perfectly governed by higher powers, then you really have no choice but to conclude that those material, worldly goods cannot have nearly as much value as most people think they do. And that is exactly the view that most Greek philosophers adopted.

Making Our Own Fair World

Not Aristotle. Impiety of that sort doesn’t trouble him. He does not think the gods share any of our concerns or any interest in fairness. He doesn’t believe they watch over us or provide any guarantee that good people will prosper. On the Aristotelian view, if we want a fair world, we’ll have to roll up our sleeves and make it ourselves. If we want good people to succeed, we’ll have to find ways—through the laws, institutions, and societies we create—to overcome our worst impulses and encourage our own better natures.

He does, as it happens, think that life is generally much better for good people than for bad people. But only as a general rule. He remains free to accept that terrible things sometimes happen even to very good people. So, he is also free, philosophically, to keep a more normal, more humane, more sympathetic attitude towards the ‘external’ goods that are vulnerable to fortune. And that’s just what he does.

This makes him a bit of an outlier. Within wider Greek philosophy, Aristotle’s positive view of worldly goods gained hardly any more acceptance than Aristarchus’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun did among Greek astronomers. And yet, it is one of the greatest strengths of his ethical system. For Aristotle, the importance of those ‘external’ goods can play a major role in our moral virtues as well – as it should. Or rather, as it does.

Why Detachment Isn’t the Answer

The view that he is arguing against goes something like this: We do wrong because of our desires and because of all our worldly attachments. That’s why we’ll be good if and only if our reason fully takes charge of those desires. For example:

• People commit adultery because of sexual desire (so if they could purify themselves of that kind of desire, they wouldn’t ever do that kind of wrong).
• They steal because of their greed, their grubby love of material gain (so if they could get rid of their love of money, they won’t steal).
• They do cowardly things in battle because of their ignorant attachment to staying physically alive (so if they could just see that death is not such a bad thing, they would be perfectly brave).

But Aristotle thought none of this makes sense.

To understand why stealing is wrong, you need a healthy sense of the value of money. Otherwise, you won’t understand why other people’s money has value to them. (If you thought the cash in your friend’s wallet was literally worthless, you’d be more likely to take it, not less—for example, to blow your nose on it, or make an origami bird.)

To know why you shouldn’t interfere in other people’s sexual relationships, you have to understand why those relationships have the importance they do to those people. If you have no sexual desire and no interest in sex yourself, that importance will be unclear to you. (That’s why eight-year-olds don’t understand why adultery is wrong.)

How can you possibly understand why it is wrong to injure someone if you don’t place any value on the body? How would you grasp how shockingly cruel it is for a young person to be deliberately disfigured if you don’t know the value of beauty and its role in young people’s lives? How could you be a good father or mother if you don’t see your children’s death as a life-changing disaster?

And if you’re going to fight for your friends on the battlefield, obviously you want them to remain physically alive—and with a passion. You’ll be a hopeless political leader if you think your fellow citizens only need moral virtues. They don’t. They also need food and safety, money, health, and families. And fun, from time to time. And power—especially the power to remove you from office for having such a poor understanding of their needs.

I find this point nicely made by one of the Greek commentators, defending Aristotle’s view of external goods. He explains it more directly than Aristotle ever does himself:

Stoics and Platonists like to say that only our virtues—like the virtue of being a fair person—have true, inherent value. But fairness is a virtue we use for sharing things out. And not just anything. It’s for sharing out external goods, like money, health, survival, respect, and so on. (Obviously, we don’t use fairness for sharing out virtues.) But if those external goods themselves have no true value, what does it matter whether we distribute them fairly or unfairly? What difference does it make? So, on their view, being a fair person is pointless. Virtue doesn’t have any value either.

Exactly.

Worldly Attachments: Weeds or Soil?

Think of our character virtues as plants growing in a farmer’s field. One famous view is that all the ‘cares of the world’ are like weeds. They swamp and smother the crop and prevent it from producing fruit.

Aristotle would say that’s very confused. Our attachments to the good things of this life, and to this wonderful world, are not the weeds in that image at all: they’re the soil. Our virtues are deeply rooted in all our other values and cannot be separated from them. Earthly cares and struggles nurture and inform every single act of our goodness. They’re the only setting in which our virtues could have any point; the only environment in which they could possibly have formed.

In his view, the key to moral virtues is not (as Plato argued) becoming more and more detached from bodily and worldly desires. The defining feature of our virtues is that they direct our attention and energies towards the interests of others—and typically, and most often, to their bodily and worldly needs. And to understand and serve those needs, we most certainly need to share in them and sympathize with them.

Why Life Itself Must Be Valued

Most obviously of all, if life itself—another of those ‘external’ goods—is not something to be treasured, then why is it wrong to take other people’s lives? If death is not a bad thing, why is it wrong to cause someone else’s death?

Aristotle is the only Greek philosopher who doesn’t need to answer that deeply silly question. This is because he is the only one who holds on to the common-sense view that death is a very bad thing indeed. He dismisses, without argument, Socrates’ famous claim (eagerly adopted by Platonists, Stoics, Epicureans, and Christians alike) that we should not fear death. He has the opposite view: “And the most frightening thing of all? Death. Because death is the end, and surely once we’re dead that’s it, there’s nothing more for us, good or bad.” This is a refreshingly humane attitude, but a rebellious one for any Greek philosopher, especially Plato’s star student.

Echoes of Homer

And yet, this idea does have an earlier source in Greek thought. There is a familiar, deeply wise voice behind it, but not a philosopher’s. We need to look more widely to see who shaped Aristotle’s thinking here.

When Odysseus journeys to the underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias, he meets Achilles. Odysseus rather insensitively suggests that Achilles must be having a wonderful time as a ruler there:

Achilles, no man was ever more blessed than you, or ever will be again. When you were alive, we Greeks honored you like a god; and now that you’re here, you’re the ruler of the dead! So, you shouldn’t be too upset about your death.

Achilles corrects him sharply:

Just don’t, Odysseus. Don’t try to console me about death. I’d rather be a field hand, working hard for some lowly man with only a few poor acres to his name, up above the ground, than be lord of all the dead whose lives are over.

Consciously or unconsciously, Aristotle closely echoes this Homeric attitude in his claim that death is the most terrible thing of all because it ends everything for us. He expresses the same Homeric view, in distinctly Homeric language, when discussing the afterlife (his main point being to dismiss it entirely from the discussion of human flourishing and goals): “if anything from later events gets through to the dead, good or bad, it must be faint and slight.” And again in his discussion of bravery: “dying will be all the more distressing for a good man, because a man like that has so much to live for, and he’ll be conscious of the fact that he’s being robbed of the greatest blessings.”

For that matter, several of the more unusual moral virtues that Aristotle discusses (including some never even mentioned by other philosophers)—the importance of ‘lavish spending,’ for example; the value of standing tall and knowing your worth; of having healthy ambitions and a desire for respect; of getting angry at people when they deserve it—quite clearly have a very Homeric flavor to them too, once you notice it.

This is a useful way of thinking about Aristotle, I believe.

• By his embrace of human character as he finds it,
• By his acceptance of the whole great, messy variety of human cares, pleasures, and pains,
• By his clear love of life here on the surface of the earth,
• And not least by his Iliad-like view that the gods do not protect or reward good people or help us solve any of our problems. In all these things, he is the most Homeric of the Greek philosophers.

Challenges of Ethics Without Gods

Aristotle’s humanism also leads to some interesting puzzles and problems. And, of course, some modern readers, like Atticus before them, will see this aspect of his thought as very unattractive in itself.

For one thing, he has to stay clear of areas of morality that are too deeply mixed up with piety and traditional Greek ideas about the gods.

That’s why he gives no direct explanation of the practice of making and keeping promises and vows. For Greeks, promises were closely tied to oaths. And oaths were always sworn by the gods—as, indeed, they still often are. But Aristotle presumably does not think it is good theology to call upon the power and anger of Zeus, or any god, to make sure that people keep their contracts.

But instead of giving some alternative, humanistic account of why we should keep our promises, he just gives no account at all. He barely mentions them. By extension, he offers no account of the related virtue of honesty. That seems like a very serious omission for any moral philosopher, especially for one whose stated goal is to list and discuss all our most important virtues.

When Morality Feels Sacred

There are other areas of morality that Greeks would normally strengthen with ideas of holiness and sacredness. Aristotle has to revise these, sidestep them carefully, or tone them down significantly.

• Aristotle agrees that it is ‘more terrible’ to hit your own father than anyone else.
• He also says ‘there are some things’—meaning acts like killing your mother, or disrespecting the body of a loved one—‘that nothing could ever force you to do.’

For most Greeks, this kind of language is mild. Characters in Greek tragedies like Orestes and Oedipus weren’t hunted by the Furies (goddesses of vengeance) just because what they did was ‘terrible.’ They were guilty of monstrous sins, vile acts that polluted everything, and were disgusting to all the gods. And while most Greeks would readily agree with Aristotle that ‘nothing could force them’ to kill their parents, almost all of them would also say there is another obvious reason: the fact that it is an act of unspeakable impiety (disrespect for the gods).

What About Incest and Disgust?

Aristotle never mentions incest directly in the Ethics. He perhaps touches on it vaguely when discussing moderation. For example, he says there are certain ‘despicable’ pleasures ‘that nobody should ever enjoy.’ If this refers to incest, then according to his account of that virtue and its opposite vice, he is saying that incest results from too much physical desire. So, he places it on the same moral level as drinking too much wine. That seems insufficient, and it is surely not what he actually believes.

Incest causes a very distinct moral feeling: disgust. It activates a particular kind of “taste receptor” in our moral sense, one that appears in many areas of human behavior and many of our moral judgments. Feelings of moral disgust can be shaped a lot by culture. But the examples we’ve just noted—incest, violence towards one’s parents, and mistreating the dead—bring out that same response in almost all of us. So do things like sexual abuse of children, cannibalism, murder, treason, and acts of monstrous cruelty. Disgust often lies behind our strongest, most absolute moral commitments—like thinking, ‘I’d rather die than do that.’ It is closely related to ideas of moral purity and integrity.

Why Aristotle Avoided Disgust

This feeling of disgust surely doesn’t depend on any particular philosophical view about the universe. It is a human universal. But Aristotle does not discuss it. I suspect he feels he cannot discuss it because, in Greek culture, it is too tightly linked with ideas of holiness and those traditional beliefs about the gods that he rejects. My guess is that he cannot see a way to separate the moral feeling from the problematic religious ideas. (He’s dealing with an interesting problem, and one we still face today.)

He does say, a few times, that a good upbringing, among other things, trains you to ‘hate the things you ought to hate.’ Perhaps he thinks that just about covers it. But it simply doesn’t. He fails to give an account of the relevant virtue here. And the relevant virtue, at least for most Greeks, is piety.

An Inconsistency in Humanism?

There is also a problem of consistency. Aristotle does not embrace the whole range of human values after all. He leaves one out. He has no room for Antigone (a character from Greek tragedy famous for her piety). Arguably, that actually undermines his humanism. When it comes to piety, he assumes that most people’s instincts and emotions have fooled them. (Isn’t that a Platonic kind of move, to distrust common feelings?) Or, at the very least, he refuses to tell us what he thinks. He avoids the topic. (There are only the briefest hints in these lectures of his attitude to traditional religious beliefs and practices.) That goes against his Homer-like policy of celebrating and analyzing the whole of human life.

The paradox here is that even if we agree that right and wrong belong to the human domain, it seems very plausible that piety is a ‘human thing’ too. It should be part of the conversation.

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These seem like rather minor problems. Let’s face the deeper worries that many readers may have about the whole humanistic project.

If Not God, Then What? Finding a Basis for Morality

If right and wrong have no connection with God, or with the kind of higher truths that Plato thought were so important to human values, what does Aristotle think is their real foundation? Does he have a satisfactory replacement? Or any at all?

I suggest that one useful way to approach this book is to see that he is thinking about and addressing this question all the time.

Here are some of his ideas for the foundations of morality:

• Our Nature (Biology): In Book II, he proposes that our moral virtues are grounded in our biology. We are ‘primed’ by our nature to develop a rich set of character virtues that serve as the basis of our moral intuitions. (That is also why he often calls human beings a ‘social animal’ or a ‘moral animal.’)
• Society (Laws and Norms): Then, in Book V, he claims (like other Greek humanists before and after him) that right and wrong depend on laws and social norms. He implies that right and wrong formally come into being only once a community of equals creates and writes down a set of common rules. Morality exists ‘between fellow citizens.’
• Human Flourishing: Laws, he adds, are supposed to create and sustain human flourishing. So that offers a third foundation for morality, of a sort. Laws and moral norms can be considered sound and wise if and only if they promote general human flourishing. He implies that human flourishing itself can be described reasonably clearly based on the shared and objective demands of human life.

So, removing God does not make Aristotle a subjectivist (believing morality is just personal opinion) or a relativist (believing morality changes completely with culture). Rather, his ethics is anthropocentric: it is centered on human beings. Facts that are relative to the needs and interests of human beings, and human communities, are its new foundation.

The Role of Relationships and Friendship

Later, in Book VIII, he offers what looks like another, slightly different answer to the same question. He suggests that our relationships with the people we care about—all our friendships, family ties, and various wider partnerships—create and are supported by corresponding obligations. These are, in effect, corresponding facts about right and wrong ways of treating those people. And he lists a very wide range of such relationships that together cover just about every form of right and wrong that most of us could think of.

He says, ‘When people are friends, that’s all the righteousness they need.’ By that, I assume Aristotle means that if people are friends, that fact alone—with no outside force, no higher authority—will make them see and do what’s right by one another. Friendship serves as an alternative, entirely human origin for our strongest obligations.

By extension, right and wrong apply more widely if and when we succeed in expanding our attachments and partnerships more widely. For Aristotle, that means, as we just noted, to the all-embracing ‘partnership of fellow citizens.’ This is where right and wrong find their broadest and most typical area (but also, it seems, their usual outer limit). And if we want to extend morality wider than that, we have to base it on the sorts of partnerships that cross borders, or on the natural fellowship of all human beings (an idea that Aristotle touches on but never discusses in much depth).

Of course, for many readers, this simply won’t be enough. It’s a respectable and perfectly understandable view that right and wrong demand, or inevitably imply, a higher and non-human authority.

Do We Secretly Believe in God When We’re Moral?

Some people say, in our age of increasing secularism, that if right and wrong have the strong hold over you that they do for most people, then whatever you say about your beliefs, you are acting as if there is a righteous God. You are treating others as if there are moral facts with the sort of absoluteness that only God could support. And it is only because of the many centuries during which people did believe that morality came from God that it keeps the same hold over you now. So, it is a little ungrateful of you to criticize those beliefs while benefiting so much from their cultural legacy.

How might Aristotle respond to this line of argument?

Aristotle’s Answer: Habits Matter More Than Beliefs

Well, for one thing, he doesn’t think there is a God who shares our moral interests or could possibly play that role. So, in his view, this supposedly crucial belief in a righteous God would be a false belief, or at best a very unlikely one. And it seems highly unsatisfactory for morality to be grounded in an illusion or a hunch.

He might at least have half-agreed about the role of religion in shaping behavior. He believes, as we saw, that well-designed cultural practices must instill good habits and, from those, the right ethical principles. And he is aware that religious traditions and stories are the most common way that Greeks present those principles to one another and build those habits. He shows no interest in changing that fact. On the contrary, he is a great lover of Greek literature and mythology. He knows the tales of gods and heroes are full of wisdom.

But stories are not scientific theories. Nor are they history. And on the Aristotelian view, it’s ultimately the habit itself that matters, not the story it comes with, and certainly not the detailed metaphysics (theories about the fundamental nature of reality). Train your children to be fair, kind, and brave in any manner you like. Tell them (almost) any tales you like. Just get them to do it. Think of it like the “wax on, wax off” method of teaching in martial arts – the action leads to understanding. The idea that their virtues need very precise beliefs about the universe as their foundation rests, in his view, on confusion about that process.

What does such a foundation look like?

• ‘I should respect my parents because that is one of God’s commandments.’
• ‘I should treat people fairly because that is what was revealed to the prophet.’
• ‘I should care about others because I have discovered that the self is an illusion.’

Aristotle thinks there shouldn’t be a ‘because’ here at all, especially one based on complex or debatable ideas. We don’t explain the obvious (like basic moral duties) by appealing to the very unobvious (like theological claims or deep metaphysical insights).

This is just another application of the larger idea we already discussed: that ethical ‘starting points’ come from human character, not from reason. We don’t need theological beliefs or cosmic insights to explain why we should treat people fairly or respect our parents. We don’t need any prior beliefs or any prior argument to explain why we should do those things, or to explain anything else so ethically basic.

Is this a strange view? On the contrary, I think we all accept it quite happily when it’s applied to other typically human cares and passions.

• People who don’t believe in Aphrodite (the goddess of love) will fall in love just the same. And when they do, nobody thinks that their actions show they really believe in Aphrodite after all.
• Bad leaders and angry young men don’t need to worship Ares or Mars (gods of war) to be eager to bring violent conflicts to the world. We blunder on regardless, with or without any help from the gods of war.
• And if you’ve ever admired a painting, or a beautifully made film, nobody insists that you’re benefiting from centuries of faith in Athena (goddess of the arts).

Why should our moral interests be the exception? Why do only they need metaphysical support, instead of arising unstoppable from human character like the rest?

A Hopeful View of Human Goodness

This Aristotelian view is optimistic and philanthropic (concerned with human welfare). Perhaps a little naïve. It offers grounds for faith in your fellow human beings, across theological and ideological divides. It proposes—a deeply civilized idea—that each of us should instead be measured only by the content of our character.

And it’s good news (if true) that we don’t need theology and metaphysics to sustain morality.

• It means we can expect decency to be relatively common, a normal human thing, instead of being limited to a few enlightened sections of humanity.
• It means we can stop hating and killing our fellow human beings for being raised under a different set of stories.
• We can stop worrying that the wrong metaphysical views will corrupt us, or depress us, or sink us into nihilism (the belief that life is meaningless).

On Aristotle’s view, we might just as well worry that the wrong beliefs about the laws of gravity will cause those laws to lose their hold on us and send us floating into space. Relax. Our virtues are made of sterner stuff. They aren’t going to melt away like snowflakes in the face of a few heated arguments about the nature of the universe.

I think we all harbor a natural sympathy for this view of things. Here’s a way of testing your intuitions, if you aren’t sure. When you travel to some new country, knowing nothing whatsoever about its theology (or lack of it), do you expect people to exhibit the central human virtues? (Do you expect to be treated fairly? To encounter friendship, generosity, humor, and kindness? To see parents looking after their children?) You probably do.

Aristotle invites us to reverse the claim I mentioned earlier. You may say that you’re convinced that morality depends on having the right beliefs about the right kind of God. But every day you will act as if it doesn’t. In the way you treat others and in what you demand of them, you will often act as if you know that we are a moral animal, and that right and wrong is a human thing.

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A Slow Start for a Famous Book

These ideas, and the rest that are covered by this extraordinarily rich and varied set of discussions, had rather limited success in Aristotle’s day.

For two or three centuries, hardly anyone seems to have noticed the Nicomachean Ethics at all. This might be because it barely circulated outside of the Lyceum (Aristotle’s school). Or it could be because (according to one ancient report) the surviving records of Aristotle’s lectures spent two hundred years hidden in a damp and moldy basement.

By late antiquity (roughly 3rd to 8th centuries AD), a few followers of Aristotle and other specialist philosophers were studying it closely. Some, as we saw, were angrily criticizing it. (Christians, at least in ancient times, firmly decided that Aristotle was on the wrong team.)

Rediscovery and Lasting Influence

The book bided its time, hiding out in the corners of Constantinople and a few Greek monasteries for another seven centuries or so, while not many people were reading much philosophy at all. Byzantine scholars occasionally worked on it.

Wider interest in Aristotle (mostly his logic and metaphysics) eventually grew again, first in the great centers of Arab learning. From there, starting around the twelfth century, it spread to Arab and Christian Spain and the rest of Western Europe. But the Ethics itself still kept a very low profile.

Finally, in the Renaissance (a period of renewed interest in ancient art and learning), things changed. There was a hunger for ancient wisdom and a growing fashion for humanism in particular. Also, the field was much emptier, as many once-dominant works of ancient ethics had vanished. In this environment, the Nicomachean Ethics found its moment. It emerged as an authoritative work and a philosophical must-read for the first time—a mere 1,700 years after Aristotle gave his last talk on the subject.

Book I

1. Everything Aims at Something Good

It seems that every skill, every method we use, and every action or choice we make is trying to achieve something good.

That’s why people have rightly said that the good is what everything aims for.

But there seem to be different kinds of goals:

• Sometimes, the goal is simply the activity itself.
• Other times, the goal is a product that results from the activity. When an activity produces a product, the product is naturally a greater good than the activity used to make it.

Since we do many different things and have many different skills and types of knowledge, there are also many different goals.

• For example, the goal of medicine is health.
• The goal of shipbuilding is to build a ship.
• The goal of being a general is to achieve victory.
• The goal of managing a household is to create wealth.

Sometimes, these skills are organized under a more important, single ability.

• For instance, making bridles for horses and other cavalry equipment are skills that fall under horsemanship (the skill of riding horses).
• Horsemanship, along with every other action related to war, falls under the skill of generalship (being a military general).
• Other skills fall under different master skills in a similar way.

In all these cases, the goals of the higher, master skills are more valuable than the goals of the skills under them. This is because we pursue the lower-level goals for the sake of the higher-level ones. This is true whether the goals are the activities themselves or something else beyond them, like the types of knowledge we just listed.

2. The Highest Good and The Science of Government

So, if there is one ultimate goal for everything we do—something we want for its own sake, and the reason we want everything else—then this must be the key good in life. This would be the highest good. (We assume such a goal exists, because if we always chose things only to get something else, our efforts would go on forever, making our desires empty and pointless.)

If this highest good exists, wouldn’t knowing about it greatly affect our lives? If we have a target to aim at, like archers, won’t we be more likely to figure out what we need to do?

If that’s true, then we should try to get at least a general idea of what this highest good is. We also need to figure out which branch of knowledge or ability is concerned with it.

This knowledge or ability would surely be the most authoritative and the one that covers the most ground. Clearly, this is statesmanship (the science of governing a city or state).

• After all, statesmanship decides which types of knowledge should even exist in cities.
• It determines which subjects different groups of people should learn, and how much they should learn.
• We can see that even the most respected abilities—like being a general, managing a household, or being a skilled public speaker—are all under the authority of statesmanship.

Statesmanship uses all other branches of knowledge. It also makes the laws, telling us what we must do and what we must not do. So, its goal must include the goals of all the others.

Therefore, the goal of statesmanship must be the key good for human beings.

Even if this good is the same for one person as it is for a whole city, it certainly seems like a greater and more perfect achievement to obtain it and keep it safe for an entire city-state. True, we should be happy enough to achieve it even for just one person. But it is a finer and more god-like thing to achieve it for a whole nation or state.

So, these are the aims of our investigation. This study is a kind of statesmanship.

3. How to Approach the Study of Goodness

When we discuss these topics, our claims will only be as clear and detailed as the subject itself allows. We shouldn’t demand the same kind of precision in all areas of study, just as we don’t expect it in things made by craftsmen.

What is honorable and what is right—the kinds of things statesmanship deals with—have a lot of variety and can change depending on the situation. This variability is so great that some people think these concepts only exist by social agreement, not by nature. What is “good” for people can also be flexible in a way, because people often find themselves harmed by things considered good. For example, some people have been ruined by their wealth, and others by their bravery.

So, when we make claims about such things, based on facts that are also somewhat variable, the best we can hope for is to show the truth in broad strokes, like a rough outline. We are talking about things that are true for the most part, based on facts that are true for the most part. So, we’ll have to be content with conclusions that are also true for the most part.

This means you will need to approach the claims we make with the same understanding. An educated person only looks for precision in each field to the extent that the nature of the subject allows. Asking a political speaker for scientific proofs makes about as much sense as accepting a mathematical proof just because it ‘sounds pretty good.’

Each of us is good at judging the things we know. That’s what you are a good judge of.

• If you are educated in a particular field, you can judge matters in that field.
• If you have an all-around education, you can judge things in general.

That’s why lectures on moral and political questions are not suitable for young people.

• Young people have no experience of the actions and situations of life. These experiences are what our arguments will be based on and what they will be about.
• Also, young people tend to act based purely on their emotions.
• So, for them, listening to these lectures will be a waste of time. They won’t get anything useful out of it, because our goal here isn’t just knowing; it’s doing.

It doesn’t matter if you are actually young in age or just immature in character. The problem isn’t just about how much time has passed. It’s about whether you live your life and pursue your goals based on your emotions. For people like that, knowledge doesn’t help, just as it doesn’t help people who have no self-control.

But if you can shape your desires and act according to reason, then knowing about these things might do you a lot of good.

4. What is Happiness or Flourishing?

Now let’s get back to our main point.

Given that every kind of knowledge and every choice we make aims for some kind of good, what is this thing that we say statesmanship tries to achieve? What is this ‘highest of all goods’ that can be achieved through action?

Well, pretty much everyone at least agrees on what it’s called. Eudaimonia—which means things like ‘flourishing,’ ‘prospering,’ or ‘living a blessed life’—that’s what everyone calls it, whether they are rich or poor, educated or not. And we all consider ‘having a good life’ or ‘doing well’ to be the same thing as ‘flourishing.’

But when it comes to what ‘flourishing’ actually is, people disagree. Most people don’t have the same view as philosophers.

• Most people say it should be something plain and obvious, like a life of pleasure, or wealth, or prestige and honor.
• Different people have different ideas about it.
• Often, even the same person will change their mind. For example, when you were sick, you might have thought healthy people were ‘flourishing’; now that you’re poor, you might think it’s the rich who are flourishing.
• Others, knowing they don’t have their own ideas, are impressed by other people’s grand and complicated theories about it.
• Some used to think there was something extra, beyond all the particular good things we know. They called this ‘Good in itself’ and believed it was the cause of all other things being good.

And let’s not forget that there’s a difference between arguments that start from our basic principles and arguments that try to get us to those basic principles. Plato was right to wonder about this and try to figure out if we move from basic principles outwards, or if we move towards them. Think of it like a race: are we starting at the judging stand and going to the far end of the track, or coming from the far end back to the judges?

Well, clearly we have to start from things that are knowable. But ‘knowable’ can mean two different things:

1. Things we easily know (familiar, specific facts from our experience).
2. Things that are knowable in an absolute sense (universal scientific truths, which might be harder for us to grasp initially).

So, surely we have to start from the things we easily know.

That’s why you already have to have been guided in the right direction by good habits if you hope to get much out of lectures on what’s honorable and right, or any other moral or political question. Our starting point is often just “the fact that X is true.” If X seems pretty obvious from our upbringing and experience, that’s all we need for now. We won’t need to discuss why X is true at this stage.

People who have had this kind of good upbringing either already have the right principles or can easily grasp them. If neither of those applies to you, well, the poet Hesiod said it best:

The best person of all is the one who understands things on their own. Next best is someone who knows how to take good advice when they hear it. So, if you’re clueless yourself, and unwilling to listen to others, or take to heart what they say— then, sorry, you’re pretty much hopeless.

5. Common Ideas About the Good Life

When it comes to the main good in life, and what it means to flourish, people seem to base their ideas—understandably enough—on their own lives.

So, ordinary people, often the least refined, think the main good is pleasure. That’s why they’re satisfied with a life of enjoying themselves.

You see, there are three main types of life that stand out:

1. The life of pleasure.
2. The life of a statesman (an active public life).
3. The contemplative life (a life of thinking and studying).

So, ordinary people who choose the life of pleasure seem completely driven by basic desires, opting for a life like that of well-fed cows! But their view gains some plausibility because powerful rulers so often behave just like King Shardanapal (a legendary king known for extreme indulgence).

People of a higher social standing, at least those who choose an active life, assume that the main good is respect or honor. Respect, roughly speaking, is the goal of the life of statesmanship. But honor seems a bit too shallow to be what we’re looking for as the highest good.

• It seems to depend on the people who respect you, rather than on you, the person being respected.
• We have a strong feeling that the true good in life should be something that’s your own and hard to take away from you.
• Also, people seem to pursue respect to reassure themselves that they are good people. At any rate, they want to be respected by people who are wise and know them well, and they want to be respected for being good. So, it seems clear that, in their view, being a good person (virtue) itself matters more than being respected. Maybe it makes more sense to consider virtue as the goal of a life of statesmanship.

But then even virtue seems somehow incomplete as the highest good.

• After all, it seems perfectly possible to have virtue and be in a coma, or do nothing at all, for your entire life.
• What’s more, a good person can still experience the worst kinds of suffering and really awful misfortunes.
• And nobody—unless they are stubbornly defending some crazy theory—would say that someone living a life like that was flourishing or truly happy. (That’s all we need to say about that for now, as it’s been discussed elsewhere.)

The third type of life is the contemplative life, which we’ll look at closely later on.

What about a life spent earning money? That’s mostly a life of hard, unpleasant work. And wealth clearly can’t be the ‘key good’ that we’re looking for. This is because wealth is just something we use; it’s only for getting something else.

That’s why the key good is more likely to be one of the other goals we just talked about (like pleasure, honor, or virtue), because at least those are valued for their own sake. And yet, the highest good doesn’t seem to be any of those either, despite the many arguments already made for them.

So, let’s set these specific questions aside for now.

6. Is There a Universal “Good”?

I suppose we should investigate the idea of a ‘Universal Good’ – to see if we can figure out what that’s supposed to mean. This is a question I’m a little uncomfortable with, seeing as the people who introduced the idea of ‘Forms’ (like a Form of the Good) were like family to me (referring to Plato and his followers). But I think it would probably be better to set aside personal ties. I think we really have to do that when the truth is at stake, especially since we are philosophers. We love them both—our mentors and the truth—but it would be wrong not to respect the truth more.

Alright, so the people who introduced this view of Forms didn’t suggest that Forms existed for sets of things where some items in the set were naturally ‘before’ others (like numbers, where 1 comes before 2). That’s why they didn’t even try to create a common Form for the set of all numbers. But we use the term ‘good’ for different kinds of things:

1. Existing things or substances (e.g., God, or the mind).
2. Qualities of things (e.g., virtues).
3. Relations between things (e.g., something being useful). Something that exists on its own—a substance—is naturally more fundamental than a relation. A relation seems to be a sort of feature of an existing thing. So, there can’t be one common Form of Good that applies to all these different uses.

Also, we use the term ‘good’ in as many different ways as we use the word ‘is’ (or ‘being’).

• We use it for good things (like God, or the mind).
• We use it for good qualities (like virtues).
• We use it for good quantities (like ‘the right amount’).
• We use it for good relations (like ‘this is useful for that’).
• We apply it to time (like ‘the right moment’) and place (like a ‘good place to live’), and so on. So, it’s obvious that there can’t be some single, Universal Good that is common to all these. If there were, we wouldn’t use the term ‘good’ in all these different categories of existence; we’d only use it in one.

Also, for sets of things that fall under a single Form, there is also a single branch of knowledge. So, if this theory were true, there should also be a single science of all good things. But there isn’t. In fact, there are multiple sciences even for things that are just in one category of good.

• Take knowing ‘the right moment.’ In war, that’s a matter of generalship. In treating an illness, it’s medical knowledge.
• Or consider ‘the right amount.’ The right amount of what? Of food? That’s medical knowledge. Of exercise? That’s physical training.

And you might well wonder what they even mean by an ‘X in itself’? For example, whether it’s a ‘human being in itself’ or just a particular human being, the definition of what it is to be a human being is one and the same. There’s no difference in what makes them human. If that’s right, then the same should apply to ‘the Good in itself’ versus particular good things. There would be no difference in what makes them good (which contradicts the idea of a special, separate Form).

And no, being ‘everlasting’ does not make something somehow more of a good thing. If object A is white for a really long time, and object B is white just for one day, does that make A ‘whiter’ than B? Of course not.

The Pythagoreans (an earlier group of philosophers) surely have a more believable claim here, when they place ‘Unity’ or ‘Oneness’ in their list of good things. In fact, even Speusippus (Plato’s successor) seems to have adopted their view. But we should talk about these things another time.

Getting back to what I just argued—I can just, faintly, see an objection you might raise: Someone might say that Plato’s claims about Forms weren’t supposed to apply to every kind of good.

• Things we pursue and value for their own sake (let’s call them intrinsic goods) – these are called ‘good’ according to a single Form.
• Then there are things that bring about intrinsic goods, or preserve them, or prevent their opposites (let’s call these instrumental goods). This second kind of good is called ‘good’ because of the first kind; it’s a different sense of the term.

So, clearly, things can be ‘good’ in two different senses: some are good in themselves, and the rest are ‘good’ because they lead to the first kind. Let’s set instrumental goods to one side and focus on things that are good in themselves. Are these things good according to a single Form?

But what kinds of things are you supposed to classify as good in themselves?

• Are they all the things we pursue even when considered on their own? For example, being wise, being able to see, certain kinds of pleasure, certain forms of respect?
• You would classify all of those as good in themselves, even if we also sometimes pursue them for the sake of something else.

Or is the idea that nothing else, at all, is good in itself—just the Form of Good? If so, the Form turns out to be pointless, as it doesn’t explain or relate to any particular goods we experience.

And if those other things (wisdom, sight, etc.) are good in themselves, then the explanation of what makes them good ought to be clearly the same across all the different cases. It should be like the way an explanation of whiteness is the same for snow as it is for white face-paint.

But actually, there are distinct and different explanations for what makes respect, wisdom, and pleasure good things. So, what’s good isn’t a universal concept determined by a single Form.

Then why exactly do we call all those different things ‘good’? They’re surely not just unrelated things that happen to share the same name by chance.

• Is it that they all come from some single source?
• Or do they all contribute to some single goal?
• Or perhaps more likely, is it a matter of analogy? For example, what sight is in the body, intellect (understanding) is in the soul; and A is to B what C is to D, and so on.

We should probably just drop this question for now. Working it all out in detail really belongs to a different area of philosophy (metaphysics). And let’s not talk about the Form of the Good any more either. Because even if there is some single, universally shared Good, or something separate that exists ‘alone and by itself,’ it obviously couldn’t be a good that any human being can actually do or possess. But that’s the kind of good we’re looking for here—an achievable human good.

At this point, one of you might think that it’s better to know about the Form of the Good with the aim of understanding the good things that we can do or possess. Maybe if we have it as a kind of perfect example or paradigm, we’ll be more likely to know what things are good for us. And if we know that, then we’ll be able to achieve them.

Alright, sure, that argument has a certain plausibility to it. But it seems to conflict with how actual forms of knowledge and skills work.

I mean, all those skills are aiming at some kind of good, and all of them are looking for ways to improve. But none of them show any interest in knowing about this abstract “Form of the Good.” So here’s this supposedly huge resource, yet skilled craftsmen are all unaware of it and never even think to look into it! That doesn’t sound very believable.

And I can’t for the life of me see how a tailor or a carpenter would get any help in their craft if they did know about this ‘Good in itself.’ How would anyone become a better doctor or general just because they’ve ‘seen the Form itself’? Doctors don’t even seem to investigate health in that abstract way. They investigate human health, or really, just the health of the specific person in front of them. Right? Because you practice medicine on particular individuals.

7. The Best Life: Ultimate and Self-Sufficient

Let’s go back again to the kind of good we were looking for—the main good in life. What could it be?

It’s clear that there’s a different good for each area of action and each skill:

• One for medical skill (health).
• One for being a general (victory).
• And so on for the rest.

So, for each of these, what do we mean by ‘the good’ of it? Surely it’s the reason you are doing all the other things you’re doing in that area.

• In medicine, that would be health.
• In leading an army, it’s victory.
• In building, it’s a house. It’s one thing here, another thing there. But every action and every choice has its goal. And it’s for the sake of that goal that we’re doing all the other things we’re doing.

So, if there’s an overall goal for all the things that we ever do in life, then that would be the key good that can be achieved through action. (Or if there’s more than one such goal, then it would be those goals.)

So, we see many different goals. But some of those goals, as we said, are things we only want as a means to get something else—like wealth, or bridles for horses, or any sort of tool. So, they obviously aren’t all ultimate goals. But the highest good seems like something ultimate.

Therefore, if there’s one, single, ultimate goal in life, then that would be what we’re trying to find here. (And if there are more than one, then it would be whichever of them is the most ultimate.)

We can say a goal is ‘more ultimate’ if we pursue it for its own sake, rather than pursuing it only as a means to get something else. And if there’s something, X, that we never value as a means to something else, then that’s a ‘more ultimate’ goal than things we value both for themselves and as a means to X.

So, an absolutely ‘ultimate’ goal is one we always value just for itself, and never as a means to anything else.

And that description applies perfectly to flourishing (or eudaimonia).

• We always value flourishing for itself, and never as a means to get something else.
• On the other hand, things like respect, pleasure, intelligence, and every kind of virtue—yes, we value these partly for their own sake. (Even if nothing else came from them, we’d still choose to have them).
• But we also value them for what they contribute to a flourishing life. We value them with the idea that through these things, we will achieve flourishing.
• But it doesn’t work the other way around: nobody wants to flourish so as to have those other things, or as a means to anything else at all.

We seem to get the same result if we think about the highest good as something that meets all your needs (being self-sufficient). The ultimate good, surely, ought to be something that meets all your needs. When I say ‘your needs,’ I don’t mean just yours alone (like someone living as a hermit who can meet their own needs). I mean it to include the needs of your parents, your spouse and children, all your family and friends, and your fellow citizens too. This is because people are by nature social beings. (Of course, we have to set some kind of limit here. If you stretch it to include your ancestors, your grandchildren, your friends’ friends, and so on, it’ll go on forever. But we can address that question later.)

We’re saying here that the highest good ‘meets all your needs’ if, on its own, it makes your life not just a desirable one, but a life from which nothing is missing. And that’s exactly what we think ‘flourishing’ implies.

More than that, we think of ‘flourishing’ as the most desirable good there can be, but not one that you simply count alongside other good things. (If you just added it to a list of other goods, then it would obviously become even more desirable if you added even the smallest extra good thing to it. The addition means you have a larger total of goods than before; and a larger set of good things is always more desirable. This implies the original “flourishing” was not complete, which contradicts its nature.)

So, to sum up:

• To flourish and prosper is our ultimate goal.
• It means living a life that meets all our needs and lacks nothing essential.
• It’s the goal of everything we do.

But just saying the highest good is ‘to flourish’ isn’t exactly a new idea. What we’re missing here is a detailed explanation of what flourishing actually is.

We might be able to give that explanation if we first get an idea of the task or function of a human being. For a flute-player, a sculptor, any artist or craftsman, or anyone who has some sort of task or job they are supposed to do, their ‘key good’ and their ‘doing well’ surely lies in performing that task. So, that’s probably how it is for human beings too, assuming that there is such a thing as a specific human task or function.

So, isn’t there one? Could it be that a carpenter and a shoemaker each has their task, their specific thing they are supposed to do, but a human being as such does not? Is a human being born into the world without a job or purpose?

Or, if our eyes, hands, feet, and all our other body parts so clearly have their tasks or functions, surely we can safely assume that, in the same way, the whole human being has some sort of task, beyond all of those individual parts?

So, what on earth could that be?

• Well, there’s just being alive. But that’s clearly something we share even with plants, and we’re trying to find the task that’s specifically ours, as humans. So, we should rule out a life of just feeding, reproducing, and growing.
• Next might be some kind of life based on our capacity to perceive and feel. But that form of living, too, is clearly one we share with horses, cows, and any other animal.
• So that leaves a life of doing things based on the rational part of us. (And that means the part that is responsive to reason, as well as the part that possesses reason and actually thinks.)

And the word ‘life’ can be understood in two ways here, so we should specify that we mean the active exercising of that rational part of us (as opposed to just having the capacity for it). Because actively using our capacities is surely the more natural sense of ‘living.’

So, given that:

1. Our task as human beings is the active use of the soul’s rational and partly rational elements (our ability to reason and to be guided by reason).
2. We say that the task of any X (like a guitar-player) is the same in general as the task of a good X (a good guitar-player). For example, the task of a guitar-player is ‘to play the guitar,’ and the task of a good guitar-player is ‘to play the guitar well.’ This general rule holds true in all cases; being a good X just means that the task is performed with a certain excellence. And if that’s so, and:
3. We’re saying that the task of a human being is a certain form of living—namely, a life of exercising the soul and acting rationally.
4. And the task of a good person is to exercise these capacities well, in every sense.
5. And performing anything well means performing it with the appropriate goodness, or the appropriate virtues…

…If all that’s the case, then the key good for human beings turns out to be: activity of the soul that expresses our goodness or our virtues.

(And if there is more than one sort of goodness, or if we have different virtues, then it means activity that expresses the best and the most complete virtue.)

Also, this must be over a complete life. Because ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer,’ nor does just one day. In the same way, one day, or a short amount of time, isn’t enough to make someone flourish or qualify as truly ‘blessed’ or happy.

Look at the way a carpenter and a mathematician have different ways of thinking about a right angle.

• A carpenter only needs to think about it to the extent that it’s useful for their task.
• A mathematician investigates exactly what it is and its mathematical properties; they are studying truth. So that’s exactly the approach you need in other areas as well: never let the side issues become more important than the main tasks.

We also shouldn’t demand explanations in the same way in all areas. In some situations, it’s enough just for the facts to have been stated clearly and correctly. That’s how it is with starting points (basic principles), for example. And facts come first; they are our starting points.

(Some of our starting points are understood through logical deduction, some through direct perception, some through a sort of habituation or getting used to them. There are different ways for different kinds of starting points. And we have to try to investigate each sort only in the way that fits with their nature. We must also take great care to set them out correctly, because they have a big impact on what follows. As they say, ‘the start is more than half the job’—meaning, a lot of the things you’re trying to figure out immediately become clear once you have the right starting point.)

8. Does Our Definition of Flourishing Match Common Beliefs?

We need to think about this idea of flourishing not just based on our conclusion and the reasons we used to get to it, but also by looking at what people generally tend to say about it.

After all, if something’s true, all the available evidence agrees with it. But if it’s false, it quickly clashes with the truth.

So, first of all, good things are often divided into three types:

1. ‘External goods’ (like wealth, reputation).
2. ‘Goods of the soul’ (like knowledge, virtue).
3. ‘Goods of the body’ (like health, strength). And we say that goods of the soul are goods in the strictest and fullest sense. Our definition of flourishing involves ‘actions and active exercises of the soul,’ which are goods of the soul. So, our definition is looking pretty good, at least according to that long-standing view, widely agreed on by philosophers.

Our claim that certain ‘actions and active exercises’ are the goal of life is correct because that puts the goal among goods of the soul, not external goods.

Also, the common idea that flourishing means ‘living well’ and ‘doing well’ fits nicely with our view, because that’s pretty much exactly how we’ve defined it: as a sort of well-living and well-doing.

And the way we’ve defined it, it seems to have all the expected features that people associate with flourishing.

• Some people think you’re flourishing just by being a good person (having virtue).
• Some think it’s by being wise.
• Some think it’s by achieving some sort of higher philosophical knowledge.
• Some think it’s those things, or one of them, plus pleasure (or at least not without pleasure).
• Some think you also need an abundance of external goods.

Some of these are popular and traditional views, while some are held by just a few highly regarded thinkers. And neither of these sources is likely to be completely wrong. They’ve probably got at least something right, or even most of it.

So, first, my definition agrees with people who identify flourishing either with being a good person or with having some particular virtue. This is because ‘actively exercising your goodness’ depends on being a good person. However, I’d say it makes a pretty big difference whether we consider the highest good to be merely possessing virtues, or using them; a mere state of character, or its active exercise.

• After all, a good character trait can be there without producing any good effect, for example, if you’re asleep or otherwise totally inactive.
• But when you’re actively exercising your virtues, that’s not possible, because you’ll inevitably be doing things, and doing them well (and therefore, doing well in life). It’s not the strongest athletes on the practice field who win the Olympic crowns. It’s the ones who actually take part in the contests. You have to be in the contest to win. And it’s the same in life: you have to actually do things, and do them right, to win life’s greatest blessings.

And life for such people is also pleasurable in itself. Feeling pleasure is not an external thing; it’s something that happens in the soul. And everyone gets their pleasure from whatever they’re really devoted to.

• If you’re a devoted horse-lover, for example, you get pleasure from riding horses.
• If you love sightseeing, you get pleasure from seeing the sights.
• In the same way, if you love doing what’s right, then doing what’s right is something you take pleasure in.
• And every other aspect of being a good person gives you pleasure, if you love being a good person.

Now, most people, it’s true, find themselves fighting against the things they take pleasure in. That’s because those things aren’t naturally pleasurable for everyone. But people who love what’s honorable take pleasure in things that are naturally pleasurable. All the actions that go with being a good person are like that. So that means these actions are pleasurable for those people, and also pleasurable in themselves.

So, life for these people doesn’t need any extra pleasure tied onto it like some sort of magic charm. It already has its pleasure within itself.

Besides, here’s another thing: a person who doesn’t enjoy acting honorably isn’t even a good person in the first place.

• You wouldn’t call someone fair and honest, for example, if they didn’t enjoy treating people fairly and honestly.
• You wouldn’t call them generous if they didn’t enjoy acting generously, and the same for the rest of the virtues. But in that case, it follows that the actions that go with being a good person are enjoyable in themselves. And of course, they’re also good for you, and they’re also honorable. In fact, they are all of those things more than anything else in life, at least if good people are correct in their judgment about them. (And that’s certainly what good people judge them to be.)

So, it turns out that flourishing is the best thing there is, and the most honorable, and the most enjoyable. These three things are not incompatible, as the famous inscription on the temple at Delos implies they are:

The most honorable thing? To be as righteous as can be. But the best thing in life? To be healthy and strong. But the sweetest thing is to get your heart’s desire.

Our view is that you get all three of those features—best, most honorable, and most enjoyable—in the best activities (the best ways of actively using your soul). And it’s those activities—or one of them, the best one—that we’re saying make up a flourishing life.

But even so, a flourishing life does seem to require external goods as well, as we said earlier.

• Because it’s impossible, or certainly pretty hard, to do honorable things if you don’t have any resources.
• There are lots of things that we do by using friends and family, or wealth, or political power as tools, so to speak.
• And there are other things you need, in the sense that missing out on them spoils your happiness. For example, being born into a noble family, having wonderful children, or being physically attractive.
• You’re a long way from the typical idea of ‘blessed’ or happy if you’re terribly ugly, or from a low-status family, or solitary and childless.
• And perhaps you’re even further from it if you have really awful children or friends, or if they were good but then they died.

So, as we said, a flourishing life does also seem to depend on certain things like that going in your favor. That’s why some people think that flourishing or being blessed is basically the same as being fortunate or lucky, which is rather different from the view that it’s a matter of being a good person.

9. How Do We Achieve Flourishing?

And that brings up another puzzle. Is flourishing something you can learn? Or do you achieve it by forming good habits, or by some other kind of training? Or does it come to us by some sort of divine gift? Or is it just by luck?

So, if anything else is a gift from the gods to humankind, it would make sense for a flourishing life to be God-given, more than all other human things, since it’s the greatest human good. (This question, however, more naturally belongs in a different investigation, perhaps theology.) But even if flourishing is not given to us by the gods, even if you achieve it through being a good person, and through some kind of learning or training (as we’ve claimed), it still feels like the most divine of things. Because the prize for goodness, the thing you’re aiming for by being a good person, feels like not just the best thing there is, but also something divine and blessed.

It also turns out to be widely available. Anyone can achieve it—unless they are born incapable of being a good person—through some form of learning and by their own efforts.

And if it’s better that we flourish that way (through effort and learning), rather than just by mere luck, it also makes sense for it to be that way. After all, nature structures things in the finest and most beautiful ways. Human design and every other cause of good things, especially the very best cause (reason or nature itself), also aim for the best. So, to entrust the most important and finest thing in human life to mere luck—something seems very wrong with that.

We can also see the answer to our question about how we achieve flourishing right in its definition. We defined flourishing as a certain kind of activity of the soul that expresses our virtues (our goodness). As for the other good things in life, they are either just the necessary background conditions for that activity, or they help bring it about or are useful for it—they are basically tools.

This idea also seems to fit well with what we said at the beginning. We said, remember, that the highest good was also the goal of statesmanship (the art of good government). And statesmanship concerns itself, above all, with turning citizens into certain kinds of people—namely, good people who consistently behave honorably.

So, it makes sense that we don’t call a cow or a horse or any other animals ‘blessed’ or ‘flourishing.’ This is because none of them are able to take part in that kind of virtuous activity. For the same reason, a child can’t fully ‘flourish’ either, because a child is too young to be able to do those kinds of things. If we do call children ‘blessed,’ it’s usually because we think they have a bright future. This is because, as we said, to truly flourish you need to exercise complete goodness over a complete life.

And that’s not so easy. Life is full of sudden changes and luck of every kind. Someone can be thriving completely but then suffer terrible disasters in old age, like King Priam in the stories of the Trojan War. And when someone experiences that level of misfortune and meets a miserable end, nobody calls them ‘blessed.’

10. Can We Call Someone Happy While They’re Still Alive?

So, does that mean we should never call anyone happy or blessed—any human being—while they’re still alive? Do we have to agree with Solon (an ancient wise man) and ‘wait and see how it ends’?

But then, suppose that’s right. Does that mean you flourish once you’re dead? That seems totally absurd, especially for us, since we’re saying that flourishing is a kind of activity.

And suppose we’re not saying the dead are flourishing, and suppose that’s not what Solon means either. Suppose he just means that it’s only after death that you can safely declare a human being was blessed, because now they are beyond the reach of more evils and misfortunes. Well, even that idea is somewhat debatable. We do tend to think that bad things and good things (of a sort) can happen to you after you’re dead. These could be things like being honored or shamed by later generations, or the successes and failures of your children and your descendants in general. This is similar to how things can happen to someone who’s alive but unaware of them.

But that brings up another puzzle. Suppose you’ve lived a wonderful, blessed life right into old age, and then you’ve passed away in a way that fits with such a life. Your descendants might experience many changes in their fortunes. Some of them might be good people who achieve the life they deserve, while others might have the opposite fate. (And of course, how distantly related they are to you also makes a difference to how relevant their lives are to yours.) So, it would be pretty strange if—though you are dead—you were to share in all those changes too. It would be odd if you became blessed one day and then went back to being a miserable wretch the next, all because of what happened to your descendants!

But then again, it’s also strange to think that the lives of our descendants have no impact on us at all—not even for just a little while after we’re gone.

We should go back to our previous question. That one might help us figure out the answer to the one we’re asking now. So, suppose we do have to ‘wait and see how it ends,’ and it’s only then that we should call a person blessed. And suppose we don’t mean they are now blessed (since they are dead), but that they were blessed before they died. If that’s the case, how is it not absurd that when they actually are living that blessed life, it’s not true to say that they are? Why refuse to state that fact about them? This refusal comes from the idea that fortunes can change, and because a flourishing life is supposed to be something stable and not at all easy to alter, while fortunes have a way of turning full circle on people, again and again.

Clearly, if we were basing whether someone is flourishing on their fortunes, we’d have to say that the same person is flourishing one day and then pitiful again the next, over and over. The person who ‘flourishes,’ on that view, would turn out to be a sort of chameleon, or someone standing on very shaky foundations.

Maybe focusing on people’s fortunes is fundamentally a mistake. Fortunes don’t determine whether your life goes well or badly. Yes, a human life needs good fortune as an extra, as we said. But what really determines whether we flourish are the ways we actively use our goodness (our virtues). And the opposite sort of activities give us the opposite kind of life.

Even the question we just worked through supports our claim. A flourishing life, we just noted, is supposed to be stable. And no task or activity in human life involves as much stability as the various ways we exercise our goodness. Our virtues are more durable even than pieces of knowledge. And the most precious of our virtues are also the most durable of all. This is because people who are blessed spend the largest portion of their lives exercising them, and they do so most uninterruptedly. That’s likely the reason we don’t ‘forget’ our virtues—they become a deep part of us.

So, it follows that anyone who’s flourishing will have the characteristic we’re looking for here: they’ll be that way their whole life. This is because they’ll always, or more than anything else, be doing and reflecting on things that express goodness. As for good or bad fortunes, they’ll handle those in the best and most honorable way, and appropriately in absolutely every respect—at least, if they’re ‘truly good, straight as a die, without a single flaw.’

Lots of things in life happen to us by luck. And they vary in importance. Some are significant, some are trivial.

• Minor bits of good luck, or minor bits of bad luck, clearly don’t have much of an impact on your life.
• But if you experience major strokes of fortune, and many of them, and if those go in your favor, they’ll make your life more blessed. (For one thing, they naturally make life better, and for another, you can use them in honorable, morally good ways).
• However, if major misfortunes go against you, they weigh down on and damage your blessedness. They cause you pain and suffering, and also hinder many of your activities.

Then again, even in those difficult situations, honorable behavior can shine through—when, for example, you handle a series of terrible disasters with poise and calm. This isn’t because you’re insensitive to the pain, but because of your nobility and your sense of pride.

And if actively using our virtues is what really matters in life, as we said, then nobody who’s truly blessed can ever become a miserable wretch. This is because they are never going to do things that are morally disgusting or vile. If someone’s ‘truly good’ (and sane), we fully expect them to handle every misfortune with grace and dignity. We expect them to always conduct themselves as well and as honorably as circumstances allow.

• This is just as we expect a good general to make the best possible military use of whatever troops are available.
• And we expect a good shoemaker to make the finest possible shoes with whatever leather they are supplied with.
• The same goes for all other experts.

If that’s the case, then a person who flourishes can at least never become wretched. However, they might not be called fully ‘blessed’ either, if they suffer misfortunes on the scale of King Priam’s.

So, a flourishing person is not constantly changing and unstable. They won’t easily be knocked from their state of flourishing, and not by just ordinary misfortunes. It would have to be a long series of major disasters. And conversely, after misfortunes of that kind, they aren’t going to be able to return to flourishing in any short amount of time. If they manage it at all, it will take a long time: a whole lifetime in which they’ll have to accomplish great and glorious things.

So why shouldn’t we say that someone is flourishing or is blessed, if they’ve been actively expressing complete goodness, they’re adequately supplied with external goods, and they’ve been that way not just for some trivial amount of time but for their entire life? Or do we have to add that they’re going to carry on living that way, and then also die in a manner that fits with that life? This is a challenge because the future is invisible to us, and we assume that a flourishing, blessed life is not just our goal, but also something perfect and complete in every possible way.

In that case, fine—yes, we will call people blessed, even while they’re still alive (if they have all the characteristics I’ve just listed and look set to keep them into the future). But we’ll say they are ‘as blessed as is humanly possible.’

11. How Do Our Loved Ones’ Fortunes Affect Us After Death?

The idea that the fortunes of our descendants, and of our friends and loved ones in general, have no effect on us whatsoever after we die is surely far too unloving. It also goes against common sense.

But lots of different things happen to them, of every imaginable category and kind. Some of them touch our lives more, some less. To sort through all of them, case by case, seems like a long—in fact, endless—task. Let’s just say something general and in broad outline. That’ll probably be enough for our purposes.

So, think about the misfortunes you experience yourself. Some have a serious weight to them and a big impact on your life, while others seem more bearable. The same is true of misfortunes suffered by all our family and friends. They vary greatly in how much they affect us. And it makes a big difference, for each such thing suffered by them, whether it happens while we’re alive or after we’re dead. This difference is far greater than whether the grisly crimes in a tragedy have already taken place off-stage or are being acted out before our eyes. So, we have to consider that difference.

More to the point, let’s not forget that we have major doubts as to whether deceased people can experience any kind of good thing at all, or anything of the opposite kind. Because it seems likely that if anything from later events gets through to the dead, whether good or bad, it must be faint and slight. It might be faint either in an absolute sense, or at least faint for them. In any case, it’s probably not important enough, and not the sort of thing to make people blessed if they’re not already blessed, or to take away their blessedness if they are.

So, while it seems that, yes, there may be some effect on the departed when the people they love do well in life, and some effect when those people do poorly, the nature and scale of those effects surely isn’t enough to make the blessed unblessed, or do anything else like that.

12. Is Flourishing Praised or Something More Precious?

So now that we’ve sorted that out, let’s consider the question of whether flourishing in life is something we praise in other people, or rather something that’s more precious and honored. (Because obviously, it shouldn’t be classed as a mere potential or capacity.)

It seems clear that with anything we praise, we praise it because it has a certain quality, or because it stands in a certain relation to something else.

• We praise someone who’s fair, for example, or brave, and in general a good person, both for having that quality—for being a good person—and also because of their actions and what they accomplish.
• We praise someone who’s strong, or a fast runner, and so on, both for having a certain physical quality, and also for standing in a certain relation to some kind of good, something we value.

We can also see this clearly when people praise the gods. It makes the gods look ridiculous to think of them as having any relation to us and our needs. And that’s just what happens when we praise them, because praise always involves some such relation, in the sense we just explained.

So, if those are the kinds of things we praise, it seems clear that things that are the best of all aren’t praised. They receive something greater, something better, than praise. And that’s just how it seems to work.

• Take the gods. We don’t praise them; we declare them blessed. We aspire to the wonderful life they have.
• We do likewise for the people who are the most godlike among us.

And the same is true of the greatest of all good things. No one praises people for flourishing or being blessed in the way we praise people for doing what’s right. Instead, we feel it’s something more divine, something above mere praise: we aspire to it.

Eudoxus (another philosopher) used this same point to make what I thought was a pretty good case for pleasure being the primary good. The fact that pleasure is a good thing, but one that we don’t praise, he thought, was a clear indication that it’s superior to things we praise. That’s true of God, he thought, and it’s also true of the key good in life. We don’t praise those things because they are the standards by which we judge everything else.

Think about it like this, too: You’re praised for being a good person, because goodness makes you reliably do honorable things. And eulogies (speeches of praise) celebrate accomplishments—of any sort at all, whether of body, mind, or character. We don’t need to go into all the details here; this isn’t my advanced class on how to write eulogies. But even from what we’ve said, it’s clear enough that flourishing should be classed apart, as something precious, perfect, and complete.

It also seems to have that status because it is a principle or a starting point, in the sense that it’s the reason all of us do all the other things we do. And something that’s the principle, the source of all good things, the thing that makes them good—we treat that as something precious and divine.

13. Understanding Virtue to Understand Flourishing: The Parts of the Soul

Since flourishing is a kind of activity of the soul that expresses complete goodness, our next step should be to investigate goodness, or virtue. This is because that way we’ll surely gain more insight into the nature of human flourishing as well.

But surely a statesman—at least, a statesman in the true sense of the word—is also someone who, above all, makes a close study of human goodness. This is because the aim of a statesman is to make citizens good people and law-abiding people. As our model for that, we have the lawmakers of ancient Crete and Sparta, and various others who were like them.

(If our current question about virtue does fall under the scope of statesmanship, that just shows that our investigation is proceeding nicely in line with our original purpose.)

And in saying that we need to investigate ‘goodness,’ obviously we mean human goodness and human virtues. After all, it’s the key good for human beings that we’ve been investigating: human flourishing.

Also, when we talk about ‘human goodness,’ we don’t mean good qualities of the body; we mean goodness of the soul, or virtues of the soul. Remember, we define flourishing as an activity of the soul.

If all of that’s the case, then obviously a statesman (or anyone studying moral and political questions as we are) has to have some degree of knowledge about the soul. This is like the way a doctor, if they are going to treat someone’s eyes, has to know something about the whole body. And this is even more true for statesmanship, to the extent that moral and political wisdom is better and more valuable than medical knowledge.

Certainly, the better class of doctors puts a lot of effort into knowing about the body. In the same way, a statesman needs to study the soul. But we also only have to study it for our particular reasons—that is, only to the extent that’s enough for the questions we’re asking. To go into it in more detail is probably too time-consuming for our current purposes.

I’ve made claims about the soul in my public writings too. Some of them are not too bad, and we can use those claims here. For example, I’ve said that there’s an irrational part of the soul and a rational part of the soul. Whether these parts are separate in the way parts of the body are separate (or anything made up of actual bits), or whether they are only distinct in the way we describe them but physically inseparable (like the concave and the convex side of the circumference of a circle)—that doesn’t make any difference for our discussion right now.

One aspect of that irrational part seems common to all living things, even plants. I mean the part responsible for nourishment and growth. That sort of capacity in the soul is something that you can see exists in all things that feed and grow, even in embryos. And we should assume it’s the very same capacity in fully grown beings. (That makes more sense than thinking that it’s a different one.)

Now, that part of the soul can be good at what it does. But that kind of goodness is clearly something all living things can have. It’s obviously not specifically human goodness. In fact, that part of the soul, that capacity, seems to operate most of all when we’re asleep. Good people and evil people are pretty much indistinguishable when they’re asleep. (That’s why people say that ‘for half their lives, there’s no difference at all between the wretched and the blessed.’) It makes sense that it works that way. Sleep is the inactivity of precisely those aspects of the soul by which it’s termed a good or bad soul. (Unless, to some small extent, certain mental processes get through to us while we’re asleep, so that the dreams of decent people are better than the average person’s.)

But enough about that. Let’s just forget about the nutritive part of the soul, since it has no natural connection with human goodness.

The soul seems to have another part that’s irrational in its basic nature, but has some degree of connection with, or a sort of overlap with, reason. Consider that in someone who’s exercising self-control (or experiencing a failure of self-control), we praise one part of them—namely their reasoning and the rational part of their soul. We praise it because that bit is doing its job right and urging them to do what’s best. But it seems there’s another element in them, besides reason, that’s fighting with reason and straining against it.

It’s like when parts of the body are paralyzed. People try to move them to the right, but their limbs pull the opposite way, to the left. That’s how it can be with the soul. When people lack self-control, their impulses pull them in opposite directions, against their reason. The difference is that with the body, we can actually see the part pulling the wrong way. With the soul, this struggle is invisible. But all the same, surely even in the case of the soul, we have to assume that there’s something else there, something other than reason, that opposes reason and works against it. (Exactly how it’s a ‘separate’ thing doesn’t matter for our discussion right now.)

And this other part of us, the part with desires and impulses, seems to have some connection with reason too, as we said.

• At any rate, in someone who has self-control, this desiring part obeys reason’s commands.
• And surely, it’s even more responsive and obedient in someone who is moderate or brave. In such a person, their desires are in total harmony with their reason all the time.

So, it seems that the irrational part of the soul itself has two aspects:

1. There’s the plant-like aspect (responsible for nutrition and growth), which doesn’t share in reason at all.
2. Then there’s the part that feels physical desires and desires in general. This part is partly rational in the sense that it can listen to reason and obey reason’s commands.

This desiring part “has reason” (or in Greek, “has logos”) in the same way we speak of someone paying attention to their father or their friends. “Paying attention to” in Greek is “having logos of,” which means “taking account of.” It’s not “having reason” in the sense that you understand a logos as a reasoned proof of a mathematical idea.

A further sign that this irrational (desiring) part can be persuaded by reason, in some sense, is the fact that we correct one another. We do this every time we criticize or encourage anyone.

And if we must say that that desiring part of us actually ‘is rational’ (because it can listen to reason), then the ‘rational’ aspect of us will turn out to have two parts:

1. There’ll be the part that is truly and inherently rational, the part that thinks.
2. And there’ll be the part that’s rational in the sense of listening to reason, like the way you listen to your father.

Goodness, or virtues, can be divided according to this same distinction in the soul. That is to say, we speak of:

• Virtues of thought and intellect (intellectual virtues).
• Virtues of character (moral virtues).

Philosophical knowledge, insight, and wisdom—those are intellectual virtues. Being generous or moderate—those are virtues of character. If we’re saying something about someone’s character, we don’t say ‘they are a great philosopher’ or ‘they are insightful.’ Instead, we say ‘they are a good-natured person,’ or ‘they are a moderate person.’

But we do praise the philosopher, too, for that state of their intellect. And all praiseworthy states, whether of character or intellect, are called ‘virtues.’

Book II

1. How We Develop Good Character: It’s All About Habits

So, we’ve learned there are two kinds of virtues (good qualities):

1. Intellectual virtues (like wisdom and understanding). These mostly come from teaching and take time to develop.
2. Virtues of character (moral virtues, like fairness and courage). These come about through habit. That’s why they also need time and experience.

Interestingly, our Greek word for ‘character’ – ēthos – is only a slight variation on our word for ‘habit’ – ĕthos. This connection in language hints at how closely related they are.

From this, we can also be sure that none of our moral virtues develop in us just by nature. Why? Because nothing that is naturally a certain way can be trained or habituated to be different.

• For example, a stone naturally moves downwards. You can’t train it to fall upwards, even if you ‘trained’ it by throwing it up in the air 10,000 times.
• You can’t train fire to move downwards.
• You can’t train anything else that is naturally one way to become some other way through habit.

So, the fact that we develop virtues through habit shows that our virtues don’t come purely from our nature, nor do they go against our nature. Rather, our nature gives us the ability to receive them, and then we are perfected and made good through our habits.

Also, think about things that do just develop in us naturally, like our senses (sight, hearing, etc.). We always get the capacities (the abilities) first, and then we start using those capacities.

• This is obvious with our senses. It wasn’t by seeing over and over again, or hearing over and over again, that we first got our senses of sight and hearing.
• It’s the other way around. We already had our sight and hearing before we used them. We didn’t get them by using them.

But with virtues, it’s different. We get them by doing virtuous things first. This is just like how it is with learning technical skills. In general, when we have to learn how to do something, we learn it by actually doing it.

• People become builders by building things.
• They become guitar players by playing the guitar. It’s the same with virtues:
• We become fair and honest people by doing things that are fair and honest.
• We become moderate people by doing things that are moderate.
• We become brave people by doing brave things.

Another piece of evidence for this is what happens in cities at the political level. Lawmakers try to make citizens good people by getting them into good habits through laws. That’s the intention, at least, of every lawmaker. When they don’t do it well, it’s only because they make mistakes in their laws. This difference in how laws shape habits is what separates a good system of government from a bad one.

Also, for every virtue, the same kinds of actions that create it and help it grow are also the things that can destroy it. This is also true for technical skills.

• It’s by playing the guitar, for example, that people become good guitar players or bad guitar players.
• The same goes for builders (and all other skilled workers): people will become good builders by building things well, or bad ones by building things badly.
• (If that weren’t true, then why would they even need anyone to teach them? They’d all just be born already good or bad at their skills.)

So, that’s how it is with our virtues too.

• By the way we act in our dealings with other people, some of us become fair and honest, while some of us become unfair and dishonest.
• By the things we do in frightening situations, and by getting into the habit of being afraid or unafraid, some of us become brave, while some of us become cowards.
• The same applies to situations that involve physical desires or that make us angry: some people become moderate and good-natured, while others become indulgent, greedy, and bad-tempered. It all depends on how they behave in those situations.

So, here’s our overall claim: our dispositions (our character traits) are created by the activities that match them. That’s why we have to make sure we are doing the right sort of actions and behaviors. Differences in our actions will lead to different character traits.

So, it’s no small matter whether we get into these good habits or those bad habits right from childhood. It makes a very, very big difference. Really, it makes all the difference.

2. How to Act: Finding the Middle Way

Now, this study of ethics isn’t just for thinking, like other areas of philosophy. We’re not just asking these questions so that we’ll know what ‘being a good person’ is or what ‘virtues’ are. We want to actually become good people. Otherwise, what would be the point of studying ethics?

So, that means we have to carefully think about the nature of our actions: how, exactly, should we do the things we do? This is because our actions will determine what our character traits end up being like, as we’ve just said.

Alright, so first, we have to act according to correct reason. This is a general rule that applies to everything, and we can just accept it as true for now. We’ll talk about it more later. We’ll explain what ‘correct reason’ means and how it relates to the other virtues.

Let’s also agree from the start that any statement about what people should and shouldn’t do ought to be stated in rough outline only, not precisely. We said this back at the start of our discussion. Remember, we said that we should expect our claims to suit their subject matter. Nothing connected with human action is completely fixed and unchanging. There’s nothing absolutely fixed about what’s in people’s best interests, any more than there is about what makes us healthy.

If that’s how it is even for general statements, it’ll be even more true that statements about particular situations can’t be precise. These things don’t fall under any technical skill or set of exact rules. It’s the people actually doing things, in each case, who have to think for themselves about what that situation requires. This is like a doctor treating a patient or a ship’s captain steering a ship.

Still, even though that’s the kind of subject we’re dealing with, we have to do the best we can with it.

So, the first thing for us to observe is that it’s in the nature of these kinds of things (like virtues, strength, and health) to be messed up if we fall short or if we go too far.

We can see this clearly in the case of strength and health. We should use these obvious cases as evidence for the ones that aren’t so clear, like virtues.

• Doing too much exercise, or not enough, messes up your strength.
• Likewise, eating or drinking too much, or too little, messes up your health.
• But just the right amount creates and increases strength and health, and preserves them.

So, it’s just the same with moderation, bravery, and our other virtues.

• Someone who runs away from everything, is afraid of everything, and never stands and faces anything, becomes a coward (that’s a deficiency of courage).
• Someone who isn’t afraid of anything at all and rushes into any dangerous situation becomes a reckless person (that’s an excess of courage).
• Likewise, someone who indulges in every kind of pleasure and never refrains from any sort of pleasure becomes an overindulgent or gluttonous person (that’s an excess regarding pleasure).
• While someone who avoids every pleasure, like a gloomy and unsociable person, becomes some kind of ‘unfeeling’ or ‘insensitive’ person (that’s a deficiency regarding pleasure).

So, virtues like moderation and bravery are messed up by our going too far (excess) or by our falling short (deficiency). They are preserved by the middle state or the mean.

And virtues aren’t just created, developed, and sometimes messed up as a result of, and by means of, the very same sorts of behaviors. We also then exercise these virtues in those same areas of life. This is also how it is with other very obvious cases, like strength.

• People become strong by eating lots of food and enduring lots of hard work.
• And it’s a strong person who can then do those things more than anyone else. It’s the same with our virtues:
• We become moderate people by refraining from pleasures. Once we’ve become moderate, we’re then more able to refrain from pleasures than anyone else.
• It’s the same with bravery: by getting into the habit of being untroubled by frightening things and facing them, we become brave people. Once we’ve become brave, we’ll be better than anyone else at facing frightening situations.

3. Virtue, Pleasure, and Pain: The Role of Upbringing

We should take the pleasure or pain that a person feels when they act as evidence for their dispositions (their character traits).

For example:

• If you hold back from physical pleasures, and you enjoy doing exactly that, you are a moderate person. If it pains you to have to hold back, you are an overindulgent or gluttonous person.
• If you face frightening things and enjoy it, or at least aren’t distressed by it, you are a brave person. If it distresses you, you are a coward.

The fact is, being a morally good person is all about pleasures and pains.

• After all, we do bad things because they give us pleasure.
• And we typically fail to do honorable things because they’re painful. That’s why it’s important for us to have been brought up in a certain way right from childhood—as Plato says. We need to be raised to enjoy the things we should enjoy and to feel pain at the things we should feel pain at. That’s what a good upbringing is.

Also, if virtues are all about our actions and our emotions, and if every emotion and every action has a feeling of pleasure or pain that goes with it, that’s another reason for thinking that being a good person is all about pleasures and pains.

This is also shown by the fact that punishments work through pleasures and pains. Punishments are like remedies, and remedies naturally work by using opposites (e.g., using something painful to correct a tendency towards harmful pleasure).

Also, as we said earlier, for every character trait you have, the kinds of things that make it better or worse are also the things that it naturally relates to and is concerned with. And it’s through pleasures and pains that people become bad. This happens by pursuing and avoiding pleasures and pains—or at any rate, the wrong ones, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, or in any of the other ways of getting it wrong that reason can determine.

That’s why some people even define the virtues as ‘states of calmness’ or ‘states of inner peace’—meaning, as the absence of feelings of pleasure and pain. But that’s not right. It’s not enough to just say we shouldn’t feel them at all. Instead, we need to say how we should feel them, or how we shouldn’t, or when—and all the other necessary details.

So here’s our basic claim: being a good person is a matter of feeling pleasures and pains in such a way that you do what’s best. Being a bad person is the opposite.

Here’s another way for us to see that it’s all about pleasures and pains. There are three general classes of things that are the targets of our choices:

1. Things that are honorable.
2. Things that are in our interest (advantageous).
3. Things that are pleasurable. And there are three opposites of those that we try to avoid:
4. Things that are shameful.
5. Things that are harmful.
6. Things that are painful.

It’s in all three of these areas, of course, that a good person regularly gets it right, while a bad person regularly makes mistakes. But this is especially true with respect to pleasure.

• Because pleasure is something we share with all animals.
• It accompanies all possible objects of choice.
• Even what’s honorable, and what’s in our interest, often appears to us as something pleasurable.

Also, the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain have been nurtured into all of us right from when we were babies. That’s why it’s hard to scrub these feelings out of us, when our whole life is deeply colored by them.

We also guide our actions (some of us more than others) using the pleasure and pain they produce as our standard or measuring stick. So that means our whole task here in studying ethics is bound to be all about pleasure and pain. This is because it’s going to make a really big difference to our actions whether we feel pleasure and pain at the right things or the wrong things.

Also, as Heraclitus says, it’s ‘a harder thing to fight pleasure than anger.’ And the harder tasks are the ones that call for technical skills and virtues. The tougher the job, the greater the good in doing it well. So that’s another reason why the whole business of being good people (and the whole business of statesmanship) has to do with pleasures and pains. Depending on whether you feel them the right way or the wrong way, you’ll be a good person or a bad one.

So here’s what we’ve claimed so far:

• Virtues are all to do with pleasures and pains.
• The activities that produce virtues can either strengthen them or weaken them (depending on whether the activities are done one way or the other).
• Virtues are exercised in the very same kinds of activities that produced them. Let’s move on.

4. It’s Not Just Doing Good Acts, But How You Do Them

You might well wonder how we can claim that to become a fair person you’ve got to do things that are fair, and to become a moderate person you’ve got to do things that are moderate. After all, if you’re doing things that are fair and moderate, doesn’t that mean you already are a fair and moderate person? This is just like saying that if you’re doing things that are literate (reading and writing) or musical, then you must already be literate or already a musician.

Or is that not right, even with technical skills? It’s perfectly possible to produce a piece of writing just by luck, or by following someone else’s instructions. So, you’re only really literate not just when you do some writing, but also when you do it the way someone who can write does it. That means doing it based on your own knowledge of how to write.

Also, it’s not the same for virtues as it is for skills.

• With the products of technical skills (like a chair or a song), yes, how good or bad they are is in the things themselves. So, it’s enough for those products to turn out a certain way.
• But with things we do based on our virtues (virtuous actions), it doesn’t follow just from the actions themselves being a certain way that we’re doing them fairly or moderately. You, the person doing them, also have to be in a certain state of mind and character when you do them.
  1. First, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.
  2. Second, you’ve got to be choosing to do those things, and be choosing them for what they are (i.e., because they are the right things to do, not for some other motive).
  3. Third, you’ve got to be acting from a constant and unvarying state of character (a firm disposition).

These internal conditions (especially the second and third) aren’t usually considered when it comes to having technical skills—just the knowing how. But when it comes to having virtues:

• Knowledge doesn’t really matter much at all, or maybe just a little.
• But the other two conditions—choosing the act for its own sake and acting from a firm character—certainly don’t matter just a little. They make all the difference.
• And these are the conditions that can only be brought about by your doing fair and moderate things over and over again.

So, we call actions fair and moderate when they’re the kinds of things a fair or moderate person would do. But a fair or moderate person isn’t just anyone who does those things; it’s someone who also does them exactly the way that fair and moderate people do them (with the right knowledge, choice, and character).

So, there’s no problem with our claim that you become a fair person by doing things that are fair, and a moderate person by doing things that are moderate.

You certainly have no hope whatsoever of becoming a good person by not doing any of those things. But the fact is, most young people don’t do them. They hide in mere theory, fancy themselves ‘philosophers,’ and think that’s going to turn them into good people. That’s like patients who listen carefully to their doctors but don’t actually do anything the doctors tell them to do. Patients aren’t going to make their bodies well by that kind of treatment. And those people aren’t going to improve their souls by that sort of purely philosophical thinking, either.

5. What Exactly is Virtue? An Emotion, a Capacity, or a State of Character?

Next, we should consider exactly what a virtue is. There are three kinds of things that can be present in your soul:

1. Emotions (or feelings).
2. Capacities (or abilities).
3. Dispositions (or states of character). A virtue has to be one of these.

By emotions or feelings, I mean things like desire, anger, fear, boldness, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, jealousy, pity—in general, things that are accompanied by pleasure or pain.

By capacities, I mean the things that make us capable of those feelings—for example, capable of feeling angry, capable of feeling annoyed, or capable of feeling sorry for someone.

By dispositions or states, I mean the things that set us in a good or bad way regarding our emotions. For example, with respect to feeling angry, we’re set in a bad way if our feelings of anger are typically too intense or typically too weak. We are in a good way if they’re somewhere in the middle. The same applies to our other emotions.

So, first, virtues (and their opposites, vices) are not just emotions.

• We aren’t called good or bad people just on the basis of our emotions. But we are called good or bad on the basis of our virtues and vices.
• Also, we aren’t praised or blamed just for having emotions. (You don’t praise someone just for being afraid or for being angry. You don’t criticize someone simply for being angry either; it depends on the way they get angry). But we are praised and blamed for our virtues and vices.
• Also, when we get angry or feel afraid, it’s not a matter of choosing to feel that way. But virtues are choices, of a sort—or at any rate, they involve making choices.
• In addition, we say that our emotions move us. But we don’t say our virtues and vices move us; we say they set us into a certain condition or state.

For the same reasons, virtues aren’t capacities either.

• We aren’t called good or bad people, and we aren’t praised or blamed, just for being capable of feeling certain emotions.
• Also, it’s our nature that gives us capacities. But we don’t become good or bad people just by our nature—we talked about that earlier.

So, if virtues aren’t emotions or capacities, then they must be dispositions or states of character. That’s what’s left. So that tells us, in general terms, what a virtue is.

6. What Kind of State is Virtue?

But we can’t leave it at that—just saying ‘it’s a disposition.’ We also have to say what sort of disposition it is.

So here we need to explain that virtues, whatever they are the virtues of, always do two things:

1. They put the thing itself into a good state.
2. They also make it good at performing its specific task or function.

For example:

• The physical virtues of an eye (like good vision) make the eye a good eye, and make it perform its task well—which is to say, the eye’s virtues make us see well.
• Likewise, a horse’s virtues make it a good horse, and specifically good at running, carrying its rider, and facing the enemy.

So, if that’s how it is for all cases, then human virtues, similarly, are presumably those states of character that make someone a good human being and good at performing the specific task of a human being.

We’ve already said something about how virtues do that. But another way for us to get a clear idea of what I mean is by examining the exact nature of a virtue.

Whenever something comes in different amounts, like on a sliding scale, you can have:

• More than a certain amount of it.
• Less than a certain amount of it.
• An amount that is equal or balanced. These amounts can be measured either objectively (based on the thing itself) or relative to us as individuals. The equal or balanced amount is then a sort of mid-point between going over that amount and falling short of it.

Now, by an ‘objective’ mid-point, I mean the amount that’s exactly halfway between the two extremes. That amount doesn’t change; it’s the same for everyone.

• For example, if ten of something is a lot, and two is a little, then six is the objective mid-point. This is because six is four more than two and also four less than ten. That’s the mathematical mid-point.

But the mid-point relative to us is an amount that isn’t too much and isn’t too little for a particular person. And that can vary a lot; it isn’t the same for everyone.

• For example, suppose ten pounds of food is a lot for someone to eat in a day, and two pounds is a little. It doesn’t follow that a trainer will always tell someone to eat six pounds of food.
• Why? Because even six pounds might be a lot for the specific person who’s going to eat it, or it might be a little. Six pounds might be a small amount for a champion athlete like Milo, but a lot for someone who’s just starting their training.
• The same idea applies to activities like running or wrestling.

So, in the same way, every expert avoids going too far and avoids falling short. They try to figure out the mid-point and choose that—not the objective mid-point, but the mid-point relative to us.

That’s how every sort of knowledge and technical skill does its job well and perfects its product: by keeping its eye on the mid-point and by guiding its works towards that mid-point. (That’s why people typically say of well-made works of art or craft that ‘you couldn’t possibly add or take away a single thing.’ They mean that going beyond that perfect spot, or falling short of it, would mess it up, while the middle state preserves its quality. And good artists and craftsmen do their work with their eye on that mid-point, as I said.)

But of course, virtues are more precise than any art or technical skill, and better, just as nature is more precise and better than art. So, virtues must aim at a mid-point too.

(You might ask: “Do you mean both kinds of virtues? Even intellectual virtues?”) For now, I’m only talking about character virtues. These are the virtues that have to do with our actions and feelings. And it’s in our actions and feelings that you can have too much, too little, or a mid-point.

You can be afraid, for example, or feel bold, or feel physical desire, or get angry, or feel sorry for someone. In general, you can feel any pleasure or pain either more or less than you should—too much or too little. But to have these feelings:

• when you should,
• at the things you should,
• towards the right people,
• for the right reason, and
• in the right way —that’s the mid-point. That is optimal, and being optimal is characteristic of good people and their virtue. Likewise, with actions: you can do something too much, or too little, or a middle amount.

Virtues apply to feelings or actions where going too far, or falling short, means getting something wrong. The mid-point, however, means getting it right and is something people praise. Both getting things right and being praised are characteristic of good people and their virtue.

So, a virtue is a ‘middle state,’ at least in the sense that it aims at the mid-point.

Also, there are lots of ways of getting things wrong, but only one way of getting them right. (That’s what the Pythagoreans, ancient philosophers, had a vague sense of when they classified badness as ‘infinite’ or unlimited, and goodness as ‘finite’ or limited.) That’s also why one is so easy and the other so hard. It’s easy to miss your target but hard to hit the bull’s eye. So, for that reason too, going too far or falling short is characteristic of bad people and vice, while the middle state is characteristic of good people and virtue. As the saying goes:

There’s only one way for the good to be good, But so many ways to be bad!

So, a virtue is:

1. A disposition (a state of character) to choose certain things.
2. It lies in a middle state (or a mean).
3. This middle state is relative to us (as individuals).
4. It is determined by reason, or as a wise person would define it.

It’s a ‘middle’ state both because it’s between two ways of being bad (two vices)—one caused by going too far (excess) and one caused by falling short (deficiency). It’s also a middle state in the sense that vices either make us fall short of or go beyond what’s required in our feelings and our actions, while the relevant virtue finds and chooses the mid-point.

This means that we can think of virtues in two different ways:

• In its essential nature, and by the definition that states what it fundamentally is, a virtue is a middle state.
• But in terms of being optimal, and as well-set as it can be, it’s also a high point or an excellence.

(You might ask: “Does everything have a middle state? Is there, say, even a right amount of being unfair, or a right amount of being a coward?”) No, not every kind of action or emotion allows for a middle state. In some cases, you just name the thing, and you’ve automatically implied its badness.

• Examples of such feelings include ‘gloating’ (malicious joy), ‘shamelessness,’ and ‘envy.’
• Examples of such actions include ‘adultery,’ ‘stealing,’ and ‘murder.’ With all of those, and other things like them, it’s understood in the mere mention of them that they’re bad in themselves, regardless of too much or too little of them. So, there’s never any way of getting it right where they’re concerned. You’re always getting it wrong. With things like that, there’s no good or bad way of doing it—like, say, depending on whether you commit adultery with the ‘right’ woman, or at just the ‘right’ moment, or in just the ‘right’ way. To do any of those things at all is to do the wrong thing.

So, it’s the same with being unfair or dishonest, being a coward, or being overindulgent. You shouldn’t expect there to be a middle state, or ways of going too far and falling short with those. If there were, we’d end up having a middle amount of going too far and a middle amount of falling short. You’d be able to go too far in going too far, and fall short of falling short, which is absurd! Just as there’s no such thing as too much or too little of being moderate or being brave (because the mid-point is also, in a sense, the high point or ideal), there’s also no middle state, no going too far, and no falling short with any of those inherently bad things. No matter how you do them, you’re getting something wrong.

The general rule is: there’s no middle point of going too far or a middle point of falling short, and there’s no such thing as too much or too little of being in the middle.

7. Examples of Virtues as the Middle Way

We can’t just make this very broad kind of claim about the middle state. We also have to make it fit particular cases. When we’re making claims about actions, general claims may cover more ground, but particular claims are more dependable and trustworthy. Actions are all about particular situations, and that’s where our theory has to be true.

So, let’s take these examples from our list or chart of virtues and vices:

Regarding feelings of Fear and Boldness:

• Deficiency: Cowardice (feeling too much fear, not enough boldness)
• MEAN (Virtue): Courage / Bravery
• Excess: Recklessness (feeling too little fear, too much boldness) (If you go too far in feeling no fear, there isn’t always a specific name for that state.)

Regarding Pleasures and Pains (mainly physical pleasures):

• Deficiency: ‘Unfeeling’ / Insensible (enjoying physical pleasures too little) (There pretty much aren’t any people like that, so there’s no common word for them. Let’s call them ‘feel-nothings.’)
• MEAN (Virtue): Moderation / Temperance
• Excess: Overindulgence / Gluttony / Lechery (indulging too much in physical pleasures)

Regarding Giving and Getting Money (on a smaller scale):

• Deficiency: Ungenerousness / Stinginess (falling short in giving, perhaps going too far in getting)
• MEAN (Virtue): Generosity
• Excess: Extravagance / Wastefulness (going too far in giving away, falling short in managing money) (Ungenerous and extravagant people show their excess and deficiency in opposite ways: an extravagant person gives too much and earns/keeps too little; an ungenerous person earns/keeps too much and gives too little. For now, this is just a rough outline; we’ll give a more detailed description later.)

Regarding Spending Money (on a larger scale):

• Deficiency: Cheapness / Meanness / Niggardliness (spending too little on large, important things)
• MEAN (Virtue): Lavishness / Magnificence (spending on a grand and appropriate scale)
• Excess: Tackiness / Vulgarity (spending too much in a showy, tasteless way) (Being lavish isn’t just the same as being generous; a lavish spender spends on a grand scale, while generosity can apply to small-scale spending. The vices here are different from those opposed to generosity. We’ll explain later exactly how they’re different.)

Regarding Honor and Dishonor (major forms):

• Deficiency: Lack of Pride / Undue Humility (not valuing oneself enough)
• MEAN (Virtue): Proper Pride / Greatness of Soul
• Excess: Being Full of Oneself / Vanity / Conceit (thinking too highly of oneself)

Regarding Honor and Prestige (minor forms):

• Deficiency: Unambitiousness (lacking desire for appropriate honor)
• MEAN (Virtue): Proper Ambition (desiring honor to the right degree)
• Excess: Over-ambitiousness (desiring honor too much or in wrong ways) (There’s often no specific word for the person in the middle state, or for the disposition itself, except for the ambitious person’s trait, which is ‘ambition.’ That’s why people at the two extremes both sometimes try to claim the middle spot. We sometimes call the person in the middle ‘ambitious’ in a good way, and other times ‘not ambitious’ also in a good sense. We’ll explain why we do that later. For now, let’s list the rest, following the method we’ve outlined.)

Regarding Anger:

• Deficiency: ‘Angerlessness’ / Spiritlessness / Apathy (not getting angry when one should)
• MEAN (Virtue): Good-naturedness / Gentleness / Patience
• Excess: Bad-temperedness / Irritability / Hot-headedness (getting too angry, too often, or for wrong reasons) (There are often no precise names for these dispositions, but since we call the person in the middle ‘good-natured’ or ‘gentle,’ let’s call the middle state ‘being good-natured.’)

Regarding Social Conduct and Truthfulness about Oneself:

• Deficiency: Self-deprecation / Mock-modesty (talking oneself down too much)
• MEAN (Virtue): Truthfulness (being honest about oneself)
• Excess: Phoniness / Charlatanism / Boastfulness (talking oneself up, pretending to be more than one is)

Regarding Social Conduct and Pleasantness in Jokes and Amusement:

• Deficiency: Humorless Yokel / Boorishness (lacking wit, spoiling fun for others)
• MEAN (Virtue): Wittiness / Good Humor
• Excess: Buffoonery / Crassness (trying too hard to be funny, often offensively)

Regarding Social Conduct and Pleasantness in General Life:

• Deficiency: Cantankerousness / Grumpiness / Quarrelsomeness (being unpleasant in all situations)
• MEAN (Virtue): Friendliness (being pleasant in the right way)
• Excess: People-pleasing (if done with no ulterior motive) / Flattery / Obsequiousness (if done to gain something)

Regarding Certain Emotional Responses (like shame):

• Deficiency: Shamelessness (feeling no shame at all)
• MEAN: Modesty / A Sense of Shame (feeling shame at the right things)
• Excess: Extreme Shyness / Being Easily Embarrassed (feeling shame or embarrassment at everything) (Shame itself isn’t a virtue, but having a sense of shame is still something we praise. Even here, someone can be in the middle, go too far, or fall short.)

Regarding Emotional Responses to the Fortunes of Others:

• Deficiency: Gloating / Malicious Joy (delighting in others’ undeserved misfortune, or falling far short of feeling upset by it)
• MEAN (Virtue): Righteous Indignation (feeling upset at undeserved good fortune of others, and pained by their undeserved misfortune)
• Excess: Envy (feeling upset at everyone’s successes, deserved or not) (All three relate to the pleasure and pain we feel about what happens to people around us.)

But we’ll have a chance to talk about these things elsewhere. (And after that, we’ll distinguish the two different senses of being ‘just’—meaning ‘righteous’ and ‘fair’—and talk about each of those, and explain in what sense they are middle states. We’ll also talk about the virtues of thought and reason later on.)

8. How Virtues and Vices Relate to Each Other

So, when you have three possible dispositions—two of them vices (one caused by going too far, one by falling short) and one of them a virtue (the one in the middle)—all of them are opposites of all the others in some way.

• The two extremes (vices) are the opposite of the middle state (virtue).
• The two extremes are also the opposite of each other.
• And the middle state is the opposite of both extremes.

This is because, just as a certain amount (X) is ‘bigger’ compared to an amount less than X, but ‘smaller’ compared to an amount more than X, likewise, in feelings and actions, the middle states seem to go too far if you compare them to the states that fall short. And they seem to fall short if you compare them to the states that go too far.

• A brave person, for example, seems reckless when compared to a coward. But that same brave person looks like a coward when compared to someone reckless.
• In the same way, a moderate person seems overindulgent compared to an ‘unfeeling’ person, but looks ‘unfeeling’ compared to someone overindulgent.
• A generous person seems extravagant compared to someone ungenerous, but seems ungenerous next to someone extravagant.

That’s also why people at the two extremes both try to push the person in the middle towards the other extreme. For instance, a coward calls a brave person reckless, and a reckless person calls the brave person a coward. The same happens with the other virtues.

So, in that sense, all these dispositions are opposites of each other. But the strongest contrast is between the two extremes, less so between each extreme and the middle. This is because the extremes are further away from one another than they are from the middle. It’s just like how ‘big’ is further from ‘small,’ and ‘small’ is further from ‘big,’ than either of them is from ‘medium-size.’

Plus, in some cases, one of the extremes is somewhat similar to the middle. For example, being reckless looks a little bit like being brave, and being extravagant looks a little bit like being generous. However, the two extremes are always totally different from one another. And people define ‘opposites’ as things that are as far apart from one another as possible. So, things that are further apart are the more natural opposites.

In some cases, it’s falling short (the deficiency) that seems more like the opposite of being in the middle. For example, the more natural opposite of being brave isn’t being reckless (going too far), but being a coward (falling short). In other cases, it’s going too far (the excess) that seems more like the opposite. For instance, the more natural opposite of being moderate isn’t being an ‘unfeeling’ person (the shortfall), but being overindulgent and gluttonous (going too far).

There are two reasons this happens. One is based on the thing itself.

There are two reasons this happens.

1. One reason is based on the thing itself. If one of the extremes is closer to and more like the middle virtue than the other extreme is, then we’re more inclined to treat the other extreme (the one that’s less similar) as the main opposite.

   • For example, being reckless seems more similar to being brave, and closer to it, than being a coward does.
   • So, being a coward, which seems further from bravery, is the one we’re more likely to treat as bravery’s opposite. The extreme that is further from the middle seems like the more natural opposite.

2. The second reason comes from us and our own nature. If there’s one extreme that we are somehow naturally more drawn towards, that extreme feels more like the opposite of the mid-point virtue.

   • For instance, we are naturally more drawn to physical pleasures. Because of that, we’re more likely to lean towards being overindulgent and gluttonous than towards being self-controlled and moderate.
   • So, we’re more likely to call overindulgence the ‘opposite’ of moderation. It’s the direction we more often give ourselves over to.
   • And that’s why being overindulgent (in this case, going too far) is the more natural opposite of being moderate.

9. Hitting the Middle Way is Hard: Some Practical Advice

So, we’ve said that a virtue of character is a middle state. We’ve also explained how:

• It’s in the middle between two vices—one caused by going too far (excess) and one caused by falling short (deficiency).
• It’s also a middle state because it aims for the mid-point in our feelings and actions. That just about covers it.

That’s also why being a good person is a tough task. It’s always a task to find the mid-point.

• It’s like finding the exact center of a circle—not just anyone can do it; it takes knowledge.
• In the same way, sure, anyone can just get angry, or give money to someone, or spend money. That part is easy.
• But doing it to the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right reason, and in the right way—that’s not so easy anymore. Not just anyone can do it.
• That’s why getting it right is rare, and something we praise, and something honorable.

So, if you’re aiming for the mid-point, here’s some advice:

1. First, move away from the extreme that is more opposed to the virtue. This is like the advice Calypso gave to Odysseus in the old story:

   Pilot the ship well clear Of the spray and the roar of the whirlpool! One extreme usually involves getting things more wrong than the other. So, since it’s so hard to hit the mid-point exactly, the next best thing is to choose ‘the lesser of two evils,’ as they say. The best way to do that is to steer clear of the worse extreme.

2. Recognize your own natural tendencies. We also need to think about what we personally are more inclined towards. After all, we’re all naturally drawn towards different things. We can figure out our own tendencies by noticing our feelings of pleasure and pain—our individual likes and dislikes. Once you know your tendencies, the trick is to drag yourself in the opposite direction. By pulling ourselves a long way away from the direction we usually go wrong, we’ll have a better chance of ending up at the mid-point. This is like the way people straighten out warped planks of wood by bending them too far in the opposite direction.

3. Be especially careful with pleasure. In every situation, above all, we have to keep a close watch on what we find pleasurable. Watch out for “Lady Pleasure”! This is because whenever we’re judging something that involves pleasure, pleasure can bribe us and cloud our judgment. We need to have the same cautious attitude towards pleasure that the Trojan elders had towards Helen (who was very beautiful but caused a lot of trouble). In every situation involving pleasure, we should repeat their words to ourselves. That way, we can resist its strongest pull, and we’ll be less likely to go wrong.

So, in short, if we do all that, we’ll give ourselves the best chance of hitting the mid-point.

But there’s no doubt that this is a pretty hard thing to do—especially when it comes to specific situations.

• It’s not easy, for example, to determine exactly how you should get angry, and with whom, and over what kinds of things, and for how long.
• After all, even as observers, we sometimes praise people who fall short of anger and say they’re ‘good-natured.’ At other times, we praise people who are being very harsh and call them ‘tough and manly.’

In any case, we don’t usually criticize someone who’s only a little bit off from getting it right, whether they lean a bit to one side or the other. They have to be much further off. That’s when we notice. But as for exactly how far someone has to be off, or what point they have to reach before they should be criticized—there’s no easy way to define that by theory alone. It’s like everything else that depends on our direct perception and judgment in particular situations. These kinds of things are found in the details of each case, and judging them depends on perception.

So, what all of this shows is that although the middle state (virtue) is, in all cases, what people praise, we should sometimes lean a bit towards going too far, and sometimes lean a bit towards falling short. This is because that will actually be the easiest way of hitting the true mid-point and getting it right in the end.

So, if that’s how it is for all cases, then human virtues, similarly, are presumably those states of character that make someone a good human being and also make them good at performing the specific task or function of a human being.

We’ve already said something about how virtues do that. But another way for us to get a clear idea of what I mean is by looking closely at the exact nature of a virtue.

Whenever something comes in different amounts, like on a sliding scale, you can have:

• More than a certain amount of it (an excess).
• Less than a certain amount of it (a deficiency).
• An amount that is equal or balanced. These amounts can be measured either objectively (based on the thing itself) or relative to us as individuals. The equal or balanced amount is then a sort of mid-point between going over that amount and falling short of it.

Now, by an ‘objective’ mid-point, I mean the amount that’s exactly halfway between the two extremes. That amount doesn’t change; it’s the same for everyone. For example, if ten is a lot and two is a little, then six is the objective mid-point because it’s four more than two and four less than ten. That’s the mathematical mid-point.

But the mid-point relative to us is an amount that isn’t too much and isn’t too little for a particular person. This can vary a lot; it isn’t the same for everyone.

• For example, suppose ten pounds of food is a lot for someone to eat in a day, and two pounds is a little. It doesn’t follow that a trainer will always tell someone to eat six pounds of food.
• Why? Because even six pounds might be a lot for the specific person who’s going to eat it, or it might be a little. Six pounds might be a small amount for a champion athlete like Milo, but a lot for someone who’s just starting their training.
• The same idea applies to activities like running or wrestling.

So, in the same way, every expert avoids going too far (excess) and avoids falling short (deficiency). They try to figure out the mid-point and choose that—not the objective mid-point, but the mid-point relative to us.

That’s how every sort of knowledge and technical skill does its job well and perfects its product: by keeping its eye on the mid-point and by guiding its works towards that mid-point. (That’s why people typically say of well-made works of art or craft that ‘you couldn’t possibly add or take away a single thing.’ They mean that going beyond that perfect spot, or falling short of it, would mess it up, while the middle state preserves its quality. And good artists and craftsmen do their work with their eye on that mid-point, as I said.)

But of course, virtues are more precise than any art or technical skill, and better, just as nature is more precise and better than art. So, virtues must aim at a mid-point too.

(You might ask: “Does this apply to all virtues, even intellectual ones?”) Right now, I’m only talking about character virtues. These are the virtues that deal with our actions and feelings. And it’s in our actions and feelings that you can have too much, too little, or a mid-point.

For example, you can feel fear, or boldness, or physical desire, or anger, or pity—and in general, feel any pleasure or pain—either more or less than you should; that is, too much or too little. But to have these feelings:

• when you should,
• about the things you should,
• towards the right people,
• for the right reason, and
• in the right way —that’s the mid-point. That is the best way, and achieving this best way is characteristic of good people and their virtue. Likewise, with actions: you can do something too much, or too little, or a middle amount.

Virtues apply to feelings and actions where going too far (excess) or falling short (deficiency) means getting something wrong. The mid-point, however, means getting it right and is something people praise. Both getting things right and being praised are characteristic of good people and their virtue.

So, a virtue is a ‘middle state,’ at least in the sense that it aims at the mid-point.

Also, there are many ways of getting things wrong, but only one way of getting them right. (This is what the ancient Pythagorean philosophers sensed when they described badness as ‘infinite’ or unlimited, and goodness as ‘finite’ or limited.) That’s also why one is so easy and the other so hard. It’s easy to miss your target but hard to hit the bull’s eye. So, for that reason too, going too far or falling short is characteristic of bad people and vice, while the middle state is characteristic of good people and virtue. As the poet said:

There’s only one way for the good to be good, But so many ways to be bad!

So, a virtue is:

1. A disposition (a stable character trait) to choose certain actions and feelings.
2. It lies in a middle state (or a mean).
3. This middle state is relative to us (as individuals, considering our specific circumstances).
4. It is determined by reason, or as a wise person would define it.

It’s a ‘middle’ state both because it lies between two ways of being bad (two vices)—one caused by going too far (excess) and one caused by falling short (deficiency). It’s also a middle state because these vices either make us fall short of or go beyond what’s appropriate in our feelings and our actions, while the relevant virtue finds and chooses the mid-point.

This means that we can think of virtues in two different ways:

• In its essential nature, and by the definition that states what it fundamentally is, a virtue is a middle state.
• But in terms of being the best it can be, and as well-formed as possible, it’s also a high point or an excellence.

(You might ask: “Does everything have a middle state? Is there, say, even a right amount of being unfair, or a right amount of being a coward?”) No, not every kind of action or emotion allows for a middle state. In some cases, you just name the thing, and you’ve automatically implied its badness.

• Examples of such feelings include ‘gloating’ (taking malicious joy in someone else’s misfortune), ‘shamelessness,’ and ‘envy.’
• Examples of such actions include ‘adultery,’ ‘stealing,’ and ‘murder.’ With all of those, and other things like them, it’s understood in the mere mention of them that they’re bad in themselves. It doesn’t matter if you do them “too much” or “too little”; they are always wrong. So, there’s never any way of getting it right where they’re concerned. You’re always getting it wrong. With things like that, there’s no good or bad way of doing it—like, say, depending on whether you commit adultery with the ‘right’ woman, or at just the ‘right’ moment, or in just the ‘right’ way. To do any of those things at all is to do the wrong thing.

So, it’s the same with being unfair (dishonest), being a coward, or being overindulgent. You shouldn’t expect there to be a middle state, or acceptable ways of going too far or falling short with these. If there were, we’d end up having a middle amount of going too far and a middle amount of falling short, which is absurd. You’d be able to go too far in going too far, and fall short of falling short! Just as there’s no such thing as too much or too little of being moderate or being brave (because the mid-point is also, in a sense, the ideal high point), there’s also no middle state, no going too far, and no falling short with any of those inherently bad actions or emotions. No matter how you do them, you’re getting something wrong.

The general rule is: there’s no middle point of an excess or a deficiency, and there’s no such thing as an excess or a deficiency of a middle state (virtue).

7. Examples of Virtues as the Middle Way

We can’t just make this very general claim about the middle state. We also have to show how it fits particular cases. When we’re talking about actions, general statements might cover a lot of ground, but statements about particular situations are more reliable and trustworthy. Actions are all about specific situations, and that’s where our theory has to prove true.

So, let’s look at these examples of virtues and vices:

Regarding feelings of Fear and Boldness:

• Deficiency (falling short): Cowardice (feeling too much fear, not enough boldness)
• MEAN (Virtue): Courage / Bravery
• Excess (going too far): Recklessness (feeling too little fear, too much boldness) (If someone goes too far in feeling no fear at all, we don’t always have a specific name for that state.)

Regarding Pleasures and Pains (mainly physical pleasures):

• Deficiency: ‘Unfeeling’ / Insensible (enjoying physical pleasures too little) (There aren’t many people like this, so there isn’t a common word for them. Let’s call them ‘feel-nothings.’)
• MEAN (Virtue): Moderation / Temperance
• Excess: Overindulgence / Gluttony / Self-indulgence (indulging too much in physical pleasures)

Regarding Giving and Getting Money (on a smaller, everyday scale):

• Deficiency: Ungenerousness / Stinginess (giving too little, perhaps too focused on getting)
• MEAN (Virtue): Generosity
• Excess: Extravagance / Wastefulness (giving away too much, not managing money well) (Ungenerous and extravagant people show their flaws in opposite ways: an extravagant person gives too much and doesn’t manage their resources; an ungenerous person focuses too much on acquiring or keeping money and gives too little. This is just a basic outline for now; we’ll discuss these in more detail later.)

Regarding Spending Money (on a larger, more significant scale):

• Deficiency: Cheapness / Meanness / Niggardliness (spending too little on large, important things where more is appropriate)
• MEAN (Virtue): Lavishness / Magnificence (spending on a grand and fitting scale for significant purposes)
• Excess: Tackiness / Vulgarity / Ostentation (spending too much in a showy, tasteless, or inappropriate way) (Being lavish isn’t the same as being generous; lavishness applies to large-scale spending, while generosity can apply to smaller amounts. The vices here are different from those related to generosity. We’ll explain how they’re different later.)

Regarding Honor and Dishonor (major forms of honor):

• Deficiency: Lack of Proper Pride / Undue Humility (undervaluing oneself, not seeking deserved honor)
• MEAN (Virtue): Proper Pride / Greatness of Soul (having a justified high opinion of oneself and seeking great honors appropriately)
• Excess: Being Full of Oneself / Vanity / Conceit (thinking too highly of oneself, seeking honors one doesn’t deserve)

Regarding Honor and Prestige (minor forms of honor):

• Deficiency: Unambitiousness (lacking the desire for appropriate, smaller honors)
• MEAN (Virtue): Proper Ambition (desiring honor to the right degree and for the right things)
• Excess: Over-ambitiousness (desiring honor too much, too aggressively, or for the wrong reasons) (Often, there isn’t a specific word for the person in the middle state or for the disposition itself, except for the ambitious person’s trait, which is ‘ambition.’ That’s why people at the two extremes sometimes try to claim the middle spot. We sometimes praise someone for being ‘ambitious’ in a good way, and other times for being ‘unambitious’ also in a good, content way. We’ll explain why we do that later. For now, let’s continue with our list.)

Regarding Anger:

• Deficiency: ‘Angerlessness’ / Spiritlessness / Apathy (not getting angry when one should, or not enough)
• MEAN (Virtue): Good-naturedness / Gentleness / Patience
• Excess: Bad-temperedness / Irritability / Hot-headedness (getting too angry, too often, or for the wrong reasons) (There often aren’t precise names for these dispositions, but since we call the person in the middle ‘good-natured’ or ‘gentle,’ let’s call the middle state ‘being good-natured.’)

Regarding Social Conduct and Truthfulness about Oneself:

• Deficiency: Self-deprecation / Mock-modesty (understating one’s own merits or abilities)
• MEAN (Virtue): Truthfulness (being honest and straightforward about oneself)
• Excess: Boastfulness / Pretension / Charlatanism (exaggerating one’s merits, pretending to be more than one is)

Regarding Social Conduct and Pleasantness in Jokes and Amusement:

• Deficiency: Humorlessness / Boorishness (lacking wit, being a killjoy)
• MEAN (Virtue): Wittiness / Good Humor (being amusing in a clever and appropriate way)
• Excess: Buffoonery / Crassness (trying too hard to be funny, often offensively or tastelessly)

Regarding Social Conduct and Pleasantness in General Life:

• Deficiency: Cantankerousness / Grumpiness / Quarrelsomeness (being generally unpleasant and argumentative)
• MEAN (Virtue): Friendliness (being pleasant and agreeable in the right way)
• Excess: People-pleasing (if done with no hidden motive, but excessively) / Flattery / Obsequiousness (if done to gain something)

Regarding Certain Emotional Responses (like shame):

• Deficiency: Shamelessness (feeling no shame at all, even when appropriate)
• MEAN: Modesty / A Sense of Shame (feeling shame at the right things and in the right way)
• Excess: Extreme Shyness / Being Easily Embarrassed (feeling shame or embarrassment at everything, even when not appropriate) (Shame itself isn’t a virtue, but having a sense of shame is still something we praise. Even here, someone can be in the middle, go too far, or fall short.)

Regarding Emotional Responses to the Fortunes of Others:

• Deficiency (in feeling appropriate pain): Gloating / Malicious Joy (delighting in others’ undeserved misfortune)
• MEAN (Virtue): Righteous Indignation (feeling upset at the undeserved good fortune of others, and pained by the undeserved misfortune of others)
• Excess (in feeling pain at others’ good fortune): Envy (feeling upset at anyone’s success, whether deserved or not)

But we’ll have a chance to talk more about these specific virtues and vices later. (And after that, we’ll distinguish the two different senses of being ‘just’—meaning both ‘righteous in general’ and ‘fair in particular dealings’—and discuss each of those, explaining in what sense they are middle states. We’ll also talk about the virtues of thought and reason.)

8. How Virtues and Vices Relate to Each Other

So, when you have three possible dispositions for each area of feeling or action—two of them vices (one of excess, one of deficiency) and one of them a virtue (the one in the middle)—all of them are opposites of all the others in some way or other.

• The two extremes (the vices) are the opposite of the middle state (the virtue).
• The two extremes are also the opposite of each other.
• And the middle state is the opposite of both extremes.

This is because, just as a certain amount (let’s say, amount X) is ‘bigger’ compared to an amount less than X, but ‘smaller’ compared to an amount more than X, the same applies to feelings and actions. The middle states (virtues) seem to go too far if you compare them to the states that fall short (deficiencies). And they seem to fall short if you compare them to the states that go too far (excesses).

• A brave person, for example, seems reckless when compared to a coward. But that same brave person looks like a coward when compared to someone reckless.
• In the same way, a moderate person seems overindulgent compared to an ‘unfeeling’ person, but looks ‘unfeeling’ compared to someone overindulgent.
• A generous person seems extravagant compared to someone ungenerous, but seems ungenerous next to someone extravagant.

That’s also why people at the two extremes both try to push the person in the middle towards the other extreme. For instance, a coward calls a brave person reckless, and a reckless person calls the brave person a coward. The same thing happens with the other virtues and their related vices.

So, in that sense, all these dispositions are opposites of each other. But the strongest contrast is between the two extremes (the two vices), less so between each extreme and the middle (the virtue). This is because the extremes are further away from one another than they are from the middle. It’s just like how ‘big’ is further from ‘small,’ and ‘small’ is further from ‘big,’ than either of them is from ‘medium-size.’

Plus, in some cases, one of the extremes is somewhat similar to the middle. For example, being reckless looks a little bit like being brave, and being extravagant looks a little bit like being generous. However, the two extremes are always totally different from one another. And people define ‘opposites’ as things that are as far apart from one another as possible. So, things that are further apart are the more natural opposites.

In some cases, it’s falling short (the deficiency) that seems more like the opposite of being in the middle (the virtue). For example, the more natural opposite of being brave isn’t being reckless (going too far), but being a coward (falling short). In other cases, it’s going too far (the excess) that seems more like the opposite. For instance, the more natural opposite of being moderate isn’t being an ‘unfeeling’ person (the shortfall), but being overindulgent and gluttonous (going too far).

There are two reasons this happens.

1. One reason is based on the nature of the extremes themselves. If one of the extremes is closer to and more like the middle virtue than the other extreme is, then we’re more inclined to treat the other extreme (the one that’s less similar) as the main opposite.

   • For example, being reckless seems more similar to being brave, and closer to it, than being a coward does.
   • So, being a coward, which seems further from bravery, is the one we’re more likely to treat as bravery’s opposite. The extreme that is further from the middle seems like the more natural opposite.

2. The second reason comes from us and our own natural inclinations. If there’s one extreme that we are somehow naturally more drawn towards, that extreme feels more like the opposite of the mid-point virtue. This is because we have to fight harder against that natural tendency to reach the middle.

   • For instance, we are naturally more drawn to physical pleasures. Because of that, we’re more likely to lean towards being overindulgent and gluttonous than towards being self-controlled and moderate.
   • So, we’re more likely to call overindulgence the ‘opposite’ of moderation; it’s the direction we more often stray towards if we’re not careful.
   • And that’s why being overindulgent (in this case, going too far) is the more natural opposite of being moderate.

9. Hitting the Middle Way is Hard: Some Practical Advice

So, we’ve said that a virtue of character is a middle state. We’ve also explained how:

• It’s in the middle between two vices—one caused by going too far (excess) and one caused by falling short (deficiency).
• It’s also a middle state because it aims for the mid-point in our feelings and actions. That pretty much summarizes it.

This also explains why being a good person is a tough task. It’s always a challenge to find the mid-point in every situation.

• It’s like finding the exact center of a circle—not just anyone can do it; it takes knowledge and skill.
• In the same way, sure, anyone can just get angry, or give money to someone, or spend money. That part is easy.
• But doing it to the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right reason, and in the right way—that’s not so easy anymore. Not just anyone can do it correctly.
• That’s why getting it right is rare, and something we praise, and something honorable.

So, if you’re aiming for the mid-point (virtue), here’s some practical advice:

1. First, steer clear of the extreme that is more opposed to the virtue. This is like the advice Calypso gave to Odysseus in the ancient story when sailing past dangers:

   Pilot the ship well clear Of the spray and the roar of the whirlpool! One extreme usually involves getting things more wrong than the other. So, since it’s so hard to hit the mid-point exactly, the next best thing is to choose ‘the lesser of two evils,’ as people say. The best way to do that is to make sure you avoid the worse of the two extremes.

2. Recognize your own natural tendencies and pull away from them. We also need to think about what we personally are more inclined towards. After all, we’re all naturally drawn towards different things. We can figure out our own tendencies by noticing our feelings of pleasure and pain—our individual likes and dislikes. Once you know your tendencies, the trick is to drag yourself in the opposite direction. By pulling ourselves a long way away from the direction we usually go wrong, we’ll have a better chance of ending up at the mid-point. This is like the way people straighten out warped planks of wood by bending them too far in the opposite direction for a while.

3. Be especially careful and watchful when it comes to pleasure. In every situation, above all, we have to keep a close watch on what we find pleasurable. Be wary of “Lady Pleasure”! This is because whenever we’re judging something that involves pleasure, pleasure can easily bribe us and cloud our judgment. We need to have the same cautious attitude towards pleasure that the Trojan elders had towards Helen (who was very beautiful but her beauty led to much trouble). In every situation involving pleasure, we should remember their cautious words. That way, we can resist its strongest temptations, and we’ll be less likely to go wrong.

So, in short, if we follow these guidelines, we’ll give ourselves the best chance of hitting the mid-point and acting virtuously.

But there’s no doubt that this is a pretty hard thing to do—especially when it comes to specific, particular situations.

• It’s not easy, for example, to determine exactly how you should get angry, and with whom, and over what kinds of things, and for how long.
• After all, even as observers, we sometimes praise people who fall short in expressing anger and say they’re ‘good-natured.’ At other times, we praise people who are being very harsh and call them ‘tough and manly.’

In any case, we don’t usually criticize someone who’s only a little bit off from getting it right, whether they lean a bit too much to one side or too little to the other. They have to be much further off from the middle for us to criticize them. That’s when their error becomes noticeable. But as for exactly how far someone has to be off, or what point they have to reach before they should be criticized—there’s no easy way to define that by theory alone. It’s like everything else that depends on our perception and judgment in particular situations. These kinds of things are found in the details of each case, and judging them depends on direct perception.

So, what all of this shows is that although the middle state (virtue) is, in all cases, what people praise, we should sometimes lean a bit towards going too far, and sometimes lean a bit towards falling short. This is because that will actually be the easiest way of hitting the true mid-point and getting it right in the end.

This kind of spending is what we call prestige spending. It involves spending money on impressive things.

Examples include:

• Spending for religious purposes: This could be for offerings like monuments or statues, building temples, sacrifices, or anything else related to religion.
• Ambitious public spending: This is when people spend money on public projects to gain recognition. For instance, they might fund an elegant play, pay for a warship for the city, or host a large feast for the entire city.

In all these situations, the spending should match the person doing it. We need to consider: Who is this person? What money and resources do they have? What is their background? The spending must be appropriate for these factors. This means the spending should fit both the project itself and the person spending the money.

This is why a poor person cannot be lavish. A poor person doesn’t have the money or background to spend large amounts in a fitting way. If they try, they make themselves look foolish. They would be spending more than their situation allows and more than they should. To practice any virtue well, everything must be done correctly.

Lavish spending is suitable for people who already have a certain status. This status might come from their own achievements, their ancestors, or their family connections. So, it suits people who are well-born, famous, or otherwise distinguished. These kinds of people are seen as grand and important.

So, this is the best example of a lavish person. Lavishness is mostly seen in these kinds of public spending because these are the grandest and most respected ways to spend.

What about private spending? It makes sense to spend lavishly on:

• Once-in-a-lifetime events, like a wedding or similar occasions.
• Something the whole city is excited about, or at least the important people are.
• Hosting foreign guests and sending them off with gifts.
• Giving and receiving impressive gifts.

A lavish person usually doesn’t spend a lot on himself. He prefers to spend on public things. His gifts often resemble public offerings or monuments.

A lavish person will also furnish and decorate his house in a way that suits his wealth. This is another way of creating beauty.

He also prefers to spend money on things that will last a long time, as these are considered the most beautiful.

In everything he does, he aims for what is fitting. For example, what is appropriate for the gods is different from what is appropriate for humans. What suits a temple might not suit a tomb.

Also, everything a lavish person spends money on is grand for its type. The most lavish act would be a grand version of something already large-scale. But “lavish” in a specific situation might just mean a grand example of that particular thing, whatever it is. There’s a difference between the large scale of the project and the grandeur of the spending. For example, a very beautiful ball or oil flask can be a grand and lavish birthday present for a child, even if it costs little. So, being lavish means always creating a high-quality version of whatever you’re making, something that is hard to surpass. But it must also be in a style that is proportionate to the cost.

So, that is what we mean by a lavish person.

The Tacky Person (Excess in Spending)

Someone who goes too far in this area is tacky or vulgar. As we said, he spends more than he should. He spends large amounts even on small expenses, showing off with a garishness that is in bad taste. For example:

• He might host a dinner for his club friends that is as extravagant as a wedding banquet.
• He might pay for a comedy show chorus to come on stage dressed in expensive purple costumes, which is over-the-top.

He does these things not because it’s the right or honorable thing to do, but to show off his wealth. He thinks it will impress people.

Also, when he should spend a lot, he spends a little. But when he only needs to spend a little, he spends a lot.

The Cheapskate (Deficiency in Spending)

A cheapskate is someone who spends too little on all these things. Even if he spends a huge amount on something, he will ruin its beauty by trying to save a tiny sum. Whatever he is paying for, he hesitates. He thinks about how to spend as little as possible. He complains even about that small amount. And he always thinks what he’s producing is grander than it needs to be.

These ways of behaving – tackiness and cheapness – are clearly bad qualities. However, they don’t usually give a person a very bad reputation. This is because they don’t harm other people, and they are not especially disgraceful actions.

3. Understanding Pride

Pride is about great things, as the word itself suggests. But what does this mean exactly? Let’s try to understand this first. It doesn’t matter if we are examining the character trait itself or a person who has it.

A proud person sees himself as worthy of great things, and he is truly worthy of them. If he were wrong about his worth, he would just be foolish, and no one who is a model of virtue can be foolish or silly.

So, that is a proud person. Notice the wording. It’s not someone of little worth who sees himself as being of little worth. That kind of person is sensible, but not proud. Greatness is important here: you need great worth to have pride, just as you need physical size to be attractive. Short men can be neat and well-proportioned, but not attractive in the sense of imposing.

A man who sees himself as worthy of great things, but isn’t actually worthy, is vain or full of himself. However, not everyone who overestimates himself a little is automatically vain.

Someone who underestimates himself lacks pride. This can happen whether his actual worth is great, average, or even small (if he rates himself even lower). This term probably best describes someone of great worth who underestimates himself. Think about what such a person would do if his actual worth were even less.

So, in terms of his actual worth, the proud man is at the top. But in terms of his attitude or self-assessment, he is in the middle. His view of himself is just right. The vain person goes too far, and the person lacking pride falls short.

If the proud man feels worthy of great things – and is – especially the greatest things, then this virtue likely concerns one particular thing most of all. “Worth” here refers to deserving external goods. We are talking about people deserving or not deserving these outside benefits. We can assume the greatest external good is the one we offer even to the gods. It’s what important people strive for most. It’s the prize for the most glorious achievements. This perfectly describes respect. Respect is the greatest of all external goods.

So, a proud man is someone with the right attitude towards respect and disrespect in all their forms. In fact, it seems obvious even without much argument that proud people are very concerned with respect. They believe they deserve respect more than anything else – and they truly do.

Someone who lacks pride falls short in two ways:

1. He underestimates himself.
2. He has less self-worth than a proud person (because the proud person’s self-assessment is accurate and high).

Someone who is vain goes too far because he overestimates himself. But this doesn’t mean he has more self-worth than a proud person; the proud person’s worth is genuine.

If a proud person is worthy of the greatest things, he must be an exceptionally good man. As a rule, the better the man, the more he deserves. And the very best people deserve the greatest things. So, to truly be a proud person, you have to be a good man.

You could say that pride adds a kind of greatness or magnificence to every virtue.

It would be completely out of character for a proud man to:

• Run from a battle in a panic.
• Cheat someone.

Why would he do shameful things like that? This is a man for whom nothing is all that important in a way that would make him act dishonorably. If you think about it case by case, the idea of a proud person not being a good man seems completely absurd.

Also, he wouldn’t deserve respect if he were a bad person. Respect is the prize for being a good man. We give it to good men.

So, pride seems like a kind of enhancement for the virtues. It makes them greater. And it cannot exist without them. That’s why it’s difficult to genuinely be a proud person. It’s not possible unless you are a thoroughly decent human being.

The Proud Person’s Attitude and Behavior

So, as I said, a proud person is mainly defined by his attitude to respect and disrespect.

• Receiving Respect: When he is offered great respect by good people, he will be somewhat happy. He’ll feel he’s getting what he deserves – or maybe even less than he deserves, because no amount of respect can truly match his total goodness. Still, he will accept it, since they don’t have anything greater to offer him.
• Receiving Trivial Respect or Disrespect: If he gets respect from mediocre people or for unimportant things, he will completely ignore it. That kind of thing is beneath him. He will react the same way to any disrespect he receives, because it won’t be justified.

We’ve said a proud person mainly has a certain attitude to respect. But he’ll also have a cool, reserved attitude towards:

• Wealth
• Power
• All successes and setbacks in life, however things turn out.

He is not someone who gets overly joyful when things go well or especially upset when things go badly.

The reason is, he doesn’t even feel that strongly about respect itself, even though it’s the greatest external good. It’s not hugely important to him. Power and wealth are desirable mainly because they bring respect. At least, people who have them want to be respected for them. So, if even respect is a minor thing to someone, then other things like wealth and power are even less important. That’s why proud people can sometimes seem haughty or arrogant.

It’s also a common view that good fortune contributes to pride. People of noble birth, for instance, are seen as worthy of respect, as are wealthy or powerful men. This is because they have a kind of superiority, and being superior in any good thing always earns you more respect. So, these kinds of advantages enhance a man’s sense of pride because they are respected, at least by some people.

Strictly speaking, only a good man truly deserves to be respected. But if someone has both goodness and advantages (like being good and wealthy), he’s seen as even more deserving of respect.

What if people have these advantages (like wealth or power) but are not good men? In that case, they are wrong to see themselves as having great merit. It’s incorrect to call them “proud.” That’s not possible if they aren’t completely good people.

However, these advantages, much like a sense of pride, can make people haughty and scornful. If you aren’t a good man, it’s hard to handle good fortune gracefully. Some men just don’t know how. They think they’re above everyone else and end up being snobs. They look down on others even though their own achievements are distinctly average. They try to act like a proud person (even though they are not) and do so in the only way they can. So, even though they don’t do any of the things that come with being a good man (because that’s beyond them), they still look down on everyone. (A truly proud man also looks down on people, but he is right to do so because his judgments are correct. Most people who look down on others do it for no good reason at all.)

Characteristics of the Proud Person

• Risk-Taking: He doesn’t often take small risks and doesn’t seek out danger for minor reasons because there aren’t many things he values that highly. But he will face great dangers if necessary. When he does, he’s willing to give up his life. For him, not every kind of life is worth living.
• Helping Others: He likes to do good for others, but he’s embarrassed to receive help himself. This is because helping implies a superior position, while being helped implies an inferior one.
• Returning Favors: He likes to return a favor by doing something even better. That way, the original giver will end up in his debt, and will be the one who has benefited overall.
• Remembering Deeds: He remembers the good he has done for others but not the help he has received. This is because a person who has been helped is lower in status than the person who helped him, and the proud man wants to be in the superior position. He also likes hearing about the good he’s done, but not about the help he’s received. (This is why, in mythology, Thetis doesn’t remind Zeus of the ways she helped him. Similarly, the Spartans, when addressing the Athenians, didn’t list their past aid to Athens but spoke of the help they’d received from Athens.)
• Self-Sufficiency: A typical trait of a proud man is not needing anyone, or hardly anyone, while being eager to help others.
• Behavior with Different People: He stands tall and acts confidently in the company of important, wealthy, or powerful people. With more modest people, he tones it down. This is because being superior in the first case is difficult and impressive, but in the second case, it’s easy. Showing off a bit in front of the rich and powerful has a certain nobility to it. But doing so among humbler folk is rather crude or ill-mannered, like a strongman bullying weaklings.
• Ambition: He won’t enter into highly prestigious areas of life if other people are already at the top there.
• Activity Level: He doesn’t like mundane work and always takes his time, unless there’s great respect and glory to be won or a great deed to perform. He doesn’t do many things, but the things he does are big and memorable.
• Openness: He always lets people know who his enemies are and who his friends are. Hiding it would suggest he was scared. He cares more about being truthful than about what people think of him. So, he speaks and acts openly. He says whatever he wants – because he basically doesn’t care what people will think – and tells things as they are. The only exception is when he understates his own merits, which he might do in the company of ordinary people.
• Independence: He is incapable of living his life by constantly deferring to someone else (apart from family). That kind of life is like being a slave. That’s why people who constantly suck up to others are usually from the lowest classes, and only meek-spirited men become other men’s yes-men.
• Not Easily Impressed: He is not easily impressed because nothing seems like a big deal to him.
• Grudges: He doesn’t hold grudges. It doesn’t suit a proud person to dwell on the past, especially not on harms he has suffered. He’s more likely to look past that stuff.
• Speech About Others: He doesn’t talk about people. He won’t say anything about himself or anyone else. He’s not interested in being praised or in encouraging criticism of others. He’s not one to praise other people either. Therefore, he also doesn’t speak ill of others, not even his enemies – unless he is provoked by some outrageous wrong.
• Dealing with Necessities: When it comes to necessities – the little things in life – he’s the last person to start whining or begging. Behaving that way would suggest that he actually cared a lot about those things.
• Possessions: He prefers to own things that are beautiful but not necessarily profitable, rather than things that are productive and useful. This is more in keeping with a man who has all he needs.
• Demeanor: We expect a proud man to:
  • Move slowly.
  • Have a deep voice.
  • Speak in a steady way. A man who isn’t really bothered about much isn’t going to be in a hurry. And if nothing is a big deal to him, why would he be stressed? A high-pitched voice and hasty movements usually go with stress and worry.

So, that describes a proud man.

The Person Who Lacks Pride (Deficiency)

Someone who falls short in this area lacks pride.

The Vain Person (Excess)

Someone who goes too far is full of himself or vain.

Now, regarding these two (lacking pride and being vain), we don’t see these people as morally bad in the sense of doing harm. But we do think there’s something not quite right about them.

A person who lacks pride is someone who actually deserves good things but denies himself what he deserves. So, he gives the impression of having some kind of flaw because he doesn’t see himself as deserving those good things. It’s as if he doesn’t know himself. If he did, he would strive for the things he deserved – because they are good, after all.

That being said, people like this certainly don’t come across as silly. They seem more hesitant.

However, I think having that kind of low opinion of yourself does actually make you a worse person. People will always aim for what they think they are worthy of. So, they hold back from doing honorable things and from pursuing honorable ways of life if they don’t feel worthy of them. They also hold back from external goods like wealth or opportunities in much the same way.

When people are full of themselves (vain), they certainly do come across as silly. They also clearly don’t know themselves, and this is glaringly obvious. They try to get involved in high-prestige activities when they aren’t worthy, and then they get found out.

Vain people also embellish themselves – through their clothes, their behavior, and so on. They want everyone to see how fortunate, wealthy, or powerful they are. They talk about these things as if they expect to be respected for them.

Having no pride is the more direct opposite of having pride, more so than being full of yourself. This is because lacking pride is more common, and it’s a worse state to be in.

So, we’ve said that pride concerns respect on a grand scale.

4. A Related Virtue: Ambition for Ordinary Respect

But there seems to be another, unnamed virtue connected with respect. We talked about this possibility earlier. You might say this virtue relates to having pride in a way similar to how being generous relates to being lavish.

Both this unnamed virtue and generosity operate outside the grand scale. They guide us to the right state in medium-sized and small-scale matters.

Just as there’s a middle state when it comes to giving and acquiring money (with ways of going too far or falling short), there’s also a similar structure when it comes to the desire for ordinary levels of respect. This means there is such a thing as:

• Desiring ordinary respect more than you should.
• Desiring it less than you should.
• Desiring it for the right things and in the right way.

Let’s consider this more closely.

• We criticize someone for being too ambitious if they want respect or status more than they should, or if they want it for the wrong reasons.
• We also criticize someone for being unambitious if they aren’t interested in earning respect, even for good things they’ve done.

On the other hand:

• Sometimes we praise an ambitious person, meaning they are energetic, determined, and eager to do honorable things.
• But we also praise someone for not being ambitious, meaning they are reserved and sensible. We talked about this earlier.

Clearly, saying “he’s someone-who-loves-X” can mean different things. We don’t always use the word “ambitious” to describe the same quality.

• As a compliment, “ambitious” means you want respect more than most people do.
• As a criticism, it means you want it more than anyone should.

Since there’s no specific word for the balanced middle state here, it’s as if the two extremes – too ambitious and not ambitious enough – are the only options.

But in anything where there’s a way of going too far and a way of falling short, there must be an in-between. People do desire respect more than they should, and also less than they should. So, it must also be possible to desire it just the right amount.

At any rate, there is a character trait here that we praise: a middle state related to respect. We just don’t have a specific name for it.

• Compared to harmful ambition, this middle state seems like a lack of ambition.
• Compared to a harmful lack of ambition, it seems like ambition.
• Compared to both extremes, it can seem like a bit of both. This appears to happen with other virtues too.

In this case, the people at the extremes seem to be direct opposites because we don’t have a word for the person in the middle.

5. Good-Naturedness: The Middle Ground for Anger

Good-naturedness, or being gentle, is the middle state when it comes to feelings of anger.

Actually, there’s no perfect name for this middle state. There aren’t really names for the extremes either. We use “good-natured” or “gentle” for the middle, even though this term leans a bit towards the side of getting less angry than average. That side, the deficiency, also doesn’t have a specific word.

What about going too far with anger? We might call it being anger-prone or bad-tempered. The emotion involved is anger, though many different things can cause it.

So, if someone gets angry:

• At the right things,
• With the right people,
• To the right degree,
• At the right time,
• And for the right length of time, we praise them. This person would be considered good-natured, since good-naturedness is something we praise.

Being good-natured means:

• Keeping your cool.
• Not being carried away by emotion.
• Only getting as angry as reason tells you to.
• Getting angry at the things reason tells you to.
• Staying angry only for as long as reason tells you to.

A good-natured person might even tend to get angry a little less than situations warrant. This is because they don’t like to retaliate and are more likely to forgive.

The Deficiency: Lack of Appropriate Anger

As for falling short, which we might call being angerless or something similar, this is something we criticize. People who don’t get angry at things they should get angry at come across as foolish or passive. This is also true if they don’t get angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right people. It’s as if they don’t feel things or understand what’s happening. If you don’t get angry, people assume you won’t stand up for yourself. Letting yourself be abused and insulted, or allowing your family to be insulted, seems pathetic and like the behavior of a servant.

The Excess: Too Much Anger

As for going too far with anger, this can happen in all sorts of ways. You can get angry:

• With the wrong people.
• Over the wrong things.
• More than you should.
• Too quickly.
• Or stay angry for too long.

Not all of these traits usually appear in the same person. That wouldn’t be possible. Any flaw, besides being harmful to others, also tends to destroy itself. If it’s a total flaw, it becomes unsustainable.

So, there are different types of people who get too angry:

• Bad-tempered people get angry quickly, with the wrong people, over the wrong things, and more than they should. However, the best thing about them is that they stop being angry quickly. This happens because they don’t hold their anger in. They retaliate, expressing how they feel with a fiery reaction, and then their anger calms down.
• Touchy people take this fieriness to an extreme. They lose their temper at anything, over anything, at the slightest provocation. That’s why they are called “touchy.”
• Bitter people refuse to reconcile and stay angry for a long time. They bottle up their rage. Relief comes from letting anger out and retaliating. Getting back at someone stops your anger because it brings a feeling of pleasure that replaces the pain. When this doesn’t happen, people feel weighed down. Since they don’t express their feelings, nobody even tries to reason with them. Over time, their anger festers inside them. People like this cause huge problems for themselves and for those closest to them.
• Harsh people react harshly to the wrong things, more harshly than they should, and for longer than they should. They refuse to reconcile without some form of payback or punishment.

We are more likely to see going too far with anger as the natural opposite of being good-natured. This is because getting too angry is more common – it’s a more human tendency to want to retaliate. Also, harsh people are harder to live with.

The general point I made before is also very clear here. It isn’t easy to determine exactly:

• How angry you should get.
• Who you should be angry with.
• Over what kinds of things.
• And for how long.
• And up to what point someone is handling anger correctly or incorrectly.

If someone is only a little bit off-target, either by getting too angry or not angry enough, we don’t blame them. In fact, sometimes we even praise people who fall short of anger, calling them “good-natured.” And sometimes we praise people when they are being harsh, calling them “tough” and saying they “know how to lead.”

So, it’s not easy to create a general rule about exactly how far off-target someone has to be, and in what way, before it’s right to criticize them. When it comes to specific situations, judgment also depends on perception and understanding the details.

But at least this much is clear:

• The middle state here is praiseworthy. This is the state that makes us consistently get angry at the right people, over the right things, and as angry as we should, and so on.
• When people go too far with anger, or fall short, they deserve to be criticized. They get a little criticism when they’re slightly off, more when they’re further off, and severe criticism when they’re way off.

So, it’s clear that we should try to achieve that middle state.

6. Friendliness: The Middle Ground in Social Interactions

In social interactions, when we spend time with others and share in conversation or activities, some people are people-pleasers. People-pleasers praise everything to please others. They never object to anything. They think they should never offend the people they are with.

Others are the exact opposite. They object to everything and couldn’t care less about offending people. We call them grumpy or cantankerous.

It’s pretty clear that we criticize these tendencies. The character trait in between them is obviously something we praise. This is the trait that will make you accept the things you should, in the way you should, and likewise object to the right things, in the right way. But there’s no special name for this middle state.

It most closely resembles being a friend.

That is to say, someone in this middle state is similar to what we mean by a morally decent friend. The main difference is that a true friend also has an extra element of affection. This social skill differs from friendship because it doesn’t involve emotion or affection for the people you’re interacting with. You respond to everything in the right way, not because you love the person or are their enemy, but simply because that’s the kind of person you are. You’ll behave this way whether you know them or not, whether they’re close to you or just acquaintances. Of course, you’ll also do whatever is appropriate for each specific case. For example, it’s not appropriate to be as concerned about strangers as you are about family and friends, or to hurt their feelings in the same ways.

So, that’s the general description: you interact with others in just the right way.

Specifically, you’ll always think about what’s honorable and what’s in their best interests. Based on this, you will aim either not to offend or to go along with people.

This seems to be all about the feelings of pleasure and pain that come up in social interactions. It’s about making people feel good or hurting their feelings.

• Whenever it’s not honorable, or it’s harmful, to go along with someone, you’ll voice your objections. You’ll choose to hurt their feelings a little if necessary.
• If doing something is going to bring them disgrace – especially a major disgrace – or harm, and confronting them about it will only hurt them a little, then you won’t tolerate it. You’ll object.

How you treat people will also vary depending on their status – whether they are important or ordinary people, famous or less known, and so on with all the other ways we categorize people. You’ll give everyone what is appropriate for them.

Ideally, you’ll prefer to be pleasant and to avoid offending anyone. But you’ll be guided by the consequences if those are more important. That means you’ll choose what’s honorable and in people’s best interests. You might also cause them a little hurt now if it helps them achieve greater pleasure in the future.

So that describes the person in the middle. And there’s no specific word for someone like that.

As for going along with people:

• If someone is just aiming to be pleasant with no other motive, that’s a people-pleaser.
• But if they’re doing it for the benefits they get out of it – for money, or things money can buy – that’s a flunky or a hanger-on.

And someone who objects to everything, as I said, is grumpy and cantankerous.

In this case, the extremes appear to be direct opposites of one another because there is no name for the middle state.

7. Truthfulness: Honesty About Oneself

Applying to a similar area of life is the character trait that lies between being a charlatan (or phoney) and being self-deprecating.

Again, there’s no specific word for this middle quality of truthfulness about oneself.

(By the way, it’s not a bad idea to discuss even these kinds of qualities. First, we’ll get a better knowledge of human character in general if we go through it all in detail. Second, we can also be more confident that virtues are middle states if a full survey shows that this is how it works for everything.)

So, in the context of spending time with others, we’ve just talked about people interacting in ways that please or offend. Next, let’s talk about the ways people can be truthful and untruthful – in what they say, what they do, or how they present themselves.

• A charlatan is someone who pretends to have impressive abilities or qualities that they don’t really have, or who exaggerates the ones they do have.
• Someone who is self-deprecating is the opposite. They deny or downplay their attributes.
• The person in the middle, a kind of straight-talker, likes to be truthful, in the way they live and in what they say. They admit what’s true about themselves without either exaggerating or downplaying it.

You can do each of these things – boast, be self-deprecating, or be truthful – either with or without an ulterior motive. What someone is really like is shown in what they say and do, and in the way they live, when they aren’t acting with any hidden agenda.

In itself, telling lies is bad and blameworthy. Telling the truth is honorable and praiseworthy. In line with that, we praise a truthful person (the one in the middle here) and we criticize untruthful people – both the boaster and the overly modest person, but especially the charlatan.

So let’s talk about each one.

The Truthful Person

First, the truthful person. We’re not talking here about someone who tells the truth in contracts or promises, or in all those cases where truth-telling directly relates to wrongdoing or doing what’s morally right. That would fall under a different virtue. No, we’re talking about someone who, even if nothing important is at stake, is truthful anyway, in what they say and in how they live, because that’s just the sort of person they are by nature.

Arguably, being like that is morally significant. If you like telling the truth even when nothing major depends on it, you’ll be even more likely to be truthful when it is important. You’ll avoid falsehood as something shameful because you were already avoiding it simply for its own sake. This is a commendable way to be.

Perhaps a truly truthful person leans a little towards understatement about themselves, rather than stating the plain, unvarnished truth. This comes across as more gracious, because overstatements can be annoying.

The Charlatan (Boaster)

Someone who exaggerates their abilities with no ulterior motive at all still seems like a bad person – why else would they enjoy telling lies? – but they come across as more silly than nasty.

If they do have an ulterior motive:

• If it’s for reputation or respect, they’re not extremely blameworthy, at least compared to other charlatans.
• But if it’s for money or anything money can buy, that’s much more disreputable.

It’s important to note that being a charlatan isn’t just about having a certain skill (like being able to deceive). It depends on choice. Someone is a charlatan by character because they are that kind of person. It’s like being a liar. A liar is someone who likes telling lies for their own sake, or who tells lies out of a desire for something, like reputation or financial gain.

So, people who make phony claims just to improve their reputation pretend to have things that people will praise them for or congratulate them for.

But charlatans who are out for financial gain pick abilities that other people can benefit from and that are easily faked. Examples include pretending to be a prophet, an intellectual, or a healer. Most charlatans pretend to have these kinds of abilities because these fields have those features: they are valued, and claims are hard to disprove.

The Self-Deprecating Person

As for self-deprecating people, they understate their own qualities and often come across as more charming characters. Nobody thinks they’re talking that way for financial gain; people assume they are just trying to avoid being pompous.

In most cases, they play down noteworthy abilities. (Socrates used to do this, for example.) But some people disclaim even rather trivial things they obviously possess, like wealth. These are sometimes called “upper-class tramps.” It’s rather easy to look down on people like that.

Sometimes, understating yourself can even come across as a form of being phony – like when people wear simple Spartan clothes as an affectation. Going too far in how you present yourself, or falling way too short, can both be forms of phoniness.

But people who use self-deprecation moderately, and don’t deny things about themselves that are right in front of everyone and perfectly obvious, come across as charming.

It’s the charlatan or phoney who is the true opposite of someone truthful. This is because being a charlatan is worse than being self-deprecating.

8. Wit: Humor in Relaxation

There are also times in life when we relax. When relaxing, we sometimes pass the time by playing around and telling jokes. Here too, we feel there’s an appropriate way of conversing. There’s a way of saying, and listening to, the sorts of things you should, and in the right way. It will also make a difference what kind of company you’re speaking in, or what kind of people you’re listening to.

Obviously, here too there’ll be a way of going too far, a way of falling short, and an in-between state.

• People who go too far in their humor are seen as buffoons or crass. These are people who try very hard to be funny by any means necessary. They are more concerned about getting a laugh than about speaking in a dignified way and not offending the person they are joking about.
• Then there are people who would never tell a joke themselves and who get annoyed with people who do. We see them as humorless yokels or stiffs.
• People who tell jokes tastefully are witty. The Greek word for them, eutrapeloi, suggests being “good at turning” – meaning deft or nimble. This is because this sort of thing is like character in motion. Just as people’s bodies can be judged from the way they move, so can their characters.

In places where comedy is very common, and almost everyone likes joking and mockery more than they should, even vulgar buffoons are sometimes called “witty” and seen as “charming.” But buffoonery is different from true wit and a good sense of humor, and it’s a significant difference. That much is clear from what we’ve said.

Closely connected with this middle disposition of wittiness is the quality of being tactful. Being tactful is about saying, and being willing to hear from others, the kinds of things that are appropriate for someone decent and gentlemanly. The fact is, only certain things are suitable for someone like that to say and hear when it’s time for jokes.

• Gentlemanly humor is different from servile or crude humor.
• Cultivated jokes differ from those of uncultivated people.

You can see this difference in old and new forms of comedy. In older comedies, the jokes were often bawdy and foul-mouthed. In more recent comedies, humor is more often based on innuendo. This makes them considerably more dignified.

So, how should we define someone who tells jokes well?

• Is it a matter of telling jokes that are not inappropriate for a gentleman?
• Or is it just a matter of not offending your audience, or perhaps that plus entertaining them?

Defining it precisely is difficult; such descriptions might be far too vague.

This is because different groups of people find very different things offensive or amusing.

We also need to add that a witty person will only listen to appropriate kinds of jokes. This is because the jokes you are willing to listen to often reflect the kinds of jokes you yourself would tell. So, a witty person won’t just tell any joke.

Making fun of someone is, after all, a form of verbal abuse. Some types of verbal abuse are actually illegal. Perhaps certain kinds of mockery should be illegal too. So, someone who is courteous and gentlemanly will behave appropriately anyway, simply because of their character. They will be their own guide, so to speak.

So, that’s what the person in the middle is like, whether we call them tactful, witty, or someone with a good sense of humor.

As for a buffoon, this is someone who can’t resist a joke. They won’t treat anyone – themselves or other people – as off-limits, as long as they can make people laugh. They tell the kind of jokes that no courteous person would ever tell, and some that a courteous person wouldn’t even want to hear.

As for humorless people, they are not helpful in these kinds of social situations. They contribute nothing and take offense at everyone else’s jokes. But surely, relaxation and humor are things that life cannot do without.

1. All three relate to sharing in certain kinds of conversations and actions.
2. They differ from one another because one of them (truthfulness about oneself) is about being truthful.
3. The other two are about certain forms of pleasure.
   • Of the two that are about pleasure, one applies specifically to situations involving jokes (wit).
   • The other applies to our interactions with others in every other area of life (friendliness).

9. Understanding Shame

What about shame?

It seems odd to speak of shame as a virtue at all. It seems more like a feeling than a fixed character trait. At any rate, we define it as the fear that people will think badly of you. Its effect on us is rather similar to the effect of standard fear – the fear of frightening things.

• People who feel shame turn red.
• People in fear of their lives turn pale. Both reactions seem to be physical in some sense. This is more what you expect from a feeling or a temporary state of mind, rather than a stable disposition or character trait.

Even as a feeling, shame isn’t appropriate for every stage of life; it’s mainly for young people. We think young people should be bashful and prone to shame. This is because they live by their feelings and constantly make mistakes, and shame helps to keep them in line.

• We praise young people for being prone to shame.
• However, no one would praise an adult for constantly feeling ashamed or embarrassed. This is because we don’t think an adult should be doing any of those shameful things in the first place.

Shame is what we feel when we do morally bad things. So obviously, it isn’t something that a decent person ever feels. This is because you simply shouldn’t be doing things like that. It doesn’t make any difference here if we’re talking about things that are actually shameful or things that you merely regard as shameful. You shouldn’t do either type of action. So, you shouldn’t ever feel shame. If you are someone who occasionally does something shameful, well, then you are a bad person.

But what about being the sort of person who, if they did do something like that, would be ashamed of it? It makes no sense to think that this makes you a decent person. We feel shame about things that we do willfully or intentionally. And no decent person will ever willfully do morally bad things.

All right, yes, perhaps we could say that shame is hypothetically a decent thing. For instance, “if a good person were to do that bad action, they would feel shame.” But these kinds of “what if” scenarios are irrelevant to our actual moral virtues.

Even if it’s a bad thing to be “shameless” about doing shameful things, that certainly doesn’t mean that doing those shameful things, and then feeling ashamed about them, is a morally good thing!

Shame is a bit like self-control. Self-control isn’t exactly a virtue either. Or, you could say it kind of is and kind of isn’t. We’ll explain that in more detail later.

Book V

1. Understanding Fairness and Unfairness

Now let’s talk about being fair and being unfair. We need to think about:

• What kinds of actions are involved?
• In what way is being fair a middle state?
• If what’s fair is in the middle, what is it in the middle of?

Let’s use the same method we used for the virtues we’ve already discussed.

It’s clear that everyone thinks of being fair as a character trait. This trait makes us:

• Do what’s right or fair.
• Treat people rightly or fairly.
• Want what’s right or fair.

Similarly, everyone assumes that being unfair is the character trait that makes us:

• Do wrong or act unfairly.
• Want things that are wrong or unfair.

So, we can start with this general idea of what these traits are.

Remember, a character trait (a disposition) is not like a piece of knowledge or an ability.

• If you have an ability to do something, you usually also have the ability to do its opposite.
• If you have knowledge about something, you also understand its opposite.
• But a disposition to be a certain way is different. It doesn’t make you do the opposite. For example, the disposition of health can’t make your body do unhealthy things. It only makes it do healthy things. We see this when someone walks in a healthy way – we say they walk like a healthy person walks.

Often, we can understand a disposition in a couple of ways:

1. By looking at its opposite.
2. By looking at the things or situations it applies to.

For example:

1. If we know what good physical shape is, we also know what bad physical shape is.
2. We can figure out what good physical shape is by looking at things that are in good shape. Once we know what good physical shape is, we also know what actions or habits get you into that shape. For instance, if good shape means having a firm, toned body, then bad shape means having a soft, flabby body. And what gets you into shape would be whatever produces a firm, toned body.

It usually follows that if one of two opposite terms has more than one meaning, the other term will also have more than one meaning. For example, if “fair” has multiple meanings, then “unfair” will likely have multiple meanings too.

And, in fact, “fair” and “unfair” do seem to have more than one meaning. It’s just that these meanings are quite close to each other, so we often don’t notice that they refer to different things. This is different from when a word has two very far-apart meanings, making it obvious it means two different things. For example, the word “key” can mean the thing you use to lock a door, or a crucial element in a plan – two very different concepts.

So, let’s start by looking at the different meanings of an unfair person.

We generally think of an unfair person in two main ways:

1. As someone who breaks laws or social norms (a lawless person).
2. As someone who takes more than their share or doesn’t give others their due (an unequal person).

This means a fair person is:

1. Someone who respects laws and social norms (a law-abiding person).
2. Someone who takes only their proper share and gives others their due (an equal person).

So, what is fair (or right) can mean:

1. What is lawful.
2. What is equal.

And what is unfair (or wrong) can mean:

1. What is unlawful.
2. What is unequal.

Now, let’s look at the first idea: the unfair person as someone who “takes too much.” This idea applies to goods – not all good things, but those affected by good or bad luck. These are things that are normally considered good, but they might not always be good for a specific person. They are also the things most people pray for and try to get, although perhaps they shouldn’t. People should pray that normally good things also turn out to be good for them, and they should choose things that are actually good for them.

An unfair person doesn’t always take too much of a good thing. Sometimes, they might take too little of something that is normally bad. But taking less of something bad is actually a kind of good. Since “taking too much” applies to any good, this person is still thought of as “taking too much” in a broader sense (i.e., too much of a net benefit). Really, an unfair person is an unequal taker. This idea of being unequal covers both taking too much of a good thing and too little of a bad thing.

Fairness as Lawfulness (General Righteousness)

Since an unfair person (in one sense) is someone who violates laws and social norms (a law-breaker), while a fair person (a righteous person) observes them, it’s clear that “fair” or “right” (in this first sense) includes everything that follows laws and social norms.

Things that are established by the law-making process are considered lawful. And we call these lawful things “right” or “just.”

Our laws and social norms command and forbid actions in all areas of life. They aim for:

• The common interest of all citizens.
• Or, the interest of the best class of citizens, or those in charge, depending on the society.

So, in this sense, what is right means whatever creates and maintains happiness – and the components of happiness – for the entire community of citizens.

Laws and social norms require us to do many things:

• Act like a brave person (e.g., not deserting your post in battle, not running away, not throwing away your weapons).
• Act like a moderate person (e.g., not committing adultery, not committing assault).
• Act like a gentle, non-violent person (e.g., not attacking people, not being abusive). And so on for all the various ways of being a good or bad person. Laws command some actions and forbid others. They do this correctly if the laws and social norms have been well established, but not so well if they have been laid down carelessly.

So, this first way of being fair – being righteous or law-abiding – is really the same as complete goodness. The only qualification is that it refers to complete goodness in relation to other people.

That’s why being righteous often seems like the most important virtue of all. People say, “not even the morning star, or the evening star, is quite so wondrous.” And there’s a proverb: “In being a righteous man is every virtue, all in one.”

Also, being a righteous person is the most complete virtue because it’s the use of your complete goodness. It’s complete because someone who has it knows how to use their goodness when dealing with other people, not just for themselves.

• Many people know how to use their goodness within their own family.
• But they might not know how to use it when dealing with other people outside their family.

That’s why the saying from Bias seems right: “Power will show you the man.” When a man has power, he is automatically dealing with other people beyond his own family and working in partnership with others.

For the same reason, being a righteous person is the only virtue that is often thought of as “a good thing for someone else.” This is because it is used in relation to other people. It makes us do things that serve the interests of another person, like a ruler or a partner.

While the very worst sort of person is one who uses their badness even on themselves and their own family, the best sort of person is one who uses their goodness not just for themselves and their family, but also in their dealings with others. That’s a greater challenge.

So, this very general virtue of being a righteous or ethical person isn’t just one part of being a good person; it’s really the whole of being a good person. And its opposite, being unrighteous or unethical, isn’t just part of being a bad person; it’s the whole of it.

What, then, is the difference between being a good person and being a righteous one (in this general sense)? It should be clear from what we’ve just said. They are really the same thing, but viewed from two different aspects:

• We call it being righteous or ethical when this good character affects other people.
• We call the very same character trait, without that specific focus on others, simply being a good person.

2. A Specific Kind of Fairness: Fairness in Dealings

But we believe there’s another sense of “being fair” that is just one part of being a good person. This is the kind of fairness we are most interested in here. Likewise, we are interested in a particular sense of “being unfair” that is part of general badness.

Here’s how you can tell there is such a specific kind of fairness, even if you use the same words for both general righteousness and particular fairness:

When we look at other moral failings, the behavior is certainly “wrong” (in the general sense), but it doesn’t necessarily mean the person is “taking too much” of something.

• For example, if a man throws away his shield in battle because he’s a coward.
• Or if someone says something abusive because they are bad-tempered.
• Or if someone refuses to give money to help someone out because they are ungenerous. These actions are wrong, but not primarily about unfair gain.

Conversely, when someone does take too much, their action often doesn’t stem from any of those other kinds of vices (and certainly not from all of them at once). But they are definitely showing a moral failing (we criticize them for it), and we still call it unfairness (in this specific sense of unfair gain).

So, there must be another kind of unfairness (as a specific vice) which is part of general wrongdoing. And there must be a particular kind of what is unfair (an unfair action or outcome) that’s just part of the universal idea of what is wrong (which covers everything that violates laws and social norms).

Here’s another way to see it:

• Suppose one man sleeps with someone else’s wife to make a profit from it.
• Suppose another man does the same thing out of lust, and actually has to spend money and suffers a loss.

We’d say the second man was lustful rather than greedy or “taking too much.” The first man, however, seems unfair (because he profits) but not primarily lustful in that act. This must be because he’s making a profit from it.

Also, with all other forms of wrongdoing, we can always connect them to some particular moral failing:

• Did he commit adultery? It’s because he’s lustful.
• Did he abandon his comrade in battle? It’s because he’s a coward.
• Did he punch someone? It’s because he lost his temper.

But if what he did was profit at someone else’s expense, there’s no other specific moral failing we connect that to, besides unfairness itself. So, obviously, there must be another, particular kind of unfairness, besides the general kind of wrongdoing. It’s a related use of the term, and both kinds of unfairness apply to our dealings with other people. The difference is:

• Particular unfairness specifically concerns things like respect, status, money, and safety (or whatever single term could cover all these). It is caused by the pleasure we get from personal gain.
• General wrongdoing covers everything in any way relevant to being a good (or bad) person.

So, it’s clear we have two different senses of “being fair”:

1. Being a righteous person (acting in accordance with complete virtue towards others).
2. Being a fair person (acting with a specific virtue related to equality and not taking undue gain). And the second one is not the same as the whole of being a good person; it is a part of it.

We need to figure out what this particular fairness is and what it involves.

We’ve already said that:

• What is wrong (in a general sense) means what is against law and social norms.
• What is unfair (in a particular sense) means what is unequal.
• What is right (general) means what is in line with law and social norms.
• What is fair (particular) means what is equal.

So, the general wrongdoing we’ve already talked about corresponds to being unlawful.

But “unequal” is not the same thing as “against laws and social norms.” It’s a different concept, related to it as a part is to a whole. That is, every case of unequal dealing is against the law (or against what the law should be), but not everything that is against laws or social norms is an unequal dealing.

Therefore, there are also two different senses of what is unfair, and two different ways of being an unfair person, related to one another as parts to wholes.

• Being an unfair person (in the particular sense of taking too much) is part of being an unrighteous person (in the general sense of being a law-breaker and wrongdoer).
• Likewise, being a fair person (in the particular sense) is part of being a righteous or ethical person (in the general sense).

So, it’s time to discuss the particular virtue of being a fair person, and the particular vice of being an unfair person, and likewise what is specifically fair and unfair.

For now, let’s put aside the wider ideas of being a righteous or unrighteous person, which correspond to the whole of being a good person (one being the use of your overall goodness towards others, and the other the use of overall badness towards others).

Anyway, it’s obvious how to define the general kind of right and wrong that corresponds to those broader concepts. Roughly speaking, most of the things required by law and custom (and are therefore “right” in the general sense) come from our idea of overall goodness. The law requires us to live our lives according to every virtue and forbids us to act on any of the vices. All the laws and customs that guide how young people are educated for civic life aim to promote this overall goodness.

(As for your individual upbringing, which aims to make you simply a good man, as opposed to just a good citizen, we can figure out later whether that should be controlled by the state or belongs to some other area. Maybe being a good man and being a good citizen aren’t always the same thing in every society.)

The particular virtue of being a fair person, and the corresponding particular sense of what is fair, come in two main forms.

1. Distributive Fairness: This form applies to distributions, meaning the sharing out of:

• Respect or status
• Wealth
• Whatever else can be divided up among members of a community. In these distributions, one person’s share can be equal or unequal to another’s.

2. Compensatory Fairness (or Corrective Fairness): This form applies to making things right in our dealings with one another. It has two parts, based on two kinds of dealings:

• Willing Dealings: These are interactions people enter into willingly. Examples include:

  • Buying and selling
  • Lending money (with or without interest)
  • Insuring
  • Renting
  • Investing
  • Hiring

• Unwilling Dealings: These are interactions where one person is forced or unaware. They can be:

  • Secret (done without the other’s knowledge): Examples include theft, adultery, poisoning, helping an adulterer, luring away someone’s contracted servant or employee, premeditated murder (if done by stealth), and giving false evidence.
  • Forced (done against the other’s will): Examples include assault, imprisonment, manslaughter (killing without premeditation but unlawfully), kidnapping, maiming, verbal abuse, and insult.

3. Distributive Fairness: Fair Shares

An unfair person, we said, takes an unequal share, and what is unfair means what is unequal. So, there’s obviously also a mid-point here. This mid-point of the range “unequal to X” is “equal to X.” (Because in any sort of action where you can get more than someone, or less, you can also get an equal amount.)

So, if an unfair share is an unequal share, then a fair share is an equal share. This is exactly what everyone feels is true, even without having to think much about it.

And since equality is a mid-point, it follows that what’s fair is also a mid-point.

Equality implies at least two things being compared (e.g., two shares). So, if what’s fair has to be both a mid-point and a kind of equality, then:

1. As a mid-point, it has to lie between something and something else (that is, between getting too much and getting too little).
2. As a kind of equality, it has to be the equality of two shares, let’s call them share C and share D.
3. When considered as fair, it has to be fair for two people, let’s call them Person A and Person B.

So, for something to be fair in distribution, you need at least four elements (or variables):

• Two people for whom it’s fair (A and B).
• Two shares that are being distributed (C and D).

Of course, the equality of the shares will have to match the relative standing or “equality” of the people involved. That is, the shares have to be in the same relation to each other as the people are to each other. This means if the people involved aren’t equals (in terms of what they deserve in that situation), it won’t be fair for them to get equal shares. This is exactly what causes all the arguments and complaints:

• Either when equals don’t get equal shares.
• Or when people who aren’t equals are given equal shares.

This is also clear when we talk about what people deserve. Everyone agrees that fairness in distributions has to be based in some sense on what people deserve. However, people disagree about what makes one person deserve the same as another:

• Democrats might say it’s simply being a free citizen (not a slave).
• Oligarchs (who favor rule by the wealthy) might say it’s wealth, or sometimes family background (pedigree).
• People who support aristocracy (rule by the “best” or most virtuous) say it’s moral worth or virtue.

In other words, a fair share is, in some sense, proportional. Proportion isn’t just a property of abstract numbers; it applies to anything that can be measured or quantified at all. Proportionality means an equality of two ratios, and so it needs at least four elements or variables.

• It’s easy to see the four variables when there’s no overlapping term (e.g., A is to B as C is to D).
• Even if there’s an overlap (e.g., A is to B as B is to C), there are still four variables because one of them (B) serves two roles – you use it twice. As long as you list B twice, you get four proportional variables.

Fairness in distribution is like this. It also needs a minimum of four variables, and it too has ratios that are the same. The shares are divided in a ratio that matches the relevant differences (or “gap”) between the persons.

So, for example, this means: (Person A’s worth) is to (Person B’s worth) as (Share C’s value) is to (Share D’s value). Or, to put it another way: (Person A’s worth) / (Person B’s worth) = (Share C) / (Share D).

And conversely, this also means: (Person A’s worth) is to (Share C) as (Person B’s worth) is to (Share D). This means Person A relative to their share should be the same as Person B relative to their share.

Consequently, the whole situation of Person A getting Share C matches the whole situation of Person B getting Share D. The “whole” here is the pairing of a person with their share that results from the distribution. When these pairings are put together in this proportional way, they are fair. In other words, joining Person A with Share C, and Person B with Share D, makes a fair distribution. What’s fair here is also a mid-point, because a proportional share is a mid-point between too much and too little for individuals relative to each other. The fair share is the proportional one.

An unfair distribution is one that breaks this proportionality. Mathematicians call this kind of proportionality geometrical proportion. This is because it’s found in geometry, where one whole figure relates to another whole figure in the same way that each part of the first figure relates to each corresponding part of the second. However, in the case of fairness, the proportionality can’t have overlapping terms (like A is to B as B is to C) because a person and a share cannot be the same type of term in the ratio.

So, that’s what fair means in this context: proportional. And unfair means out of proportion, meaning that one person’s share is too big and another’s is too small, relative to what they deserve.

This is exactly what happens in actual cases of unfairness:

• The person who acts unfairly gets too much of some good thing.
• The person who is treated unfairly gets too little of it.

The reverse is true if it’s something bad:

• A smaller share of something bad, compared to a larger one, is considered a good thing.
• The smaller share of something bad is more desirable than the larger one.
• What is desirable is good, and if something is more desirable, it’s a greater good.

So, that’s one kind of fairness: fairness in distributions.

4. Compensatory Fairness: Making Things Right in Dealings

The other kind of fairness is compensatory fairness (or corrective fairness). This applies to our individual dealings with one another, whether those dealings are:

• Willing (like buying or selling).
• Unwilling (like theft or assault).

This type of fairness is different from distributive fairness. Here’s why:

Fairness in distributing public goods (like community funds) is always based on the kind of proportion we just talked about (geometrical proportion, based on worth). For example, if you’re sharing out public funds, the fair way is to do it in the same ratio as the amounts people contributed to those funds. Unfairness in this context means not following that proportion.

But when it comes to our individual dealings with one another, what’s fair is certainly still a form of equality, and what’s unfair still means unequal. However, this time the equality isn’t based on the same ratio according to worth (geometrical equality). Instead, it’s based on simple numerical equality (arithmetical equality, meaning restoring the same amount or balance).

For example, when correcting an injustice, it’s completely irrelevant who stole from whom – whether a respected person stole from a less respected one, or vice versa. It also doesn’t matter if a respected person or a less respected one committed adultery with the other’s spouse. In these cases, the law only looks at the difference created by the harm done. It treats both parties as equals if one person has committed a crime and the other is the victim, or if one has done harm and the other has been harmed.

The wrongdoing creates an inequality between the two people. The judge must then try to make things equal again.

• Even when one person throws a punch and another gets punched, or one person kills another, the action and its effect create an inequality.
• So, the judge tries to even out the victim’s loss and the wrongdoer’s “profit” by taking something away from the “profit.”

We use the term “profit” broadly in these cases to describe any advantage the wrongdoer gained, even if it doesn’t seem like the perfect word (e.g., the “profit” to the person who threw the punch). We speak of the “loss” to the victim. In court, these are called “loss” and “profit” once the harm done to the victim has been measured.

So, equality, as we said, is a mid-point between getting more and getting less. “Profit” and “loss” mean getting more or less, in opposite ways:

• Profit is getting more of what’s good, or less of what’s bad.
• Loss is the other way around (less of good, more of bad).

In the middle of these is the point of equality – and that’s what we call “fair.” Therefore, what’s fair in the context of compensation is the mid-point between one person making a “profit” (through wrongdoing) and the other suffering a “loss.”

This is why when people have a dispute, they go to a judge. Going to the judge means appealing to fairness itself. That’s what a judge is supposed to be: fairness brought to life, so to speak. People want a judge who is in the middle. Some even call judges “mediators” (meaning those who find the middle), because they feel that if they get a judge who is in the middle, they’ll get what’s fair. So, what’s fair must be a mid-point, if even judges aim for the middle.

A judge, then, is an equalizer. Think of it like a line that has been cut into two unequal sections. What a judge does is take away the part of the larger section that goes beyond the halfway point and add it to the smaller section. When the whole thing is divided exactly in two, people say they’ve got “what’s theirs” – meaning they get what’s equal. This equal point is also the middle (the mathematical average) of the larger and smaller initial amounts.

This connection is even reflected in language. The ancient Greek word for “fair” (díkaion) was thought to be related to the idea of “dividing in two” (díkha). So, it’s as if “fair” meant the “divided-in-two thing,” and a “judge” (dikastēs) was a “cutter-in-two.”

Imagine two equal amounts, X and Y. If an amount ‘a’ is taken from X and added to Y, then Y is now larger than X by exactly ‘2a’. (If ‘a’ was just taken from X but not added to Y, Y would only be larger than X by ‘a’. But since it was added to Y, Y is now larger than the original average of X and Y by ‘a’, and the original average is also larger than the new X by ‘a’.) By using this idea of an average, we can figure out what needs to be taken from the person who now has more (Y) and what needs to be added to the person who now has less (X). We ask:

• How much is X short of the average? That’s the amount to add to X.
• How much is Y over the average? That’s the amount to take from Y.

Consider an illustration with three initially equal lines or amounts. If we take a part from the first line and add it to the third line, the third line becomes longer than the average (the second, unchanged line) by the amount that was added. The first line becomes shorter than the average by the amount that was taken away. To restore fairness (equality), the amount by which the third line exceeds the average must be taken from it and given back to the first line.

The terms “loss” and “profit” originally came from willing exchanges, like buying and selling.

• To make a profit meant to get more than what was originally yours.
• To make a loss meant to have less than what you started with. These terms apply to dealings where the law doesn’t set specific restrictions. When people engage in such dealings and don’t get either more or less than they started with, but just the same, they say they haven’t made a loss or a profit; they just have “what’s theirs.”

From this idea, fairness in the context of unwilling interactions (where someone is wronged) is also a mid-point between a kind of “profit” for the wrongdoer and a “loss” for the victim. Fairness is achieved when what the victim ends up with is equal to what they had before the harm occurred.

5. Fairness as Reciprocity and the Role of Money in Exchange

Some people think that fairness is simply a matter of reciprocity – basically, “you get what you give.” This was the view of the Pythagoreans, ancient philosophers who defined fairness simply as “doing to others as they’ve done to you.”

However, simple reciprocity doesn’t work well for either distributive fairness (fair shares of common goods) or compensatory fairness (correcting wrongs). Even though some might point to ancient figures like Rhadamanthus (a mythical wise judge) as supporting such a definition with sayings like, “Let him suffer what he did; that will be perfect justice,” it often leads to strange results. For example:

• If a person in authority (like a government official) strikes you, it doesn’t mean you should hit them back.
• If a subordinate strikes their superior, they shouldn’t just get a return slap; they also need to be punished further. Also, it makes a big difference whether something was done intentionally or unintentionally.

But it’s true that in cooperative exchanges (like trade), a form of fairness based on reciprocity is what keeps people together. This is proportional reciprocity, not just an exactly equal payback.

Society is held together by people’s ability to repay others proportionally. People want to:

• Repay harm done to them.
• Repay benefits they have received.

If they can’t repay harm, they feel like slaves. If they can’t repay benefits, there’s no ongoing exchange, and exchange is what holds society together. This is why it was said that a temple was built to “the Graces” (goddesses of gratitude) – to encourage people to repay gifts and favors. That’s what gratitude is about. When someone does you a favor, you are then obliged to do them a favor in return, and perhaps even take the initiative to offer a favor the next time.

For a proportional exchange of goods between different producers, like a builder and a shoemaker, they need to find a way to make their products equal in value for the purpose of the exchange. The builder has to get the shoemaker’s product (e.g., shoes) from the shoemaker and give his own product (e.g., a house, or part of one) in exchange. For this to work fairly:

1. A proportional equality between the goods must be established first.
2. Then, they can reciprocate (exchange).

If this doesn’t happen, the trade is unequal, and their partnership or cooperation won’t work. This is because one product (like a house) may well be much more valuable than the other (like a pair of shoes). So, their goods have to be equalized in some way.

Cooperative partnerships like this aren’t usually between two people of the same profession (e.g., a doctor and another doctor). They are typically between people who are different and, in that sense, unequal (e.g., a doctor and a farmer). So, their contributions or products must be made equal for exchange purposes.

We need some way of comparing all the different things that people exchange. This is why money was invented. Money serves as a sort of middle ground or medium of exchange. Money can measure anything. So, it can measure the higher and lower values of two different products – for example, how many pairs of shoes are equal in value to a house or a certain amount of food.

So, the value of the builder’s work relative to the shoemaker’s work must be reflected in the ratio of their products. For instance, the ratio of (value of what builder provides) to (value of what shoemaker provides) must determine (how many shoes) are equivalent to (one house or a certain amount of food). If this isn’t the case, there will be no exchange and no cooperation. And it won’t be the case unless their goods can somehow be made equal in value.

That’s why everything that is exchanged has to be measured by a common unit, as we said. And that common unit is money.

Strictly speaking, the most basic thing that binds the whole community together is need. If people didn’t have any needs, or didn’t have the same kinds of needs they do, then either there wouldn’t be any exchange at all, or it wouldn’t be the same kind of exchange. But, by social agreement (convention), we’ve created a sort of token that represents need, and that token is money. (That’s why the Greek word for money, nomisma, is related to the word for convention or law, nomos. Money isn’t natural; it only exists by social agreement, and it’s in our power to change its value or make it worthless.)

There can only be reciprocity (a fair back-and-forth) when the goods being exchanged are first equalized. This means that the value of the shoemaker’s product relative to the farmer’s product must reflect the relative value or standing of the farmer to the shoemaker. So, they have to bring their goods into a proportional relationship when they trade. Otherwise, one of them will get an unfair advantage over the other. But when their goods are equalized in some way, they can interact as equals. This equality makes their partnership possible. If they couldn’t exchange proportionally, there couldn’t be any cooperation between them.

Need is what holds everything together, acting as a kind of common unit. This is proven by the fact that when two people don’t need one another (either neither needs the other, or one doesn’t need what the other has), they don’t trade. For example, people only trade with you for your wine if they need it, offering their grain in exchange.

For the purpose of future exchange, if someone doesn’t need your goods right now, we use money as a sort of promise or guarantee that they’ll be able to get what they need from you when they do need it. The idea is, when they bring that money and pay, they must be able to take the goods.

Of course, the same thing happens to money itself: it doesn’t always have the same value. But it does tend to be a bit more stable than the value of individual goods. That’s why everything has to be given a price. This ensures that exchange will always be possible, and with exchange, partnership and cooperation can occur.

So, money is a kind of unit of measure that equalizes different goods by making them commensurable (measurable by a common standard).

• There could be no cooperation without exchange.
• There could be no exchange without goods being made equal in value.
• Goods can’t be made equal in value without being commensurable.

Of course, it’s impossible for goods that are very different (like a house and a vitamin pill) to be truly and perfectly commensurable. But it can be done well enough to serve our practical needs for exchange.

So, we need a common unit: money. This unit is agreed upon by convention (that’s why it’s called nomisma). Money makes everything commensurable because everything can be measured in money. For example:

• If a house (B) is valued at five “minae” (an ancient unit of currency).
• And a bed (C) is valued at one-tenth of that, or half a mina.
• Then it’s obvious how many beds are equal to one house: ten beds (if using the “one-tenth of B” for C). Or if C is a tenth of B (the house), and A (some other good) is half of B, then A is worth 5 beds. (The example in the original seems a bit muddled with A, B, C and values like “five minae” and “five beds.” The core idea is that if values are set in money, equivalencies can be found: e.g., if a house is worth $X, and a bed is worth $Y, then $X/$Y beds equal one house.)

It’s clear that this is how all trading was done, using some common unit, even before money existed as coins. It doesn’t make any difference whether we swap five beds for a house, or the amount of money that five beds are worth for a house.

So, we’ve now said what it means for outcomes to be fair and unfair.

And now that we’ve defined these, it’s clear that fair dealing is a middle point. It’s the mid-point between:

• Giving someone else an unfair deal (profiting at their expense).
• Getting an unfair deal yourself (suffering a loss). One of these means getting more than you should, and the other means getting less.

Being a fair person is a middle state, in a way. But it’s not quite like the other virtues. It’s a middle state only in the sense that it produces a middle or fair outcome. Unfairness, on the other hand, produces both extremes (too much for one, too little for the other).

Fairness, then, is the character trait that makes you reliably do what’s fair by choice. It makes you share out goods (whether between yourself and someone else, or between two other people) in such a way that:

• You don’t get more of the desirable good and the other person less of it (or the reverse if it’s something harmful).
• Everyone gets a proportionately equal amount. This applies equally when you are distributing between two other parties.

Unfairness is the opposite: it makes you choose unfair outcomes. What’s unfair is someone getting too much, or too little, of something beneficial or harmful – a disproportionate amount.

That’s why unfairness is both an excess (an overshoot) and a deficiency (a shortfall) – because it produces an overshoot for one party and a shortfall for another.

• If you use unfairness for your own benefit, you get too much of a typical good and too little of a typical harm.
• If you use it between third parties, the same general idea applies (one of them gets too much benefit and too little harm), but the disproportion goes against one party or the other depending on the situation.

For any act of unfairness:

• Getting too little means you are getting an unfair deal (being treated unfairly).
• Getting or awarding too much means you are dealing unfairly or treating someone else unfairly.

6. Wrongdoing, Unrighteous Character, and the Scope of Justice

It’s possible to do something wrong without yet being an unrighteous person (a “wrongdoer” in terms of character). So, what sort of wrong actions do you need to commit to qualify as a wrongdoer or “criminal” for each type of wrongdoing? For example, what makes someone a thief by character, not just someone who stole once? Or an adulterer by character? Or a bandit?

Does the action itself automatically make the difference in character? Not necessarily. For example, a man could sleep with someone’s wife, knowing she is married. But he might do it in a moment of passion rather than by deliberate choice and planning. In such a case, he does wrong, but he isn’t automatically an “unrighteous person” or a “criminal” in character. We might say, “He’s not a thief (by nature), but yes, he did steal something on that occasion,” or “He’s not an adulterer (by fixed character), but yes, he did commit that act of adultery.”

(The discussion on the relationship between reciprocal exchanges and fairness was covered earlier.)

Justice Applies to Communities of Equals Under Law

What we are now investigating is right and wrong (or justice and injustice) in their standard sense. This means right and wrong as it exists between citizens.

This, in turn, means justice applies between people who are:

• Living together in a community that aims to be self-sustaining.
• Free.
• Equal partners (either fully equal in every respect, or equal by proportion according to their worth or contribution).

It follows that when people don’t stand in this relationship to one another, no right or wrong (justice or injustice) exists between them in the same way it exists between citizens. At best, there might be some sort of right and wrong by resemblance or analogy.

• Right and wrong (justice) in the full sense only exist for people who are subject to law.
• Conversely, laws only arise among people who are capable of doing wrong to one another (which implies they are distinct individuals interacting with a degree of freedom). Courts of law then pass judgment on questions of right and wrong.

Further Points on Unrighteousness and Rulership

• Being an unrighteous or unethical person (by character) always implies doing wrong actions. But just doing a wrong action (perhaps once, or unintentionally) doesn’t always mean you are an unrighteous person by character.
• Being unfair (as a particular vice) means assigning too much of the normally good things to yourself, and too little of the normally bad things.

This is why, in a well-governed state, we don’t allow any single individual man to have supreme power based on his personal will. Instead, we give supreme authority (sovereignty) to reason, usually in the form of law.

• This is because when individual people rule without the constraint of law, they tend to rule for their own benefit and can become tyrants.
• A ruler should instead be a guardian of what’s right and fair, and that means being a guardian of equality.

Since a ruler, if he is righteous and honest, doesn’t make a personal profit from being such a guardian (he doesn’t award himself a larger share of the community’s goods, except what is in proportion to his merits), it follows that he is working for others, not for himself. (This is why, as we said earlier, being a righteous person is considered “a good thing for other people.”) So, a ruler must be given some sort of reward for his service. This reward is typically respect and prestige. If these kinds of rewards aren’t enough for someone in power, that’s when they might become tyrants, seeking more for themselves.

Justice in Unequal Relationships (Continued)

Right and wrong between a master and a slave, or between a father and a child, is not the same as justice between citizens. It’s only somewhat similar. This is because, in this way of thinking, there’s no way of doing wrong (in the civic sense) to what is simply considered “yours.”

• Your property (like a chattel slave in ancient contexts) or your child (until they reach a certain age and become independent) is effectively seen as a part of you.
• And, it’s generally thought that you can’t intentionally harm yourself in a way that constitutes injustice to yourself.

So, according to this view, no civic right or wrong, or obligations of justice as they exist between equal citizens, applies directly between you and them.

Justice based on law, as we said, only exists for people who are natural partners under that law. This means people who are equals when it comes to ruling and being ruled.

This is why, in that historical context, it was thought you have more obligations to your wife than to your children or slaves, because your wife was seen as more of an equal. You have obligations to her as a husband and head of the household. But even this relationship and its obligations are not the same as the system of right and wrong (justice) that exists between full citizens.

7. Natural Justice and Conventional Justice

Right and wrong (justice) between citizens comes in two kinds:

1. Natural justice
2. Conventional justice (based purely on law and custom)

Natural justice has the same force and validity everywhere. It doesn’t matter whether people recognize it or not.

Conventional justice, on the other hand, deals with things where, at the beginning, it doesn’t really matter if they are done one way or another. But once people establish a law or custom, then it does matter. Examples include:

• Setting a specific price for releasing a prisoner of war (e.g., one mina of silver).
• Requiring a specific type of sacrifice (e.g., one goat rather than two sheep for a particular god).
• All the particular local customs that cities establish (like offering sacrifices to a local hero like Brasidas).
• Temporary obligations created by special decrees.

Some people think that conventional justice is the only kind of right and wrong that exists. They argue this because what’s natural is unchangeable and has the same force everywhere. For example, fire burns the same way in Persia as it does in Greece. But then they see that ideas about right and wrong vary from place to place.

This view isn’t entirely correct, though it has a point. The fact is, in our human world, some things are certainly natural, but everything is subject to change and variation. (Perhaps in the divine realm, things are perfectly unchanging, but not here.) Even so, we can still distinguish between things that are natural and things that are not.

Even if all human rules and natural situations could be different, it’s still usually obvious which kinds of rules are based on nature and which are based only on custom and agreement – even if both can change over time.

The same kind of distinction applies in other areas. For example:

• The right hand is naturally stronger for most people.
• And yet, it’s perfectly possible for everyone to be trained to be ambidextrous (equally skilled with both hands).

Moral rules based on convention and practical benefit are like units of measurement.

• The measures people use for wine and for grain aren’t the same size everywhere. Wholesalers often use larger measures, while retailers might use smaller ones.
• Similarly, moral rules that are man-made rather than natural are not the same everywhere. Forms of government also vary from place to place, although there is arguably only one form of government, everywhere, that is naturally the best.

Each particular instance of what is right or lawful relates to a general principle, much like a universal concept relates to particular examples. There’s just one universal idea of each right or law, and it covers many particular actions.

There’s a difference between saying “X is a wrongdoing” and saying “X is wrong.” And “X is a right action” is not the same as “X is right.” A thing (an act, a situation) is wrong, either naturally or by some rule. When somebody does that thing, that’s a wrongdoing. But until somebody does it, it’s not a wrongdoing yet; it’s just “wrong.” The same applies to a right action. (We generally call a completed right action a “just deed,” while “rectification” refers to the specific act of righting a previous wrong.)

8. The Importance of Acting Willingly in Right and Wrong Actions

If the kinds of right and wrong are as we’ve described, then someone “does wrong” or “does the right thing” only when they do these things willingly (or voluntarily).

When they do them unwillingly, they aren’t truly “doing wrong” or “doing the right thing” in a way that reflects their character – except incidentally. This means they are doing an action, and that action also happens to be objectively right or wrong, but they don’t get the full credit or blame as if they chose it. Whether an act is a wrongdoing or a right action (in terms of moral responsibility) is determined by whether or not it was done willingly.

• When a wrong action is done willingly, people will blame you for it, and that’s also when it becomes a “wrongdoing.”
• This means an action can be objectively wrong, but not count as a “wrongdoing” by that person if it doesn’t have the extra element of being done willingly.

By willingly, I mean (as we explained earlier) anything you do that is:

• In your power to do or not do.
• Done knowingly (you are not mistaken about who you’re doing it to, what you’re doing it with, or the likely result, etc.). For example, you know who you’re hitting, what you’re hitting them with, and why. And in each respect, it’s not by accident or because you are forced. (If somebody took hold of your arm and used it to hit someone else, that’s not a willing action on your part because it’s not in your power.) Or, perhaps you hit someone who turns out to be your own father. You knew you were hitting someone, or “one of the people who was there,” but you didn’t realize it was your father. Similar distinctions can be made about the intended result and the action as a whole.

So, you are acting unwillingly when:

• You do something unknowingly or by mistake.
• You are not acting unknowingly, but it’s not something in your power to control (e.g., an involuntary reflex).
• You are forced to do it.

(There are plenty of naturally occurring things that we do and experience knowingly – like getting old or dying – and none of those is considered willing or voluntary in this moral sense.)

Also, doing something “incidentally” applies equally to doing right and doing wrong.

• Suppose a man pays back money he owes, but he does it unwillingly, perhaps out of fear of punishment. We wouldn’t say that he’s “doing the right thing” or “acting ethically” from good character – except incidentally (his action happens to align with what is right).
• Conversely, if someone fails to pay back money because of circumstances beyond his control and thus fails unwillingly, we’d have to say that he’s only “wronging” someone or “doing wrong” incidentally.

Of things we do willingly, some are also done by choice, while others are not.

• We act by choice whenever we act after thinking and deliberating about it.
• We act not by choice when our action is not the result of deliberation (e.g., a sudden impulse).

So, there are three main forms of doing harm in our dealings with others, based on the level of awareness and intention:

1. Mistakes or Accidents: These are harmful things we do unknowingly. This happens when you’re confused about who you’re doing something to, or what you’re doing, or what instrument you’re using, or the intended result.

   • For example, you didn’t think you were shooting at someone; or you didn’t realize the weapon was loaded; or you were aiming at a target but hit a person by accident; or you didn’t mean for that particular harmful outcome to happen (it just turned out that way, not as you intended – e.g., you didn’t mean to seriously wound him, just to prick him slightly, or that wasn’t who you meant to affect, or what you meant to do).
   • When the resulting harm was very unlikely and unforeseeable, that’s a mishap or an unlucky accident (the cause is external).
   • If the harm wasn’t entirely unlikely but there was no malice involved, that’s a mistake (the cause of the error originates inside you, in your misjudgment).

2. Wrongdoing from Emotion: This is when you do something harmful knowingly but without deliberating over it beforehand. Examples include wrongs we do out of anger or any other strong emotion or state of mind that’s simply inevitable or natural for any normal human being.

   • When people harm others in this way – when they err in these ways – yes, they are certainly doing wrong, and yes, those actions do count as wrongdoings or even crimes.
   • However, these actions don’t yet make you an unrighteous, unethical, or evil person by character. This is because the harm you do isn’t a result of deep-seated wickedness.

3. Wrongdoing from Deliberate Choice: When someone does these same harmful things by deliberate choice, after thinking about it, that does now mean that they are an unrighteous, unethical, and wicked person.

That’s why we are quite right not to judge things done from anger as being premeditated.

• If a man acts in anger, he isn’t the one who initiated his action in a vacuum; the person who made him angry played a role in starting it.
• Also, in such a case, the argument afterwards is usually not over whether or not he did the act, but about whether it was justified. His anger was a reaction to what he perceived as a wrongdoing. This is different from disputes over business dealings, where people might argue about what actually happened (and where one person or the other must be dishonest, unless it’s just because they can’t remember the facts). In cases of anger, they agree on what happened and just argue over whether it was justified. So, one person feels they’ve been wronged, and the other feels their reaction was warranted.
• In contrast, a person who has deliberately chosen to do wrong almost always knows they are acting without such justification.

So, if you do harm by deliberate choice, then (a) you are doing wrong, and (b) that kind of wrongdoing also makes you an unrighteous person by character. Conversely, you’re an ethical or righteous person if you do the right thing by deliberate choice. (And you’re only truly “doing the right thing” in a way that reflects good character if you’re acting willingly.)

Regarding things people do unwillingly, we are inclined to forgive some, but not others.

• We are inclined to forgive people for mistakes they make unknowingly (true accidents or misjudgments without malice).
• However, if people make mistakes not because they are simply unaware of their actions in a normal sense, but because they are “unaware of their actions” as a result of some emotion or state of mind that isn’t natural or normal for a human being (e.g., extreme, irrational states), then we are not inclined to forgive them.

9. Puzzles About Fairness: Being Willingly Wronged and Self-Wrongdoing

So, if we’ve given a reasonably good account of what it is to be wronged and to do wrong, one puzzle to consider is whether what the playwright Euripides describes is possible, when he has characters say something like:

Character A: “I killed my mother! That’s the long and short of it.” Character B: “Killed her? Willingly? And was she willingly killed? Or was the act against your will, and hers?”

Can you really be willingly wronged, as that dialogue suggests? Or is that impossible? Is being wronged always an unwilling experience, just as every case of doing wrong (in the blameworthy sense) must be wilful?

We might also ask if it has to be all one way or the other. Maybe some cases of being wronged are willing, and some are unwilling.

The same question applies to being treated rightly. Doing right by someone is always voluntary on the part of the doer. But as for being dealt with rightly, it’s surely absurd to say that it’s always willing on the part of the receiver. Some people are clearly unwilling to have what’s right dealt out to them (e.g., a criminal unwillingly receiving punishment, which is a form of justice). So it seems plausible that for both pairs of opposites – being wronged and being treated rightly – the experience can sometimes be willing and sometimes unwilling for the person on the receiving end.

Here’s another puzzle: If it’s true that what happened to me was objectively wrong, does that always mean that I’ve been wronged by a specific person? Or can you be affected by a wrong incidentally, just as you can incidentally do wrong? After all, an action can be incidentally right, both for the doer and the receiver. Clearly, the same is true for wrongs:

• “He’s doing X, and X is wrong” is not the same as “He is doing wrong to someone” (in a way that implies full culpability).
• “X happened to him, and X was wrong” is not the same as “He was wronged” (in the sense of being a victim of injustice). The same goes for doing the right thing versus being the recipient of a right action. It’s impossible to be wronged unless somebody is actively wronging you, or to have something rightly done to you unless somebody is rightly doing that action.

Doing wrong, in the ordinary sense, means willingly harming someone, where “willingly” means knowingly (i.e., knowing who you’re harming, what you’re harming them with, and how).

But what if you lack self-control? A person who lacks self-control can willingly harm themselves. So, that would seem to mean you can be willingly wronged (by yourself); and it makes it possible for you to wrong yourself. (That’s another one of our questions here: Can you wrong yourself?)

Plus, through a lack of self-control, you might willingly allow yourself to be harmed by someone else who willingly inflicts the harm. So, there again, it seems possible to be willingly wronged.

Or was our definition of “doing wrong” incorrect earlier? Maybe it isn’t just “doing harm to someone, knowingly” (i.e., knowing whom, what with, how). Maybe we need to add that the action has to be contrary to what that person wants. In that case:

• Yes, someone can be willingly harmed (they agree to suffer something that is objectively harmful or wrong).
• And yes, someone can willingly submit to an action X (where X is objectively wrong).
• But nobody can ever be willingly wronged. This is because nobody wants to be wronged in the sense of having an injustice done to them against their fundamental interest. Not even a person who lacks self-control truly wants this. A person like that acts contrary to what they deeply want. Nobody wants what they don’t think is good for them (and think they shouldn’t be doing), but a person who lacks self-control does things that they think they shouldn’t be doing.

When someone gives away his own things – like the way, in Homer’s Iliad, Glaucon gives Diomedes “gold armor for bronze, a hundred-cow’s worth for nine!” – he isn’t being wronged or cheated. This is because the giving of it is up to him. But being wronged can’t be up to you. There has to be someone else wronging you. So, that’s clear: you can’t be willingly wronged.

Now, of the things we planned to talk about, here are two we can address:

1. In an unfair distribution, is it the person who awards someone more than they deserve who is the wrongdoer, or is it the person who receives too much?
2. Is it possible to wrong yourself?

If the first is possible (i.e., if the distributor is the primary wrongdoer, not the person who gets more than they should), then if you knowingly and willingly assign more to someone else than to yourself, you are thereby wronging yourself or being unfair to yourself.

But surely, that’s just what reasonable and decent people do sometimes. Any kind and decent person typically takes less than they might be strictly entitled to in some situations.

Or is it not quite as simple as that? Maybe when they take less of one good, they are really taking more of a different kind of good, like gaining a good reputation, or more of what’s simply honorable.

Also, the problem is solved anyway by our earlier definition of wrongdoing (which includes the idea of it being contrary to the victim’s wish). If you willingly choose to take less, nothing is happening to you contrary to what you yourself want. This means that you certainly aren’t being wronged in that specific sense. At most, perhaps you’re being harmed in terms of material possessions, but not wronged.

It’s also obvious that the distributor is the primary wrongdoer, not always the person who thereby gets too much. The person who benefits from a wrongful or unfair decision isn’t automatically the wrongdoer. The wrongdoer is whoever wilfully brings about that unfair situation. And that means whoever is the source of the action. The source of the action is the person who distributes the goods unfairly, not always the receiver.

Also, consider these points:

1. To “bring about” an outcome can mean different things. In a sense, even inanimate objects can “kill” someone (e.g., a falling rock), or your hand can “kill” someone (as an instrument), or a slave acting on his master’s instructions can cause harm. In the case of the slave, although he isn’t necessarily wronging anyone in terms of his own initiative or character, he is still “bringing about” things that are wrong. So, the recipient of an unfair share isn’t the one doing the primary wrong.
2. If a judge made a decision in a case without knowing all the facts, then he hasn’t technically “done wrong” in the sense of committing an act of injustice, and it isn’t a “wrongful judgment” according to the law that implies his culpability. But the judgment itself is still wrong in a sense (it doesn’t align with what is absolutely right). What’s right according to the law is not always the same as what’s absolutely or naturally right.
3. If, on the other hand, a judge knowingly makes a wrongful judgment, then he must be getting something out of it himself, such as someone’s gratitude, a bribe, or perhaps revenge against one party. So, just as if he were to take a cut of the profits of a wrongdoing, the man whose wrongful judgment has those motives behind it gets more than he should. For example, when a judge (A) makes a corrupt judgment (on condition of getting a share of the benefit) awarding a piece of land to person B, then, no, judge A doesn’t get the land itself, but he does get the money or other benefit.

10. Kindness and Decency (Equity): A Higher Form of Justice

Next, we should talk about being kind and decent (or what is often called equity). We need to understand:

• What do we mean by the kind and decent thing to do?
• How does being a kind and decent person relate to being simply righteous (just according to the law)?
• How does what’s kind or decent relate to what’s right (legal justice)?

If you think about it, these ideas don’t seem to be exactly the same thing. Yet, they don’t seem to be truly different from one another either. This creates a bit of a puzzle.

Sometimes we praise a “kind” or “decent” action and a “kind and decent” person. We even use the term “decent” for other things as a general term of approval, meaning simply “good.” This clearly implies that the more decent something or someone is, the better.

On the other hand, if you analyze it logically, it seems strange if the kind and decent thing to do is different from what’s legally right, and yet is still praiseworthy. This would mean one of two things:

• Either doing the legally right thing isn’t always good.
• Or, doing the kind and decent thing isn’t truly right (if it’s different from legal justice).

Or, if they’re both good, surely they must just be the same thing? These points make the idea of what’s “kind” or “decent” a little puzzling.

In fact, these ideas are all correct in a sense and don’t contradict one another. This is because the kind and decent thing to do is the right thing to do. But it’s right because it’s better than one particular form of what’s right (namely, strict legal justice). It’s better than strict legal justice without being a completely different kind of rightness.

So, the “kind and decent” thing and the “right thing” (in a broad sense) are the same: they are both good. But what is kind and decent is better.

The puzzle arises because doing the kind and decent thing is certainly right, but it’s not always what is right strictly according to the letter of the law. Rather, it’s an improvement or correction of what’s strictly right according to the law.

The reason for this is that every law has to be stated in general terms. However, for some situations, it’s impossible for a general rule to be perfect. So, in cases where we must state general rules, but a general rule cannot be perfect, the law assumes what will usually be the case. The law does this fully aware that this approach might introduce a flaw in specific, unusual cases. And it might still be a perfectly well-drafted law. The shortcoming isn’t in the law itself or in the lawmaker. It’s in the nature of the situation. It’s simply a characteristic of the basic material that all practical decisions are made of – human actions are very varied.

So, when the law states a general rule, and then a particular situation happens that goes against the original intent of that general rule, it’s entirely proper to correct the shortcoming. If the original lawmaker overlooked something or got it slightly wrong by stating the rule too generally, the correction should reflect:

• “This is what the lawmaker himself would have said if he were here in person and knew about this specific case.”
• Or, “That’s how he would have drafted the law if he knew that this particular problem would arise.”

That’s why doing the “kind and decent” thing (acting equitably) is certainly right, but at the same time, it’s actually better than one form of what’s right (strict adherence to an imperfect general law). It’s not better than the underlying principle of rightness itself. It’s just better than the flawed outcome caused by the law’s unavoidable generality.

And that’s the fundamental nature of being kind and decent (equity): it’s a corrective to law, to the extent that law is always imperfect because it must be stated in general terms.

This is also why not everything that rulers and lawmakers do can be achieved through general laws in the first place. For some things, it’s impossible to draft a law that covers every possibility. So, then you need a special, one-off decree or ruling. For indeterminate matters (things that can’t be pinned down by a fixed rule), you need an indeterminate standard. This is like the flexible lead rulers used by builders in ancient Lesbos: the ruler isn’t rigid; it bends to fit the shape of the stone. Similarly, a one-off decree can be fitted to the specifics of events.

So, it’s now clear what we mean by what’s “kind and decent” (equitable). It’s clear that it’s both right and, at the same time, better than one form of what’s right (strict legal justice).

And that should make it obvious what it is to be a kind and decent person. A kind and decent person is simply someone who reliably chooses and does these sorts of equitable things. Instead of being rigid about what’s legally right in a way that makes things worse, they tend to demand a little less than they’re strictly entitled to, even when they have the law on their side.

That character trait is kindness or decency (equity). It’s just a better, more refined way of being righteous (just), not an entirely separate trait.

11. Can You Wrong Yourself? (Second Discussion)

As for whether or not it’s possible to wrong yourself, that should be clear from what we’ve already said. But here are some more arguments.

Some things that are “right” (in the broader sense of being aligned with virtue) are the sort of actions required by law, reflecting every way of being a good person. For example, the law orders us not to take our own lives (and what the law orders us not to do, it effectively forbids).

Now, when someone wilfully inflicts harm (and not in retaliation for harm done to them), they are doing wrong. And they are doing it wilfully if they know who they are harming, what instrument they are using, and so on.

A man who kills himself out of anger does so wilfully and acts contrary to the law (he does something the law doesn’t permit). So, that means he’s doing wrong. But who is he wronging?

Is the answer that he wrongs his city, but not himself? After all, he is a willing victim of his own action, and we’ve said that nobody can be willingly wronged. And that’s why it’s the city that punishes such an act: when a man has taken his own life, he often suffers a kind of public disgrace for the wrong he has done against the city.

Now, let’s consider the other kind of “what is wrong” – the kind that only makes someone an unfair person (by taking too much or giving too little), but not necessarily an all-around bad person. With this specific kind of unfairness, it’s impossible to wrong yourself (that is, it’s impossible to deal unfairly with yourself).

(Note that this kind of unfairness is distinct from the general kind of wrongdoing. There’s a way of being unfair that implies one particular moral failing – namely, being an unfair person – which is a specific vice, much like being a coward is a specific vice. It doesn’t automatically imply all-around badness.)

So, with that kind of specific unfairness, no, you can’t wrong yourself.

• Because that would mean you are getting something from yourself and having that same thing taken away from you by yourself at the very same time. That’s impossible. Fair and unfair actions always have to occur between at least two people.
• Also, wrongdoing (in the sense of injustice) has to be wilful, deliberate, and unprovoked. “Unprovoked” is key because someone who acts because a wrong was done to them, and does the same thing in return (retaliation), isn’t generally seen as committing an injustice. But if you “wrong yourself,” you are literally doing the very same thing that’s being done to you by yourself. It’s not an unprovoked act by one person against another distinct person.
• Also, if you could wrong yourself, that would make it possible to be willingly wronged by yourself, which we’ve argued against.
• On top of all those reasons, you can’t “do wrong” in this specific sense except by committing one of the particular forms of wrongdoing. But you can’t commit adultery with your own wife, or break and enter into your own house, or steal your own property. These actions require another party.

In general, the idea of doing wrong to yourself (in the sense of being unjust to yourself) is also ruled out by our earlier definition anyway – when we concluded that you can’t be willingly wronged because being wronged is contrary to your wish.

Doing Wrong is Worse for You Than Being Wronged

Obviously, both being wronged by someone else and doing wrong to someone else are bad things. Even so, doing wrong is worse for you (the doer).

• Because doing wrong involves you being a bad person and is morally blameworthy. It implies you are either completely and absolutely bad, or you are heading in that direction. (Maybe not every single wilful wrongdoing instantly makes you a fully unrighteous person, but it’s a mark against your character.)
• But being wronged by someone else doesn’t involve you being a bad person, or an unrighteous or unethical person.

So, in itself, being wronged is the lesser of the two evils in terms of its impact on moral character. Having said that, there’s nothing to stop “being wronged” from sometimes being worse for you in terms of practical consequences, due to some unforeseen turn of events. For example, a doctor might tell us that a lung infection is a much worse illness than stubbing your toe. And yet, stubbing your toe could, through an unlucky series of events, turn out to have worse consequences – like if you stub your toe, stumble, and because you stumbled, you end up being captured or killed by the enemy. This doesn’t change the medical fact about the severity of the illnesses themselves.

Wronging Yourself in a Metaphorical Sense

In a metaphorical sense, or by analogy, you can have obligations to yourself. Or perhaps not to your whole self exactly, but to different parts of yourself. This analogy is often drawn with relationships like that of a master to a servant, or a husband to a household, where one part (reason) is seen as guiding or ruling another part (desires or emotions). It is in this context, concerning the relationship between the rational part of the soul and the irrational part, that these ideas apply.

So, some people reflect on this internal dynamic and think you can, in a sense, wrong yourself. This happens when one part of you does things to another part of you that go against its wishes or desires. So, just as a ruler and those who are ruled can have obligations to one another (and thus can wrong each other), so too can the different parts of the self be in conflict in a way that resembles injustice.

All right, there, so that completes our account of being righteous and fair, and of all the other virtues of character that we have discussed.

Book VI

1. The Need to Define “Correct Reason”

We said earlier that to be virtuous, you always need to choose the “middle” path. You should avoid going too far or falling short. We also said that this middle path is determined by correct reason. Now, let’s explain what we mean by that.

For all the character traits we’ve talked about (and any others too), there’s a kind of target that a person with reason aims for. They adjust their efforts, increasing or decreasing them, to hit this target. This target acts as a boundary for the middle states that lie between doing too much and doing too little. “Correct reason” is what determines this boundary.

Now, when we put it that way, what we’re saying is certainly true. However, it’s also very vague.

Think about other activities – any that involve some kind of knowledge. It’s always true that you have to exert yourself or ease off just the right amount – “the middle amount.” You shouldn’t do too much or too little, and you should do it “as correct reason says.” But if that was all the guidance you had, you wouldn’t be any wiser about what to actually do. For example, imagine someone told you to apply certain medicines to your body – “the ones medical expertise says you should” or “the ones determined by an expert doctor.” This wouldn’t help you much unless you knew which specific substances they meant.

That’s why it’s important here as well, when talking about the qualities of the soul, not to just make this vague claim about “correct reason” – true as it is – and leave it at that. We also need to figure out exactly what “correct reason” is and how we define it.

Recalling the Parts of the Soul

Alright, earlier we divided the virtues of the soul into two types:

1. Character virtues (moral virtues).
2. Intellectual virtues.

We’ve finished our discussion of character virtues. So, it’s time for us to talk about the intellectual virtues. But first, let’s say a bit more about the soul itself.

Earlier, we said that there are two main parts of the soul:

1. The part that has reason (the rational part).
2. The part that does not have reason (the irrational part).

Now we need to divide the rational part itself in a similar way.

Let’s start with the idea that there are really two aspects of the soul that “possess reason”:

1. One part we use to think about kinds of things whose causes and basic principles cannot possibly be different than they are. These are unchangeable truths.
2. Another part we use to think about things that can be different than they are. These are changeable matters.

It makes sense that for these two different kinds of things, there would be a corresponding part of the soul, itself different in its nature, naturally suited to understanding each one. This is based on the idea that we come to know things through a kind of similarity or relatedness between our mind and the objects of our thought.

Let’s call one of these the scientific part (which studies unchangeable truths). Let’s call the other the calculating part or deliberative part (which considers changeable matters). Deliberating (thinking about what to do) is a form of calculating, and nobody deliberates about things that cannot possibly be otherwise. So, the calculating part is one aspect of the rational part of the soul.

Our goal now is to understand the best possible state for each of these two rational parts to be in. This best state will be the special virtue of each part, or what makes it good at its specific job.

2. How We Make Good Choices

There are three things in the soul that control our actions and our grasp of truth:

1. Perception (using our senses).
2. Cognition (thinking or intellect).
3. Desire.

Of these, perception is never the direct source of purposeful action. This is clear from the fact that animals have perception, but they don’t share our human capacity for reasoned action.

In practical thinking (thinking about what to do), affirmation (saying “yes” to something) and denial (saying “no”) in our thoughts must have corresponding actions in our desires: pursuing something or avoiding something.

So, if a virtue of character is a settled tendency to make certain choices, and a choice is a desire that has been shaped by deliberation (careful thinking), then for a choice to be a good choice:

• Reason (our thinking) has to be stating something true.
• Desire has to be correct (aiming at the right thing).
• And what reason is asserting as true must match what desire is pursuing.

This is how practical thought and practical truth (truth about what you should do) work. Purely contemplative thought, on the other hand (thinking that is not connected with doing anything or making anything), succeeds or fails simply by being true or false. The goal of every part of the soul that thinks is to arrive at truth. But for the part that not only thinks but is also involved with doing things, its goal is truth that agrees with correct desire.

The starting point of an action (in the sense of what causes it to happen, not its ultimate purpose) is choice. And the starting point of choice itself is desire combined with reason that is aimed at a goal. That’s why you can’t have choice unless you have both:

1. Cognition (understanding) and thought.
2. A certain disposition of character (a tendency to desire certain things).

Doing well or badly in our actions is impossible without a combination of thought and character. Thought on its own doesn’t move or motivate anything. Only thought that is aimed at a goal – practical thought – can move us to act. (Practical thought also governs our thinking about making things. Anyone who makes something does so with a goal in mind. But the thing they are making isn’t usually their overall, final goal. It’s always relative to, or part of, something else. It’s the doing or acting well that is often the overall goal.)

Doing well – that’s always your goal in actions. And that’s what desire aims for. That’s why choice is either:

• Cognition (thought) tied to desire.
• Or, desire tied to thought. This combination is the distinctive human way of causing things to happen.

It’s important to note that nothing that is already past can be an object of choice. You can’t choose to have captured Troy, for example. This is because you can’t deliberate about the past either. You can only deliberate about things that are still going to happen and that might or might not come to be. But what has already happened cannot be changed. That’s why the poet Agathon rightly said: “The only power that even heaven lacks: To change the past, to make what’s done undone.”

So, the task of both of the thinking parts of the soul is to arrive at truth. Therefore, whatever states or conditions best enable each part to grasp truth are the specific virtues for each part.

3. Scientific Knowledge (Epistēmē)

Alright, let’s go back a bit and begin our discussion of these intellectual virtues again.

Let’s say that there are five main ways or faculties by which the soul arrives at truth when it affirms or denies something:

1. Technical Skill (or Art)
2. Scientific Knowledge
3. Practical Wisdom
4. Philosophical Wisdom (Higher or Theoretical Wisdom)
5. Direct Cognition (or Intuitive Reason)

We don’t include belief and opinion in this list, because those can sometimes be entirely false, whereas these five are about grasping truth.

So, what do we mean by Scientific Knowledge? If we want to be precise about it (and ignore looser uses of the term “knowledge”), we can explain it like this: We all assume that if we scientifically know something, then that thing cannot possibly be otherwise than it is. (With things that can be otherwise, once they are out of our direct observation, we often lose track of whether they are actually true or not.) Therefore, an object of scientific knowledge must be a necessary truth. This means it must also be an eternal truth, because strictly necessary truths are always eternal. By eternal truths, we mean things that don’t ever come into being or cease to exist.

Also, we assume that all scientific knowledge can be taught, and that whatever can be scientifically known can also be learned. All teaching has to be based on things you already know (as explained in writings on logic, like the Analytics). Teaching happens in one of two ways:

• Induction: This is where we observe particular cases and arrive at universal principles or general rules.
• Deduction: This is where we start with universal principles and reason to specific conclusions.

Induction is the source of our universal scientific principles. Deduction then works from these universal principles. This means there are principles that form the basis of our deductions, and these principles are not themselves arrived at by deduction. They are arrived at by induction.

So, Scientific Knowledge is the state of mind you reach through logical proof (deduction). It also involves other conditions (as outlined in the Analytics): for example, you only have true scientific knowledge when you trust your starting points (first principles) in a particular way, and these principles are known to you as certain. If your starting points weren’t any more known or certain to you than your conclusion, then any “scientific knowledge” you thought you had would just be accidental.

4. Technical Skill or Art (Technē)

Of the set of things that can be otherwise (changeable things), some are also things we can make, and some are things we can do.

But making and doing are two different kinds of activities. We can see this from common sense. This means that the character state that guides reason in doing things (which is practical wisdom) must be different from the ability to make something guided by reason (which is technical skill). So, one doesn’t include the other. Doing isn’t a form of making, and making isn’t a form of doing.

Now, a builder’s technical skill, for example, is a clear case of “an ability to make something in a reason-guided way.”

In fact, every technical skill or artistic expertise is an ability to make something guided by true reason. And conversely, every such ability is a technical skill. So, it looks like a technical skill is precisely an ability to make something in a reason-guided way.

Every technical skill is concerned with creating. This involves thinking about and figuring out how something – something that can either exist or not exist – can be brought into being. The key is that the source of its existence depends on the maker, not on the thing being made. (No skill creates things that exist by physical necessity or by nature. Those things have the source of their existence in themselves.)

And since making is different from doing, it follows that technical skill is concerned with making, not with doing or general action. Plus, in a sense, skill and luck often cover the same areas. As the poet Agathon says: “Skill is the friend of luck, and luck of skill.”

So, technical skill or artistic expertise, as we’ve said, is an ability to make something, using true reason and getting it right. The opposite, lack of skill, is a disposition to make something, using reason but getting it wrong. Both skill and lack of skill are concerned only with things that can be otherwise (things that don’t have to be the way they are).

5. Practical Wisdom (Phronēsis)

What about Practical Wisdom?

Perhaps we can get a sense of what practical wisdom is by considering the kinds of people we call “wise” in a practical sense.

Alright, so we think of a wise person (in this practical sense) as someone who is able to deliberate well – to make good decisions – about what’s good for them and what’s in their best interests. And this isn’t just about particular things, like what’s going to make them healthy or strong, but about what kinds of things make for a good life in general. In support of this, notice that we call people “wise” even in a particular field if they succeed at figuring out how to achieve an important goal that isn’t a matter of their specific technical expertise. This suggests that, in the general sense as well, to be wise is to be good at deliberating and making good decisions.

But nobody deliberates about:

• Things that can’t possibly be otherwise (necessary truths).
• Or things that it’s impossible for them to do anything about.

So, given that:

1. Scientific knowledge involves proof about necessary things.
2. You can’t prove something if its starting principles could have been different (because then the conclusion itself could have been different).
3. You can’t deliberate about things that are necessarily the way they are.

It follows that practical wisdom is not a form of scientific knowledge or technical expertise.

• It isn’t a science, because the things we do (actions) can, by definition, be otherwise.
• It isn’t a technical skill, because (as we just explained) doing and making are two separate categories. Making something always has some further, separate goal (the product). But that’s not the case with doing, where doing well is itself the goal.

So, that leaves us with this definition: Practical Wisdom is a truth-discerning, rational, action-guiding disposition concerned with what’s good and bad for human beings.

That’s why we think of people like Pericles (an ancient Athenian statesman) and others like him as practically wise. Wise people have a talent for figuring out what’s good, both for themselves and for human beings in general. We consider good family managers and good political leaders to fit this description perfectly.

This also explains why the Greek word for moderation or temperance, sōphrosunē, was thought to mean something like “that which preserves (sōzei) wisdom (phronēsis).” But what it “preserves” are those kinds of practical judgments and understanding. Pleasure and pain don’t mess up or distort just any kind of idea – for example, they don’t distort the mathematical notion that the internal angles of a triangle add up to two right angles. They only disrupt your ideas about what you should or shouldn’t be doing. This is because the starting point for action is the purpose or goal of the things you’re doing. When someone is corrupted by pleasure or pain, they fail to see this starting point clearly from the outset. As a result, they also don’t see that they should be choosing and doing all other things for the sake of that purpose and for that reason. That’s what being a bad person does to you: it warps your understanding of ethical starting points.

So, it follows that practical wisdom must be a rational, truth-sensitive disposition that guides our actions with respect to what’s good for human beings.

Furthermore, you can be excellent at a technical skill, but you’d never say “he’s excellent at being wise” in the same way. Wisdom itself is an excellence. Plus, in the case of technical skill, it’s actually considered better to be someone who makes a mistake on purpose (as it might show underlying competence). But with practical wisdom, just like with character virtues, deliberately choosing wrong is worse. So it’s clear that practical wisdom is a kind of virtue, not a technical skill.

There are two parts of the soul that possess reason. Practical wisdom seems to be the virtue specific to one of them: namely, the part that forms beliefs or opinions (the “calculating” or “deliberative” part). This is because belief, like practical wisdom, is concerned with things that could be otherwise. But practical wisdom isn’t just a purely rational quality that can be learned and forgotten like facts. You can forget information related to purely intellectual abilities, but you don’t “forget” your practical wisdom in the same way (it’s more about your character and how you see things).

6. Intuitive Reason or Direct Cognition (Nous)

Scientific knowledge is all about what’s universal and necessarily the case. There are always starting points, or first principles, for whatever we prove and for all scientific knowledge, because all such knowledge is supported by reasons leading back to these principles.

This means that the first principles from which we derive what we know scientifically cannot themselves be objects of:

• Scientific knowledge (because scientific knowledge is proven, and first principles are not proven; they are the basis of proof).
• Or technical expertise or practical wisdom (because scientific first principles are about necessary truths, while technical skill and practical wisdom deal with things that could be otherwise).
• We can’t have philosophical wisdom (in the sense of a demonstrative science like epistēmē) of these first principles either, since that kind of wisdom also involves proving at least some things from principles.

So, if the faculties which grasp truth and which (by definition) cannot be wrong are:

1. Scientific knowledge
2. Practical wisdom
3. Philosophical wisdom
4. Direct cognition (Intuitive Reason)

And if it can’t be any of the first three (wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophical wisdom in a demonstrative sense) that grasp the unprovable first principles, that just leaves Direct Cognition (Intuitive Reason). We must directly intuit, or immediately grasp, the first principles of science.

7. Philosophical Wisdom (Sophia)

As for Philosophical Wisdom (sophia), the term is used in a couple of ways. In one sense, we attribute it to the most exact and consummate craftsmen and artists. So, we might say that Phidias was sophos (a “master” sculptor), or that Polycleitus was sophos (another “master” sculptor). In that context, what we mean by sophia is exceptional technical virtuosity.

But we also think of some people as having a general sort of sophia, which we can call higher philosophical knowledge, as opposed to skill in some particular thing. For example, Homer says of a character named Margites that he wasn’t a sophos (master) “at anything else”: “He couldn’t handle a spade – because that wasn’t the way the gods made him – nor could he master a plough, or anything else for that matter.”

This implies that sophia, in its higher sense as philosophical knowledge, should be the most exact and comprehensive of all forms of knowledge. So, it requires us:

• Not just to know the things that we derive from first principles (like in scientific knowledge).
• But also to grasp the truth of the first principles themselves (through direct cognition/intuition).

So, higher philosophical knowledge is a combination of direct cognition (grasping first principles) and scientific knowledge (demonstrating truths from those principles). It is scientific knowledge crowned, so to speak, by having the most exalted and honorable things that exist as its subject matter.

It’s absurd to imagine that statesmanship (political wisdom) or practical wisdom is the best kind of knowledge there is, when human beings are far from the best or most important thing in the cosmos.

Also, consider this:

• “Healthy” or “good” means one thing for fish and something quite different for human beings.
• But what’s “white” or “straight” is always the same, regardless of the context. Similarly, philosophical knowledge (which might deal with metaphysics, theology, or fundamental physics) will always mean the same thing because it deals with universal truths. But “being practically wise” will mean something different for different kinds of beings, as each would be concerned with its own specific good. Anything that’s good at perceiving all its own interests would qualify as “practically wise” for its kind, and that species itself will be the authority on its own interests. That’s why people even call some wild animals “wise” – the ones that evidently have the capacity to anticipate their needs and make provisions for their survival.

Another reason it’s obvious that philosophical knowledge (e.g., metaphysics, theology, physics) is not the same thing as statesmanship or moral and political wisdom is this: If knowing what’s beneficial to one’s own species is going to count as “philosophical knowledge,” then there would be multiple forms of philosophical knowledge, one for each species. This is absurd, as philosophical knowledge aims at universal truths. There won’t be just one philosophical knowledge encompassing what’s good for all animals; there would be a different version for each species, just as there isn’t a single, unified medical knowledge for all living things.

And even if human beings are the “best” of all animals on Earth – so what? There are still other things in the universe far more divine in their nature than humans. To give only the most obvious examples, think of the constituents of the cosmos, like the stars and planets.

So, it’s clear from all we’ve said that Philosophical Wisdom (sophia) is a combination of scientific knowledge and direct cognition (intuition), applied to things that are by their nature the most exalted and honorable things in the cosmos.

That’s why people say that Anaxagoras, Thales, and men like that are “great philosophers” or “geniuses” (because they understand profound, abstract truths), but they don’t necessarily think of them as “practically wise.” This is because such philosophers are sometimes seen as being clueless about their own everyday best interests or practical affairs.

The things these philosophers know are indeed extraordinary, amazing, difficult to understand, and marvelous. However, some might call them “useless” because they aren’t focused on investigating what’s good for human beings in their daily lives.

Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is all about human concerns. It deals with things you can actually think about and make decisions on. That’s the main talent of a practically wise person: to be good at deliberating and making good decisions. Nobody deliberates about:

• Things that cannot possibly be different than they are.
• Or things that don’t involve a goal – specifically, some good thing that can be achieved by doing something.

A good decision-maker, in the general sense, is someone who is good at figuring out the best possible human goods that can be achieved through action.

Practical wisdom isn’t just about understanding general principles either. You also have to know the particular facts of a situation. This is because practical wisdom determines what we do, and doing things always involves specific details. That’s why sometimes people who are ignorant of a general principle but have a lot of experience might be more likely to do the right thing than people who know the principle but lack experience.

• For example, if someone knows the general principle that “lean meat is easy on the stomach and healthy” but doesn’t know which particular kinds of meat are lean, they aren’t going to be very successful at eating healthily.
• The person who only knows that “chicken is healthy” (a particular fact) is more likely to do the healthy thing by eating chicken.

Practical wisdom determines what you actually do. So, this means you need both kinds of knowledge: general principles and knowledge of particular facts. Or, you could say that knowing the particulars is even more important for direct action. Of course, even in practical matters, there can be a general, master-plan type of wisdom, too.

8. Statesmanship and Practical Wisdom

Being a good statesman (or a good leader) and being practically wise are the same character trait, but they are different aspects or applications of it.

Even in the political sphere, practical wisdom takes two forms:

1. The general, master-plan kind is legislative wisdom. This involves creating good laws and a good constitution.
2. The day-to-day kind gets the name that really applies to both: statesmanship or politics. This involves taking action and deliberating on current issues. Passing a decree, for example, is an action in this day-to-day sense. That’s why only these people who are actively involved in governing are usually called “statesmen.” It’s because they’re the only ones doing things in this hands-on way; they are like the practical craftsmen of public life.

“Practical wisdom” is most naturally thought of as applying to yourself as an individual. That’s what we usually mean by the general term “wisdom” when we talk about managing one’s own life. But there are those other kinds too:

• Wisdom in managing your family (household management).
• Wisdom in lawmaking (legislative wisdom).
• Wisdom in politics (which includes both deliberating about policy and making judicial decisions).

So, knowing what’s good for yourself is just one particular form of practical wisdom. But it’s a very distinct form of it. This leads to the idea that a man who knows his own interests and “minds his own business” is therefore wise. In contrast, statesmen (who are, by definition, concerned about other people’s lives and the community) are sometimes seen as “busybodies.” This sentiment is captured in lines from the playwright Euripides, where a character reflects:

“How unwise I’ve been! I must be mad! I could have stayed out of trouble, been an ordinary soldier, one of the troops, content with my equal share. People often resent a man who sticks out from the crowd, and does something special…”

This character means that many people focus on their own interests and assume that’s what we ought to do. From that attitude, you get the idea that “minding your own business” is what it is to be wise.

But does that make sense? Surely your own interests can’t be well served if you only think about yourself, and if you aren’t also a responsible family member and a citizen. Also, exactly how you should manage your own affairs is not always obvious; you have to think carefully about it.

Practical Wisdom Requires Experience

Here’s another piece of evidence for the claim that practical wisdom is not an abstract science and requires experience of life: Young people can certainly learn geometry and mathematics and become brilliant at that kind of abstract thinking. However, we don’t usually think young people can be practically wise. The reason for this is that practical wisdom requires knowing the details and complexities of life. We only become acquainted with these details through experience, and experience is exactly what young people don’t yet have. It’s simply the passage of time and encountering many situations that gives you experience.

This also helps explain another curious fact: Why is it that children can be good at mathematics but not at subjects like metaphysics, theology, or the natural sciences?

• Is it because mathematics studies things in abstraction from the physical world?
• Whereas the principles of those other subjects have to come from experience? Children can often recite facts or theories from these more complex subjects, but they don’t truly believe or understand them deeply without experience. But in mathematics, many basic concepts are clear enough to grasp even without extensive life experience.

Also, when you are deliberating about a practical matter, you can be wrong in two ways:

• You might not know a universal principle (e.g., you might not know the general rule that “water with a high mineral content isn’t good to drink”).
• Or, you might not correctly identify a particular fact (e.g., you might not realize that “this particular water here has a high mineral content”).

It’s also clear that practical wisdom isn’t a science from the fact that it has to grasp the ultimate particular facts of a situation. This is because those particular facts are what actions are based on. So, practical wisdom is at the opposite end of the thinking process from direct cognition (intuitive reason).

• Direct cognition (or intuitive reason), at one end, gives us our understanding of universal concepts or first principles, which are not deduced from anything else.
• Practical wisdom, at the other end, grasps particular facts. These particular facts are not deduced scientifically either; they are something we just perceive or become aware of in a situation.

I don’t mean the way we perceive qualities specific to each sense (like colors, sounds, or tastes). I mean the way we perceive, for example, in a mathematical proof, that “this particular shape here is a triangle.” At that end of the process too, where you are dealing with a specific instance, there’s a point where detailed explanation just has to stop, and you directly apprehend the fact. Of course, this direct grasp of particulars in a situation is more a kind of perception than practical wisdom itself, but it’s a form of perception essential to practical wisdom.

9. Good Decision-Making (Euboulia)

Problem-solving and decision-making (deliberation) aren’t exactly the same thing. Decision-making is a particular form of problem-solving.

We need to get a sense here of what good decision-making (or good deliberation) is.

• Is it a matter of having some sort of scientific knowledge, or a certain belief?
• Is it the same as being sharp and quick-witted?
• Or is it some other kind of thing?

So, to begin with, it isn’t scientific knowledge. With things we already know for certain through science, there’s nothing left for us to work out or decide. But good decision-making is a form of deliberation, and when you’re deliberating, you are working things out, problem-solving, and figuring something out.

Then again, it isn’t just a matter of being quick-witted either. Quick-wittedness doesn’t necessarily involve deep reasoning and happens on the spot. In contrast, people can spend a long time deliberating, and it’s often said, “Decide slowly, then act quickly.”

Being a quick, shrewd observer is also not the same as good decision-making. It’s just a form of being quick-witted.

Good decision-making is also not equivalent to having any particular belief.

Here’s a better idea: Since someone who deliberates badly (or makes bad decisions) is making mistakes in their deliberation, good decision-making must mean deliberating correctly. Therefore, good decision-making is a kind of correctness. But it’s not:

• Correctness of scientific knowledge (because there’s no such thing as “incorrect scientific knowledge”; if it’s incorrect, it isn’t knowledge).
• Correctness of belief (a correct belief is simply a true belief, and the content of a belief is already fully determined, not a process of deliberation).

Of course, good decision-making also involves reason. So, there’s still the option of it being the correctness of the thought process itself. This is because a thought process (deliberation) is not yet an assertion or a fixed belief. Belief is an assertion, not a form of working anything out. But when you’re making a decision, whether you’re doing it well or badly, you’re still in the process of working something out; you’re calculating or reasoning.

So, good decision-making is correctness in deliberation.

But we can mean various different things by “correct deliberation,” and clearly not every kind of correctness counts as good decision-making in the moral sense.

• For example, take a case where someone who lacks self-control, or an evil person, figures out an effective way to achieve the bad goal he has set for himself. In a narrow sense, he might have “deliberated correctly” about how to achieve his aim, even though he’s done himself and others a lot of harm. But truly good decision-making should be a good thing overall. So, the kind of correctness in deliberation we are interested in here is the kind that helps you attain something genuinely good.

Then again, you can also achieve a goal by a false chain of reasoning. You can achieve what you’re supposed to, but by the wrong means or based on a false premise. (You might have a false “middle premise” in your logical steps.) So that isn’t truly good decision-making either, if you attain the right result by the wrong reasoning.

Also, you can succeed after taking a really long time deciding what to do, when you might have reached the same good decision quickly. Taking too long doesn’t necessarily count as good decision-making either. “Correctness” here is determined by what benefits you: it involves the right goal, the right means, and the right timing.

Furthermore, we can say someone “has made good decisions” either:

• In an absolute sense (that is, in how they conduct their life generally).
• Or relative to some particular goal.

So, good decision-making in the absolute sense is the kind that’s successful relative to the overall, absolute goal of living a good life. The particular forms of good decision-making are relative to our particular, more immediate goals.

Therefore, if it’s a defining feature of practically wise people that they have made good decisions in life, then it seems good decision-making is correctness in our deliberations, determined by whatever effectively advances us towards that overall goal of a good life, a goal of which our practical wisdom gives us a true understanding.

10. Insight and Understanding (Sunesis)

We also call some people insightful and good at understanding people. These qualities – insight and good understanding – aren’t just a matter of knowledge or belief in general. (If they were, we’d all be “insightful” just by knowing things.) And they aren’t the same as having a particular kind of scientific knowledge either.

• Medical knowledge doesn’t automatically make you “insightful” about health in this practical, human sense.
• Geometry doesn’t make you “insightful” about the deeper meaning of triangles in human affairs.

In fact, you can’t really be insightful in this way about objects of scientific knowledge (things that are eternal and unchanging), or even about just anything in the domain of things that simply come to be and pass away. You can only be insightful about the kinds of things a person can be facing some problem over and trying to make a decision about.

So, insight has the same domain as practical wisdom: it deals with human actions and choices. But that doesn’t mean being insightful is the same as being practically wise.

The difference is that:

• Your practical wisdom gives you orders or commands (its goal is to figure out what you should or shouldn’t do).
• Being insightful is only for offering judgment and advice (its goal is to understand a situation or person well).

Being insightful is the same as being good at understanding people; insightful people have a knack for understanding people’s situations and what makes them tick.

So, being insightful isn’t a matter of possessing or acquiring practical wisdom itself. Rather, just as learning something new often involves using your existing knowledge to see your way into it, insight is about using your existing views and understanding to make a judgment on something – something that falls within the scope of practical wisdom – when someone else tells you about it. It involves making the morally right call on the matter, or judging it well (which is the same thing).

This is why the Greek word for insight, sunesis, was thought to be related to being good at understanding people (eusunetoi). The word comes from the context of learning; the Greek word for “to learn” (manthanein) often also means “to understand” (sunienai).

11. Consideration, Sympathetic Judgment, and Practical Awareness

“Understanding,” when used in that other way – to refer to the quality that makes people sympathetic and forgiving – is a matter of correctly judging what is kind and decent (or equitable). We think of kind and decent people as especially likely to be sympathetic. And being able to forgive (at least, certain things) is a hallmark of being kind and decent.

This sympathetic outlook (sometimes called consideration or gnōmē in Greek) is the sort of understanding that makes us correctly judge the kind and decent thing to do. “Correctly” here means you get it right; your judgment is accurate regarding what equity requires.

All these various traits – understanding, insight, practical wisdom, good “sense,” and awareness – tend to go together in the same people, as you might expect. If we say someone has understanding, we’ll typically also say they have good sense, they’re wise, and they’re insightful. This is because all these abilities are directed at the immediate facts and the particular details of situations.

It’s in offering other people your advice (on matters that fall within the scope of practical wisdom) that you can be insightful and considerate – or sympathetic. Of course, kindness is common to all good people in their dealings with others.

All the things that we do belong to that set of immediate facts and particulars.

• A practically wise person has to know these particulars.
• Insight and understanding also only apply to the things people are actually doing, which are always particular.

Awareness (or nous, used here in a practical sense of “common sense” or “intuition about particulars”) is also about “ultimates” – at both ends of the reasoning process:

• At one end, direct cognition (nous) gives us our understanding of the unprovable first principles of science (which are universal and unalterable). We don’t reason our way to these; we grasp them directly.
• At the other end, in our practical reasoning, practical awareness (nous) means direct awareness of the “last term” – the particular fact in a situation, the thing that could have been otherwise, which often functions like a “minor premise” in practical thinking.

These particular facts, perceived through this practical awareness or “sense,” are the source material for all our goals in action. We get our understanding of universal principles relevant to action from observing and understanding these particulars of life. So, we have to have perceived these particulars, to have a “sense” of them, and that kind of perception is this practical “awareness” or “common sense.”

That’s why these practical intellectual qualities – understanding, insight, good sense, awareness of particulars – seem to develop in us naturally. Abstract knowledge like metaphysics and theology doesn’t seem to come naturally to anyone. But understanding, insight, good sense, and awareness of practical details – those do seem to come naturally with development. We can see this from the fact that we think of them as arising at certain stages of life. We say things like, “that’s the age when you acquire some sense and understanding,” implying that nature or natural development causes these things.

Therefore, we should pay attention to what experienced people, our elders, and people who are practically wise say. We should listen even to their unproven assertions and opinions, no less than to the proven claims of science. Those people have developed a “keen eye” from experience, so they often see things correctly in practical matters.

Alright, so we’ve now explained what practical wisdom is, and what philosophical wisdom is. We’ve discussed what each of them is about, and said that each is the special virtue of a different part of the soul.

12. The Usefulness of Philosophical and Practical Wisdom

But you might well wonder about these intellectual virtues: what’s the use of them?

• Philosophical wisdom (like knowledge of metaphysics, theology, or the cosmos) won’t directly help you contemplate any of the things that make a person flourish in a practical, day-to-day sense. It’s not about making specific things happen in your life.
• And while practical wisdom does have that feature of being about action, what do you really need it for? Practical wisdom is all about what’s right and wrong, honorable and shameful, good and bad for human beings. It’s about the things a good person is supposed to do. But what if we’re no more likely to do these things just by knowing about them, since virtues are traits of character?
  • It’s like physical health: we’re no more able to do things that are healthy and fit just from knowing about them (if we are talking about actions that depend on our already being in a healthy state, not actions that make us healthy and fit). Obviously, we’re no more able to perform athletic feats just by being experts in medicine or physical training theory.

But maybe we shouldn’t think of practical wisdom in that way. Maybe practical wisdom is what makes you become a good person.

• But then, it would be of no use to people who already are good.
• Or even to people who don’t have it and aren’t good. Because what difference will it make whether we possess practical wisdom ourselves or just follow the advice of people who do? That would work well enough for us, just as it does with health. (We all want to be healthy, but we don’t all study medicine; we often rely on doctors.)

What’s more, it seems absurd that mere practical wisdom (which deals with human affairs), although clearly concerned with less lofty subjects than philosophical wisdom (which might deal with theology and metaphysics), should nevertheless exercise authority over philosophical wisdom. This is because practical wisdom is the one that makes things happen; it’s in charge and gives the orders in every area of life.

So, those are some puzzles we need to say something about. So far, all we’ve done is set out the problems.

So, first, let’s make the point that philosophical wisdom and practical wisdom are bound to be worth having in themselves. This is simply because they are virtues (the excellence of each respective part of the soul), even if neither of them had any other effect whatsoever.

Second, they do have an effect:

• Philosophical wisdom (like knowledge of metaphysics, theology, or cosmology) does make us flourish. However, it doesn’t do it in the way that medical expertise makes you healthy (as a means to an end). It makes you flourish in the way that health itself is a state of flourishing. Philosophical wisdom is part of the whole set of virtues, part of being excellent at everything you should be good at as a human. So, by having it and exercising it, you are flourishing in a certain way.
• Also, our human task or purpose is only achievable through goodness of character working in combination with practical wisdom. Goodness of character gives us the right target or goal, but practical wisdom shows us how to attain that goal effectively.

(There’s no equivalent “virtue” or “goodness” for the fourth part of the soul, by the way – the nutritive-reproductive part – because that part isn’t responsible for our consciously doing or not doing anything.)

As for the idea that practical wisdom doesn’t make us any more likely to do what’s honorable and right, well, we’d better go back to what we said a little while ago.

Let’s start with this: We said that some people do the right thing without yet being righteous or ethical people by character. They might do all the things required of them by the law, for example, but do them unwillingly, or just by mistake, or for some other reason, and not for the sake of what those actions truly are in themselves. But they are certainly doing the things they should be doing: all the things a good person ought to do.

So, conversely, we think there’s such a thing as doing all those things from a certain state of character, such that you are thereby a good person. That means doing them:

• By choice.
• And for what they are in themselves (for their own sake).

So, in that case, goodness of character is what makes your basic choice, your aim or goal, the correct one. But as for figuring out all the things that need to be done to carry out that aim – that’s not just part of goodness of character. It requires a further ability, which is practical wisdom.

We need to focus here and explain this more clearly.

Alright, so there’s an ability we call being clever. That’s the ability to do the things that help you move towards whatever goal you happen to have set for yourself, and to accomplish that goal.

• If that goal is an honorable one, then being clever is a praiseworthy ability.
• But if cleverness is used for a bad goal, we call it being cunning.

(This explains why clever or cunning people are also sometimes loosely called “wise.”)

Practical wisdom is not the same as this ability of cleverness. However, practical wisdom does include or rely on cleverness. The full development of practical wisdom, which is like the “eye of the soul” for practical matters, cannot happen without goodness of character. We’ve mentioned this before, and it should be clear by now. This is because practical reasoning always has to have a starting point, which is a goal. This goal is expressed as: “Given that X is my goal; given that X is the best thing for me to do…” (This X can be any decent goal you like). The important point is that such a good goal is only visible and truly valued by a good person. Being an evil person distorts your understanding of these practical starting points (your goals); it makes you consistently wrong about them.

Therefore, it’s clear: you can’t be practically wise if you aren’t also a good person.

13. Good Character, Natural Virtue, and the Role of Wisdom

So, we need to take another close look at what’s involved in being a good person.

The situation with goodness of character is rather like what we just said about practical wisdom and cleverness (namely, that they’re not the same thing, but closely related). There’s a similar relationship between natural goodness (or natural virtue) and goodness in the full sense.

Everyone agrees that all character traits come to us naturally to some extent. Right from birth, we might be predisposed to some degree of fairness, moderation, bravery, and so on. But we look for something more in the fully good person; we expect those traits to be present in a different, more developed way. After all, even children, and even animals, can have these natural dispositions. But if these natural tendencies are not combined with sense, awareness, and reason (that is, with practical wisdom), they can be clearly harmful.

• Imagine a powerful animal that rushes around without vision. It’s bound to crash into things just as powerfully as it moves.
• We can easily imagine that something similar applies to natural virtues without wisdom (to say the least).

But once these natural dispositions gain awareness and are guided by reason, that makes a big difference in how a person acts. Their disposition of character (while still fundamentally the same natural tendency) will then be full moral goodness.

So, just as the part of our soul that forms beliefs about what to do has two related abilities – cleverness (the raw ability) and practical wisdom (the perfected state) – there’s a similar situation when it comes to character:

1. There’s natural moral goodness (inborn tendencies).
2. And there’s full moral goodness. And full moral goodness can’t exist without practical wisdom.

That’s why some people say that all the moral virtues are just different forms of practical wisdom. Socrates, the philosopher, was partly right in the way he tried to explain the virtues, but also partly mistaken.

• He was wrong to think that all moral virtues are forms of wisdom or knowledge.
• But he was quite right when he said that they require wisdom.

Here’s evidence for that: All philosophers these days, when they are defining a moral virtue, first describe the disposition (the character trait). Then they say what its area of concern is. And then they add the qualification that it must be “consistent with correct reason” – which means consistent with practical wisdom. So, it’s as if everyone has this vague sense that a character trait needs that feature – consistency with wisdom – to count as a full moral virtue.

But we need to adjust that slightly. Strictly speaking, it’s not just that a virtue has to be consistent with correct reason; it also has to actually involve your own correct reason. And correct reasoning about these kinds of practical matters is practical wisdom.

So, Socrates thought all the virtues were just forms of reasoning (he thought they were all kinds of knowledge). But we say they involve reason.

The main point of everything we’ve said is that it’s not possible to be a fully good person without also being practically wise. And it’s not possible to be practically wise without goodness of character.

The Unity of Virtues

This understanding also gives us a way to dismiss the argument that tries to show that the virtues can exist separately from one another. That argument might say: “The same person isn’t going to be naturally inclined to a high degree to all the virtues at once; so a person might well acquire virtue A before virtue B.” Yes, maybe that’s true of the natural virtues. One can be naturally brave but not naturally temperate. But with the virtues that make you a good person in the full sense, it’s not possible for them to be separate. This is because once you have practical wisdom, which is a single state, then when you have any one full moral virtue, you will have them all.

The Value of Practical Wisdom (Reprise)

It’s clear that:

1. Even if practical wisdom didn’t make us more likely to do the right thing, we’d still need to have it. We’d need it just because it’s the special virtue or excellence of its particular part of the soul (the calculating or deliberative part).
2. In fact, our choices won’t be the right ones without a combination of practical wisdom and moral goodness. Goodness of character makes us have the right goal, and practical wisdom makes us do the things that lead to that goal.

What’s more, practical wisdom isn’t really “in charge of” philosophical wisdom, or of the “better part” of the soul (the scientific part that contemplates higher truths). This is similar to how medicine is not “in charge of” health; rather, medicine serves health. Practical wisdom doesn’t employ the knowledge that comes from higher philosophy (like theology and metaphysics). It just makes sure that the conditions for philosophical activity can exist. So, it gives orders in the interest of philosophical knowledge, but not to philosophical knowledge itself. To think otherwise is like saying that statesmanship (the art of running a city) rules the gods, just because it gives orders for everything that goes on in the city, including religious matters and temple upkeep. Practical wisdom serves the higher functions by ensuring their possibility.

This, then, is our account of the intellectual virtues.

Book VII

1. Undesirable Character States: An Introduction

1. Being a bad person (vice or wickedness).
2. Having no self-control (incontinence or akrasia).
3. Being like a beast (bestiality).

The opposites of the first two are obvious:

1. The opposite of being a bad person is being a good person (virtue).
2. The opposite of having no self-control is having self-control (continence).

As for the third, being bestial, it might make most sense to say its opposite is being superhumanly good, like a god or a demigod. For example, in Homer’s epic, King Priam says that his son Hector was such an exceedingly good man that he “seemed more like he was born of a god than a child of a mortal.” So, if (as people say) human beings can become like gods through exceptional goodness, then something like that superhuman goodness is the natural opposite of being like a beast.

This makes sense in another way too:

• A beast isn’t good or evil in the human moral sense.
• Neither is God. God possesses something more exalted than what we call human goodness.
• Being like a beast is a wholly different category from being evil in the human way.

Also, it’s rare for a human to be “godly.” As they say in Sparta when they really admire someone: “He is a godly man!” It is equally rare for a human being to be truly bestial. Bestiality is mostly found among people from very different cultures (what the Greeks called “barbarians”), or it’s sometimes caused by illness or severe mental impairment. (We also use terms like “beast!” or “animal!” as insults for people who are extremely evil.)

• Lacking self-control (and related states like being “soft” or “pampered”).
• Having self-control (and related states like being “resilient”).

We shouldn’t treat lacking self-control as exactly the same as being a bad person (vice). Nor should we treat having self-control as exactly the same as being a good person (virtue). But we also shouldn’t treat them as if they are entirely different and unrelated to virtue and vice.

Alright, so here’s what people generally think:

• Self-control and resilience (toughness) are good qualities and praiseworthy.
• Lacking self-control and being soft are bad qualities and blameworthy.
• People with self-control stick to what they’ve decided. People who lack self-control tend to change their minds and deviate from what they’ve decided.
• When people lack self-control, their feelings and emotions make them do things they know are bad. When people have self-control, their reason makes them not follow desires they know are bad.
• People say a moderate person (someone with the virtue of temperance) always has self-control and resilience. But only some people think that everyone who has self-control is also moderate; others disagree. Some people treat “having no self-control” as the same as being lecherous (sexually uncontrolled) or gluttonous (uncontrolled with food), lumping them all together. Others say these are different things.
• Sometimes you hear people say a wise person (someone with practical wisdom) must also have self-control. Other times, people say that some individuals are wise – or at least clever – but have no self-control.
• Also, we use the same word in Greek (akrateis, meaning “lacking power” or “lacking control”) for people who can’t control their temper, or who have no self-control when it comes to seeking prestige and fame, or where money is concerned.

So, those are the things people commonly say about these states.

2. Puzzles About Lack of Self-Control

Now, let’s look at our first puzzle. (a) How can you know something is wrong but do it anyway? In what sense exactly does someone correctly understand that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing when their self-control fails? Do they truly know it’s wrong?

Some people, like Socrates, say that’s impossible. Socrates thought it was “shocking” to imagine that knowledge could be inside someone, and yet something else (like an emotion or desire) could control that knowledge and push it around like a mere slave! In fact, Socrates was firmly against the whole idea of “failures of self-control.” He thought there was no such thing. He argued that “Nobody ever knowingly goes against what they think is best. They must just not realize that what they’re doing is bad.”

Well, that theory clearly clashes with the apparent facts of human experience. We have to ask about what’s happening to people in these situations. If they “don’t realize” it’s bad, what kind of “not realizing” does that turn out to be? Because it certainly seems that people do think they shouldn’t do the action before they experience their loss of self-control. That’s a common observation.

(b) Is it belief, not knowledge, that’s overcome? Others partly agree with Socrates but also partly disagree.

• They agree that true knowledge can’t be overpowered by desires.
• But they don’t agree that you can’t act against what you merely believe is better. So, on these grounds, they claim that when you lose control and are “overpowered by pleasures,” you don’t have genuine knowledge that you shouldn’t be acting that way; you just have a belief.

But if it’s just a belief rather than full knowledge – meaning, if it’s not a strong conviction telling you not to do it, but just a rather half-hearted one, like when people can’t quite make up their minds about something – surely you can be excused for deviating from those weak beliefs when faced with really powerful desires? However, we don’t usually excuse a moral failing like lack of self-control, or anything else we blame people for.

(c) Is it practical wisdom that’s overcome? So, is it your practical wisdom that’s telling you not to do it? Practical wisdom is a very strong state. No, that’s absurd. If practical wisdom could be overcome, it would mean the same person could be wise and also have no self-control. And literally nobody would say that wilfully doing really awful things is compatible with being wise. On top of that, we showed earlier that a wise person is, by definition, good at actually doing the right thing – they understand particulars – and has all the other moral virtues.

(d) Self-control, moderation, and strong desires: Also, if self-control comes into play when you have desires that are strong and bad:

• A moderate person (who doesn’t have overpowering bad desires) will not be someone who needs to use self-control.
• And a person who does need to use self-control (because they have such desires) will not be someone moderate. Extreme desires of that sort are incompatible with being moderate, and so is having bad desires in the first place if you are truly moderate.

And the desires do have to be strong and bad for self-control to be relevant.

• If the desires in question were good, the disposition that stopped you from acting on them would be a bad quality. So then, weirdly, self-control wouldn’t always be a good thing.
• And there’s nothing very impressive about controlling desires that are weak and not so bad. Even if they’re bad, but also weak, what’s the big deal in controlling them?

(e) Self-control and sticking to any belief: Also, if self-control is what makes you stick to any and every belief you have about what you ought to do, then it can sometimes be a bad quality (for example, if it even makes you stick to a false belief). Conversely, if deviating from any such belief is a “lapse of self-control,” then lack of self-control will sometimes be a good thing. Remember the story of Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ play Philoctetes. We applaud him precisely for not following through on what he was persuaded to do by Odysseus (which was to lie), because he feels bad about telling a lie. His “lapse” was good.

(f) The sophists’ paradoxical argument: There’s also an argument used by sophists (teachers of rhetoric and argument) that creates another puzzle. Sophists often try to force you to accept weird conclusions based on your own views. It makes them look clever when they succeed. So, you get a chain of reasoning that amounts to a paradox. Your mind gets all tied up in knots. It doesn’t want to stay where it is, with a conclusion it can’t possibly accept, but it can’t move beyond it either because it can’t see how to untangle the argument.

So, there’s this sophists’ argument that suggests that being an idiot, combined with having no self-control, amounts to being a good person! The idea is:

• Since you have no self-control, you always do the opposite of whatever you think you should be doing.
• But, since you’re an idiot, you think good things are bad and that you shouldn’t be doing them.
• So, you end up always doing good things and never bad ones!

(g) Who is worse: the deliberately bad person or the one lacking self-control? Here’s another puzzle:

• Person A does something he shouldn’t do, pursuing pleasures, and is convinced it’s a good idea. He does it by choice.
• Person B does the same bad thing, not because he reasoned that he should, but just through a lapse of self-control (knowing it’s not good).

So, you could argue that Person A (who chooses the bad) is morally better (or at least less hopeless) than Person B (who acts against his better judgment). The reasoning is that Person A might be more easily cured because he can be persuaded that his conviction is wrong. But Person B, the one with no self-control, fits the old saying: “When even water makes you choke, what can you wash it down with?” If he’d been doing the bad action because he was convinced it was a good idea, he might have stopped if he was persuaded otherwise. As it is, he’s already convinced he shouldn’t be doing it, and it doesn’t make any difference. He’s doing it anyway.

(h) What is the “standard sense” of lacking self-control? Also, if self-control and lack of self-control can apply to anything at all (like temper, ambition, money, as mentioned earlier), what’s the standard or primary sense of “having no self-control”? Nobody seems to lack self-control in all the ways we mentioned. But we do speak of some people as simply “having no self-control.”

3. Understanding How Knowledge Interacts with Lack of Self-Control

So, first, we need to consider whether or not people who lack self-control know they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, and if so, in what sense they “know” it. Second, what kinds of things should we consider self-control and lack of self-control to apply to? Can they apply to any kind of pleasure and pain, or only certain kinds? Also, is having self-control the same as being resilient (tough), or different? And so on, through all the other questions connected to this investigation.

Second, can lack of self-control, and self-control, apply to anything? Because someone who “lacks self-control” in the standard sense doesn’t lack self-control about just anything. He lacks self-control in a particular area: he does the same kinds of things that gluttonous and lecherous (sexually uncontrolled) men do. Plus, it’s not just about doing those things at all (otherwise lacking self-control would be the same as being lecherous or gluttonous). It’s about being in a particular state of mind when you do them.

• A gluttonous or lecherous man is driven to these actions by choice: he believes he should, whenever possible, pursue immediate gratification.
• Someone who lacks self-control, however, thinks they shouldn’t pursue that gratification, but they do it anyway.

Now, as for that idea that it’s only true belief, not knowledge, that people go against when their self-control fails – that just doesn’t make any real difference to the explanation. Why? Because sometimes people might only have a belief about something, but that doesn’t mean they’re unsure about it. On the contrary, they can feel 100 percent certain about their beliefs. So, if the idea is that people with “mere” beliefs only have a kind of half-hearted confidence in them, and so are more likely to act against what they take to be the case than people with full knowledge – that’s wrong. Whether it’s knowledge or belief, it won’t make the slightest difference if the conviction is strong. Some people have just as much confidence in what they believe as other people do in the things they know for certain. Just look at the philosopher Heraclitus; he held his beliefs very strongly.

No, here’s a better idea. “Knowing” can mean two different things:

1. It can mean having the knowledge but not currently using it or thinking about it.
2. Or it can mean actually using the knowledge and being actively aware of it.

And it will make a difference whether you: (a) Have the knowledge (that you shouldn’t do X) but aren’t actually thinking about it at the moment of action. (b) Or, are actually thinking about the fact that you shouldn’t be doing X while you are doing X. Perhaps doing X while actively thinking “I shouldn’t do X” seems “shocking.” But it’s not so shocking if you aren’t actively thinking about the knowledge at that moment.

Also, since there are two kinds of premises in practical reasoning (general/universal ones and specific/particular ones), there’s no reason why you can’t “have” both of them when you act against your knowledge, but only be actively using the universal one, not the particular one. This matters because it’s particular things we actually do.

It also makes a difference what kind of universal premise it is. It can be a general statement about you (the agent), or it can be about the thing or situation. So, for example:

• Case A (Knowledge seems active): You know that “dry foods are good for every human being” and you also know the particular fact: “I am a human being.”
• Case B (Knowledge may be inactive for the particular): You know the universal fact that “food of type X is dry,” but you don’t know the particular fact that “this specific food right here in front of me is of type X.” Or maybe you do possess that particular knowledge, but it’s not active in your mind at that moment.

So, these various senses of “knowing” will make a massive difference here. “Knowing” that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing might seem perfectly normal if the knowledge is inactive or general, while “knowing” it in an active, particular sense might seem astonishing if you still act against it.

Furthermore, there’s yet another way that people can “have knowledge” that is different from the ones we’ve mentioned so far. Within the category of “having the knowledge but not using it,” we know there’s a different sense of “having it” where you kind of have it but also kind of don’t have it – like someone who’s asleep, or mad, or drunk. And isn’t that exactly the condition people are in when they’re in the grip of those strong feelings or passions? Anger, intense sexual desire, and various other things like that actually alter your physical state in obvious ways, and sometimes they even drive people insane. So, it makes clear sense to say that people who lose their self-control are in the same sort of condition as those people (asleep, mad, or drunk).

The fact that they can still say all the arguments that come from their knowledge means nothing. After all, even people who are drunk or mad can recite scientific proofs or verses from poets like Empedocles. And when children first learn about right and wrong, they can string together the arguments, but they don’t yet truly know what they mean. They have to mature and grow into those ideas, and that takes time. When people say all the right things in the middle of a loss of self-control, we can think of them as being like actors reciting lines they don’t fully internalize at that moment.

We might also try looking into the cause of lack of self-control using a more scientific or logical approach. Like this: There’s one kind of belief that’s universal (a general rule), and another kind that’s about particular facts (the latter determined by perception, of course). And when these two kinds of beliefs come together to form a single new belief in your mind, then, in many cases (like theoretical reasoning), your soul is bound to assert that conclusion. In special practical cases, where the conclusion is “I should do X,” you’re bound to do X right away.

For example, suppose your premises are:

• Universal premise: “If it’s sweet, I must have a taste of it.”
• Particular premise: “This thing here is sweet” (i.e., this particular bit of food). As soon as you put them together in your mind, you’re also bound to act on that conclusion (i.e., eat it) – if you can, and if nothing prevents you.

So now, consider a case where you have conflicting beliefs:

• You have one universal belief telling you not to have a taste (e.g., “Sweet things are unhealthy and should be avoided”).
• But you have another universal belief active in your mind saying that “Every sweet thing is delicious.”
• And you have the particular premise active: “This thing here is sweet.”
• And, crucially, physical desire (appetite) happens to be present as well.

In this situation, there’s one universal rule telling you not to act, but desire is driving you on (because desire can set all your bodily parts in motion). The active reasoning becomes: “Every sweet thing is delicious” + “This is sweet” => “This is delicious and to be pursued.” So, it turns out that, in a sense, it’s actually a form of reason (the belief that sweet things are delicious) and a particular belief (“this is sweet”) that cause your loss of self-control, leading you to act against the other universal rule (“sweet things should be avoided”). But the belief “every sweet thing is delicious” doesn’t in itself contradict correct reason (the rule about health). It only contradicts it because it happens to meet with overwhelming desire. It’s desire that really opposes correct reason, not necessarily the minor belief that leads to action.

(So, that’s why animals can’t “lack self-control” in the human sense; because they don’t have universal notions or abstract rules. All they have is an impression or image of particular facts, and memory of particular facts.)

As for how your fit of “not realizing” what you’re doing dissipates, and how you get your knowledge back after a loss of self-control – well, the explanation is the same as for someone who’s been drunk or asleep and then sobers up or wakes up. It isn’t specific to this experience of lacking self-control. We should ask physiologists about the mechanisms.

And since that final premise (“this particular thing is X”) is a belief about something perceived by the senses, and it’s the one that determines our actions, that’s the premise you either don’t have at all while you’re in the grip of emotion, or you only have it in such a way that “having it” doesn’t really mean actually knowing it or being guided by it. It just means you might be able to mouth the words, like the drunk guy reciting Empedocles. And since that final term (the particular fact) isn’t a universal principle, and isn’t really part of knowledge in the same way as a universal principle is, it seems we do even get the result Socrates was after, in a way. Because it isn’t what we take to be knowledge in the strict sense (i.e., knowledge of universal, rational principles) that gets disrupted or “dragged around” by the effects of feeling and emotion – it’s just your perceptual knowledge or awareness of the particular facts of the situation.

Alright, that’s all we need to say for now about whether or not it’s possible to know that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing when your self-control fails (and if so, in what sense of “know”). Let’s move on.

4. The Scope of Self-Control and Lack of Self-Control

Is there a standard sense of “lacking self-control” – without needing to add “about X” or “about Y”? And if so, what kinds of things does it apply to? Or are there just the various particular forms of lacking self-control (e.g., regarding anger, honor, gain)? That’s what we should talk about next.

So, first, it’s quite clear that:

• Having self-control,
• Being resilient (able to endure hardship),
• Lacking self-control, and
• Being soft (unable to endure hardship) …are all to do with pleasures and pains.

Some things that give us pleasure are necessary for life. Others, though not essential, are worth having for their own sake, but you can have too much of them. The necessary sources of pleasure are the bodily ones. I mean things like the pleasures of:

• Eating and drinking (related to nourishment).
• Sex.
• And all the kinds of physical pleasures that we earlier said were involved in being lecherous (unrestrained with sex) and gluttonous (unrestrained with food), or, conversely, in being moderate with these things.

The other sources of pleasure are non-essential but are desirable in themselves. I mean things like:

• Winning
• Being respected
• Being rich
• And those kinds of good and enjoyable things.

(a) Lack of self-control with non-essential pleasures (qualified sense): So, when people go too far (overshoot correct reason in their own minds) with regard to these non-essential but desirable things, we don’t simply say they “lack self-control” in a general way. We qualify it. We say:

• “He has no self-control when it comes to money.”
• “She has no self-control when it comes to fame.”
• “He can’t control his temper.”

We don’t just say that person “has no self-control” without specifying the area. This is because these cases are different from the standard lack of self-control, and we only describe them that way by resemblance or analogy. It’s like with an Olympic champion who is also named “Man.” The general expression “man” was only a little bit different from the name that specifically referred to him, but the specific reference makes quite a difference in meaning.

Here’s a way to see the difference: We blame people for general failures of self-control (regarding bodily pleasures). It’s not just seen as a mistake; we think that it (sort of) makes you a bad person, or is (sort of) a vice. But nobody gets blamed in the same serious way for any of those qualified forms of lacking self-control, like being too ambitious for honor.

(b) Lack of self-control with bodily pleasures (standard sense): When it comes to physical enjoyments – the sort you can be moderate, or lecherous and gluttonous about – if someone pursues excessive pleasures not because they are choosing to, but against their choice and better judgment, that person “lacks self-control.” We don’t qualify it by saying “with respect to this or that,” as we do with someone who “can’t control his temper.” They simply “lack self-control.” This is the standard sense of the term.

You can see this in the fact that people are only called “soft” (unable to endure pain) with respect to these kinds of bodily pleasures and pains, not any of the other kinds (like emotional pain from losing respect).

This also explains why we tend to lump together:

• Lack of self-control with being lecherous and gluttonous.
• And, conversely, self-control with being moderate. But we wouldn’t think to do that with any of the qualified forms (like lack of control regarding anger or ambition). This is because standard self-control and moderation both involve the same kinds of bodily pleasures and pains.

Strictly speaking, though, while people who are lecherous/gluttonous and people who lack self-control do the same things (e.g., overeat), they aren’t in the same state of mind when they do them.

• In one case (the lecherous/gluttonous person), they are choosing to do them.
• In the other case (the person lacking self-control), they are not choosing to do them; they act against their better judgment.

That’s why we’re more likely to call someone lecherous or a glutton if they pursue excessive pleasures or avoid minor discomforts when they aren’t acting on any desire at all, or only a mild desire. This is worse than someone who does the same thing because of extremely powerful desires. Because just imagine what that first type of person (who acts badly with little desire) would do if they also felt a vigorous desire for pleasure, or really serious pain caused by a lack of basic necessities!

Alternative Explanation of Scope (Synthesized)

Some desires and pleasures are for things that are, in themselves, honorable and good. As we distinguished earlier, some things that give us pleasure are intrinsically desirable (like money, material gain, victory, respect), others are the opposite, and some are in between.

With all those kinds of honorable and good things (and the in-between kind), people aren’t criticized just for having feelings about them – just for desiring them or liking them. They’re criticized for the way they feel about them, specifically for going too far. We criticize people for pursuing one of those intrinsically honorable and good things obsessively and beyond reason. Think of people who care more than they should about respect and prestige, or more than they should about their children or parents. Because children and family are good things too, and people are praised for caring about them. But you can go too far even with these good things.

• For example, Niobe in mythology boasted she had better children than the gods, which was excessive pride.
• Or “father-loving” Satyros, who reportedly threw himself off a cliff because his father died – that was surely a really foolish and excessive thing to do.

Going too far with these inherently good things is not considered a moral failing or vice in the same way as overindulging in base bodily pleasures. This is because each of these objects (respect, family) is an intrinsically desirable thing in itself. But going too far with them is still a bad thing and should be avoided. For the same reason, there’s no way of “lacking self-control” about them in the standard, blameworthy sense. Because standard lack of self-control isn’t just something “to be avoided”; it’s also something we actually blame people for as a moral weakness.

But, by resemblance to the standard phenomenon of lacking self-control, we do speak of “lacking self-control” about these other things, but always with a qualification: “no self-control when it comes to X (e.g., honor, anger, money).” It’s like calling someone a “bad doctor” or a “bad actor.” When you say that, you wouldn’t necessarily call them simply “bad” (i.e., a bad person overall). Being a bad doctor or bad actor doesn’t amount to being a morally bad person; these specific failings just resemble general badness by analogy. And that’s clearly how it works in the case of these qualified forms of lacking self-control too.

We should assume that standard self-control and standard lack of self-control (the unqualified, blameworthy types) only apply to the things that people can be moderate, or lecherous and gluttonous, about (i.e., bodily pleasures and pains). But as for “not controlling your temper” – that’s something we only describe as a lack of self-control by analogy. That’s exactly why we qualify it with the reference to temper. The same applies when we say, “he can’t control himself when it comes to fame,” or “he’s got no control when it comes to money.”

5. Bestial and Pathological States

Some things are naturally pleasurable.

• Some of these are universally pleasurable for a given species (e.g., for humans).
• Some are only naturally pleasurable for certain classes of animals or certain types of people.

And some things aren’t naturally pleasurable, but they just come to be pleasurable through:

• Physical impairments or abnormalities.
• Habituation (getting used to them).
• In some cases, because people have depraved or corrupted natures.

And you can see dispositions (settled tendencies) in people that closely correspond to each of these sources of unnatural pleasure.

By bestial or animalistic dispositions, I mean conditions like these:

• There was a story about a slave-woman who supposedly used to cut open pregnant women and devour the fetuses.
• Or the kinds of things they say some of the savage tribes around the coast of the Black Sea take pleasure in – some reportedly like to eat raw meat or human flesh, and some supposedly supply their children to one another for banquets.
• Or the legendary cruelty of Phalaris (a tyrant who supposedly roasted people alive in a bronze bull). These are bestial or animalistic dispositions.

Other unnatural dispositions are pathological, meaning they are caused by illnesses, including insanity in some cases. Examples include:

• The man who sacrificed and ate his own mother.
• The one who supposedly ate his fellow slave’s liver.

The pathological kind of disposition may result either from people’s inborn nature or from habituation. I mean things like:

• Compulsively pulling your hair out.
• Compulsively biting your nails.
• Eating charcoal or clay.
• And, we might add (from the perspective of ancient societal norms), certain sexual behaviors considered deviant. In some people, these things arise from their nature; in others, from habituation, especially if they’re trained into them from childhood.

In all cases where the cause of such behavior is a person’s inborn nature (like some of these pathological states, or as the author viewed certain roles considered “natural”), nobody would speak of them “not being able to control” those urges in the same way we talk about a moral failure of self-control. The same goes for any pathological states that result from long-standing habituation.

So, having any of those conditions (bestial or pathological) is outside the usual bounds of being a bad person (vice). It’s also distinct from the animalistic kind of state. And having such a condition, and either controlling it or not controlling it – that’s not standard “lack of self-control.” We just call it that by resemblance or analogy – just like with someone who has fits of anger: we might say “he can’t control his emotion,” but we shouldn’t simply say “he lacks self-control” in the standard moral sense.

In fact, all extremes – extreme mental deficiency, extreme cowardliness, extreme lechery (beyond normal human bounds), extreme aggressiveness – are all either animalistic or pathological.

• A man whose nature makes him afraid of everything, even the squeak of a mouse, has an animalistic kind of cowardliness.
• The person who was terrified every time he saw a weasel – that was likely due to an illness or phobia (pathological).

As for the mentally deficient:

• Some lack the power of reason innately and live by perception alone. This is animalistic. (Some tribes of distant “barbarians” were thought to be like that.)
• Others are that way through illness (like seizures, for example) or madness. That’s pathological.

With some of these conditions, it’s possible for a person to have the condition or urge but not be controlled by it. (Imagine a Phalaris who was able to restrain his desire to eat a child, for instance, or to abuse it for some perverse sexual pleasure.) Or, a person can be controlled by these urges, as well as having them.

It’s the same with being “depraved”:

• Being a “depraved person” in the standard sense implies depravity within the normal human range.
• Then there’s the kind we qualify: X is a bestial depravity, Y is a pathological depravity, not the standard kind. In the same way, it’s clear that, yes, there’s such a thing as “failing to control” bestial urges or “failing to control” a pathological urge. But standard-sense “lack of self-control” is strictly just the kind that corresponds to normal human levels of lechery and gluttony (uncontrolled desire for ordinary bodily pleasures).

6. Lack of Control with Anger Versus Desires

It’s also the case that not controlling your temper (anger) is considered less shameful than not controlling your physical desires. Let’s look at that.

Anger seems to listen to your reason – a little bit. Only, it mishears it. It’s like those hasty servants who dash out of the room before they’ve heard the whole of what you’re telling them and then get your instructions wrong. Or it’s like dogs who start barking when they hear the slightest noise, before checking to see if it’s a friend. That’s how anger is. Because of its hot and hasty nature, it listens to reason, yes, but it doesn’t wait long enough to hear a command properly before lunging towards retaliation. Reason, or your impression of the situation, sends the signal: “You’re being insulted. You are being belittled.” Then anger, so to speak, makes a quick inference – “When someone does that sort of thing to me, I MUST ATTACK!” – and immediately gets all fired up.

But with physical desire, it’s different. Reason or perception just has to tell desire, “X will give you pleasure,” and (if there’s no control) desire lunges towards consuming X. So, this means that anger, in a sense, follows reason (even if faulty reason), but desire doesn’t follow reason in the same way. That makes yielding to uncontrolled desire more shameful. Someone who can’t control their temper is, in a way, actually overwhelmed by their own (misguided) reasoning process. In the other case (uncontrolled desire), it’s desire that overwhelms them, not reason.

Also, we are more inclined to excuse people for acting on natural impulses. After all, even with physical desires, we are more tolerant when people act on the kinds of desires that are universal to all humans, and to a degree that’s universal. And anger, and having a bad temper, is a more natural human thing than having extreme and non-necessary physical desires. (Remember the story about the man whose defense for beating up his father was: “Well, he hit his father too. And Grandpa hit his father.” Then he points to his little boy and says, “And when he grows up, he’ll hit me! It runs in the family.” Or the story of the guy being dragged across the floor by his son, who shouts, “You have to stop at the doorway!” “Why?” his son asks. “Because that’s as far as I dragged Dad!”)

Also, the more that people scheme and plot against others, the more immoral they are. A hot-tempered person isn’t usually a schemer. Anger doesn’t typically scheme; it’s right out there in the open. But lust and strong desire certainly can scheme. That’s why they call Aphrodite (the goddess of love and desire) “the Cyprus-born weaver of many wiles”; and “on her broidered girdle,” says Homer, she has those “sweet little lies, to beguile a man’s mind, be he ever so wary.” So, that kind of lack of self-control (driven by scheming desire) is more immoral, and more shameful, than failing to control your temper. That’s why lack of control over bodily desires is the standard case of “lack of self-control.” And that’s why it (kind of) makes you a bad person.

Also, if you lash out because you’re pained and upset, that’s not necessarily an act of abuse or cruelty. Anyone acting from anger precisely is acting that way from a kind of pain (the pain of being wronged). In contrast, someone who treats another person abusively often does so for their own pleasure. So, if the things we’re most right to be angered by – acts of abuse, especially sexual abuse – are the greater wrongs, then lack of self-control caused by physical desire (by lust), which can lead to such abuse, must also be the more immoral kind of lack of self-control. There’s nothing inherently abusive about reacting angrily to mistreatment.

But we need to grasp the distinctions among those physical desires and pleasures. As we said at the start, some are:

1. Normal and natural for human beings, both in their kind and in their extent.
2. Others are bestial and animalistic.
3. Others are pathological, caused either by physical or mental impairments or by illnesses.

Being moderate, or being lecherous and gluttonous, only applies to the first kind – normal human desires and pleasures. That’s why we don’t call animals “moderate” or “lecherous” or “gluttonous,” by the way – except metaphorically. We might say this if one whole species of animals, compared to another, is particularly aggressive in mating, or scoffs down everything in sight. But animals don’t have the faculty of choice or reasoning in the human sense. They are, in a way, “crazy and impulsive” by nature, much like human beings are when they are insane.

Also, when someone’s behavior is bestial, that’s actually less harmful to their own “better part” (their reason, if they had it in a human sense) than their being a bad human person (a vicious person) – though a bestial person might be a more frightening thing to encounter. This is because it’s not that their better part is corrupted, as it is in a vicious human being. A bestial creature simply doesn’t have that better rational part to begin with.

• So, it’s like comparing an inanimate evil (like a natural disaster) with an animate evil (like a malicious person). The badness of something that doesn’t have the power to initiate and devise harm (intellect) is always less destructive in a moral sense. And human intellect is just such a power for devising good or ill.
• So, it’s rather like comparing, say, a lion to an unrighteous human being. There’s a sense in which each is “worse.” But an evil human being can devise and carry out many times more harm than any beast.

7. Defining Self-Control, Lack of It, Resilience, and Softness

When it comes to the pleasures, pains, desires, and aversions that depend on touch and taste – which, we determined earlier, are the domain for being lecherous or gluttonous, or moderate – the various ways you can be are as follows:

• If you can’t resist the pleasures that most people can resist, you lack self-control.
• If you can resist the pleasures that most people can’t resist, you have self-control.
• If you can’t handle the pains that most people can handle, you’re soft.
• If you can handle the pains that most people can’t handle, you’re resilient (or tough).

The majority of people are set somewhere in between these extremes, even if they lean a little more towards the inferior states (lacking self-control and being soft).

Some pleasures are necessary for life, and some aren’t. And some are necessary up to a certain point, but too much of them, or too little, isn’t necessary. The same goes for desires and pains. That being so:

(a) The Lecherous/Gluttonous (Unrestrained) Person: Someone who pursues excessive pleasures, or pursues even necessary pleasures excessively, by choice, and for the pleasures themselves (not for some other good consequence like health) – that’s your lecherous or gluttonous man. He is called akolastos in Greek, which literally means “uncontrollable” or “unstoppable.” This is because, by definition, he never feels any regret for his choices; so, he’s considered incurable. If you don’t feel regret, you’re incurable.

• And someone who pursues pleasure too little is the opposite of that.
• The person in the middle is someone moderate.

(b) Shirkers of Pain (and a note on choice): Similarly with pains: one type of person shirks physical pains, not because they can’t handle them, but by choice. (Others shirk pain against their choice and intent. Of these, some are driven by the immediate pleasure of avoidance, and some by the need to escape the pain of their unfulfilled desire for comfort. So, those are different from one another.)

And anyone would agree that:

• If you do something shameful (e.g., commit adultery) without even feeling any desire, or from only mild desire, that’s worse than if you only do it because of a really intense desire.
• And if you hit someone when you aren’t even angry, that’s worse than doing it because you’re angry. Because if you’re the first type (acting badly with little provocation), just imagine what you’d be doing if you did feel those strong emotions!

That’s why a lecherous man (who chooses excess) is, in fact, a worse person than someone who merely lacks self-control (who succumbs against their better judgment).

Of the two types just described – people who shirk pain by choice, and people who pursue excessive pleasure by choice – the first is, more strictly, a form of being soft (if the choice is to avoid effort due to an overvaluation of comfort). The second is the lecherous or gluttonous man.

The opposite of someone who has self-control is someone who lacks self-control. The opposite of someone soft is someone resilient.

Being resilient is about holding out against pain or difficulty. But self-control is about controlling or mastering desires. And holding out against something is different from mastering it; rather in the way that not being defeated by the enemy is different from actually defeating them. That’s why self-control is a more valuable quality than resilience.

Someone who falls short here – who can’t handle the kinds of pains that most people make an effort against and succeed in enduring – that’s someone soft or delicate. Being “delicate” is another way of being soft.

• Think of someone who trails his cloak along the ground to avoid the “terrible pain and suffering” of having to lift it up.
• Or think of the hypochondriac who acts like an invalid and thinks he isn’t pitiful, even though he behaves like someone who genuinely is.

The same kind of distinctions apply to having, or lacking, self-control. The point is, if someone is overwhelmed by powerful and extreme pleasures or pains, that’s somewhat understandable.

We are more forgiving if people are overwhelmed by pleasure or pain when they put up a struggle.

• Think of Philoctetes in the play by Theodectes, who struggled with the pain of a snakebite.
• Or Cercyon in the play Alopē by Carcinus.
• Or people who try to hold back their laughter but then crack up explosively (as reportedly happened to a man named Xenophantus).

It’s only a significant moral issue when someone is overwhelmed by, or can’t withstand, the kind of pleasures or pains that most people can hold out against. This is assuming it’s not because of some natural family trait, a characteristic related to their gender (as understood at the time), or an illness (like the “softness” that was said to run in the family of the kings of Scythia, or the perceived general difference in resilience between men and women).

We also tend to think of people who “love to party” or “playboys” as lecherous (unrestrained in their desires). Actually, they’re often just soft. Partying is a form of relaxing; it’s a way of taking a break. Some people simply go too far with their relaxing. Party-lovers are in that group.

There are two main forms of lacking self-control:

1. Being impulsive: Acting without thinking.
2. Being weak: Thinking and deciding, but then failing to act accordingly.

In some cases (weakness), people deliberate beforehand and decide on the right course of action. But then, their feelings and emotions make them fail to stick to what they decided.

In other cases (impulsiveness), it’s because people haven’t deliberated that they are carried away by their emotions. It’s like how you can sometimes stop yourself from being ticklish by tickling yourself first. Some people, if they are aware ahead of time and see a tempting or painful situation coming, can “pump themselves up.” They rouse their reasoning in advance. Then, they aren’t overwhelmed when the emotion or feeling hits them, whether it’s pleasure they’re up against or pain.

It’s mostly quick-tempered people, or those who are hot-headed and passionate, who lose control in the impulsive way. Because of the speed of their temper or the intensity of their feelings, they don’t wait around for reason to do its work. They just go with their first impressions and get carried away.

8. Lack of Self-Control Versus Vice: Regret and Curability

So, a lecherous or gluttonous man (someone with the vice of overindulgence), as we said, isn’t going to regret his actions. He has chosen to behave that way and is sticking to his choice. But anyone who lacks self-control is bound to feel regret afterward. This is because they acted against their better judgment.

That’s why that paradox we mentioned earlier (about the person lacking self-control perhaps being worse than the vicious person) is, in fact, not correct. It’s actually the first type – the vicious person who chooses their bad actions – who is incurable. Lack of self-control, on the other hand, is curable because the person still recognizes what is right.

If we think of these as illnesses:

• Being a wicked or vicious person is like a chronic disease, say, dropsy or tuberculosis.
• But a loss of self-control is more like an intermittent illness, like a seizure. One is a constant defect of character, while the other only strikes now and then.

In general, lacking self-control is a different kind of thing from being a bad person (having a vice).

• For one thing, you can be a bad person without fully realizing it (your moral principles might be entirely corrupted).
• But you can’t lack self-control without realizing it (you are aware of the conflict between your reason and your actions).

And of people who do lack self-control, the ones who are impulsive and “lose their heads” are actually better people than the ones who retain their reason but don’t stick to it (the “weak” type). The second, weak sort can be overwhelmed by a less powerful emotion, and you can’t say they act without any forethought, like the impulsive sort. Someone who lacks self-control (especially the weak type) is like those people who get drunk quickly, without drinking a lot of wine – and on less wine than it takes for most people to get drunk.

Alright, so it’s clear that lacking self-control doesn’t automatically make you a bad person (in the sense of having a fixed vice). (It makes you sort of a bad person, arguably, because you do bad things.) This is because your actions are contrary to your choices and aims regarding what is good. But being a bad person (vicious) is all about your choices and aims themselves being bad.

Having said that, these two states (lacking self-control and being vicious) certainly can amount to the same thing when it comes to your actions. Remember what Demodocus said about the Milesians: “The Milesians aren’t stupid. But they sure act like it.” It’s the same with people who lack self-control: they aren’t inherently immoral people in their core beliefs, but they’ll still do wrong actions.

So, here are two different types of people:

• Person A (Lacks self-control): This is the kind of person who – not because they’re convinced they should do so – pursues excessive physical pleasures against their own correct reasoning.
• Person B (Vicious/Lecherous): This person, because they are the kind of person who indulges excessively, is actually convinced they should pursue those pleasures.

So, it’s the first type (Person A) who can be fairly easily talked into behaving differently and can be cured. But the second type (Person B) can’t be easily cured. Here’s why: Being a good person, or being a nasty (vicious) person, either preserves or destroys your fundamental ethical starting point. In the context of actions, your “starting point” means your ultimate purpose or goal in life. This starting point plays the same role in ethics as basic assumptions or axioms do in mathematical problems. So, just as in mathematics, here too, it isn’t the job of reason alone to explain or justify our ultimate ethical starting points. No. It’s our goodness of character – coming either from our nature or from good habits and upbringing – that makes us have the right belief about that starting point (what the ultimate good is).

So, in this context:

• Someone like that, with the right starting point, is moderate (if they also act accordingly).
• And a lecherous, gluttonous man is the opposite: he has the wrong starting point regarding pleasures.

But then there’s another kind of person: someone who’s prone to being unhinged by emotion and going against their own correct reasoning. This is someone over whom emotion and feeling exert just enough power to stop them from actually doing what correct reason is telling them to do. However, the emotion is not powerful enough to turn them into the sort of person who’s convinced they actually should be pursuing those kinds of pleasures with abandon. That’s the person who lacks self-control. They are a better person than the lecherous man, and not a bad person in the normal sense of being vicious. This is because the best part of him, that ethical starting point (his understanding of what is truly good), is still there, intact.

And then finally, there’s the person who’s the opposite of that: someone who is able to stick to what reason tells them to do and doesn’t get unhinged by emotion. This is the self-controlled person.

So, it should be obvious from all this that self-control is a good quality, and lack of self-control is a bad one.

9. Self-Control: Sticking to Correct Reason and Choices

So, is it self-control if you stick to reason, whatever it says, or to a choice of whatever sort – or only if the reason and choice are correct? And is it a lapse of self-control if you fail to stick to any choice, of whatever sort, or to reason whatever it says? Or is it only a lapse if what reason says is false, or if the choice isn’t correct? (We raised this puzzle earlier.)

Maybe the answer is that, incidentally, yes, you could be sticking to, or not sticking to, any choice at all. But if we mean self-control in itself (per se), then your reason has to be saying something true, and your choice has to be correct.

Let me explain. Suppose someone chooses or pursues X in order to get Y. That means that, in itself (per se), they are pursuing and choosing Y. They are only incidentally choosing and pursuing X (as a means to Y). And the standard or primary sense of “choosing” or “pursuing” is the “in itself” one – the ultimate aim. So yes, in a loose sense, you can be sticking to or deviating from any “opinion” whatsoever. But by the normal sense of “opinion” in this context (when talking about good choices), it has to be a true one, based on correct reason.

There’s another class of people who “stick to their opinion”: we call them pig-headed or stubborn. These are people who are hard to persuade and can’t be easily made to change their minds.

• They certainly bear a little resemblance to people with self-control, rather in the same way that an extravagant man is a little bit like a generous one, or a reckless man is a little bit like someone bold.
• But they’re also different, and in multiple ways.
• When someone has self-control, it’s emotion and desire that can’t shift them from their reasoned choice. They are certainly open to persuasion by good reason under the right circumstances.
• But with pig-headed people, it’s reason that can’t shift them. They are certainly susceptible to desires. As a matter of fact, a lot of them are precisely driven by pleasures.

Pig-headed people can be: (a) Fanatics (opinionated and self-willed). (b) Ignorant. (c) Yokels (boorish or uncultured). Of these, fanatics are certainly motivated by both pleasure and pain. They relish the “victory” when you can’t get them to change their mind, and they’re distraught when their ideas – their decrees and dogmas, so to speak – aren’t enacted. So, they’re actually more like people who lack self-control than people who have it.

There are also people who fail to stick to what they’ve decided, but not because they lack self-control in the blameworthy sense. The case of Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ play Philoctetes is an example. It’s true he failed to stick to his decision (to deceive Philoctetes) because of a kind of pleasure. But it was an honorable pleasure. Telling the truth was the honorable thing for him to do, and he’d been persuaded to lie by Odysseus. The general point is: just because someone is doing something for pleasure, that doesn’t always mean they’re lecherous, or a bad person, or that they lack self-control. It has to be a shameful pleasure for it to count as a lapse.

There’s also the kind of person who enjoys physical pleasures less than one should, and who fails to stick to their reasoning because of that feature of their character (their lack of normal desire for pleasure). Someone with self-control is between that person and someone who lacks self-control. I’ll explain:

• Someone who lacks self-control fails to stick to their reasoning because something in them (their desire for pleasure) is too strong.
• This other kind of person (who enjoys pleasure too little) fails to stick to their reasoning because their desire for normal pleasures is too weak.
• Someone with self-control (who is in the middle) does stick to what reason says, without either of those extremes (too much desire or too little desire) shifting them off course.

And if having self-control is a good thing, then it must be that both of these opposing character traits (lacking self-control due to excessive desire, and this unnamed state of being unmoved by normal pleasure) are bad – just as people assume they are. It’s just that, because one of them (being unmoved by normal pleasure) is observed in so few people and so rarely, we tend to think of lacking self-control (due to excessive desire) as the only opposite of having self-control. This is like the way we often think the only opposite of being moderate is being lecherous and overindulgent.

And since we often use words just on the basis of a resemblance, here too we’ve come to speak of the “self-control” of someone who is actually moderate, because of the resemblance between them. After all:

• Someone with self-control never does anything contrary to reason on account of physical pleasures.
• Exactly the same is true for someone who is moderate. The difference is:
• The self-controlled person has bad desires but isn’t carried away by them.
• The moderate person doesn’t have bad desires in the first place, or at least doesn’t enjoy things that go against reason.

Then there’s the resemblance between someone who lacks self-control and someone who is lecherous or gluttonous (vicious). They’re different kinds of people, of course, even though they both pursue physical pleasures. The difference is:

• The lecherous/gluttonous person thinks, “This is what I should do.”
• The person lacking self-control thinks, “I should not be doing this,” but does it anyway.

10. Practical Wisdom, Cleverness, and Lack of Self-Control

Also, it’s not possible for the same person to be practically wise and lack self-control. We showed earlier that being practically wise implies being a morally good person as well. Also, you’re not wise just by knowing what you should do; you also have to be good at actually doing it. And someone who lacks self-control isn’t good at actually doing what they know is right.

But there’s no reason why you can’t be clever and lack self-control. That’s why some people, sometimes, seem like they’re wise, but also show a lack of self-control. It’s because they are clever, and being clever differs from being practically wise only in that subtle way that we explained in our earlier discussion: in terms of their means-end reasoning they’re very close, but they differ in terms of their underlying choice and moral intent.

Also, someone who lacks self-control isn’t like someone who knows what they should do and is actually thinking clearly about it at the moment of temptation. They’re more like someone who’s asleep or drunk – their knowledge is present but not active.

Also, though they are certainly acting wilfully (because, in a sense, they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it), they’re not wicked people in the full sense. This is because their underlying choice or principle about what is good generally remains decent. They’re sort of “semi-wicked.” And they’re not unethical people in the sense of planning evil, because they don’t typically plan the harm they do. By definition, they either: (a) Fail to stick to what they did plan (if the plan was good). (b) Or, they are the hot-headed, impulsive types who act without any planning at all.

Someone who lacks self-control is like a city that passes all the resolutions that it should and has perfectly good laws, but fails to observe any of them. It’s like that joke by the poet Anaxandrides: Person A: “The city has decreed…” Person B: “Yeah, the city where no one gives a hoot about the law!”

A wicked or evil person, by contrast, is like a city that does observe its laws, but actually has wicked laws.

Having or lacking self-control is about going beyond, or falling short of, the average person’s character-state regarding these matters. It’s about being able to stick to what you’ve decided, more than, or less than, most people are capable of doing.

Of the different kinds of lack of self-control, the one that’s easier to cure is the kind of lapse experienced by impulsive people. This is easier to cure than the condition of people who do deliberate but then fail to stick to their decision (the “weak” type). Plus, people who lack self-control through bad habits are easier to cure than people who seem to have it in their nature. A habit is easier to change than your fundamental nature. After all, that’s exactly what makes a habit hard to change, too – the fact that it becomes like a “second nature.” As the poet Evenus says:

“Training yourself, dear friend, takes a very long time to accomplish. But when it comes to an end, it will form a new part of your nature.”

Alright, so we’ve said what self-control is, and what lack of self-control is. We’ve also discussed being resilient and being soft, and how those dispositions relate to one another. We’re done with that topic.

11. Pleasure and Pain: A New Topic

Now, let’s consider pleasure and pain. Moral and political philosophy is the right place for thinking about these, because it’s the part of philosophy that makes the master plan for life. It lays out life’s ultimate goal, which we can then use as our standard for calling anything good or bad in an unqualified, absolute sense.

Plus, investigating pleasure and pain is something we really have to do for a couple of reasons:

1. We made the claim earlier that “being a morally good or bad person is all about pleasures and pains.”
2. Most people say that a blessed, flourishing life must include pleasure. That’s why even the Greek word for someone who is blessed, makarios, comes from the word for feeling joy, pleasure, or happiness: khairein.

12. Common Views About Pleasure

Alright, so here are some common views people hold about pleasure:

(a) Some people think that no pleasure is a good thing at all. They believe this either because pleasure is not good in itself, or because it doesn’t lead to anything good. They take the view that what’s good and what’s pleasant are simply not the same thing.

(b) Others think that some pleasures are good, but most pleasures are bad.

(c) And there’s a third position: that even if all pleasures are a good thing, pleasure still can’t possibly be the highest good in life.

Now, let’s look at the arguments people use to say that pleasure is not a good thing at all:

1. Process vs. Endpoint: Every pleasure is seen as a process of change towards some natural state or equilibrium. No process of change can be the same kind of thing as its endpoint or goal. For example, the act of building is not the same kind of thing as the finished house.
2. Moderation Avoids Pleasure: A moderate person (who has the virtue of temperance) avoids many pleasures.
3. Wisdom Seeks Freedom from Pain: A wise person pursues freedom from pain, not the active pursuit of pleasure.
4. Pleasure Hinders Thinking: Pleasures get in the way of clear thinking, and the more intense the pleasure, the more it gets in the way. Take sexual pleasure, for example: it’s said to be impossible to have any rational thought at all when you’re experiencing it.
5. No Skill of Pleasure: There’s no technical expertise or skill that governs or produces pleasure in a reliable way. Yet surely every good thing (like health or a good house) is the product of some form of expertise or skill.
6. Children and Animals Pursue Pleasure: The fact that children and animals instinctively pursue pleasures suggests that pleasure is a base or lower kind of thing, not a uniquely human good.

And here are the arguments people use to claim that not all pleasures are good:

1. Some Pleasures Are Shameful: Some pleasures are shameful, and people are criticized or reproached for indulging in them.
2. Some Pleasures Are Harmful: Some pleasurable things are harmful, in the sense that they can make you ill or lead to bad consequences.

As for the claim that pleasure couldn’t be the best thing in life (the highest good), people say that on the grounds that:

1. It’s not an endpoint or goal in itself; it’s merely an A-to-B process, something that brings about a state but isn’t the state itself.

So, those are pretty much the common arguments people make about pleasure.

Critiquing Negative Views on Pleasure

In fact, it doesn’t follow from any of these arguments that pleasure is not a good thing, or that it can’t be the very best thing in life. We’ll make that clear from the following points.

So, first of all, “good” can mean two things:

1. It can mean simply good or good in an absolute sense.
2. Or it can mean good for a given person in particular circumstances. A corresponding distinction will apply to natures, dispositions, physical states, and also to motions and processes that bring about those states.

Now, of pleasures that are sometimes considered “bad”:

• Some are, normally speaking, bad, but they might not be bad for a given person; maybe for person X they are desirable in a specific context.
• And some pleasures maybe aren’t even unequivocally desirable for person X all the time; they might just be desirable sometimes, or for a little while, but not as a general rule.
• And some of them aren’t even really pleasures at all; they’re just experienced as pleasures. These are the ones that involve pain as well, and that are often part of medical treatment – the sort of “pleasures” experienced by people who are ill (like the relief from an itch, which might involve scratching that is itself slightly painful).

Also, one kind of good is activity, and another kind is a disposition or state. It’s merely incidental that processes that restore us to our natural physiological state (like eating when hungry) give us pleasure. In fact, pleasure is an activity – in the case of physical desires, it’s the activity of the remaining, intact part of our natural physiological disposition or state. (There are, after all, also pleasures that involve no prior pain and no physical desire, like the pleasures of contemplation, where our nature is not lacking anything at any stage.)

You can see this distinction in the fact that people don’t find the same thing pleasurable when their nature is in the process of being refilled (e.g., when very hungry or recovering) as they do once it is restored and settled.

• Once their nature is restored and in a balanced state, they enjoy things that are, in the normal sense, pleasurable.
• But when their nature is in the process of being refilled from a state of depletion, they may even enjoy the very opposite things. For example, someone very ill or deprived might find sharp or bitter things pleasant, and none of those is naturally or normally pleasurable.
• Therefore, those experiences are not natural pleasures either. Because the distinction between different kinds of pleasurable things (some are naturally pleasurable, some aren’t) implies an equivalent distinction between the pleasures arising from them.

Also, there doesn’t always have to be some other thing that’s better than the pleasure itself. Some people say that an endpoint (like a finished house) must always be better than the process of getting to that endpoint (like the act of building). But this isn’t always true for pleasure.

• Pleasures are not always processes of becoming something else. Many pleasures are activities – the active exercising of our abilities. As such, they are often endpoints or goals in themselves.
• Pleasures don’t only arise when we’re changing from one state to another (like from hungry to full). They often arise when we are simply using some part of our nature or some ability we have.
• Not all pleasures have some other thing as their final goal. That’s mainly true for pleasures that come when people are being restored or brought to a completion of their natural state (like the pleasure of eating when famished, which leads to the state of being full).

That’s why it’s simply not right to say that pleasure is merely a “perceptible process of change.” It would be better to say that pleasure is the exercising of our natural dispositions or capacities when that exercise is unimpeded (not blocked or hindered). Instead of calling it “perceptible,” we should say “unimpeded.”

Ultimately, the reason some people think that pleasure must be a process is perhaps because they recognize that pleasure is a very important good – often a form of activity. They then mistakenly think that all activity must be a process of change. But it’s not; an activity can be an end in itself.

As for the idea that pleasures are bad because some pleasurable things make you ill, you might just as well argue that some healthy things are bad because they make you lose money.

• Yes, maybe those things are bad in that specific respect (costing money, or in the case of some pleasures, potentially harming health if pursued excessively).
• But that certainly doesn’t make them bad things overall.
• I mean, for that matter, even intense philosophical study is sometimes bad for your physical health if you neglect your body. But that doesn’t make philosophy itself a bad thing.

Also, pleasure does not “get in the way of” thinking, or any other good disposition, if it’s the very pleasure that arises from that disposition itself. Only pleasures that arise from something else (external or unrelated pleasures) do that. Obviously, the pleasures that arise from philosophical thinking and from learning are only going to make you better at that style of thinking and better at learning.

As for the claim that no pleasure is the product of a technical expertise or skill, well, that’s just what we’d expect to be the case. No other kind of activity (in the sense of an unimpeded exercise of a capacity) is the product of an expertise either. Expertise or skill usually produces capacities (like the ability to build) or physical products (like a house). (Having said that, expertise in making perfume and culinary expertise do seem to have pleasure as their object or aim, don’t they?)

As for the claims that:

• A moderate person avoids pleasure,
• A wise person pursues a life free from pain (not pleasure), and
• Children and animals pursue pleasure, …all of those arguments can be dismissed by the same single point.

We’ve explained in what sense some pleasures are simply good, and in what sense not all pleasures are good. The fact is, it’s only certain kinds of pleasures that even animals and children pursue, and that a wise person aims “not to be disturbed” by. These are the ones that involve physical craving and pain – that is, the bodily pleasures. They are the ones that can be problematic, especially the excessive amounts of those pleasures that define someone as lecherous and gluttonous. That’s why a moderate person only avoids those specific excesses. Moderate people have their own proper pleasures too, after all.

13. Pleasure as a Good, and Its Relation to Flourishing

And of course, it’s also generally agreed that pain is a bad thing and something to be avoided. In some cases, pain is straightforwardly a bad thing. In other cases, it’s bad because it hinders us in some respect. But the opposite of something that is to be avoided (because it is bad and to be avoided) is good. So, it follows that pleasure must be a good thing.

The way the philosopher Speusippus tried to get around that argument – by saying that pleasure is like the way “bigger” is the opposite of “smaller” and also the opposite of “equal” (implying the opposite of bad could be neutral, not necessarily good) – that doesn’t work. Nobody is going to agree that pleasure is, by its very definition, a bad thing (in the way “smaller” implies a deficiency compared to “bigger”).

And there’s no particular reason why some sort of pleasure can’t be the best thing in life (the highest good), even if some particular pleasures are bad. This is just like how some kind of knowledge might be the highest good, even though some forms of knowledge might be trivial or even harmful.

And if each of our dispositions (of mind or character) has its corresponding unimpeded activities, and if flourishing (true happiness) is either the exercising of all our dispositions or at least one of them, surely that activity, that exercising, must take its most desirable possible form if it is unimpeded. But that’s how we just defined pleasure – as unimpeded activity. So, that would mean that the best thing in life (the highest good) is some form of pleasure, even if it turned out that most particular pleasures people pursue are (normally speaking) bad.

That’s why people all assume that a flourishing, blessed life must also be a pleasant life. We all weave pleasure into our conception of human flourishing. And we do this with good reason. Because no activity can be perfect or complete if it’s impeded or hindered. And flourishing is understood as something complete and perfect.

That’s why, to flourish, you also need:

• Goods of the body (like health).
• External goods (like friends and resources).
• Goods of fortune (good luck). You need these so that you aren’t thwarted or hindered in these respects. People who claim that even someone who’s being tortured on the rack or suffering through the most awful disasters is still flourishing as long as he’s a good man are talking pure nonsense, and they probably know they are.

And it’s because we need luck as an extra component for a fully flourishing life that some people think that being lucky or fortunate is the same thing as flourishing. But it isn’t. In fact, even good fortune, if you have too much of it, can become an impediment to true flourishing. (Maybe at that point, we shouldn’t even call it “good fortune” anymore, if it hinders rather than helps you flourish.)

The fact that “all things” – all animals and human beings – pursue pleasure is good evidence that it is, in some sense, the highest good. As the poet Hesiod says: “A truth set forth will never fade away, when it’s a thing that many nations say.”

But people don’t all have the same nature or the same best-possible state of being (and nobody thinks they do). So, they also don’t all pursue the same pleasure. However, they do all pursue pleasure. And maybe they’re not pursuing the pleasure they think they are, or the pleasure they’d say they’re pursuing. Maybe they are all, in some fundamental way, pursuing the same ultimate pleasure. This could be because all living things have something divine in their nature.

But physical pleasures have come to monopolize the term “pleasure.” This is because they’re the kind that people most often direct themselves towards, and they are the kind that everyone experiences. So, since they’re the only kind most people are familiar with, most people think they’re the only kind of pleasure there is.

It’s also clear that if pleasure isn’t a good thing (along with the activity it accompanies), then – bizarrely – it won’t be the case that a person who’s flourishing is living a pleasant life! Why would they need any pleasure if it’s not a good thing? They could just as well live a painful life and still be considered flourishing. Because, on that view (if pleasure isn’t good or bad), pain isn’t good or bad either. So why would you bother avoiding pain? This means that the life of a good man won’t be a more enjoyable one either, if his virtuous activities are also no more enjoyable than anyone else’s activities. This conclusion seems wrong.

14. Understanding Bodily Pleasures and True Pleasure

On the subject of physical pleasures specifically: Some people claim that “some pleasures are extremely desirable, namely the honorable kind, but not physical pleasures – not the pleasures that lecherous and gluttonous people pursue.” Here’s something for those people to think about: Why, in that case, are the pains that are the opposite of those bodily pleasures considered bad? After all, the opposite of what’s bad is good.

Is it that necessary physical pleasures are “good” just in the sense that even something that’s not bad can be considered a kind of good? Or are they good only up to a certain point? Let me explain.

• With some dispositions and processes of change, you can’t go too far – more is always better – so there’s also no such thing as too much of the pleasure associated with them.
• But with others, you can go too far, so there is such a thing as too much pleasure from them.

And there is such a thing as going too far with respect to bodily goods. We only fault someone for pursuing excessive amounts of them, not for pursuing necessary pleasures. After all, everybody enjoys, in some manner or other, food, wine, and sex. But not everyone enjoys them the right way or to the right degree.

It’s the reverse with pain. There’s nothing wrong with you if you avoid excessive pain. But one shouldn’t aim to avoid pain entirely, as if all pain is simply the opposite of desirable pleasure. Pain is only the opposite of excessive pleasure for someone who is mistakenly pursuing that excessive pleasure.

It isn’t enough just to state what’s true about pleasure. You also need to give an explanation for why people get it wrong, or why things might appear differently. Because that strengthens our conviction in the truth. When you have a clear, plausible explanation for why something seems true even though it isn’t, that makes you all the more confident in the actual truth. So, we have to say why it is that physical pleasures often seem more desirable than other kinds.

First of all, it’s because they drive away pain. When people are experiencing extremes of pain, they often pursue extreme pleasure as a kind of remedy. In general, this means physical pleasure. These remedial pleasures end up being very intense – which is why people pursue them – because they are highlighted by the contrast with the opposite extreme of pain.

(And pleasure sometimes seems not to be a good thing, as we said earlier, for these two main reasons: (a) because some pleasures are the actions of a bad nature – whether bad from birth, as in the case of a beast, or bad from habituation, like those of bad people. And (b) because some pleasures are remedies for something lacking, like eating when hungry – and it’s better to be in the required healthy state than to be in the process of getting into it. Some pleasures also arise when people are being brought to a state of completion or restoration, so those pleasures are only indirectly good, not good in themselves.)

Also, people pursue physical pleasures, because of their intensity, when they aren’t capable of enjoying other, higher kinds of pleasures. Some people are so desperate for any kind of pleasure that they even find ways to make themselves thirsty, just to experience the pleasure of quenching that thirst.

• So, when the physical pleasures they pursue are harmless, there’s really nothing wrong with that.
• When they’re harmful, that’s bad.

The problem is that most people don’t have many other things they enjoy. Also, for most people, even the neutral state of experiencing neither pleasure nor pain is actually somewhat painful. That’s part of our human nature. “An animal is always in some kind of pain,” as the philosopher Anaxagoras said. Physiologists say the same: they claim even seeing and hearing are, in a subtle way, slightly painful or effortful. It’s just that after a while, we get used to them, so they say.

Along the same lines:

• Young people, because they’re growing, are in a condition that’s a bit like being drunk, and youth itself is often experienced as a pleasure.
• Impulsive, “black-biled” (melancholic or intensely passionate) types, by contrast, are in constant need of pleasure as a form of medication. Their body is continually over-stimulated because of the mixture of their bodily humors (according to ancient medical theory), so they’re always in a state of intense desire. And pleasure – whether it’s the opposite kind of pleasure that calms them, or any pleasure as long as it’s strong – drives out their pain or discomfort. For these reasons, such people tend to become lecherous or bad people if they don’t manage these tendencies.

With pleasures where there are no corresponding pains (pleasures that are not merely remedies for a lack), there’s also no way of going too far with them. These are the pleasures that arise from things that are naturally pleasurable in themselves and not just indirectly pleasurable. Pleasures that act as a remedy I call “indirectly pleasurable.” (What happens is that the remaining, healthy part of you is active in some way that results in your being cured or restored, and that process in turn gives the false impression that the relief itself is a direct, primary pleasure.)

What’s naturally pleasurable for a being (like a human) are those things that bring about the action and activity characteristic of that being’s particular nature when it is in a good state.

But there’s no one single thing that can give us pleasure all the time, because our human nature isn’t simple or uniform. There’s another element in it (our physical body) besides intellect, insofar as we are material, perishable beings. So, that means that if you’re doing one kind of thing (e.g., purely intellectual activity), it’s actually unnatural for your other nature (your body) if it’s neglected. (And if you try to bring them into perfect balance, then what you’re doing might not feel either particularly painful or particularly pleasurable.)

Certainly, if there were something here on earth that had a simple, uniform nature (like a purely rational being), then for that thing, one and the same activity would always be the most pleasurable possible. That’s why God, who is conceived as perfectly simple and unchanging, forever enjoys the same, single, uniform pleasure. (Activity doesn’t always require motion and change; there’s also the exercising of changelessness or being in a perfect state. Indeed, there is often more pleasure in rest and tranquility than in constant motion.)

But “variety is the spice of life,” as the poet says. That’s because of a kind of defect or limitation in us humans.

• Just as it’s a bad person who’s fickle and shifty in their character.
• Similarly, it’s a defective or limited nature that’s constantly in need of change and variety in its pleasures. It needs change because it isn’t simple or perfectly self-sufficient or good.

Alright, so we’ve talked about having and lacking self-control. We’ve talked about pleasure and pain. We’ve explained what each of those things is and in what sense some of them are good and some are bad.

We still need to talk about friendship and love.

Book VIII

1. Introduction to Friendship

Next, it would make sense to talk about friendship and love. This is because friendship is a kind of virtue, or at least it’s very closely tied to being a good person.

Friendship is also absolutely necessary for life.

• Who would choose to live their life without any friends or family, even if they had all other good things?
• In fact, people with lots of money, and those with great authority and power, probably need friends and family more than anyone. Why?
  • What’s the point of having all those resources if you can’t use them to do good for others? And “doing good” most often means doing good for friends and family. This is also the most praiseworthy kind of doing good.
  • How could they protect or maintain their power and wealth without friends and family? The greater the power and wealth, the more easily it can slip away without loyal support.
• If you’re broke, or facing one of life’s other misfortunes, people say your family and friends are the only ones you can turn to for help.

Friendship also helps people at different stages of life:

• Young people need help from family and friends to avoid making mistakes.
• The old need friends and family to care for them and help with things they can no longer manage due to frailty.
• People in their prime need friends for carrying out honorable actions. As the saying goes, “better when two men go together,” because with friends, they are better at thinking things through and at getting things done.

Also, there seems to be a natural love:

• In parents for their children, and in children for their parents. This isn’t just in human beings but also in birds and most animals.
• Among members of the same species, there’s a natural affection for one another. This is especially true of human beings, which is why you are praised simply for “loving your fellow human beings” (philanthropy).
• When you’re traveling, you soon see that any human being can feel like family, and a potential friend, to any other human being.

Friendship also seems to hold cities together. Lawmakers often seem more concerned about fostering friendship among citizens than about making them perfectly righteous through laws.

• What lawmakers mostly aim for in their citizens is harmony, which is basically the same thing as friendship.
• They try above all to eliminate civil strife and extreme partisanship, through which citizens become, in effect, enemies.

Furthermore:

• When people are friends, that’s often all the “righteousness” they need; they don’t need much else to make them treat each other fairly.
• But people who are merely doing what’s legally right by one another (without friendship) still also need friendship for a good society.
• Of the various kinds of right and wrong, the clearest and most important form of justice is the kind that holds between friends and family.

Friendship is not just necessary; it’s also an honorable thing.

• We praise people who care about their friends and family.
• Having lots of friends is considered an honorable and good thing.
• Plus, we tend to regard people as friends if we also think of them as being good people.

However, there are various things about love and friendship that people disagree about.

• Some people say friendship is a kind of sameness – that friends always have things in common. This leads to sayings like “like attracts like” and “birds of a feather flock together.”
• But some people take the opposite view and say that people who have too much in common often dislike one another, like the proverb about two potters (who are competitors).

Some people look for more abstract, scientific principles of friendship in the workings of nature.

• The playwright Euripides, for instance, wrote poetically: “Love is in the parched Earth, yearning for the downpour. Love is in the proud, rain-swollen Sky, yearning to plunge to Earth.” (Suggesting opposites attract).
• The philosopher Heraclitus said: “opposites benefit opposites” and “different notes make the sweetest harmony,” and that the whole universe came into being “through strife” or tension between opposites.
• But then other philosophers, notably Empedocles, took the opposite view, saying that “like strives towards like.”

But let’s not bother with these questions of natural science. They’re not directly relevant to what we’re investigating here. We should be looking into human questions – anything that has a bearing on our characters, feelings, and emotions. Questions like these:

• Is friendship and love something everyone can experience, or is it impossible for bad people to have true friends?
• Is there just one kind of friendship and love, or are there several different kinds? (Some people think there’s only one kind because friendship can vary in degree – you can be more or less friendly. But that’s not a valid reason to say there’s only one type. A thing can exist in different forms and also vary in degree. We’ve talked about that general point before.)

2. What Makes Someone or Something Lovable?

We’ll get a clearer idea of things if we first figure out what is lovable. You can’t love just anything. You can only love what is lovable. And that means something that is:

1. Good
2. Pleasant (gives you pleasure)
3. Useful

A useful thing is usually useful because it’s a means to something good or pleasurable. So, that would mean the only things lovable as ultimate goals are what’s good and what’s pleasant.

So, do people love what’s objectively good, or just what’s good for them? These aren’t always the same. The same question applies to what’s pleasant.

• Well, it seems everyone loves what’s good for them.
• And although, generally speaking, “lovable” means “good,” for each individual, what’s lovable is what’s good for them.
• Plus, each person loves what seems good to them, not always what is truly good for them. But that small difference won’t change the main argument here, because what seems good for them will then also just be what seems lovable to them.

So, there are three reasons something can be “lovable.”

But loving inanimate objects (like your favorite wine) doesn’t count as friendship.

• Because they can’t love you back.
• Plus, there’s no sense in wanting what’s good for them, for their own sake. (It would be pretty bizarre to want what’s best for your wine, for instance. I suppose you might want it to be kept safe – but only so that you can have it for yourself later.) But people say you should want what’s best for a friend for the friend’s own sake.

Even when people do want the best for someone else, we still only call it goodwill, not friendship, if the feeling isn’t mutual (returned by the other person). Because friendship, they say, has to be a mutual feeling of goodwill. And we’d better add that both people also have to be aware of this mutual goodwill. Because often, someone can feel goodwill towards people they’ve never even met, perhaps because they think those people sound morally decent or useful to them. And what if one of those distant people felt the same way back? In that case, they’d apparently feel “mutual goodwill.” But how could you possibly call them friends if they aren’t even aware of how they feel about each other?

So, for people to be friends, they must:

1. Feel goodwill towards one another.
2. Be aware of this mutual goodwill.
3. Want what’s good for one another – because of one of the three lovable qualities listed above (the friend is good, pleasant, or useful).

3. The Three Kinds of Friendship

These three lovable qualities (goodness, pleasure, utility) are different from each other. So, there will also be different forms of liking or loving someone, and therefore, different kinds of friendship.

So, there are three kinds of friendship, corresponding to the three things you can love in a person. Each kind involves a mutual feeling of attachment (that both people are fully aware of). And in each kind, the people who have that attachment want what’s good for one another – but they want it in different ways, depending on exactly what it is they like about each other.

1. Friendships Based on Usefulness

• People in this kind of friendship don’t like each other for who they are in themselves. Each likes the other mainly because they are getting something good or useful out of them.
• The same goes for attachments based on pleasure. (We like people who make us laugh, for example, not necessarily for the kind of people they are overall, but because they’re fun to be around.)
• So, if your attachment to someone is based on what’s useful, you like the other person because of what’s good for you. If it’s a pleasure attachment, it’s based on what’s pleasurable for you. You don’t like the person for their essential character. What you like about them is just the fact that they’re useful to you or give you pleasure.
• These kinds of friendships are incidental. This means you don’t like the friend for being the specific person they are, but because they happen to be providing you with something good (a benefit) or something pleasant.
• This also means those friendships can easily break down if the people involved change or if the circumstances change. If they’re no longer a source of pleasure to each other, or no longer useful to each other, they stop being friends. And of course, what’s useful to a person doesn’t stay the same; first it’s one thing, then it’s something else. So, when the thing that brought them into the friendship in the first place breaks down, the friendship dissolves as well, because that was what it was based on.
• Useful friendships are especially common among old people. This is because people at that age aren’t primarily after pleasure or having fun; they often just need help and support. (And among men in their prime and young people, you find this kind of friendship in those whose main priority is material gain.)
• Friends like this don’t really spend much time together, either. After all, they may not even enjoy each other’s company beyond the usefulness. So, they don’t need their friends to spend time with them, except when they’re actually being helpful. That is to say, they enjoy their company only to the extent that they expect some direct benefit from it.
• (People usually classify xenia, or guest-friendship – the formal relationship of hospitality between individuals from different places – with this kind of useful friendship as well.)

2. Friendships Based on Pleasure

• Friendships among young people often seem to be pleasure-based. The young live by their feelings and emotions, and they mostly chase after what’s pleasurable and fun, and what’s happening in the here and now.
• But as they get older, what gives them pleasure changes. That’s why they’re quick to become friends and quick to stop being friends. Their friendships shift along with what they find pleasurable, and that kind of pleasure changes quickly.
• Falling in love (romantic attraction) is typical of young people too. That’s almost entirely based on emotion and driven by pleasure. That’s why young people often make and break these relationships so quickly. They might seem to fall in love with five different people in a short time.
• Pleasure-friends, of course, do like to spend their days together and live their lives together, because that’s exactly how they get the pleasure that their friendship involves.

3. Complete and Perfect Friendship (Friendship Between Good People)

• But complete and perfect friendship is friendship between good people, where being good people who are similar in their goodness is precisely what they have in common.
• They want what’s good for one another because they are good people, and in so far as they are good people. And that goodness is a fact about their own true selves, their character.
• Wanting what’s good for their friends for their friends’ own sake makes them friends in the fullest and truest sense. Their relationship is based on something essential about them, not something incidental like utility or temporary pleasure.
• So, their friendship lasts as long as they remain good people. And goodness of character is something durable and lasting.
• Also, in this kind of friendship, each friend isn’t just good in general but also good to his friend. Because good people are good in general, and they are also helpful and beneficial to one another.
• And they’re likewise a pleasure to each other. Because good people are pleasant in general (their character is admirable), and they also enjoy one another’s company. (Everyone enjoys their own actions and activities, and actions and activities that are like their own. Since two good people’s actions and characters are bound to be the same or similar, they will enjoy each other.)
• It makes sense that this kind of friendship should be long-lasting, because it combines all the things that there ought to be in a friendship. Every kind of friendship is based on what’s good or pleasurable (either absolutely good/pleasant, or good/pleasant for the friend) and depends on the friends being alike in some sense. And in this perfect kind of friendship, the friends have all three of these features – goodness, pleasure, and utility – present in themselves and for each other. The other two kinds of friendship (based on utility or pleasure alone) only resemble this perfect one. What is absolutely good is also absolutely pleasant (at least to good people). And these things – goodness and true pleasure – are lovable in the truest sense. So, these kinds of friends also love each other in the truest and best sense, and their friendship is the truest and best kind.
• But these kinds of perfect friendships are understandably rare, because there aren’t many people like that (truly good people). Plus, this kind of friendship takes time and closeness to develop. As the saying goes, people can’t really get to know one another until they’ve “gone through a pile of salt together” (shared many meals and experiences). So, they can’t fully accept one another and be true friends until each has gained the other’s trust and shown themselves to be truly lovable and worthy of love.
• When people are quick to start acting in a friend-like way towards one another, they may well want to be friends, but they aren’t truly friends yet – not unless both of them deserve to be loved and are convinced of that fact about each other. Wanting to be friends with someone can certainly happen quickly. Actually being friends in this deep sense is a different matter.

4. Comparing the Kinds of Friendship; Who Can Be Friends?

So, that kind of perfect friendship between good people is complete, both in its durability and in all other respects. And in every respect, both friends get the same things, or the same kind of things (like virtue, pleasure, and utility), from the friendship – exactly as a good friendship ought to be.

Pleasure-based friendship resembles perfect friendship (because good people do take pleasure in one another’s company too). Friendship based on what’s useful also resembles it (because good people are useful to one another too).

Even for those other kinds of friends (utility and pleasure friendships), the friendship lasts longer if they’re getting the same thing out of it.

• If they’re both getting pleasure, for example, and, more precisely, pleasure from the very same thing (like people who enjoy each other’s sense of humor).
• This is different from a relationship like an older suitor and his young boyfriend. That’s often a case of two people not getting pleasure from the same things. The suitor might enjoy the teenager’s physical attractiveness, while the teenager might like being pampered or receiving attention. But when the youth’s prettiness begins to fade, sometimes their relationship wanes too, because now the suitor isn’t getting the same pleasure from his looks, and the pampering might stop.
• Then again, such couples quite often do stay together if, as a result of their closeness over time, they become fond of each other’s characters, assuming they have similar characters to begin with. But when people in romantic relationships aren’t exchanging pleasure for pleasure in a balanced way – or if they’re just in it for something useful – they’re “friends” in a weaker sense and less likely to remain so for long.

In general, a friendship based on what’s useful dissolves as soon as it stops benefiting the friends. This is because they didn’t really like each other for themselves to begin with; what they really liked was advancing their own interests.

Now, who can have these kinds of friendships?

• Even bad people can have friendships with one another that are based on pleasure or what’s useful to them.
• Decent people can have these kinds of utility or pleasure friendships with bad people.
• And people who aren’t exactly good or bad can have them with anyone.
• But only good people, obviously, can have a friendship based on what they are themselves – the perfect kind of friendship. This is because bad people don’t generally enjoy being around other people like themselves, unless they’re getting some sort of benefit out of it.

Friendship between good people is also the only kind that’s proof against lies and slander.

• Because you’re hardly going to believe someone telling lies about a friend who has thoroughly proven himself to you over a long period of time.
• Plus, a key feature these friends have is that they trust one another, and they would never intentionally do one another wrong. They also have all the other qualities you expect to find in a real friendship. But in the other kinds of friendship (utility and pleasure), there’s no reason why those sorts of problems (distrust, slander, harm) can’t happen.

Now, seeing as people use the term “friends” even in cases where the friendship is based on what’s useful – like so-called friendships between city-states (alliances, which city-states seem to enter into purely on a basis of self-interest) – and for attachments that are pleasure-based, like children’s friendships, I suppose we’d better use the term “friends” in those cases too. But let’s say that really there are various kinds of friendship, and that:

• Friendship in the primary and strict sense is between good people who are friends because and in so far as they’re good people.
• The other kinds are called friendship by resemblance: they’re friends in so far as they’re a good thing to one another in some sort of way (useful or pleasant) and have something in common on that basis. Pleasure, for instance, is a good thing for people who like pleasure, and that can be a basis for a kind of friendship.

Also, these other kinds of friendship (utility and pleasure) almost never fully tie together. That’s to say, you don’t often get people who are friends both because they’re useful and pleasurable to each other in a deep and lasting way. Incidental features hardly ever match up perfectly like that for long.

So, with friendship divided into these three kinds:

• Bad people will only have friendships based on pleasure or what’s useful to them, and that’s all they’ll have in common.
• Good people, on the other hand, will have friendships based on themselves – that is, because they’re good people. So, good people are friends in the standard, truest sense. The others are friends incidentally, and they’re called “friends” only because they bear some sort of resemblance to standard-sense friends.

5. Friendship: State vs. Activity, and Factors Affecting It

Now, with moral virtues, “being good people” means either just having a certain character trait (a state or disposition) or actually exercising that trait in action. It’s the same with being friends. Friends can either be:

• Actually spending time together, enjoying each other’s company, and providing one another with good things (friendship in activity).
• Or they can be asleep, or miles apart, in which case they aren’t actively exercising their friendship, although they retain the disposition (the underlying state or capacity) to do so.

Being apart in itself doesn’t dissolve a friendship. It just stops it from being active. But if friends are apart for a very long time, that does seem to make them forget their friendship. Hence the lines: “For want of a handshake, a simple ‘G’day!’ Many a friendship fades away.”

Old people and grouches aren’t good material for friendship.

• They generally have a limited capacity for pleasure.
• And nobody can spend their day with a person who’s a pain to be with or gives them no pleasure. Our strongest natural impulse, after all, is to avoid pain and aim for pleasure.

If people approve of one another but don’t actually spend time together, that’s more like mutual goodwill than active friendship. Nothing’s as crucial to friendship as spending time together. It’s even more central than just helping one another out from a distance.

Only needy friends primarily want help. But even blessed and prosperous people want someone to spend their time with. In fact, they are the last people you’d expect to want to be solitary. And people simply can’t spend time together and do things together unless they find each other a pleasure and enjoy the same kinds of things. This is especially true in a “best friends” relationship.

So, friendship in the fullest and truest sense is friendship between good people, as we’ve now said several times. This is because, as we also said:

• What’s lovable and desirable is what’s absolutely good, or absolutely pleasurable.
• And what’s lovable for a given person is whatever is good, or pleasurable, to them.
• To a good person, another good person is lovable on both counts – because they are good, and because they are pleasant to be around.

It seems that, while the feeling of love (or affection) is an emotion, love in the sense of the ongoing relationship between friends and family is a disposition, a settled state of character.

• You can feel a momentary emotion of love or liking even for inanimate objects.
• But reciprocated love (the basis of friendship) involves choice, and choice comes from a disposition of character.
• Plus, wanting the best for the people you love, for their own sake, depends on a stable disposition, not just a fleeting emotion.

Also, by loving a friend, people are actually loving what’s good for themselves. This is because a good person, by becoming someone’s friend, becomes a source of good and part of the well-being of the person whose friend they now are. So, each friend, in loving the other, is also thereby loving and promoting their own well-being. Each friend also gives the equal of what they get in return, both in wanting the best for the other and in the pleasure they share. Because, as they say, “friendship is equality,” and it’s especially the friendship of good people that has these kinds of equality in goodwill and shared pleasure.

6. Forming Friendships: Age, Temperament, and How Many Friends?

Grouches and old people generally form friendships less easily.

• They tend to be grumpier and get less pleasure from people’s company. Enjoying each other’s company is surely the key to friendship, and especially to forming a new friendship.
• That’s why young people form friendships quickly, but old people often do not. Old people can struggle to make new friends because they may not enjoy the company of new people as readily. The same goes for grouchy individuals.
• People like that can certainly feel mutual goodwill: they can want the best for one another and they might meet each other’s material needs. But they’re hardly “friends” in the full sense, because they don’t spend much time together and don’t particularly enjoy being around one another – and these are surely key features of any true friendship.

You can’t have the complete, perfect kind of friendship with lots of people. This is similar to how you can’t be romantically in love with lots of people at once (that kind of intense love seems to be a sort of maximum feeling, and as such, something you naturally only feel towards one person at a time).

• It’s hard to feel a really strong liking for many people at the same time.
• And it’s unlikely that all of them could be truly good people.
• Plus, you’d have to get to know them all deeply and become close to all of them, which would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to do.

But it’s certainly possible to like a lot of people based on their usefulness or for the pleasure they provide. There are plenty of people like that, and the mutual benefits or enjoyment in such relationships can be established quickly.

Of these two less perfect kinds of friendship:

• The pleasure-based kind is more like real friendship, provided both friends are getting the same things out of it and enjoy each other’s company (or enjoy the same things). Friendships among young people are often like this. Pleasure-friendships tend to be more generous and less calculating (“gentlemanly”).
• A friendship based purely on what’s useful to you is more transactional and can seem a bit crude or “vulgar.”

Indeed, people who are well-off and prosperous have strictly no need for merely useful friends. But they do need friends who are a pleasure to be around because they certainly want to pass their time in someone’s company. We can all tolerate something painful or unpleasant for a short while, but you can’t possibly endure something continuously if you find it painful – not even if it were the “Form of the Good” itself (the highest abstract good) if it were somehow painful to contemplate! So, prosperous people look for friends who’ll be a pleasure to be around. And ideally, these friends will probably have to be good people as well, plus good to them (beneficial). That way, these friends will have all three qualities that friends ought to have (good, pleasant, and useful).

Powerful rulers, on the other hand, often seem to have different sets of friends for different purposes. They have their useful friends, and their pleasure-friends, but often no friends at all who are both at the same time.

• This is because they don’t usually look for friends who are fun to be around and also good people of strong character.
• Nor do they look for useful friends who will help them in doing honorable things.
• When they’re after pleasure, they just look for people who will amuse them.
• And for tasks, they want other people who are efficient at carrying out their orders. Those two sets of qualities (being amusing and being efficiently useful for any task) are not at all likely to be found in the same person who is also good.

But we just said that a truly good man is both a pleasure to be with and useful at the same time. Yes, but a good man doesn’t usually become close friends with some powerful ruler who is far above his own station in life. An exception might be if the ruler is also somewhat inferior to the good man in terms of actual goodness or virtue. In that case, the good man might be able to balance things out, being proportionately outclassed in status but superior in virtue. But it’s extremely unusual for rulers to seek out or form such balanced friendships with genuinely good individuals.

Now, all the friendships we’ve described so far are mostly between equals. Both friends get the same things out of the friendship and want the same things for one another. (Or, if the exchange isn’t of identical things, they exchange one type of thing for another, for example, pleasure in return for practical help.)

And we’ve said there are these two lesser forms of friendship (based on utility or pleasure), which tend not to last very long. Are they really friendships?

• In a sense they are, and in a sense they aren’t. They are both like and unlike true friendship (the friendship of good people).
• Insofar as they resemble the sort of friendship that depends on goodness, they do seem to be friendships. One involves pleasure, the other is mutually useful, and the complete kind of friendship (based on goodness) has both of those features too.
• But on the other hand, friendship based on goodness is immune to lies and gossip, and it has staying power. The other kinds are rapidly shifting and differ in several other ways as well. In that respect, they don’t seem to be true friendships – because of the ways in which they are unlike complete friendship.

7. Friendships Between Unequals

But there’s another distinct class of love and friendship: the kind you get between a superior and a subordinate. Examples include:

• A father’s love for his son (and in general, any relationship between an elder and a younger person).
• A husband’s love for his wife (or any relationship where one person traditionally has authority over the other, in the context of the time).
• A ruler’s relationship with those he rules.

And there are further distinctions within that group.

• Parents’ love for their children, for example, isn’t the same as a ruler’s love for the people he rules.
• For that matter, a father’s love for his son isn’t even the same as the son’s love for his father.
• And a husband’s love for his wife isn’t the same as the wife’s love for her husband.

This is because each of these roles implies a different way of being good (e.g., being a good father is different from being a good son, a good husband, a good wife, a good ruler, etc.). Each role has different tasks, and so brings a different basis for loving that person. Therefore, these are all different forms of love, both in the feelings involved and in the nature of the relationship.

So, in these cases of unequal relationships, each party certainly doesn’t get the same things out of the relationship. Nor should they expect to. But when, for example:

• Children pay their dues to their parents (the things they owe them for bringing them into existence and raising them).
• And parents do what they owe to their children (care, education). Then the love between them, as long as they both fulfill these roles, is enduring and morally decent.

In all relationships like this (between a superior and a subordinate), the amount of love people feel needs to be proportional to the gap between them.

• Someone who is your better (e.g., in virtue or status), or someone with greater resources, needs to be loved by you more than they love you back.
• The same applies to every other kind of superiority. When the love offered by each party corresponds to what each party deserves or contributes, you get a sort of equality. This proportional equality is what we think is essential to love and friendship in these cases.

But equality in love and friendship doesn’t seem to work the same way as equality in cases of fairness or justice.

• In cases of justice, equality primarily means equality relative to what each party deserves (according to merit or contribution). In secondary cases, it might mean same-amount equality (like in correcting a harm).
• But in friendship, equality primarily means same-amount equality (equal affection or benefit between equals). It’s in the secondary cases (like friendships between unequals) where it’s relative to what people deserve or their status.

This becomes clear when a really big gap opens up between two friends, for example, in how good or bad they are, their social rank, how wealthy they are, or anything else. In that case, they often can’t be friends anymore, and they don’t expect to be.

• This is especially obvious with the gods. We can’t possibly be friends with them because the gods are so vastly superior to us in every kind of good thing.
• It’s also clear with kings. People who are far below them in status don’t expect to be their close friends.
• And people of low character don’t expect to be friends with people who are very good men, or of very high rank, or with famous philosophers.

Of course, there’s no exact formula in these cases for determining precisely how large a gap will stop two people from being friends. You can take away many things from one of them (like wealth or status) and still find that the friendship carries on. But if the gap is really enormous – like between a human being and a god – then friendship certainly can’t exist.

This has a curious implication. Perhaps people don’t strictly want their friends to have the very greatest goods imaginable. For example, they don’t want their friends to become gods.

• Because then their friends couldn’t be their friends anymore (the relationship of equality or near-equality would be gone).
• And so, those friends wouldn’t be part of their own well-being in the same way. (Friends, we said, add to our own well-being.) So, if we were right to say that you always want what’s good for your friend, for your friend’s sake, we probably meant this applies as long as they continue to be the same kind of being as you are (i.e., human). In other words, you’ll want them to have the greatest goods possible on the condition that they’re still human. (And probably you don’t wish all the greatest goods for them, because, naturally, you mostly want the very best things for yourself.)

8. Loving Versus Being Loved; Equality and Similarity

Ordinary people, often because they crave respect, tend to want other people to love them more than they want to love other people.

• That’s why ordinary people often love “flunkies” or flatterers. A flunky is a kind of “friend” who is a social inferior, or at least pretends to be a friend and to love you more than you love him back.
• Being loved feels similar to being respected, and that’s what many ordinary people are really after.

And yet, people don’t even seem to value respect purely for itself. They usually value it because of what it implies or what it can get them.

• Ordinary people, for example, enjoy being respected by powerful rulers because it excites their hopes. They think they’ll be able to get anything they need out of those rulers. So, they enjoy the respect as a sign of potential future benefits.
• Then there are those who want to be respected by decent people, by people who know them well. They are trying to confirm their own good opinion of themselves. They enjoy the respect because they trust the judgment of the people telling them that they’re good people.
• But being loved – that’s something people enjoy in itself. This implies that being loved is more important than being respected, and that love and friendship are intrinsically desirable (good in themselves).

Also, friendship and love depend more on loving others than on being loved by others. Good evidence for this can be seen in mothers who are content just to love their children. I’m thinking of mothers who give away their children to be raised by others (perhaps due to difficult circumstances). They still love their children (assuming they know who they are) without expecting to be loved back, if that’s their only option. It seems it’s enough for them if they can see their children doing well. They keep up their one-sided love, even though the children – perhaps not knowing who their biological mother is – never perform any of the duties a child traditionally owes a mother.

If friendship depends more on loving, and we praise people for loving their friends, it seems it’s the act of loving (rather than the state of being loved) that’s the key to being a good friend. So, when friends love one another as much as each deserves, they stay friends, and their friendship is durable. And that’s also the best way for people who are unequal to be friends – the best they can manage. By the inferior person offering proportionally more love, they can, in a sense, equalize the gap between them.

“Friendship means being equals” – and also being similar. The best case is friendship between people who are similar in their goodness.

• Because good people are stable in themselves, and they remain the same in the way they treat one another.
• Plus, they make no demands that are morally shabby, and they don’t do any morally shabby favors for their friends either. If anything, they actually prevent that kind of thing from happening. That’s to be expected of good people: that they do no wrong themselves and stop their friends from doing wrong.
• Horrible people, on the other hand, certainly aren’t stable (they aren’t even consistent in the way they treat themselves). But they can be “friends” for a little while, if they get a kick out of each other’s horribleness.

Friends who are useful or a pleasure to one another can stay friends for longer – namely, for as long as they keep providing one another with pleasures or material benefits.

Friendship based on what’s useful most often seems to arise between people who are opposites – for example, between someone rich and someone poor, or someone ignorant and someone with expertise. This is because often when a person lacks something, they try to obtain it by giving something different in exchange for it. You might even push relationships like those between older suitors and their teenage boyfriends into this category, especially if one is considered attractive and the other perhaps not, but offers other benefits. That’s why suitors sometimes make fools of themselves by expecting to get the same kind of affection (love based on attraction) as they give, especially if they themselves are not equally attractive. If they were desirable in just the same way, sure, that might be a reasonable expectation. But when they’re not even remotely attractive in the same way, it’s just silly to expect identical reciprocation.

(Come to think of it, maybe opposites aren’t really attracted to one another in themselves. Maybe the attraction is indirect, and desire’s real target is some kind of mid-point or balance, because that’s what’s ultimately good for each opposite. What’s good for something dry, say, isn’t necessarily becoming completely wet, but moving towards some mid-point of wetness and dryness. Likewise for something hot, and so on. But let’s not talk about that now; it’s a bit off-topic.)

9. Friendship, Justice, and Community

As we said back at the start, it seems that right and wrong (justice and obligation) exist in the same contexts and involve the same people as friendship and love. This is because any kind of partnership or cooperation brings with it certain obligations – and also some sort of love or friendship.

At any rate, people call their shipmates or their fellow soldiers “friends,” and likewise the other people in any kind of shared partnership. And the extent of the partnership determines the extent of the friendship – because it also sets their mutual obligations. So, the old saying that “friends are partners” (or “friends have things in common”) is right. Love and friendship always exist in some form of partnership.

• Brothers and best friends, for example, share everything and are partners in everything.
• Others are partners within certain defined limits and to varying degrees, just as there are different degrees of love and friendship.
• And, of course, there are different forms of right and wrong (different obligations) depending on the relationship.

The obligations parents have to their children, for example, aren’t the same as the obligations brothers have to one another. And our obligations to our close friends aren’t the same as to our fellow citizens – and so on with the various forms of love and friendship. And that means that wrongs also vary for each category of person. A wrong becomes more serious if done to a closer friend or loved one.

• Stealing from your best friend, for example, is far worse than stealing from a fellow citizen you don’t know.
• Failing to help your own brother in need is far worse than failing to help a stranger.
• Punching your father is far worse than punching anyone else at all.

So, right and wrong (justice and obligation) naturally expand in step with love and friendship, because they exist among the same people and have an equal range or scope.

All forms of partnership and cooperation are parts, so to speak, of the grand partnership of fellow citizens – the political community or state. People go on trading voyages together, for example, in pursuit of some particular shared interest, and to get some particular thing they need in life. And that’s also why people originally came together as a community of citizens, and that’s why they stay together – because it’s in their interest to do so. That’s what lawmakers aim for, and they call anything that serves the common interest “right” or “just.” So, as I was saying, all other forms of partnership or cooperation only aim at some particular interest:

• For example, fellow sailors pursue their interests within the context of their voyage (which is for making money, or something like that).
• Fellow soldiers pursue their interests in the context of war (they’re after loot, or victory, or capturing a city).
• Likewise, members of the same clan or district share certain local interests.

Some associations seem to come into being primarily for pleasure – like religious guilds and dining clubs. Those are for organizing a religious festival, or a shared banquet. All of these smaller associations seem to be subordinate to the one that exists between citizens. The community as a whole (the state) doesn’t just aim at our interests of the present moment; it concerns itself with our whole life.

[You asked earlier about religious guilds being just for pleasure. Let me clarify:] Well, those people who form religious guilds organize festivals and sacrifices, and the public gatherings for those. In doing so, they’re paying their respects to the gods. They’re also providing themselves and the community with occasions for pleasure and relaxation. The earliest religious festivals and public gatherings seem to have taken place right after people harvested their crops, as a sort of “first fruits” offering. This was because that’s when people had the most free time.

So, as I was saying, all these forms of partnership and cooperation seem to be subdivisions of the one overarching partnership that exists between citizens in a state. And each form of cooperation will have its corresponding type of friendship.

10. Types of Government and Associated Friendships

There are three main types of government, along with three corresponding deviations – corrupt versions of them, so to speak.

Only needy friends primarily want help with practical things. But even blessed and prosperous people want someone to spend their time with. In fact, they’re the last people you’d expect to want to be solitary and alone. And people simply can’t spend time together and do things together for long unless they find each other a pleasure to be around and enjoy the same kinds of things – as happens in a “best friends” relationship.

So, friendship in the fullest and truest sense is friendship between good people, as we’ve now said several times. This is because, as we also said:

• What’s truly lovable and desirable is what’s absolutely good, or absolutely pleasurable.
• And what’s lovable for any given person is whatever is good, or pleasurable, to them.
• To a good person, another good person is lovable on both counts – because they are good in character, and because they are pleasant to be with.

It seems that, while the feeling of love or affection is an emotion, the ongoing relationship of friendship (and family love) is a disposition – a settled state of character.

• You can feel an emotion of love or liking even for inanimate objects.
• But reciprocated love, the kind found in friendship, involves choice. And choice comes from a disposition of character.
• Plus, wanting the best for the people you love, for their sake, depends on a stable disposition, not just on a fleeting emotion.

Also, by loving a friend, people are actually loving what’s good for themselves. This is because when a good person becomes someone’s friend, they become a source of good and part of the well-being of the person whose friend they now are. So, each friend, in loving the other, is also loving and promoting their own well-being. And each friend gives the equal of what they get in return, both in wanting the best for the other and in the pleasure they share. Because, as people say, “friendship is equality,” and it’s especially the friendship of good people that has these kinds of equality.

6. Forming Friendships: Age, Temperament, and How Many Friends?

Grouches and old people generally form friendships less easily.

• They tend to be grumpier and get less pleasure from people’s company. Enjoying each other’s company is surely a key to friendship, and especially to forming a new friendship.
• That’s why young people form friendships quickly, but old people often do not. Old people can struggle to make new friends because they may not enjoy the company of new people as readily. The same goes for grouchy individuals.
• People like that can certainly feel mutual goodwill: they can want the best for one another and they might meet each other’s material needs. But they’re hardly “friends” in the full sense, because they don’t spend much time together and don’t particularly enjoy being around one another – and these are surely key features of any true friendship.

You can’t have the complete, perfect kind of friendship with lots of people. This is similar to how you can’t be romantically in love with lots of people at once (that kind of intense love seems to be a sort of maximum feeling, and as such, something you naturally only feel towards one person at a time).

• It’s hard to feel a really strong liking for many people at the same time.
• And it’s unlikely that all of them could be truly good people.
• Plus, you’d have to get to know them all deeply and become close to all of them, which would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to do.

But it’s certainly possible to like a lot of people based on their usefulness or for the pleasure they provide. There are plenty of people like that, and the mutual benefits or enjoyment in such relationships can be established quickly.

Of these two less perfect kinds of friendship:

• The pleasure-based kind is more like real friendship, provided both friends are getting the same things out of it and enjoy each other’s company (or enjoy the same things). Friendships among young people are often like this. Pleasure-friendships tend to be more generous and less calculating (“gentlemanly”).
• A friendship based purely on what’s useful to you is more transactional and can seem a bit crude or “vulgar.”

Indeed, people who are well-off and prosperous have strictly no need for merely useful friends. But they do need friends who are a pleasure to be around because they certainly want to pass their time in someone’s company. We can all tolerate something painful or unpleasant for a short while, but you can’t possibly endure something continuously if you find it painful – not even if it were the “Form of the Good” itself (the highest abstract good) if it were somehow painful to contemplate! So, prosperous people look for friends who’ll be a pleasure to be around. And ideally, these friends will probably have to be good people as well, plus good to them (beneficial). That way, these friends will have all three qualities that friends ought to have (good, pleasant, and useful).

Powerful rulers, on the other hand, often seem to have different sets of friends for different purposes. They have their useful friends, and their pleasure-friends, but often no friends at all who are both at the same time.

• This is because they don’t usually look for friends who are fun to be around and also good people of strong character.
• Nor do they look for useful friends who will help them in doing honorable things.
• When they’re after pleasure, they just look for people who will amuse them.
• And for tasks, they want other people who are efficient at carrying out their orders. Those two sets of qualities (being amusing and being efficiently useful for any task) are not at all likely to be found in the same person who is also good.

But we just said that a truly good man is both a pleasure to be with and useful at the same time. Yes, but a good man doesn’t usually become close friends with some powerful ruler who is far above his own station in life. An exception might be if the ruler, despite his high position, is somewhat lacking in true goodness or virtue, while the good man possesses these qualities. In such a rare case, there might be a different kind of balance. However, it’s extremely unusual for powerful rulers to seek out or form such balanced friendships with genuinely good individuals.

Now, all the friendships we’ve described so far are mostly between equals. Both friends get the same things out of the friendship and want the same things for one another. (Or, if the exchange isn’t of identical things, they exchange one type of thing for another, for example, pleasure in return for practical help.)

And we’ve said there are these two lesser forms of friendship (based on utility or pleasure), which tend not to last very long. Are they really friendships?

• In a sense they are, and in a sense they aren’t. They are both like and unlike true friendship (the friendship of good people).
• Insofar as they resemble the sort of friendship that depends on goodness, they do seem to be friendships. One involves pleasure, the other is mutually useful, and the complete kind of friendship (based on goodness) has both of those features too.
• But on the other hand, friendship based on goodness is immune to lies and gossip, and it has staying power. The other kinds are rapidly shifting and differ in several other ways as well. In that respect, they don’t seem to be true friendships – because of the ways in which they are unlike complete friendship.

7. Friendships Between Unequals

But there’s another distinct class of love and friendship: the kind you get between a superior and a subordinate. Examples include:

• A father’s love for his son (and in general, any relationship between an elder and a younger person).
• A husband’s love for his wife (or any relationship where one person traditionally has authority over the other, in the context of the time).
• A ruler’s relationship with those he rules.

And there are further distinctions within that group.

• Parents’ love for their children, for example, isn’t the same as a ruler’s love for the people he rules.
• For that matter, a father’s love for his son isn’t even the same as the son’s love for his father.
• And a husband’s love for his wife isn’t the same as the wife’s love for her husband.

This is because each of these roles implies a different way of being good (e.g., being a good father is different from being a good son, a good husband, a good wife, a good ruler, etc.). Each role has different tasks, and so brings a different basis for loving that person. Therefore, these are all different forms of love, both in the feelings involved and in the nature of the relationship.

So, in these cases of unequal relationships, each party certainly doesn’t get the same things out of the relationship. Nor should they expect to. But when, for example:

• Children pay their dues to their parents (the things they owe them for bringing them into existence and raising them).
• And parents do what they owe to their children (care, education). Then the love between them, as long as they both fulfill these roles, is enduring and morally decent.

In all relationships like this (between a superior and a subordinate), the amount of love people feel needs to be proportional to the gap between them.

• Someone who is your better (e.g., in virtue or status), or someone with greater resources, needs to be loved by you more than they love you back.
• The same applies to every other kind of superiority. When the love offered by each party corresponds to what each party deserves or contributes, you get a sort of equality. This proportional equality is what we think is essential to love and friendship in these cases.

But equality in love and friendship doesn’t seem to work the same way as equality in cases of fairness or justice.

• In cases of justice, equality primarily means equality relative to what each party deserves (according to merit or contribution). In secondary cases, it might mean same-amount equality (like in correcting a harm).
• But in friendship between equals, equality primarily means same-amount equality (equal affection or benefit). It’s in the cases of friendship between unequals where the “equality” achieved is proportional to what people deserve or their status.

This becomes clear when a really big gap opens up between two friends, for example, in how good or bad they are, their social rank, how wealthy they are, or anything else. In that case, they often can’t be friends anymore, and they don’t expect to be.

• This is especially obvious with the gods. We can’t possibly be friends with them because the gods are so vastly superior to us in every kind of good thing.
• It’s also clear with kings. People who are far below them in status don’t expect to be their close friends.
• And people of low character don’t expect to be friends with people who are very good men, or of very high rank, or with famous philosophers.

Of course, there’s no exact formula in these cases for determining precisely how large a gap will stop two people from being friends. You can take away many things from one of them (like wealth or status) and still find that the friendship carries on. But if the gap is really enormous – like between a human being and a god – then friendship certainly can’t exist.

This has a curious implication. Perhaps people don’t strictly want their friends to have the very greatest goods imaginable. For example, they don’t want their friends to become gods.

• Because then their friends couldn’t be their friends anymore (the relationship of equality or near-equality would be gone).
• And so, those friends wouldn’t be part of their own well-being in the same way. (Friends, we said, add to our own well-being.) So, if we were right to say that you always want what’s good for your friend, for your friend’s sake, we probably meant this applies as long as they continue to be the same kind of being as you are (i.e., human). In other words, you’ll want them to have the greatest goods possible on the condition that they’re still human. (And probably you don’t wish all the greatest goods for them, because, naturally, you mostly want the very best things for yourself.)

8. Loving Versus Being Loved; Equality and Similarity

Ordinary people, often because they crave respect, tend to want other people to love them more than they want to love other people.

• That’s why ordinary people often love “flunkies” or flatterers. A flunky is a kind of “friend” who is a social inferior, or at least pretends to be a friend and to love you more than you love him back.
• Being loved feels similar to being respected, and that’s what many ordinary people are really after.

And yet, people don’t even seem to value respect purely for itself. They usually value it because of what it implies or what it can get them.

• Ordinary people, for example, enjoy being respected by powerful rulers because it excites their hopes. They think they’ll be able to get anything they need out of those rulers. So, they enjoy the respect as a sign of potential future benefits.
• Then there are those who want to be respected by decent people, by people who know them well. They are trying to confirm their own good opinion of themselves. They enjoy the respect because they trust the judgment of the people telling them that they’re good people.
• But being loved – that’s something people enjoy in itself. This implies that being loved is more important than being respected, and that love and friendship are intrinsically desirable (good in themselves).

Also, friendship and love depend more on loving others than on being loved by others. Good evidence for this can be seen in mothers who are content just to love their children. I’m thinking of mothers who give away their children to be raised by others (perhaps due to difficult circumstances). They still love their children (assuming they know who they are) without expecting to be loved back, if that’s their only option. It seems it’s enough for them if they can see their children doing well. They keep up their one-sided love, even though the children – perhaps not knowing who their biological mother is – never perform any of the duties a child traditionally owes a mother.

If friendship depends more on loving, and we praise people for loving their friends, it seems it’s the act of loving (rather than the state of being loved) that’s the key to being a good friend. So, when friends love one another as much as each deserves, they stay friends, and their friendship is durable. And that’s also the best way for people who are unequal to be friends – the best they can manage. By the inferior person offering proportionally more love, they can, in a sense, equalize the gap between them.

“Friendship means being equals” – and also being similar. The best case is friendship between people who are similar in their goodness.

• Because good people are stable in themselves, and they remain the same in the way they treat one another.
• Plus, they make no demands that are morally shabby, and they don’t do any morally shabby favors for their friends either. If anything, they actually prevent that kind of thing from happening. That’s to be expected of good people: that they do no wrong themselves and stop their friends from doing wrong.
• Horrible people, on the other hand, certainly aren’t stable (they aren’t even consistent in the way they treat themselves). But they can be “friends” for a little while, if they get a kick out of each other’s horribleness.

Friends who are useful or a pleasure to one another can stay friends for longer – namely, for as long as they keep providing one another with pleasures or material benefits.

Friendship based on what’s useful most often seems to arise between people who are opposites – for example, between someone rich and someone poor, or someone ignorant and someone with expertise. This is because often when a person lacks something, they try to obtain it by giving something different in exchange for it. You might even push relationships like those between older suitors and their teenage boyfriends into this category, especially if one is considered attractive and the other perhaps not, but offers other benefits. That’s why suitors sometimes make fools of themselves by expecting to get the same kind of affection (love based on attraction) as they give, especially if they themselves are not equally attractive. If they were desirable in just the same way, sure, that might be a reasonable expectation. But when they’re not even remotely attractive in the same way, it’s just silly to expect identical reciprocation.

(Come to think of it, maybe opposites aren’t really attracted to one another in themselves. Maybe the attraction is indirect, and desire’s real target is some kind of mid-point or balance, because that’s what’s ultimately good for each opposite. What’s good for something dry, say, isn’t necessarily becoming completely wet, but moving towards some mid-point of wetness and dryness. Likewise for something hot, and so on. But let’s not talk about that now; it’s a bit off-topic.)

9. Friendship, Justice, and Community

As we said back at the start, it seems that right and wrong (justice and obligation) exist in the same contexts and involve the same people as friendship and love. This is because any kind of partnership or cooperation brings with it certain obligations – and also some sort of love or friendship.

At any rate, people call their shipmates or their fellow soldiers “friends,” and likewise the other people in any kind of shared partnership. And the extent of the partnership determines the extent of the friendship – because it also sets their mutual obligations. So, the old saying that “friends are partners” (or “friends have things in common”) is right. Love and friendship always exist in some form of partnership.

• Brothers and best friends, for example, share everything and are partners in everything.
• Others are partners within certain defined limits and to varying degrees, just as there are different degrees of love and friendship.
• And, of course, there are different forms of right and wrong (different obligations) depending on the relationship.

The obligations parents have to their children, for example, aren’t the same as the obligations brothers have to one another. And our obligations to our close friends aren’t the same as to our fellow citizens – and so on with the various forms of love and friendship. And that means that wrongs also vary for each category of person. A wrong becomes more serious if done to a closer friend or loved one.

• Stealing from your best friend, for example, is far worse than stealing from a fellow citizen you don’t know.
• Failing to help your own brother in need is far worse than failing to help a stranger.
• Punching your father is far worse than punching anyone else at all.

So, right and wrong (justice and obligation) naturally expand in step with love and friendship, because they exist among the same people and have an equal range or scope.

All forms of partnership and cooperation are parts, so to speak, of the grand partnership of fellow citizens – the political community or state. People go on trading voyages together, for example, in pursuit of some particular shared interest, and to get some particular thing they need in life. And that’s also why people originally came together as a community of citizens, and that’s why they stay together – because it’s in their interest to do so. That’s what lawmakers aim for, and they call anything that serves the common interest “right” or “just.” So, as I was saying, all other forms of partnership or cooperation only aim at some particular interest:

• For example, fellow sailors pursue their interests within the context of their voyage (which is for making money, or something like that).
• Fellow soldiers pursue their interests in the context of war (they’re after loot, or victory, or capturing a city).
• Likewise, members of the same clan or district share certain local interests.

Some associations seem to come into being primarily for pleasure – like religious guilds and dining clubs. Those are for organizing a religious festival, or a shared banquet. All of these smaller associations seem to be subordinate to the one that exists between citizens. The community as a whole (the state) doesn’t just aim at our interests of the present moment; it concerns itself with our whole life.

[You asked earlier about religious guilds being just for pleasure. Let me clarify:] Well, those people who form religious guilds organize festivals and sacrifices, and the public gatherings for those. In doing so, they’re paying their respects to the gods. They’re also providing themselves and the community with occasions for pleasure and relaxation. The earliest religious festivals and public gatherings seem to have taken place right after people harvested their crops, as a sort of “first fruits” offering. This was because that’s when people had the most free time.

So, as I was saying, all these forms of partnership and cooperation seem to be subdivisions of the one overarching partnership that exists between citizens in a state. And each form of cooperation will have its corresponding type of friendship.

10. Types of Government and Corresponding Friendships

There are three main types of government, along with three corresponding deviations – corrupt versions of them, so to speak. The three good types of government are:

1. Kingship: Rule by one good king who aims for the common good.
2. Aristocracy: Rule by the best class of people, aiming for the common good.
3. Timocracy (or “government by property-holders,” often called a “republican” government): This form is based on property qualifications and also aims for the common good. Of these three good forms, kingship is considered the best, and timocracy the worst (though still a good form).

Each of these good forms of government has a corresponding corrupt deviation:

1. The deviation from kingship is Tyranny. Both are one-man rule, but they are worlds apart.
   • A tyrant only thinks about his own interests.
   • A true king thinks about the interests of the people he rules. A king, by definition, should be self-sufficient and far above everyone in all good things, so he has no further personal needs to pursue at the expense of his people. (The only “kings” not like that would be ceremonial ones, perhaps appointed by lot.) So, a king won’t focus on benefiting himself, but rather the people he rules.
   • Tyranny is the opposite of this; a tyrant pursues what’s good only for himself. It’s perfectly obvious, in the case of tyranny, that it’s the worst form of government. And the worst is the opposite of the best (kingship). Kingship can decline into tyranny when a wicked king puts his own interests first.
2. Rule by the better class (aristocracy) slips into Oligarchy through bad rulers.
   • This happens when rulers distribute public resources without regard for merit, keep all or most good things for themselves, and always give out all the political offices to the same small group of people.
   • Pretty much the only thing these oligarchs care about is getting rich. So then you get a clique of nasty, self-interested people in charge instead of the most decent and virtuous class of people.
3. Government open to property-holders (timocracy) slides into Democracy. These two forms are next to one another in character.
   • This is because even rule open to all property-holders (a timocracy or republican government) tends to empower the majority anyway, and it creates a kind of political equality among all the people who meet the property qualification.
   • Democracy, in this ancient view, is considered the least bad of the corrupt forms. It’s only a slight deviation from a good republican or timocratic government.

So, those are the most common ways in which governments change, representing the smallest and easiest shifts from one type to another.

You can find analogies for these forms of government – models, so to speak – within the family:

• A father’s relationship with his sons, for example, has the same basic form as kingship. A father takes care of his children. That’s also why the poet Homer calls Zeus (the king of the gods) “our father.” A king’s rule is supposed to be fatherly.
  • But in Persia, a father’s authority was often seen as more like tyranny, because (it was said) Persian fathers treated their sons like slaves.
  • (A master’s relationship with his slaves is also a kind of tyranny. It exists only to carry out the interests of the master. The author notes that, for slaves, this kind of rule is considered acceptable in that society, but it is wrong for fathers to treat their children this way. Different classes of people, like slaves and children, should be under different forms of control.)
• The partnership between husband and wife is like aristocracy (rule by the better class). In this view, the husband has the authority that he’s entitled to, in the areas where a man should traditionally be in charge. All matters that a woman is suited to, he delegates to her.
  • But if the husband puts himself in charge of absolutely everything, he shifts their relationship into something like oligarchy. He’s now exercising authority beyond his entitlement, and not just in the areas where he’s considered her better.
  • And in some cases, it’s the wives who are in charge – for example, if they are wealthy heiresses. So, in those situations, authority isn’t based on who’s better in character or ability; it’s just derived from force or wealth respectively, rather like in an oligarchy.
• The relationship between brothers resembles timocracy (rule open to all property-holders, or a republic). This is because brothers are generally equals, except insofar as there are differences in their ages. (Which is why if there’s a really big age gap, they might not be able to love one another as brothers in the typical, equal way anymore.)
• And there’s domestic democracy too. This is most obviously seen in households that have no master at all (because there, everyone is equal). It’s also seen in households where authority is very weak, and it’s a kind of free-for-all with no clear leadership.

11. Friendship and Justice Under Different Governments

Under each form of government, love and friendship exist to the same degree as right and wrong (justice and civic obligations).

• In a kingship, a king’s love for his subjects, for example, depends on his being their supreme benefactor. That is, he benefits his subjects (since he’s good, by definition, and ideally only cares about their interests) and ensures that they flourish. He’s like a shepherd looking after his flock. That’s why Homer calls Agamemnon (a great king) “shepherd of the people.”
  • A father’s love is like that too, but it differs in the far greater extent of the benefits provided. Fathers, after all, are the cause of our existence – which we think of as the greatest good of all – as well as being responsible for our upbringing and education. We credit our forefathers (ancestors) with these blessings as well.
  • A father has a natural authority over his sons, forefathers over their descendants, and kings over their subjects. These forms of love are between a superior and a subordinate, and that’s why we also respect our parents and other superiors. So, obligations in these cases aren’t the same on both sides; they’re based on what each party deserves according to their role. The love felt is also proportional.
• A husband’s relationship with his wife is like the one that exists between the different classes or individuals in a government by the better class (aristocracy). In both cases, the relationship is ideally based on moral worth. The greater good or honor goes to the better party, and everyone gets what they’re suited to. Obligations are proportioned in the same way.
• Love between brothers is like the love between best friends. They are equals and of the same generation, which means that they generally have the same attitudes and the same character (more or less). That kind of relationship resembles the civic friendship found under a government open to all property-holders (timocracy or republic). In such a state, citizens are supposed to be equals and generally of a “decent” class. So, they often take turns holding power and govern on a basis of equality. Therefore, their friendship is also the kind you get between equals.

In the deviant (corrupt) forms of government, rulers have very limited obligations to the ruled, and there’s correspondingly little love or friendship between them.

• This is least of all the case in the worst form: in a tyranny, there’s none at all or very little love or friendship between ruler and ruled. This is because when ruler and ruled are not in any sense partners, there’s no basis for love or friendship between them. There are no shared obligations either.
  • A craftsman, for instance, has no obligations of friendship to his tools. The soul has no such obligations to the body. Masters (in that society) were seen as having no obligations of friendship to their slaves. All of those things (tools, body, slaves) are certainly benefited by their users or masters. But we don’t love inanimate objects in a way that implies friendship, and we have no obligations of friendship to them. Likewise, it was thought, we have no obligations of friendship to horses, or cows, or slaves, insofar as they are slaves (seen as property).
  • This is because they aren’t in any sense our partners in a shared community. A slave is just a tool – an animate tool – just as a tool is an inanimate slave. So, there can be no love or friendship for a slave, considered merely as a slave.
  • However, considered as a human being, perhaps some limited friendship or justice is possible. There’s always some degree of right and wrong between any human being and any other human being who is even capable of being a partner to an agreement or part of a system of law. So, there can also be some form of love for a slave, insofar as he’s recognized as a human being.
• So, even under tyrannical governments, friendship and love, and obligations of justice, can exist to a limited degree between rulers and ruled (if the ruler treats some subjects with a degree of humanity). But in democracies, these are much more extensive. This is because citizens of democracies are partners in many things, as they are considered equals.

12. Friendship in Families

So, every kind of love or friendship exists in some form of partnership or cooperation, as we’ve said. But you might well treat love between family members and close friends as a special case, different from other partnerships. (Friendships between fellow citizens, or between shipmates and suchlike, resemble partnerships based on shared goals or agreements rather more obviously. They’re quite clearly based on an agreement or shared enterprise. And you might put guest-friendship in the same category of agreement-based relationships.)

Plus, family love itself seems to come in various forms, but it all ultimately depends, in some way, on the love of a parent for a child.

• Parents love their children as something created from them, as a part of themselves.
• Children love their parents because they are something that came from their parents; they are their origin.
• The parents’ love is often stronger because they more easily and certainly know that their offspring came from them than the offspring know they are from those particular parents (especially in ancient times regarding fathers).
• Also, the thing created (the child) “belongs” to its creator (the parent) more than the creator belongs to the thing created. For example, we say that hair and teeth belong to an animal; we’re much less likely to say that an animal belongs to its hair.
• Plus, it’s a matter of time: parents love their offspring from the moment they’re born, but offspring can only love their parents in a developed way later, once they acquire awareness or perception.
• That’s also often why mothers love their children more intensely, due to the closer initial bond.

So, parents love their children as versions of themselves. Offspring are like “other selves,” created by a kind of physical division. And children love their parents because they were born from them. Siblings love each other because they’re born from the same parents. Their shared origin relative to their parents creates a sameness with one another – hence the talk about “the same flesh and blood” and “branches on the same tree,” and so on. So, it’s as if they’re the same thing, even though they are in separate persons. A big factor in their love is also growing up together and being of a similar age. “Old loves old and young loves young,” as they say, and people who do everything together tend to be close friends. That’s why love between siblings often resembles a close friendship. Cousins and other relatives derive their attachment to one another from this common ancestry through siblings – that is, by being from the same extended family. The strength of their attachment depends on how closely or distantly related they are.

Children’s love for their parents, much like humankind’s love for the gods, is a love for something that is both good and superior. Our parents have benefited us in the greatest ways possible. They’re responsible for our existing at all and for our growth. And, having given us existence, they are responsible for raising and educating us.

Love between family members also generally has more pleasure and is more useful than friendships with non-family members. This is because a family lives a life that’s more closely and continuously shared.

Love between brothers (as long as they’re both decent people, and in general similar to one another) is like the love between best mates. It’s often even stronger, to the extent that siblings are closer due to shared blood, have an instinctive fondness for one another from infancy, and are more likely to share the same likes and dislikes because they’re born of the same parents, reared together, and given the same upbringing. Plus, a sibling gets to understand your character – which takes time – more fully and accurately than almost anyone else. The same factors explain the love between other relatives too, in proportion to how closely related they are.

Love between man and woman – husband and wife – seems to be instinctive. Human beings are naturally a pair-bonding animal even more than a merely social animal. This is true to the extent that the family unit comes before, and is more fundamental than, the state. Producing offspring is something more basic to life, something we share with all other animals. Of course, for other animals, that’s often the only purpose of this kind of male-female partnership. But human beings don’t live together in couples just to have children. They do so for all the things they need in life together. Their tasks are often naturally divided (traditionally, a man’s tasks being different from a woman’s). So, they meet each other’s needs, each contributing their own particular tasks and skills to their shared well-being. So, that explains why that kind of husband-wife relationship is useful to us and also gives us pleasure. But it can also be based on moral goodness – if the husband and wife are also decent people. Each has their own way of being good, and they can be happy in the other’s being that kind of good person. Plus, having children seems to tie them together. (That’s why childless couples, it is sometimes said, break up more easily.) Their children are a blessing they share, and it’s their shared interests in their children that hold them together.

And to ask how a man should treat his wife, and in general how we should treat our family and friends, seems no different from asking how to do what’s right by them, or what our obligations are to them. The point is that we evidently don’t have the same obligations to all people: our obligations to family are different from those to a stranger, or to a best friend, or to a classmate.

13. Complaints in Friendships; Useful Friendships and Repayment

So, we’ve got three kinds of friendship and love, as we said back at the start. And within each kind, people can be friends either on a basis of equality, or in the relation of superior and subordinate.

• Two equally good people can become friends, for example.
• But also, a better man and a worse one can be friends (though this involves the complexities of unequal friendship we discussed).
• Likewise, pleasure-friends and friends who are after what’s useful can be evenly matched or unevenly matched in the benefits they provide. So, equal friends, in line with their equality, have to offer each other an equal amount of love and equal everything else. Unequals, on the other hand, have to offer whatever is in proportion to their friends’ superiority or their respective contributions.

Complaints and criticisms only arise, or mostly arise, in friendships based on what’s mutually useful – as you’d expect.

• After all, in friendship based on being morally good, friends are strongly motivated to help one another. This is part and parcel of being good people and being friends. And if friends are competing to help one another, you won’t get any complaints or quarrels. You’d never get annoyed with someone for loving you and doing good things for you. If you’re well-mannered, you just “take revenge” by doing them good right back. And if your friend manages to outdo you in generosity (which is exactly what a good friend aims to do), what would they have to complain about? In that case, you both desire the same good outcome.
• You don’t usually get any complaints between pleasure-friends, either. They’re both getting what they desire as long as they still enjoy passing their time together. Plus, you’d look pretty silly complaining that someone isn’t any fun anymore when you can just choose to stop spending time with them.

But mutually useful friendships do generate complaints. When people are using each other for material benefit, they constantly ask for too much and always think that they’re getting less than is due to them. They grumble that their friends don’t actually deserve as much as they’re asking for. And when they’re helping one another, they never seem to be able to satisfy each other’s demands.

It seems that just as there are two different kinds of obligation – unwritten, purely moral obligations, and formal, legal obligations – there are two corresponding forms of mutually useful friendship:

1. One is informal and just a matter of character.
2. The other relies on law or explicit agreement. So, complaints are especially likely to arise when people enter into an exchange on one basis (e.g., informal, friendly) but then try to settle accounts on the other basis (e.g., strictly legal or transactional).

The law-based kind of useful friendship operates on clearly stated terms.

• It can be the entirely business-like kind of exchange where you pay immediately over the counter.
• Or it can be the more “gentlemanly” kind where the payment is postponed, but there’s a contract stipulating that X amount or service is to be paid for Y amount or service. In this second kind, what you owe is still fully spelled out, but the delayed payment makes it seem somewhat friend-like. (That’s why in some countries, you couldn’t sue people for breaking these kinds of trust-based contracts. The attitude was that when you make deals based on trust, you just have to take your chances.)

But the informal kind of useful friendship lacks clearly stated terms. Instead, it’s like this: someone offers you a “gift” (or whatever it might be) “as one friend to another.” But really, they expect to get as much, or even more, in return. So, in their mind, it wasn’t truly a gift; it was more like a loan or an investment. And the complaining starts when the recipient doesn’t settle the exchange on the same “friendly” (but actually transactional) terms on which the giver entered into it.

That kind of thing happens because while almost everyone would quite like to behave honorably and generously, in the end, many people opt for whatever serves their own interests. (The honorable thing is to help others without wanting anything in return. But it’s often in our interests to benefit from the exchange.)

So, if you can, you just should pay back the full cost of what was given to you in such a situation. If the other person doesn’t genuinely want to be your friend (beyond the transaction), you shouldn’t try to force the friendship. Really, it was a mistake on your part to have accepted the “gift” from him in the first place if you realized he wasn’t a true friend and wasn’t doing it just to help you. So now, you should act exactly as if you’d received the benefit for an agreed price, and settle the debt. Or, you can agree to pay him back when you are able to do so. (Even your “gift-giver” wouldn’t expect you to pay him back if you genuinely can’t. So, you only have to pay him back if you can.)

And be sure to consider carefully, at the outset, who is offering you help and what they expect in return. That way, you can decide whether or not to accept their help on those terms.

People also argue over whether it’s just the benefit to the recipient that should be the measure for determining the size of a repayment, or if it’s the effort someone made (or the cost to them) to give that aid.

• When we’ve been helped out, we sometimes tend to say that what we got from our benefactors was “just some little thing” for them to do, and we “could have gotten it from someone else anyway.” We minimize its value.
• And they, the givers, often do the opposite: they might say it was “the most valuable thing they had to offer,” and that we “couldn’t have gotten it from anyone else,” and they “risked their lives” helping us, or they were “very hard up at the time.”

Maybe the correct measure depends on the type of friendship. For mutually useful friendships, yes, the measure should just be the objective benefit to the recipient. This is because the recipient is the one in need, and the other person meets that need with the idea that they will get an equal amount of benefit in return.

So, the amount of help given to the needy friend is exactly the benefit he received. He should pay back the value of that benefit (or even more – that would be more honorable and show greater appreciation).

But with friendships based on moral goodness (virtue friendships) – not that there will ever be any complaints about repayment in such friendships, of course – the measure for any return or “repayment” should be the choice or intention of the person who gave the help or did the good deed. This is because in matters of moral goodness, and character in general, a person’s choice and intention are what truly count.

14. Quarrels in Friendships Between Unequals

You also get quarrels in friendships between superiors and subordinates (people of unequal status or ability).

• Each person often thinks he deserves more than the other from the friendship.
• When this happens, the friendship can end.

The person who is “better” (perhaps of higher social rank or greater wealth) often thinks he should get more out of the friendship.

• He might feel, “After all, a good man deserves the larger share.”
• Or, if he is the wealthier friend, he might think, “A friend who’s no use to me in return shouldn’t get an equal share of benefits. If what I get out of this friendship doesn’t match the cost of all I’ve done for him, that’s not a friendship, that’s just charity!” These superior friends sometimes think a friendship should be like a financial partnership, where the people who contribute more to the business get more of the profits.

But the friend who is poor and needy, or the friend of inferior rank, often sees it the other way around.

• They might think, “A high-ranking or wealthy friend is supposed to provide for his friends’ needs!”
• They might say, “What’s the point of being friends with ‘a good man’ or a powerful man if I’m not going to get any material benefit out of it?”

Actually, they are both correct in their expectations, in a way. Each one should indeed get a greater share than the other from the friendship – but not of the same thing.

• The superior friend (the one who is wealthier, more powerful, or more virtuous) should get more respect and honor.
• The needy friend (the one with fewer resources or in a lower position) should get more material help or profit.

This is because the proper reward for being a good man, and for helping others, is respect and honor. Material gain, on the other hand, is what helps a friend who is in need.

This principle seems to apply in political life as well.

• A statesman earns no respect if he doesn’t contribute to the common good of the city.
• Public goods, including respect, are only granted to people who benefit the public.
• It’s impossible, for example, for someone to make a lot of money from holding public office and earn genuine respect at the same time (assuming the money is gained improperly). Nobody tolerates a situation that makes them worse off in every sense. So, if holding public office makes you worse off financially (because you are honest and serve diligently), people will compensate you with respect. If you’re corrupt, on the other hand, you just get the money (and lose respect).

Giving people what they deserve in this proportional way is a way of equalizing the relationship and preserving love and friendship, as we said earlier. So, that’s also how unequal friends should interact with one another:

• When one friend is benefited financially, or by being made a better person (e.g., through guidance), he should pay the other back with his respect. This is often the only way he can pay him back.

Friendship and love only demand of us what’s possible to give in return, not always the full monetary equivalent of what we owe. After all, sometimes full repayment is just impossible – like with the forms of respect and gratitude we offer the gods, or our parents. Nobody could possibly ever pay their parents back in full for their existence and upbringing. All any decent person can be expected to do is care for his parents as best he can.

This is probably also why it was traditionally felt that a son has no right to disown his father, although a father may disown his son.

• The reasoning is that as long as you owe a debt, you have to keep trying to pay it back. No son has ever done enough for his father to fully match the value of what he’s already received from him. So, a son will always be in his father’s debt.
• But the person to whom a debt is owed (the creditor) has the right to cancel that debt – and this includes fathers.
• Even so, chances are that no father would ever actually renounce or abandon his son, unless the son was an extremely nasty and ungrateful person. This is because, apart from a father’s instinctive love for his son, it’s human nature not to drive away a potential future means of support.
• A son, on the other hand, if he’s a terrible son, might well try to avoid providing for his father in old age, or have no interest in doing so. After all, that’s a common human failing: people are often happy to receive help but shy away from doing good for others, especially if they don’t see what they have to gain from it personally.

I think that’s all we need to say about that for now.

Book IX

1. Maintaining Fairness in Unequal Friendships and Exchanges

In all friendships where the people are not equal (asymmetrical friendships), we said that proportion is what equalizes things and keeps the friendship going.

• For example, in the “friendship” between citizens in a community (civic friendship based on mutual usefulness), a shoemaker trades shoes for things of equivalent value from others, like a tailor, and so on.
• In this context of trade, people have invented a common unit of measurement – money – and all goods can be compared to money and measured by it.

But between lovers, things are not so simple, and disputes often arise.

• Sometimes the older partner (the suitor) in a romantic relationship complains: “I’m devoted to you, but you don’t love me back!” – even though (as sometimes happens) there’s really nothing very lovable or attractive about him.
• Often the younger partner (the beloved) complains: “You promised me all those wonderful things, and now you’re not doing anything you said you would!”

This kind of trouble happens when, for example, the older person loves the younger one for the pleasure they get, but the younger one only likes the older person because they are useful (perhaps for gifts or status). So, the relationship only works as long as both of them still have these attributes (being pleasant or being useful).

• Since their “love” is based on these external things, they break up once they’re not getting what they expected. Those things were their only reason for being in the relationship.
• They didn’t like one another for who they truly are as people. What they liked were those external features. And since those features don’t last, neither do those kinds of relationships.
• But love based on people’s characters, as we said, is about who they are intrinsically. So, that kind of love does last.

Disputes also arise when friends find themselves getting the wrong thing from the friendship – something that isn’t what they truly want or need. If you don’t get what you’re aiming for, you may as well be getting nothing at all.

• It’s like the story of a king who promised to pay a cithara player (a musician who played a stringed instrument like a lyre). The king said, “The better you sing, the more I’ll pay you.” The next morning, when the musician asked him to pay up, the king claimed he’d already paid – by giving “pleasure for pleasure.” He meant he’d given the musician the pleasure of anticipating all that money.
• That kind of “payment” might have been okay if that’s what both of them wanted. But since only one of them (the king) wanted that kind of playful enjoyment, and the other (the musician) wanted actual profit, and one got what he wanted while the other didn’t – that doesn’t quite count as respecting the terms of their deal.

The point is, what you need from a friendship – whatever that happens to be – is also what you tend to focus on. You’ll give something (X) in order to get something else (Y) that you need.

But who decides how much X is worth in such an exchange? Is it the person who offers something up front, or the person who receives it, after they’ve gotten it?

• If you offer something up front but let the other person decide the value, it looks as if you’re leaving the question of payment or return to them. (That’s what they say the famous teacher Protagoras used to do. Whenever he taught someone, he’d ask the student to set the price – “whatever you think knowing these things is worth to you” – and he’d accept that amount.)
• But some people in these situations prefer the motto: “State your fee up front – even with friends.”

Then again, if people do take a cash payment up front, and then don’t do anything they said they would (perhaps because they made such extravagant promises), they can expect to face complaints for not carrying out what they agreed. (Sophists – paid teachers of rhetoric – are surely forced to operate this way, making big promises to get paid upfront, because nobody would pay money for what they already know or for little actual value.) So those people, by failing to do what they’ve been paid to do, understandably face complaints.

But in cases where there isn’t any fixed agreement about the value of the benefit or service: (a) Giving based on character (Virtue Friendship): If people give freely to their friends just because of who their friends are (as in friendships based on goodness of character), they won’t get any complaints, as we said earlier. That’s the nature of friendship based on goodness. And any repayment or return should be sensitive to the friend’s choice and intention in giving. This is because choice is the key to being a true friend and to being a good person.

(b) Repaying Teachers of Philosophy: This is surely how we should also think about “repaying” our philosophical mentors or teachers. You can’t measure the value of that kind of guidance in money. No amount of respect could ever truly balance out what they’ve given us in terms of wisdom. It’s enough, I’d say, if we offer them whatever we can, like the way we show respect to the gods or to our parents.

However, when giving isn’t like that – when there’s an expected “quid pro quo” (something for something):

• Ideally, repayment should be made according to what both parties agree is the right amount.
• But if they can’t agree, it seems both unavoidable and fair that the person who received the benefit gets to set its value. However much that person was benefited (or however much they would have been willing to give in exchange for that pleasure or benefit), that’s the right amount for the original giver to get in return. After all, that’s clearly the way things work with buying and selling in the marketplace. (And in some places, it’s against the law to sue people for breaking voluntary contracts that were based on trust. The idea is that if you trusted someone to begin with, you just have to settle with them on the same informal terms as you entered into the deal.)

Also, people generally think that if Person A (the giver) in effect left it to Person B (the receiver) to set the terms of repayment, it’s fairer for Person B to do so rather than Person A. Furthermore, people who possess something and people who want to get hold of that thing don’t usually value it equally. We always tend to think that things that are ours, and that we’re offering to others, are worth a lot. But even so, when the exchange actually takes place, it’s often based on the amount that the people who are getting the item say it’s worth. (Though perhaps its true value for repayment should be based on what they thought it was worth before they got it, not what they say it’s worth once they already have it and might be trying to downplay its value.)

2. Handling Conflicting Obligations

Here’s another set of difficult questions that arise in relationships:

• Do you owe your father everything? Do you have to obey him in everything? Or is it that when you’re sick, you should trust your doctor, and when you’re voting for a general, you should pick the person with actual military skill (even if your father wants you to choose someone else)?
• Similarly, is it better to do favors for friends and family, or for good people in general? Should you repay a favor to someone who helped you out, or spend that money or effort on a close friend, assuming you can’t do both?

Perhaps it isn’t easy to determine all of those sorts of things exactly. There are so many variables involved, and all sorts of differences in how important something is, or how unimportant, or how honorable, or how urgent. But it’s at least fairly clear that you don’t owe everything to the same single person. Also, as a general rule, you should repay people who’ve helped you out – for the most part – rather than using those resources to do new favors for your close friends. This is just like how you should repay a debt to a creditor rather than gift that money to a friend.

But maybe even that isn’t always the case. Suppose you were kidnapped by pirates, and someone paid your ransom. Later, both the man who paid your ransom and your own father are kidnapped. Who should you ransom?

• Should you ransom the person who ransomed you, whoever he is?
• Or what if he hasn’t even been kidnapped, but is just asking for his money back? Should you pay him back, or use the money to ransom your father? Most would say you should ransom your father. After all, you’d probably even ransom your father instead of yourself.

So, as we said, as a general rule, you should pay your debts. But if giving that money or resource to someone else is overwhelmingly the more honorable thing to do, or more urgent, then you should lean towards that.

In any case, sometimes repaying a favor isn’t even truly equivalent or fair.

• For example, say someone helped you out, knowing you’re a good man. Later, you find yourself in a position to return a favor, but the person needing it now is someone you think is a horrible person.
• And if someone has lent you money, that doesn’t always mean you have to do the same for them in return. Suppose someone made you a loan, assuming he’d be repaid because you’re a decent person. But you don’t expect him to pay you back if you lend to him, because you think he’s a crook. So, in that situation, if he really is a crook, then his expectation of getting a return loan from you isn’t equivalent or fair. And even if he’s not a crook, but people widely think he is (so lending to him is risky), it surely wouldn’t be so wrong of you to refuse.

So, as we’ve said many times before, all claims and theories that involve human feelings and actions can only be as definite and precise as their subject matter allows. But it’s at least pretty clear that:

• You don’t owe the same things to everyone.
• You don’t owe everything to your father – just as people don’t only offer sacrifices to Zeus (the king of the gods), but to other gods as well. We owe different things to our parents, our siblings, our closest friends, and people who’ve helped us out. We have to grant and give what’s appropriate and fitting to each.

And that’s just what people generally seem to do.

• They invite their relatives to weddings, for example, because they share family ties with those people, so they also share in family-related events.
• They also mostly expect relatives to attend funerals, for the same reason of shared family connection.

And surely we have a primary duty to provide support and sustenance for our parents, before all others, because of our debt to them. They’re the reason we exist at all. If we had to choose, it’s better to provide for them than for ourselves. We also owe our parents respect – similar to the respect we owe the gods. But not every kind of respect is the same.

• After all, you don’t even owe the same kind or degree of respect to your father as to your mother.
• And you don’t owe your father the kind of respect you owe a philosopher, or a general. You just owe him the kind of respect a father deserves, and your mother the kind a mother deserves.

We also owe respect to any elderly person just on account of their age – by standing up when they enter the room, offering them a seat, and that kind of thing. As for our close friends and our siblings, what we owe to them is to speak frankly and honestly, and to share everything with them. As for relatives, fellow tribesmen, fellow citizens, and so on – in each case, we have to try to give them their due. We need to weigh up their competing claims on us in terms of their kinship, social rank, how good they are, or how useful they might be to the community or us.

• If people are in the same category (e.g., two equally close friends), comparing their claims is easier.
• When they’re in different categories (e.g., a family member vs. a benefactor), it’s a bit harder. But that’s no reason to give up. We’ve just got to sort it all out as best we can.

3. Ending Friendships

Another difficult question is whether or not you should end friendships with people who don’t stay the same as they were when the friendship began.

So, maybe when people are friends on the basis of what’s useful, or for pleasure, there’s nothing particularly wrong with them ending the friendship when they’re no longer getting those things out of it. After all, it was those things (the utility or pleasure) that they were friends with, not necessarily the person’s core character. So, when the supply of those benefits runs out, it makes sense for them to stop being friends.

But you might well have a complaint if someone liked you for your usefulness, or for pleasure, but pretended it was because of your character. As we said at the start of our discussion on friendship, all sorts of disputes arise between friends when there’s a difference between what they think is the nature of their relationship and what it actually is.

• So, when you mistakenly think that someone likes you for your character, without them doing anything specific to give you that idea, you only have yourself to blame.
• But if you’re deceived by pretense on their part, you have every right to call them out for their deceit. This deception is even worse than what people who make counterfeit coins do, since the harm they’re doing (damaging trust and a relationship) concerns something much more valuable than money.

And what if you accept someone as a friend, thinking that they’re a good person, but then they turn into – and you now clearly see they are – a horrible person?

• Should you still love them and keep them as a friend?
• Or is that impossible, given that not everything is lovable? Only what’s good is truly lovable. Evil is not lovable or worthy of love, and it should not be loved. You shouldn’t be an “evil-lover.” And you shouldn’t let yourself become like your awful friend either. (We said before, like tends to be friends with like.)

So, does that mean that you should end the friendship straight away?

• Or not in every case? Maybe you shouldn’t if they are merely making mistakes but are not incurably wicked.
• If there’s a possibility of reform, then you should try to help them. It’s much more important to help a friend fix their character than, say, to help them increase their wealth. This is because character is something better and more crucial to friendship.
• But it surely wouldn’t be so wrong of you to end the friendship if they are indeed wicked and show no signs of changing. After all, you weren’t friends with someone like that (the person they have become). So, if they’ve become a different person and there’s nothing you can do to bring them back to their former good self, you just have to give up on them.

Or what if your friend stayed the same, but you became a much better person, so you significantly diverge from them in how good you are?

• Should you still treat them as a friend? Or is that impossible?
• The problem becomes especially clear when the gap in character or development is really large – as sometimes happens with childhood friendships. That is to say, if one friend remained mentally and morally a child, and the other became as good and mature a person as any, how could they still be friends? They likely wouldn’t have the same likes and dislikes, nor be pleased or pained by the same things. (In fact, that difference would likely affect how they even relate to each other.) But without those shared features, there’s no way that they could be true friends, because it’s impossible for them to truly share their lives. We talked about that already.

So, should the one who has improved treat the other exactly as if they’d never been friends at all? Or should they take account of the closeness that they once had? We generally say we ought to favor friends and loved ones over strangers. Perhaps, in the same way, you owe at least something (like kindness or consideration) to the people who were once your friends, on account of the friendship that existed between you in the past – as long as the break-up of your friendship wasn’t caused by any really extreme nastiness or betrayal on their part.

4. Self-Love as the Basis of Friendship

The things that characterize friendship and love towards others – the features by which we define these relationships – seem to come from the way we relate to ourselves.

Consider this: people define “a friend” or “someone who loves you” as:

• Someone who wants and does things that are good for you, or that they think are good for you, for your sake.
• Or, someone who, because they love you, wants you to exist – to be alive and well – for your own sake. (That’s how mothers feel about their children, for example; or how true friends might feel even if they’ve had a falling-out but still wish the other well fundamentally.)
• Or, someone who spends their time with you and makes the same choices as you (shares your values).
• Or, someone who, because they love you, shares your pains and your joys. Again, that’s especially true of mothers with respect to their children, and also of close friends. And it’s by one or other of these characteristics that people always define friendship and love.

Now notice that, if you’re a good person, every single one of those features is true of your relationship with yourself. These features also hold true for anyone else to the extent that they can think of themselves as good. And as we’ve said before, we assume that goodness, and the good person, are always the measure or standard for understanding these things.

Consider: if you’re a good person, then:

• You’re always in agreement with yourself; you desire the same things in every part of your soul (your reason and desires are in harmony).
• You want good things (or what you think is good) for yourself, and you do what’s good for you (a good person works to achieve what’s truly good). And you do this for your own sake – that is, for the sake of the part of you that reasons and thinks, which is the part we think of as being your true “you.”
• Also, you want yourself to be alive and to survive and flourish, especially the part of you that thinks. Existing, for a good person, is a good thing, and you always want good things for yourself.
  • (But this means wanting good for yourself as you currently are. You’d never choose to have all possible good things if it meant first becoming something else entirely – a god, for example. You wouldn’t choose for that other thing that has now come into existence to have those goods. God already has the highest good, anyway.) You only want good things for yourself if you can still be what you essentially are. (And the part of you that thinks – surely that’s what you are, or at least the most important part of you.)
• Also, if you’re a good person, you want to spend time with yourself. That’s something you like doing because you have pleasant recollections of things that you’ve done, and you have optimism about your future, which is also enjoyable. And your intellect is supplied with plenty of rich thoughts for contemplation.
• Also, you sympathize with your own pains and pleasures more consistently and deeply than with anyone else’s. A given thing causes you pain or pleasure in a consistent way; it’s not one thing one moment, and something entirely different the next. You pretty much never regret your fundamental choices and actions if you are a good person.

So, all of those things are true of your relationship with yourself if you’re a decent person. And you relate to a friend in the same way as you relate to yourself. This is because a friend is another self. That explains why we think of love and friendship as having one or other of those features listed above, and why we think of “friends” and “loved ones” as the people you relate to in those ways.

As for whether you can or can’t actually experience love for yourself in a way that is formally “friendship” – for now, we can put that specific question to one side. But you might think you can, insofar as you are made up of two or more elements or “parts” (going by what we’ve said before about the soul having different parts). And also because the most extreme form of love for others is so similar to your healthy relationship with yourself.

All the positive self-relations we’ve just mentioned seem to apply to ordinary people too – even if they are not perfectly good, but are at least not thoroughly bad. So, is it only insofar as they’re happy with who they are, and consider themselves decent people, that they can share in these positive self-relations?

• After all, when people are utterly bad – the sort who commit heinous crimes – they certainly don’t have any of these features of internal harmony and positive self-regard. Nobody even imagines that they do.
• And, roughly speaking, neither do any truly bad people possess these qualities consistently.

Consider:

• Bad people are often internally conflicted. They have desires and cravings that are at odds with what they truly want or what their reason tells them to do – just like people who lack self-control. Instead of the things they might think are good for them in the long run, they choose things that give them immediate pleasure but ultimately cause them harm.
• For others, it’s their cowardice or their laziness that makes them give up on doing what they genuinely think is best for them.

(b) Internal Conflict and Self-Destruction in Bad People: And sometimes, people who’ve done lots of really terrible things, because they are such horrible people, come to hate being alive. They may even escape from life by killing themselves.

(c) Bad People Shun Their Own Company: Also, horrible people often seek out others to pass their days with, but they try to avoid their own company. When they’re on their own, they remember all sorts of disturbing things they’ve done and have equally disturbing thoughts about their future. But when they’re around other people, they can temporarily forget these things. And because there’s nothing truly lovable about them, they don’t feel any sort of love or friendship for themselves.

(d) Lack of Inner Sympathy and Regret: People like that don’t even sympathize with their own joys or their own pains. Their soul is in a state of constant civil war.

• One part of them, because of their wickedness, feels pained when they have to refrain from doing something bad that they desire. Another part might be pleased by the bad act itself, or by a different bad impulse.
• One part pulls them in one direction, another in some other direction – tearing them apart, as it were.
• Even if it’s not strictly possible to feel both pain and pleasure at the very same instant, it’s common that right after enjoying something bad, they feel upset that they enjoyed it. They might think, “Why did I enjoy that? I wish I hadn’t!” Bad people are often stuffed full of regrets.

So, a bad person doesn’t seem to feel any sort of friendship or love even towards himself. This is because there’s nothing truly lovable or attractive about him to himself.

If being that way – internally conflicted, full of regret, and unable to love oneself – is utterly wretched and pathetic, that’s a very good reason to make every effort to avoid being a horrible person. One should try as hard as possible to be a kind and decent person. Only then can you have friend-like feelings towards yourself, or be a true friend to anyone else, or earn anyone else’s genuine love.

5. Goodwill: A Starting Point for Friendship

What about goodwill? That certainly seems related to friendship, but it isn’t actual friendship. Goodwill is something that you can feel even towards people you don’t know. You can feel it without them being aware of it. That’s impossible with friendship, as we talked about before (friendship requires mutual awareness).

Nor is goodwill the same as actively liking or loving someone in the way friends do.

• It doesn’t involve any sustained effort or deep motivation, which are standard features of loving someone.
• Also, loving someone in a friendship implies knowing them well. But a feeling of goodwill can be instantaneous – like when we feel it towards athletes in a sporting contest. We might feel goodwill towards them and want them to succeed, but we wouldn’t actually do anything significant to help them. As I said, our goodwill often arises just in that instant, and our affection is usually fleeting.

But goodwill does at least seem to be a sort of starting point for friendship. It’s a bit like the way the pleasure of seeing someone attractive can be a starting point for falling in love.

• Nobody falls in love if they don’t first like the look of someone.
• But just liking someone’s looks doesn’t amount to being in love. You’re truly in love (according to this view) once you also miss someone whenever they’re gone and long for them to be around. In the same way, it’s impossible for people to be friends if they haven’t first come to feel goodwill towards one another. But they can have mutual goodwill without yet being actual friends. When people feel goodwill, they simply want the best for the objects of their goodwill. That doesn’t mean they’d do anything to help them or go to any trouble over them. You could call goodwill a kind of “lazy friendship,” metaphorically speaking.

But if goodwill continues for a while and gets to the point where you know each other well, it can grow into true friendship. And when it does, this resulting friendship won’t be based merely on what’s useful or what’s pleasant, because those aren’t the things that typically trigger our initial goodwill.

• It’s often when someone has been good to you, or has shown admirable qualities, that you offer them your goodwill in return for how they’ve treated you or for who they are. You might feel you owe them that positive regard.
• By contrast, if your reason for wanting to do someone a good turn is that you’re hoping for some personal advantage from them, you’re not really acting out of goodwill, at least not towards them. It’s more like goodwill towards yourself.
• Similarly, you aren’t truly someone’s friend if you’re only tending to their needs because it’s useful to you to do so.

In general, goodwill is a response to someone’s moral goodness, or some kind of decency or kindness on their part. You feel it when someone comes across as attractive in their character, brave, or something like that – as happens with athletes we admire, as we said.

6. Harmony: Civic Friendship

Harmony (or concord) seems closely tied to friendship too. That’s why it’s not just a matter of people having the same views about things. That could be the case with people who don’t even know each other.

We also don’t speak of “harmony” when people have the same views on just anything, like when they agree about the sun, moon, and stars. Being in harmony on those kinds of abstract or scientific topics has nothing to do with being friends. Rather, we speak of harmony in city-states (or communities) when citizens:

• Have the same views about what’s in their common interests.
• Make the same choices about important community matters.
• And carry out the things that they’ve all decided on as a community.

So, harmony means harmony on practical and moral questions, and more precisely, the important ones where options are open and things are at stake for both sides or for everyone involved. There’s harmony in a city-state when everyone agrees, for example, that “there should be elections for public offices,” or that “we should have an alliance with Sparta,” or that “Pittacus should rule” (assuming that was also what Pittacus himself wanted to do). But it’s not harmony when two people are both saying “I want to rule!” – like the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices in Euripides’ play The Phoenician Women. That’s civil strife. Harmony isn’t just a matter of both parties having the same idea, whatever that idea might be. It’s a matter of people having the same view applied to the same person or course of action for the community, like when the common people and the decent, upper classes all agree that the best people should rule. That way, everyone’s getting what they fundamentally want (good governance).

So, it seems clear that harmony is a form of civic friendship, or friendship between citizens (which is exactly what the word usually means). This is because it’s about things that are in people’s shared interests and that affect the way they live together.

Harmony in that sense is a feature of decent people. Decent people are in harmony, both within themselves (their desires and reason align) and with one another, since they have pretty much the same attitudes and values.

• With people like that, you know where you stand; what they want stays fixed. It doesn’t flow back and forth like the shifting currents of the Euripus (a narrow strait known for its unpredictable tides).
• And they want what’s right and fair, and what’s in people’s best interests. They strive for these things for their community as well.

Bad people, on the other hand, can’t experience true harmony, except perhaps to a limited degree (just as they can only be friends to a limited degree).

• When bad people live together, they all strive to get more than their share of the benefits, but they fall short when it comes to the burdens and their public duties.
• Every person is only out for himself, so everyone investigates their neighbor to find ways to take advantage or avoid being taken advantage of, and they often try to thwart each other.
• The fact is, if people don’t look after the common good, it’s eventually destroyed. So, communities of bad people end up falling into factionalism and civil strife. They try to coerce one another to do what’s right, but they never want to do the right thing of their own accord.

7. Why Benefactors Love More Than Beneficiaries

When people have helped others (benefactors), they seem to love and care about the people they helped more than the people who received that help (beneficiaries) love their benefactors. It’s surprising that it works this way, and people have tried to figure out why.

So, most people think it’s because helpers are owed a debt by the people they helped.

• They say, “What happens with debts is that, while the people who owe the debt would often like their creditors to cease to exist (to get rid of the debt), the lenders take great care to make sure that their debtors stay alive and well so they can pay it back.”
• “And in much the same way, when people have been helpful to others, they want the people they helped to stay alive long enough to return the favor. In contrast, the people they helped aren’t so concerned about paying them back.”

The philosopher Epicharmus might say about that claim, “That’s a scoundrel’s view of things!” But it does seem true to human character in many cases. Most people are inclined to forget favors received and are more interested in being helped than in doing good for others.

And yet, maybe the reason for this difference in affection is deeper in nature. Maybe it’s not like the lender-debtor case.

• After all, lenders don’t actually love or care about their debtors in a personal way. They only want them to survive so they can collect the debt.
• But people who’ve helped others often actually care about, and love, the people they’ve helped, even if those people are not useful to them in any way currently and are unlikely ever to be so in the future.

The same thing happens with craftsmen: every craftsman loves his own work, his own creation, more than the work would love him back if it suddenly came to life. And it probably happens most of all with poets. They just adore their own poems and plays; they love them like their own children.

So, it seems that something similar is also going on with people who’ve helped out others. The person that they’ve helped is, in a sense, their creation, their handiwork. So, they love that “work” (the person they helped, representing their good deed) more than their “work” loves its “creator.”

And the reason for that is that existence is something desirable for everyone; it’s something we all love.

• But we exist by being actualized – that is, by being alive and by doing things.
• And a creator (whether a craftsman or a benefactor) is actualized, so to speak, in his work.
• So, he loves his work because he loves his own existence being expressed and made real. That’s a natural feeling. What he is in his capacities and potential, his creation reveals and makes actual.

Also, consider these points:

• If you’ve helped someone, your action is honorable, so you cherish the person who embodies that honorable fact about you.
• If you’ve been helped, the person who helped you doesn’t represent anything honorable of yours. At most, they represent a benefit to you, and that gives you less pleasure and is less lovable than the honor of your own good deed.
• We get pleasure from our activities in the present, from our expectations about the future, and from our memories of our past. But we get the most pleasure from our activities, and it’s those that we love the most. So, for someone who’s done something helpful, their work lasts (because it was an honorable act, and what’s honorable endures in memory and reputation). For the person who received that help, the usefulness of it is often soon gone or forgotten.
• Also, the memory of our honorable actions gives us pleasure. The memory of things that were merely useful to us gives us no pleasure at all, or much less. (With our expectations about the future, it seems to work the other way around – we might anticipate future benefits with pleasure.)
• Also, loving someone seems like an active role, while being loved is a passive role. So, outdoing others in your good actions naturally goes with loving them and being a friend to them.
• Furthermore, people always feel greater fondness for things they’ve toiled hard to bring about. People who’ve made their money themselves, for example, are generally more fond of it than people who’ve simply inherited their wealth. And being helped seems effortless, while helping others is hard work. (That’s also why mothers often love their children more intensely than fathers do. For mothers, producing a child involves a lot more toil and pain. It’s also usually easier for them to know for certain that the child is theirs – which, come to think of it, is another thing that might apply to benefactors, who clearly know the result of their helpful action.)

8. Self-Love: Good Versus Bad Kinds

Another puzzle: should you love and care about yourself most of all, or someone else?

We often criticize people who mostly care about themselves; we call them “selfish” as a rebuke.

• The common view is that a bad person does everything for himself, and the nastier he is, the more that’s the case. People hold that against someone, saying things like, “Everything he does, it’s always about him.”
• A decent person, by contrast, does things “because it’s the honorable thing to do.” The better they are, the more they act for that reason. They also do things for their friends and loved ones. As for their own narrow interests, they often put them to one side.

But the facts of human nature are somewhat at odds with these claims, and for good reason.

• People say you should love your “dearest friend” the most.
• And your “dearest friend” is the person who wants what’s good for you just for your sake (even if nobody’s ever going to know about it).
• But that description applies above all to your relationship with yourself – as do all the other things by which we define a friend. (We said earlier, remember, that all the main features of friendship and love start from your relationship with yourself and extend from there to others.)
• All the common sayings about friendship support the same idea: “friends are a single soul,” “friends share everything,” “friendship is equality,” “the knee is closer than the shin.” All of those would apply most of all to your relationship with yourself. Because you are your own dearest friend. It follows that you should also love yourself the most.

So, reasonably enough, there’s a puzzle here as to which of these sets of claims we should go along with. They both seem pretty plausible. Maybe what we should do is analyze the two lines of argument and try to determine to what extent, and in what way, each is correct.

Alright, so we can probably clear things up if we get a sense of what each set of claims means by the word “selfish.”

So, the people treating “selfish” as a term of reproach are calling someone selfish if they assign themselves the larger share when it comes to money, prestige or status, and physical pleasures.

• Those are the things that most people desire and care intensely about, as if they were the best things in life – that’s why they’re the “fought-over” goods.
• So, when people are greedy over those things, they’re indulging their desires and cravings, and in general, their feelings and the non-rational part of their soul. And that’s what most people are like.
• So, that’s also how the negative term “selfish” arose – from observing that crummy, flawed majority. So, it’s right to reproach people for being selfish in that sense.

And it really is clear that for most people, by common usage, “selfish” only applies to people who assign themselves too much of those kinds of external and bodily goods. Because think about it: suppose you were always keen to do the right thing – that is, keen for you to be the one doing it rather than anyone else – or the moderate thing, or anything else based on any of the virtues. And suppose you were, in general, always laying claim to every chance to do what’s honorable, for yourself. Nobody’s going to call you “selfish” or criticize you for that.

But you might think that pursuing honor and virtue for yourself is actually a way of being more profoundly selfish. At any rate, you’re now awarding yourself the finest and most honorable things – “goods” in the fullest sense – and you’re indulging the most authoritative element of yourself (your reason) and fully obeying that part of you.

• And just as we think a city-state (or any other organized community) is, above all, its most authoritative or governing part – so too is a human being.
• So, if you love and indulge that reasoning part of yourself, you’re “selfish” (you “care about your self”) in the truest and best sense.

Also:

• We say someone “has self-control” or “lacks self-control” depending on whether or not their mind (reason) is controlling them, implying that your mind is you.
• Also, we think people have performed an action themselves, and willingly, above all when they’ve done it using their reason.

So, it’s quite clear that the individual person is that reasoning part of them, or mostly is. And it’s also clear that a decent person loves that part of themselves most of all. That’s why you could say that good people are the most fully selfish – though it’s by a different kind of selfishness from the kind that gets reprimanded. They’re as different from that other kind of selfish person as:

• Living by reason is from living by your emotions.
• Desiring what’s honorable is from desiring whatever you merely take to be in your immediate interests.

So, when people are extremely eager to perform honorable actions, everybody welcomes it, and everyone applauds them. And if everyone competed only in that way – over doing the honorable thing – and put all their effort only into behaving as honorably as they could, then society as a whole would have everything it needs. And individually, everyone would have the greatest of all goods (since the greatest of all goods is to be a good person, acting virtuously).

It follows that a good man actually should be selfish in this higher sense.

• Because that way, he himself will benefit from doing honorable things (which is the highest good for him).
• And he’ll also be helping others through his good actions. But a wicked man should not be selfish (in the common, base sense).
• Because he’ll harm both himself and his neighbors by acting on his bad impulses and greedy desires.

For a wicked man, what he should be doing is different from what he does. But with a decent man, whatever he should be doing – that’s always what he does. That’s because his intellect (reason) always chooses what is best for itself (i.e., what is honorable and truly good), and a decent person always obeys his intellect.

It’s true that a good man does lots of things for the sake of his friends and loved ones, or for his country – even giving up his life for them if he has to.

• He’ll freely give up money, prestige, and in general all the “fought-over” goods if it means securing for himself the chance to do the honorable thing.
• He’d rather experience a brief moment of extreme bliss (from a supremely noble act) than live a long life of being only weakly satisfied.
• He’d rather live honorably for one year than live for many years in moral mediocrity.
• He’d rather perform a single great and glorious action than a long series of minor, insignificant ones. That’s surely what’s happening with people who give up their lives for others. So, that means they’re choosing a great good – what’s honorable – for themselves.

And they’ll happily give up money if it means their friends and loved ones can have more of it.

• That way, the friend gets the money, but they get to do the honorable thing. So really, they’re awarding themselves the greater good (the honor). The same goes for prestige and positions of power: a good man will give them all away for his friend or someone he loves. Because that’s the honorable thing for him to do, and it’s praiseworthy. (It’s no wonder he’s thought of as a good man if he chooses what’s honorable over everything else.)

It’s even possible to “give up actions” to a friend. It can be more honorable to be responsible for your friend’s doing something good than to do it yourself.

So, in all these kinds of praiseworthy actions where a good person might sacrifice lesser goods, it’s clear they are awarding themselves the larger share – the share of what’s truly honorable. Therefore, you should be “selfish” in that good sense, as we said. But you should not be selfish in the way most people are (by greedily pursuing only material things and base pleasures).

9. Do We Need Friends to Flourish in Life?

Another thing people disagree about is whether, to flourish in life (to live a truly happy and complete life), you will or won’t need friends and loved ones.

Some people say that the most blessed and well-off people, who can meet all their own needs, have no need for friends.

• They argue that since these fortunate individuals already have all the good things in life, they can meet their own needs and don’t need anything further.
• A friend, who is a kind of “other self,” is usually there to supply the things that you can’t get on your own.
• This leads to sayings like: “When the gifts of the gods are good, what need is there for friends?”

But it seems a bit absurd, if we’re assigning all the good things in life to our “blessed” or “flourishing” person, not to grant him any friends – when friends are supposedly the greatest of all external goods!

Also, consider these points:

• If being a friend is more about doing good than receiving it;
• And if a key feature of being a good person is helping others;
• And if it’s a finer and more honorable thing to do good for friends and loved ones than for strangers;
• Then a good man will need people he’s going to do good things for.

That’s why people also puzzle over whether you need friends more when you’re enjoying good fortune or when you’re down on your luck. It seems you need them in both situations:

• If you’re down on your luck, you need friends who are going to help you.
• And when you’re enjoying good fortune, you need friends to have someone to help and share with.

And surely it’s absurd to make our flourishing, blessed person a loner. Nobody would choose to have every good thing in life all by themselves. People are social beings by nature; it’s our nature to share our lives with others. So, that must apply to flourishing, prosperous people too. They have all the naturally good things in life, including the need for companionship. And it’s obvious that it’s better to pass your time with friends and loved ones, especially with good people, than with strangers or just anyone. So, to flourish, you do indeed need friends and loved ones.

In that case, what are those first people (who say friends aren’t needed for flourishing) really saying? And is there any truth in their view? Maybe it’s that most people think that “friends” just means friends of the useful kind.

• It’s true that a flourishing man (one who is prosperous and has all he needs) won’t have any need for those kinds of useful friends, since he already has all the good things in life.
• He also won’t need many pleasure-friends, or perhaps only to a limited degree, because his life is already pleasant and has no need for extra, imported pleasure from outside. So, since he doesn’t seem to need these common kinds of friends, people might mistakenly think he just doesn’t need friends at all.

But that’s surely not the case. We said, back at the start of our discussions, that flourishing is a kind of activity. And activity is obviously something ongoing, not something you just passively have, like a possession. And if:

1. Flourishing depends on living an active life; and
2. A good person’s activity is morally good and pleasant in itself (as we said at the very beginning); and
3. What’s “our own” (things connected to us, like our actions or friends) is one of the things that gives us pleasure; and
4. We’re generally more able to observe others and their actions clearly than we are able to observe ourselves and our own actions; and
5. The actions of good people, who are also our friends, give us pleasure (if we too are good people), because these actions have both naturally pleasurable features (being good) and a connection to us (being “our own” through friendship)… …it follows that to truly flourish, you’ll have to have morally good friends. This is because one of your aims in a flourishing life is to observe actions that are both morally good and, in a sense, “your own.” The actions of a good person who’s your friend nicely fit that description.

Also, people think that if you’re flourishing, you should be enjoying life; you should be happy. But a loner’s life is hard. It’s not easy to exercise your virtues continually and actively all on your own. But doing good things with others, and for others – that’s easier. So, that way, your virtuous activity (which is enjoyable in itself) will be more continuous – and continuous, unimpeded activity has to be a feature of any truly flourishing life. (A good person, simply by being a good person, takes pleasure in others’ actions that express goodness, and is bothered by actions caused by badness, just as a musician enjoys beautiful songs but finds bad ones painful.)

Also, by sharing your life with good people, you get a sort of training in how to be a good person – as the poet Theognis says.

Thinking about it more scientifically, it does seem that a morally good friend is a naturally desirable thing for any good person.

1. We said earlier that what’s naturally good is always good, and pleasant, to a good person.
2. And people define being alive, for all animals, by their capacity for perceiving things, and for human beings by their capacity for perceiving or thinking. But a capacity only truly exists for the sake of exercising it; the key thing is in the actual exercising of that capacity. So that implies that being alive, in the key sense, means actually perceiving, or thinking.
3. Being alive is something good and pleasant in itself. It’s a definite, positive state, and what’s definite and positive is part of the nature of what’s good. (And whatever’s naturally good is also good and pleasant for a good person. That’s why being alive seems pleasant to everyone – perhaps because everyone, to some extent, sees themselves as good or values their own existence. But for our purposes here, we shouldn’t consider a depraved or corrupted form of life, or even life filled with overwhelming pain. That kind of life is indeterminate and chaotic, and so are all its features. This will be explained more fully in the next section, when we talk more about pain.)
4. So, being alive, in itself, is good, and something we enjoy. (This also seems to be the case from the fact that everybody desires to live, and especially people who are morally good and flourishing. Theirs is the most desirable kind of life; for them, living is flourishing in the fullest sense.)
5. When you see something, you also perceive that you are seeing; and when you hear something, you perceive that you are hearing; and when you walk, you’re aware that you’re walking. With all the rest of our activities, there’s always a part of us that’s aware that we’re exercising that capacity. So, if we’re perceiving, we’re also aware that we’re perceiving, and if we’re thinking, we’re aware that we’re thinking.
6. To be aware that we’re perceiving, or thinking, is to be aware that we exist. Because to exist, or to be alive, as we just said, is to be perceiving or thinking.
7. To be aware that you’re alive is something that gives you pleasure in itself, since being alive is a natural good, and to be aware that you hold that natural good gives you pleasure.
8. Being alive is especially desirable for good people. For them above all, existing is good and pleasant (they experience pleasure from perceiving the intrinsic good that they have within themselves).
9. As a good person, you relate to a friend the same way as you relate to yourself (because a friend is, in a sense, a “second self”). So, just as your own existence is desirable for you, so is your friend’s existence – or in very nearly the same way.
10. And existing, we said, is desirable through your perceiving yourself as good and active. That kind of awareness is pleasurable in itself. Therefore, you also need to share the awareness of your friend’s existence. That’s what happens when you share your life with a friend, converse with them, and share your thoughts. (Surely for human beings, that’s what “sharing a life” or “spending your time with someone” means. We don’t just mean grazing the same patch of grass together, like cattle.)

So, if you’re really flourishing in life, your own existence is intrinsically desirable (because it’s naturally good and pleasant). And your friend’s existence is desirable for you in very nearly the same way. So, it follows that the friend, too, is something desirable for you to have. And what’s “desirable” for you, by definition, is something you’ve got to have, or you’ll be missing out in that area of life. So, yes, to flourish you will need some friends, and you’ll need them to be good people.

10. How Many Friends Should You Have?

So, does that mean that you should make as many friends as possible?

In the case of xenoi (guest-friends or formal acquaintances), people tend to agree with Hesiod’s motto: “It’s a bad idea to have too many; but it’s just as bad to not have any.” Will that apply to having true friends as well? Is it not just a bad idea to have no friends, but also to have a huge number of them?

Well, consider these points:

• If we mean friends of the useful kind, the saying seems exactly right. Returning favors and services to a large number of people is hard work. Life is too short; you just don’t have time for that. So, any such useful friends that you have beyond the number that you actually need for your own livelihood are unnecessary. They can actually get in the way of living well and honorably. So, you simply don’t need a huge number of them.
• A small number of pleasure-friends is also enough, just as you only need a little bit of spice with your food to make it enjoyable.

What about morally good friends (friends based on virtue)? Should you try to make as many of them as you can? Or is there some sort of measure or limit to the quantity of true friends you can have – like with the size of a city?

• You can’t make a functioning city out of just ten people.
• And if you have 100,000 people, that’s not really a single, manageable city anymore either. As for the right number of citizens for a city, well, it’s surely not some single, exact number. It’s a whole range between an upper and a lower limit.

Likewise with friends, there’s an upper limit to the number of true friends that you can have.

• Surely it’s the largest number of people that you can actively share your life with. (Because that’s what we thought was the key thing in friendship.)
• And it’s pretty clear that it’s not possible to share your life deeply with a very large number of people; you’d spread yourself too thin.
• Also, for true communal friendship, they’d all have to be friends with one another too (if you’re all planning to hang out together as a group of close friends). And for that to be true of a very large number of people is pretty tricky.
• It’s also hard to genuinely sympathize with all the joys and pains of a lot of other people and make them your own. Chances are you’ll often find yourself in a position where you’re having to feel happy for one friend and upset for another at the very same time, which is difficult.

So, maybe it’s a good idea not to try to have as many friends as you possibly can. It’s better to have just as many as are enough for truly sharing a life with.

In any case, it doesn’t even seem possible to be a very close friend to lots of people. This is for the same reason that you can’t be romantically in love with more than one person at a time (at least not with the same intensity). That kind of deep love tends to be a sort of maximum of affection, something you can usually only feel intensely towards one person, or a very few. And very strong friendship, too, can usually only be with a small number of people.

And that’s just the way it seems to work in practice.

• You don’t find large groups of people all becoming very close, deep friends.
• And in the famous stories of great friendships, it’s always two people, or a very small group. People who do seem to have lots of “friends” and interact with everyone on familiar terms surely aren’t actually true, close friends with anyone (except perhaps in the general way that fellow citizens can be friendly). We often call those types “people-pleasers” or overly agreeable. Now, you can be friends with lots of people in that general fellow-citizen way without being a people-pleaser; you can just be a genuinely nice and sociable person. But to be true, deep friends with lots of people on the basis of their goodness and their intrinsic qualities – you can’t do that. You should be happy to find even a small number of friends like that.

11. Friends in Good Times and Bad Times

Here’s a question: when do you need friends more? In times of good fortune or in times of adversity? It seems they’re required in both situations.

• When people are down on their luck, they need support.
• When their fortunes are up, they need people to share their life with and people they can help, because good people want to do good.

So, in adversity, friendship is more of a necessity. That’s why in that situation, you especially need the useful kind of friends who can provide practical help. When you’re enjoying good fortune, friendship is more something honorable and good in itself. So then you look for morally decent friends, since those are the people it’s more desirable to do good things for and to spend your time with.

In fact, just the mere presence of our friends, both in times of good fortune and in adversity, gives us pleasure and comfort. When we are in distress, we get relief when friends share our pain.

• This raises another question: are they, as it were, literally helping us carry a burden? Or is that not quite it?
• Maybe it’s that their presence itself is a pleasure, and the realization that they’re feeling our pain with us somehow lessens our own distress.
• Anyway, whether it’s for that reason or for some other reason that people are uplifted by their friends in difficult times – let’s not worry too much about the exact mechanism for now. The main point is, it does seem to work that way.

But the presence of friends when you are suffering seems to be a kind of mixed experience.

• On the one hand, just seeing your friends is a pleasure, especially when you’re having a hard time. Their presence acts as a support and stops you from feeling too distressed. A friend is someone with the power to make you feel better, just by the mere sight of them and by what they say, if they’re good at saying the right thing at the right time. This is because a true friend knows your character, and knows what pleases you and what pains you, what cheers you up and what upsets you.
• On the other hand, the awareness that your friend is upset because of your misfortunes is painful. Nobody wants to be a cause of pain to their friends.
• That’s why people who are tough by nature take care not to spread their own pain and distress to their friends. A man like that may even try to be strong for his friends and not show his upset. If he can’t avoid being upset, he certainly doesn’t want his friends getting excessively upset as well. In general, he doesn’t let his friends moan and groan about his misfortunes because he doesn’t even like to moan about them himself.
• But (according to ancient stereotypes) females, and men considered “womanish,” sometimes enjoy it when people whine and wail along with them. They love those people who overtly show shared sorrow, thinking, “They care about me; they feel my pain.”
• And in all things, obviously, you should try to imitate the better type of person (the one who is resilient and considerate of others’ feelings).

When you’re enjoying good fortune, the presence of your friends offers both a pleasant way of passing your time and the enjoyable awareness that they’re taking pleasure in your blessings. So, I’d say what you should do is this:

• Be eager to invite your friends to share in your good fortune – because doing good for others and sharing happiness is an honorable thing.
• But be reluctant to invite them into your misfortunes. You should share the bad stuff in your life as little as possible. (Hence the saying: “One of us being miserable is plenty.”)
• Ideally, you should call on friends for help in misfortune only when they’re going to be a very big help to you with very little trouble or burden to themselves.

But when it comes to you going to your friends’ aid, I’d say the reverse applies.

• If your friends are in trouble, you should go to their aid without even being called, and eagerly. Because being a friend means helping out, and especially helping out friends who are in need – and ideally, without them even having to ask. (Because that’s more honorable, and a greater pleasure, for both of you – for you to give freely, and for them to receive help without the embarrassment of asking.)
• But as for when friends are enjoying good fortune and success: well, by all means, be eager to help them achieve it (we need our friends for that kind of support too). But when it comes to taking favors from them during their good times, you should hang back a bit. There’s nothing honorable in constantly looking for perks or benefits from your successful friends.
• On the other hand, you should probably also try to avoid getting a reputation for being a killjoy or ungracious by constantly refusing their kind offers. That sometimes happens.

So, all in all, the presence of our friends seems desirable in all contexts of life.

12. Shared Life as the Essence of Friendship

So, is it like this? When people are romantically in love with someone, what they cherish most of all is seeing them. They’d choose that way of perceiving their beloved over all the other senses, since their love often arises and primarily exists through that sense of sight. So, is it that, in a similar way, what friends want more than anything else is to share life?

• Because friendship is a kind of sharing, a kind of partnership.
• And your relationship with your friend matches your relationship with your own self (a friend is like another self).
• And in your own case, your awareness that you exist is desirable. So, your awareness that your friend exists must be desirable too.

Also, we exercise friendship by sharing a life. So, it’s no surprise that that’s what friends aim to do.

And whatever “existing” or “living” means to each group of friends – that is, whatever their fundamental reason is for wanting to be alive at all – that’s what they want to spend their time doing with their friends.

• So, some friends drink together.
• Some play dice or games together.
• Some train together in athletics.
• Some hunt together.
• Some do philosophy together. In each case, they spend their time together doing whatever it is that they most cherish in life. Because what they want is to share life with their friends; so they do the things, and share in the things, that they think amount to really living.

Now, for bad people, “friendship” (if it can be called that) is often corrupting.

• They share in each other’s morally bad actions.
• And because they are often fickle and impressionable, they become even more wicked by assimilating to one another and reinforcing bad habits.

But the friendship of decent people is itself decent, and it grows more so as they spend their time together.

• It’s as if they become better people by exercising their friendship and by correcting one another’s mistakes in a gentle way.
• They’re shaped by one another, by their shared likes and dislikes for what is good and honorable. Hence the line from the poet Theognis: “From noble men, you will learn noble things.”

All right, I think that’s all we need to say about friendship and love for now. Next, we should give an account of pleasure.

(b) Internal Conflict and Self-Destruction in Bad People: And sometimes, people who’ve done lots of really terrible things, because they are such horrible people, come to hate being alive. They may even try to escape from life by killing themselves.

(c) Bad People Shun Their Own Company: Also, horrible people often seek out others to spend their days with, but they try to avoid their own company.

• When they’re on their own, they remember all sorts of disturbing things they’ve done. They also have equally disturbing thoughts about their future.
• But when they’re around other people, they can temporarily forget these things.
• And because there’s nothing truly lovable about them, they don’t feel any sort of love or friendship for themselves.

(d) Lack of Inner Sympathy and Regret: People like that don’t even sympathize with their own joys or their own pains. Their soul is in a state of constant civil war.

• One part of them, because of their wickedness, feels pained when they have to refrain from doing something bad that they desire. Another part might be pleased by a different bad impulse or action.
• One part pulls them in one direction, while another part pulls them in some other direction – tearing them apart, as it were.
• Even if it’s not strictly possible to feel both pain and pleasure at the very same instant, it’s common that right after enjoying something bad, they feel upset that they enjoyed it. They might think, “Why did I enjoy that? I wish I hadn’t!” Bad people are often stuffed full of regrets.

So, a bad person doesn’t seem to feel any sort of friendship or love even towards himself. This is because there’s nothing truly lovable or attractive about him to himself.

If being that way – internally conflicted, full of regret, and unable to love oneself – is utterly wretched and pathetic, that’s a very good reason to make every effort to avoid being a horrible person. One should try as hard as possible to be a kind and decent person. Only then can you have friend-like feelings towards yourself, or be a true friend to anyone else, or earn anyone else’s genuine love.

5. Goodwill: A Starting Point for Friendship

What about goodwill? That certainly seems related to friendship, but it isn’t actual friendship. Goodwill is something that you can feel even towards people you don’t know. You can feel it without them being aware of it. That’s impossible with friendship, as we talked about before (friendship requires mutual awareness).

Nor is goodwill the same as actively liking or loving someone in the way friends do.

• It doesn’t involve any sustained effort or deep motivation, which are standard features of loving someone.
• Also, loving someone in a friendship implies knowing them well. But a feeling of goodwill can be instantaneous – like when we feel it towards athletes in a sporting contest. We might feel goodwill towards them and want them to succeed, but we wouldn’t actually do anything significant to help them. As I said, our goodwill often arises just in that instant, and our affection is usually fleeting.

But goodwill does at least seem to be a sort of starting point for friendship. It’s a bit like the way the pleasure of seeing someone attractive can be a starting point for falling in love.

• Nobody falls in love if they don’t first like the look of someone.
• But just liking someone’s looks doesn’t amount to being in love. You’re truly in love (according to this view) once you also miss someone whenever they’re gone and long for them to be around. In the same way, it’s impossible for people to be friends if they haven’t first come to feel goodwill towards one another. But they can have mutual goodwill without yet being actual friends. When people feel goodwill, they simply want the best for the objects of their goodwill. That doesn’t mean they’d do anything to help them or go to any trouble over them. You could call goodwill a kind of “lazy friendship,” metaphorically speaking.

But if goodwill continues for a while and gets to the point where you know each other well, it can grow into true friendship. And when it does, this resulting friendship won’t be based merely on what’s useful or what’s pleasant, because those aren’t the things that typically trigger genuine goodwill.

• It’s often when someone has been good to you, or has shown admirable qualities, that you offer them your goodwill in return for how they’ve treated you or for who they are. You might feel you owe them that positive regard.
• By contrast, if your reason for wanting to do someone a good turn is that you’re hoping for some personal advantage from them, you’re not really acting out of goodwill, at least not towards them. It’s more like goodwill towards yourself.
• Similarly, you aren’t truly someone’s friend if you’re only tending to their needs because it’s useful to you to do so.

In general, goodwill is a response to someone’s moral goodness, or some kind of decency or kindness on their part. You feel it when someone comes across as attractive in their character, brave, or possesses some similar admirable quality – as happens with athletes we admire, as mentioned.

6. Harmony: Civic Friendship

Harmony (or concord) seems closely tied to friendship too. That’s why it’s not just a matter of people having the same views about things. That could be the case with people who don’t even know each other.

We also don’t speak of “harmony” when people have the same views on just anything, like when they agree about the sun, moon, and stars. Being in harmony on those kinds of abstract or scientific topics has nothing to do with being friends. Rather, we speak of harmony in city-states (or communities) when citizens:

• Have the same views about what’s in their common interests.
• Make the same choices about important community matters.
• And carry out the things that they’ve all decided on as a community.

So, harmony means harmony on practical and moral questions, and more precisely, the important ones where options are open and things are at stake for both sides or for everyone involved. There’s harmony in a city-state when everyone agrees, for example, that “there should be elections for public offices,” or that “we should have an alliance with Sparta,” or that “Pittacus should rule” (assuming that was also what Pittacus himself wanted to do). But it’s not harmony when two people are both saying “I want to rule!” – like the conflict between Eteocles and Polynices in Euripides’ play The Phoenician Women. That’s civil strife. Harmony isn’t just a matter of both parties having the same idea, whatever that idea might be. It’s a matter of people having the same view applied to the same person or course of action for the community, like when the common people and the decent, upper classes all agree that the best people should rule. That way, everyone’s getting what they fundamentally want (good governance).

So, it seems clear that harmony is a form of civic friendship, or friendship between citizens (which is exactly what the word usually means). This is because it’s about things that are in people’s shared interests and that affect the way they live together.

Harmony in that sense is a feature of decent people. Decent people are in harmony, both within themselves (their desires and reason align) and with one another, since they have pretty much the same attitudes and values.

• With people like that, you know where you stand; what they want stays fixed. It doesn’t flow back and forth like the shifting currents of the Euripus (a narrow strait known for its unpredictable tides).
• And they want what’s right and fair, and what’s in people’s best interests. They strive for these things for their community as well.

Bad people, on the other hand, can’t experience true harmony, except perhaps to a limited degree (just as they can only be friends to a limited degree).

• When bad people live together, they all strive to get more than their share of the benefits, but they fall short when it comes to the burdens and their public duties.
• Every person is only out for himself, so everyone investigates their neighbor to find ways to take advantage or avoid being taken advantage of, and they often try to thwart each other.
• The fact is, if people don’t look after the common good, it’s eventually destroyed. So, communities of bad people end up falling into factionalism and civil strife. They try to coerce one another to do what’s right, but they never want to do the right thing of their own free will.

7. Why Benefactors Love More Than Beneficiaries

When people have helped others (benefactors), they seem to love and care about the people they helped more than the people who received that help (beneficiaries) love their benefactors. It’s surprising that it works this way, and people have tried to figure out why.

So, most people think it’s because helpers are owed a debt by the people they helped.

• They say, “What happens with debts is that, while the people who owe the debt would often like their creditors to cease to exist (to get rid of the debt), the lenders take great care to make sure that their debtors stay alive and well so they can pay it back.”
• “And in much the same way, when people have been helpful to others, they want the people they helped to stay alive long enough to return the favor. In contrast, the people they helped aren’t so concerned about paying them back.”

The philosopher Epicharmus might say about that claim, “That’s a scoundrel’s view of things!” But it does seem true to human character in many cases. Most people are inclined to forget favors received and are more interested in being helped than in doing good for others.

And yet, maybe the reason for this difference in affection is deeper in nature. Maybe it’s not like the lender-debtor case.

• After all, lenders don’t actually love or care about their debtors in a personal way. They only want them to survive so they can collect the debt.
• But people who’ve genuinely helped others often actually care about, and love, the people they’ve helped, even if those people are not useful to them in any way currently and are unlikely ever to be so in the future.

The same thing happens with craftsmen: every craftsman loves his own work, his own creation, more than the work would love him back if it suddenly came to life. And it probably happens most of all with poets. They just adore their own poems and plays; they love them like their own children.

So, it seems that something similar is also going on with people who’ve helped out others. The person that they’ve helped is, in a sense, their creation, their handiwork. So, they love that “work” (the person they helped, representing their good deed) more than their “work” loves its “creator.”

And the reason for that is that existence is something desirable for everyone; it’s something we all love.

• But we exist by being actualized – that is, by being alive and by doing things.
• And a creator (whether a craftsman or a benefactor) is actualized, so to speak, in his work.
• So, he loves his work because he loves his own existence being expressed and made real. That’s a natural feeling. What he is in his capacities and potential, his creation reveals and makes actual.

Also, consider these points:

• If you’ve helped someone, your action is honorable, so you cherish the person who embodies that honorable fact about you.
• If you’ve been helped, the person who helped you doesn’t represent anything honorable of yours. At most, they represent a benefit to you, and that gives you less pleasure and is less lovable than the honor of your own good deed.
• We get pleasure from our activities in the present, from our expectations about the future, and from our memories of our past. But we get the most pleasure from our activities, and it’s those that we love the most. So, for someone who’s done something helpful, their work lasts (because it was an honorable act, and what’s honorable endures in memory and reputation). For the person who received that help, the usefulness of it is often soon gone or forgotten.
• Also, the memory of our honorable actions gives us pleasure. The memory of things that were merely useful to us gives us no pleasure at all, or much less. (With our expectations about the future, it seems to work the other way around – we might anticipate future benefits with pleasure.)
• Also, loving someone seems like an active role, while being loved is a passive role. So, outdoing others in your good actions naturally goes with loving them and being a friend to them.
• Furthermore, people always feel greater fondness for things they’ve toiled hard to bring about. People who’ve made their money themselves, for example, are generally more fond of it than people who’ve simply inherited their wealth. And being helped seems effortless for the recipient, while helping others is hard work. (That’s also why mothers often love their children more intensely than fathers do. For mothers, producing a child involves a lot more toil and pain. It’s also usually easier for them to know for certain that the child is theirs – which, come to think of it, is another thing that might apply to benefactors, who clearly know the direct result of their own helpful action.)

8. Self-Love: Good Versus Bad Kinds

Another puzzle: should you love and care about yourself most of all, or someone else?

We often criticize people who mostly care about themselves; we call them “selfish” as a rebuke.

• The common view is that a bad person does everything for himself, and the nastier he is, the more that’s the case. People hold that against someone, saying things like, “Everything he does, it’s always about him.”
• A decent person, by contrast, does things “because it’s the honorable thing to do.” The better they are, the more they act for that reason. They also do things for their friends and loved ones. As for their own narrow interests, they often put them to one side.

But the facts of human nature are somewhat at odds with these claims, and for good reason.

• People say you should love your “dearest friend” the most.
• And your “dearest friend” is the person who wants what’s good for you just for your sake (even if nobody’s ever going to know about it).
• But that description applies above all to your relationship with yourself – as do all the other things by which we define a friend. (We said earlier, remember, that all the main features of friendship and love start from your relationship with yourself and extend from there to others.)
• All the common sayings about friendship support the same idea: “friends are a single soul,” “friends share everything,” “friendship is equality,” “the knee is closer than the shin.” All of those would apply most of all to your relationship with yourself. Because you are your own dearest friend. It follows that you should also love yourself the most.

So, reasonably enough, there’s a puzzle here as to which of these sets of claims we should go along with. They both seem pretty plausible. Maybe what we should do is analyze the two lines of argument and try to determine to what extent, and in what way, each is correct.

Alright, so we can probably clear things up if we get a sense of what each set of claims means by the word “selfish.”

So, the people treating “selfish” as a term of reproach are calling someone selfish if they assign themselves the larger share when it comes to money, prestige or status, and physical pleasures.

• Those are the things that most people desire and care intensely about, as if they were the best things in life – that’s why they’re the “fought-over” goods.
• So, when people are greedy over those things, they’re indulging their desires and cravings, and in general, their feelings and the non-rational part of their soul. And that’s what most people are like.
• So, that’s also how the negative term “selfish” arose – from observing that crummy, flawed majority. So, it’s right to reproach people for being selfish in that sense.

And it really is clear that for most people, by common usage, “selfish” only applies to people who assign themselves too much of those kinds of external and bodily goods. Because think about it: suppose you were always keen to do the right thing – that is, keen for you to be the one doing it rather than anyone else – or the moderate thing, or anything else based on any of the virtues. And suppose you were, in general, always laying claim to every chance to do what’s honorable, for yourself. Nobody’s going to call you “selfish” or criticize you for that.

But you might think that pursuing honor and virtue for yourself is actually a way of being more profoundly selfish. At any rate, you’re now awarding yourself the finest and most honorable things – “goods” in the fullest sense – and you’re indulging the most authoritative element of yourself (your reason) and fully obeying that part of you.

• And just as we think a city-state (or any other organized community) is, above all, its most authoritative or governing part – so too is a human being.
• So, if you love and indulge that reasoning part of yourself, you’re “selfish” (you “care about your self”) in the truest and best sense.

Also:

• We say someone “has self-control” or “lacks self-control” depending on whether or not their mind (reason) is controlling them, implying that your mind is you.
• Also, we think people have performed an action themselves, and willingly, above all when they’ve done it using their reason.

So, it’s quite clear that the individual person is that reasoning part of them, or mostly is. And it’s also clear that a decent person loves that part of themselves most of all. That’s why you could say that good people are the most fully selfish – though it’s by a different kind of selfishness from the kind that gets reprimanded. They’re as different from that other kind of selfish person as:

• Living by reason is from living by your emotions.
• Desiring what’s honorable is from desiring whatever you merely take to be in your immediate interests.

So, when people are extremely eager to perform honorable actions, everybody welcomes it, and everyone applauds them. And if everyone competed only in that way – over doing the honorable thing – and put all their effort only into behaving as honorably as they could, then society as a whole would have everything it needs. And individually, everyone would have the greatest of all goods (since the greatest of all goods is to be a good person, acting virtuously).

It follows that a good man actually should be selfish in this higher sense.

• Because that way, he himself will benefit from doing honorable things (which is the highest good for him).
• And he’ll also be helping others through his good actions. But a wicked man should not be selfish (in the common, base sense).
• Because he’ll harm both himself and his neighbors by acting on his bad impulses and greedy desires.

For a wicked man, what he should be doing is different from what he does. But with a decent man, whatever he should be doing – that’s always what he does. That’s because his intellect (reason) always chooses what is best for itself (i.e., what is honorable and truly good), and a decent person always obeys his intellect.

It’s true that a good man does lots of things for the sake of his friends and loved ones, or for his country – even giving up his life for them if he has to.

• He’ll freely give up money, prestige, and in general all the “fought-over” goods if it means securing for himself the chance to do the honorable thing.
• He’d rather experience a brief moment of extreme bliss (from a supremely noble act) than live a long life of being only weakly satisfied.
• He’d rather live honorably for one year than live for many years in moral mediocrity.
• He’d rather perform a single great and glorious action than a long series of minor, insignificant ones. That’s surely what’s happening with people who give up their lives for others. So, that means they’re choosing a great good – what’s honorable – for themselves.

And they’ll happily give up money if it means their friends and loved ones can have more of it.

• That way, the friend gets the money, but they get to do the honorable thing. So really, they’re awarding themselves the greater good (the honor). The same goes for prestige and positions of power: a good man will give them all away for his friend or someone he loves. Because that’s the honorable thing for him to do, and it’s praiseworthy. (It’s no wonder he’s thought of as a good man if he chooses what’s honorable over everything else.)

It’s even possible to “give up actions” to a friend. It can be more honorable to be responsible for your friend’s doing something good than to do it yourself.

Book X

1. Introduction to Pleasure

Next, I think it would make sense to give an account of pleasure.

Pleasure, after all, seems to be something deeply ingrained in human nature.

• That’s why people educate the young by steering them with pleasure and pain.
• Also, enjoying the things you should enjoy, and hating the things you should hate, seems hugely important for developing a good character.
• These feelings of pleasure and pain extend through your whole life. They have a major impact and a powerful influence on how good a person you are and on whether you flourish in life.
• This is because pleasure shapes our choices: people choose and value the things that give them pleasure, and they avoid the things that cause them pain.

So, we certainly don’t want to skim over such an important topic, especially since it involves a major controversy.

• Some people say pleasure is the key good in life, the ultimate goal.
• Others say the exact opposite: that pleasure is an utterly bad thing.

Maybe some of the people who claim pleasure is bad are actually convinced that it’s true. But others might just think it’s better, for the practical effect it’ll have on people’s lives, to declare that pleasure is bad, even if they don’t fully believe it themselves.

• They might argue: “Ordinary people tilt strongly towards pleasure; they’re like slaves to their pleasures. So, we have to lead them in the opposite direction by telling them pleasure is bad. That way, they might end up somewhere in the middle, in a more balanced state.”

I’m not so sure that’s a good argument. The thing is, theoretical claims about any matters that involve our emotions, feelings, and actions are always less believable than how life really works. So, when these claims clash with what we can plainly see is the case in real life, people tend to dismiss them as nonsense. And when that happens, the truth itself can get thrown out along with the flawed arguments.

• For example, some philosopher might say that pleasure is bad. But if he’s then seen at some point actively seeking pleasure, his actions imply that pleasure is something desirable – and perhaps desirable in any form. This is because most people can’t make fine distinctions between different types of pleasure.

So, it seems to me that the most useful philosophical claims are always the ones that are true. They are useful not just for knowing what is the case, but also for their positive effect on how we live. Since true claims are in harmony with how life really works, people find them believable. And that’s how these true ideas come to motivate people (who understand them) to live their lives according to them.

2. Eudoxus’s View: Pleasure as the Chief Good

Alright, so the philosopher Eudoxus thought that pleasure was the key good in life. He believed this for several reasons:

1. He saw that all things strive after pleasure. This includes all animals, whether they are rational (like humans) or non-rational. He argued that in all cases, what is desirable for a being implies that it is good for that being. And what’s most desirable for a being must be that being’s highest good. So, the fact that all animals gravitate towards the same thing (pleasure) indicates that pleasure is the highest good for all. We can assume that each type of animal naturally seeks out its own good, exactly as each seeks out its own proper food. And if pleasure is good for all, and it’s what all things strive for, it must be the key good in life.

His arguments seemed plausible to many people, more on account of his excellent character than just on their own merit. Eudoxus was known as a man of extraordinary moderation and self-control. So, people assumed he wasn’t making these claims simply because he was a lover of pleasure himself. They thought things must actually be the way he claimed.

2. Eudoxus thought it was equally obvious from looking at pleasure’s opposite: pain. Pain, he said, is intrinsically undesirable for all animals; all creatures naturally avoid it. So, its opposite, pleasure, must be intrinsically desirable for all.

3. Also, what’s most desirable (by definition) is whatever we choose for its own sake, not because of something else or for the sake of some other thing. And pleasure undeniably fits that description. We never ask someone who’s doing something for pleasure, “Yes, but why do you want to experience pleasure?” We treat pleasure as desirable in itself.

4. Furthermore, when pleasure is added to any other good thing, it makes that good thing even more desirable. For example, if you add pleasure to acting fairly or moderately, those actions become even more appealing. And what is good only increases by having more of itself (more good) added to it.

(That particular argument, by the way – that pleasure added to good makes it more desirable – only seems to show that pleasure is one sort of good, not necessarily more important than any other good. After all, any good thing combined with any other good thing becomes more desirable than it is on its own. In fact, Plato even uses much the same argument against the idea that pleasure is the key good. He argues that a pleasant, enjoyable life is more desirable when combined with wisdom than without it. And if that combination (pleasure + wisdom) is better than pleasure alone, then pleasure can’t be the key good. This is because nothing can be added to the true key good that would make it more desirable. And obviously, that applies to anything else: X can’t be the chief good if X becomes more desirable by being combined with any other intrinsic good.)

(So, what does fit that description of being the chief good – something to which nothing can be added to make it better – while also being something we can actually share in and experience? That’s the outline of what we’re looking for here when we search for the highest human good.)

Now, some people object to Eudoxus’s first point by denying that “what all things strive after must necessarily be good.” But that’s got to be nonsense. What seems to be the case to everyone and everything, we generally assume is the case. If you dismiss that sort of universal evidence, you’re certainly not going to be able to put something more plausible or believable in its place. I mean, if it was just the non-thinking animals that desired pleasure, those objectors might have had a point. But since it’s the smart ones too (humans), how could there possibly be anything in their claim? (And surely, even in the lower animals, there’s a kind of natural force or instinct, something greater than they are individually, that strives for their proper good.)

These objectors also don’t seem to be right in what they say about pleasure’s opposite, pain. They might say that even if pain is a bad thing, it doesn’t automatically follow that pleasure is a good thing. They argue, “Because one bad thing, A, can be the opposite of another bad thing, B, and both can also be opposites of something neutral that isn’t A or B.” And they’re not wrong about that general logical point. But that’s not to say it applies in this specific case of pleasure and pain. If both pleasure and pain were bad things, then they should both be undesirable. And neither should be in the desirable “neutral” class (or if they were neutral, both should be equally so). But that’s not how it is in reality. People obviously shun pain as something bad and choose pleasure as something good. So, that’s the way that they’re opposites: one is bad, and one is good.

3. Further Arguments About Pleasure and Goodness

Also, the fact that pleasure isn’t a quality (like being tall or blue) doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing. After all, the activities and behaviors that express our moral goodness (like brave actions or just dealings) aren’t qualities either. Neither is flourishing itself (true happiness). Yet these are all considered good.

Opponents also say that what’s good is determinate and definite, while pleasure is indeterminate because it comes in degrees (you can feel more or less pleasure).

• So, if they’re basing that judgment on the way we feel pleasure, then the same thing is going to be true even of, say, being fair and the other moral virtues. They’d agree that we evidently possess those qualities to greater or lesser degrees, and we act on our virtues to varying degrees. That is to say, we can be brave people, or fair people, by degrees; and we can act fairly or moderately in varying degrees.
• And if it’s just a judgment about pleasures as such (the nature of pleasure itself), then I suspect that their explanation (that it’s indeterminate) isn’t the real reason pleasure might seem problematic, especially given that some pleasures are pure and some are mixed with pain or other sensations.

And anyway, why shouldn’t pleasure be like health?

• Health is generally considered a determinate good, yet it clearly comes in degrees.
• The ideal balance of elements for health isn’t exactly the same in everyone, or even the same for one given person all the time.
• Health can be “relaxed” (less than perfect but still good) up to a point and still persist; it clearly exists in different degrees. So, something like that could also be the case with pleasure. It could be a determinate good that nonetheless admits of degrees.

Also, opponents assume that the key good in life is something perfect and complete. They also assume that processes, and in particular processes that bring something about, are incomplete until they reach their end. They then try to show that pleasure is a process and brings about something (and is therefore incomplete and not the chief good).

But I don’t think that’s right. It’s not even clear that pleasure is a process.

• Every process seems to have its own way of being fast or slow, if not in itself (like perhaps the motion of the cosmos, which might be constant) at least relative to something else. But neither of those (being fast or slow) applies to the feeling of pleasure. You can certainly be quick to start feeling pleasure in something (just as you can be quick to get angry), but you can’t feel pleasure itself at high speed – not even relative to something else. It’s not like walking or growing, or anything like that which unfolds over time. In other words, you can transition into a state of pleasure quickly or slowly, but you can’t then exercise that state (that is, actually feel pleasure) quickly or slowly in the same way a process unfolds.
• And does pleasure “bring about something”? How so? (They can’t just be vague about that.) You don’t get just anything coming into being from just anything. When something (X) comes into being, what it comes out of is usually what it also dissolves back into. This model doesn’t seem to fit pleasure.

Opponents also say: “What pleasure brings about, that’s what pain destroys.” And they claim that pain is the lacking of your natural state, and pleasure is the refilling and restoring of that natural state.

• But those (lacking and refilling) are things that happen to the body. So, if pleasure is the refilling of your natural state, it should be the thing where the refilling is going on (i.e., the body) that feels the pleasure. But it doesn’t seem to be the body itself that feels pleasure in this direct way. So, pleasure is not the refilling itself.
• Rather, we should say that, when the refilling is going on, you feel pleasure (just as when you’re being cut, you feel pain). The pleasure is an experience that accompanies the restoration.

Their view (that pleasure is a refilling of a lack) seems to be based only on the pleasures and pains to do with eating and drinking. The idea is that people get into a state of need (hunger, thirst), first experience that as pain, then feel pleasure at filling up again. But that doesn’t happen with all pleasures.

• The pleasures of learning, for example, are generally painless throughout the activity.
• Of the sensory pleasures, so are the pleasures of smell.
• The pleasures of hearing and seeing are also often without prior pain or lack (in plenty of cases).
• The same is true for pleasures from remembering and anticipating good things. So, what shall we say all those pleasures “bring about”? There’s no prior need or lack of anything in these cases. So, there’s nothing that can be “refilled.”

And to those people who go on about the “disgraceful” kinds of pleasures, you could reply in a few ways:

1. First, those things aren’t actually, or universally, pleasurable. When things are pleasurable only to people whose character or physical condition is poor, we don’t have to think those things actually are pleasurable in a true sense, except to those particular people – just like with things that are only considered healthy, sweet, or bitter by people who are sick; or things that only look white to people with an eye infection.
2. Or you could say this: those pleasures (like those from shameful acts) are desirable in some way (they offer some gratification), but they’re just not desirable when they arise from those specific things or actions. This is similar to how we might say that being rich is desirable, but not if it comes from an act of betrayal; or that health is desirable, but not if you have to eat just anything (including harmful things) to achieve it.
3. Or maybe there are different kinds of pleasure. The pleasures that arise from honorable things are just of a different kind from those that arise from shameful things. It’s not even possible to experience the pleasure that an ethical person experiences without being an ethical person, or the pleasure a true musician experiences from music without being a musician, and so on with other activities and their proper pleasures.

And the fact that a friend is a different thing from a flatterer shows, arguably, that pleasure is not the highest good, or at least that there are different kinds of pleasure that have different moral values.

• A friend spends time with you with a view to what’s genuinely good for you.
• A flatterer (or “flunky”) spends time with you with a view to giving you immediate pleasure (to gain favor).
• And flatterers are generally criticized, while true friends are praised. So, we must see that their companionship has different aims and values.

Also, consider these points:

• Nobody would choose to live their whole life with the mind of a child, even if it meant enjoying to the absolute full all the things that children enjoy.
• And nobody would choose to get pleasure from doing something utterly shameful, even if they were guaranteed never to experience any pain or negative consequences as a result of it.
• Also, there are plenty of things that we’d still value highly even if they didn’t bring us any pleasure at all – like seeing, remembering, knowing things, and having our moral virtues. Even if pleasures inevitably do accompany these things, that doesn’t affect my point. The point is, we’d choose to have them even if no pleasure came from them.

So, it seems pretty clear from all this that:

• Pleasure is not the key good in life (the single highest good).
• Not every pleasure is desirable.
• But also, there are some pleasures that are desirable – specifically, desirable in themselves. And those good pleasures are different in kind from the undesirable ones, or they differ in what they arise from.

4. The True Nature of Pleasure: An Activity, Not a Process

So, what is pleasure, or what kind of thing is it? Maybe we’ll get a clearer sense of that if we take it up again from the beginning with a fresh approach.

Consider the act of seeing. Seeing is complete at any moment that it’s occurring. That is to say, it’s not lacking anything that has to come about at some later stage to bring its form to completion. When you are seeing, your seeing is whole and fully itself in that instant.

And pleasure seems to be something like that.

• That is, it’s something whole and complete at any given moment. There’s no instant you could freeze a pleasure, such that it has to go on for more time before its form is completed. If you are feeling pleasure, that feeling is fully what it is in that moment.

That’s why pleasure is not a process or a movement towards something.

• Every process or movement takes a certain amount of time and is directed towards a goal – the process of building a house, for example. A process is only complete once it produces the thing it’s aiming at. So, it’s only complete when viewed over the whole time it takes, or at its endpoint.
• But all processes, in their individual parts and during the time they take, are incomplete. They also differ in kind both from the whole, completed process and from each other.
  • Fitting the stones of a column together, for example, is a different part of the process from fluting the column (carving grooves in it).
  • And both of these parts are different from the whole process of making the temple.
  • And as for “making,” though making the temple as a whole is “complete” (it doesn’t lack anything relative to the overall project once finished), the sub-process of making the foundation or making a decorative part like a triglyph is “incomplete” in itself, in that each is just the making of a part of the whole.
• So, processes differ in kind, and it isn’t possible to freeze a process at any particular moment and find it complete in its form. It’s only complete, if at all, over the whole of the time it takes to reach its end.

The same is true even of walking and similar movements.

• If moving is a kinēsis (a process of change) from one place to another place, then there are different forms of that, too – flying, walking, jumping, and so on.
• And they don’t just differ in that way; there are also different sub-processes going on even, say, within walking itself. Moving “from one place to another” isn’t the same over the whole length of a stadium as it is over just a part of it. And it isn’t the same in one part of the stadium as in another. Even crossing the finishing line here isn’t the same as crossing a finishing line there. Because you don’t just cross “a line”; you cross a line that is in a specific location. And this bit of the line is in a different location from that one over there.

So, though our detailed treatment of kinēsis (processes of change and movement) is set out elsewhere (in works on physics), it’s safe to say here that a process is not complete at each moment. Rather, most processes are incomplete and differ in kind at each moment – if, for example, moving from this spot to that spot makes for a different kind of moving or a different stage of the movement.

Pleasure, by contrast, is complete in its form at every moment it is experienced. So, it’s clear that these two things – process and pleasure – must be different from one another. Pleasure belongs to the class of things that are whole and complete in themselves at any given instant.

The same thing also seems to follow from the fact that it’s not possible for a process of change to take place other than over a certain period of time. But it is possible to feel pleasure without it necessarily being extended over any particular period of time. It’s complete in every instant, however small.

From these facts, it’s also clear that people are not right to say that pleasure can be the object of a process of change, or that any process brings about pleasure as its product.

• You can’t attribute those things (being a process or product of a process) to everything; only to things that are divisible into parts and that aren’t already whole.
• There’s no process, for example, that “brings about” the act of seeing itself (seeing is an activity, not a product). There’s no process that brings about a geometrical point or a numerical unit (these are indivisible concepts).
• And conversely, none of those things (seeing, a point, a unit) is a process or brings about some further thing X into being through a process.
• So, there’s no process that brings about pleasure either, because pleasure is something whole and complete in each moment.

Every sense (sight, hearing, etc.) operates on an object of perception. Each sense is completely and perfectly active when it’s in good working order and is operating on the finest of the objects that fall under its capacity. That’s what we see as the ideal case of complete, perfect activity for a sense. (And let’s say it doesn’t matter for this argument whether we say it’s the sense itself that’s “active,” or the faculty or organ that has the sense.) So, for each of the senses, the best kind of activity is that of a sense organ in the best possible working order operating on the best or most suitable object that falls under it. That kind of activity is the most complete and perfect – and also the most pleasurable.

• Because for every kind of perception, and also for every kind of thought and higher contemplation, there’s a corresponding pleasure.
• And it’s most pleasurable when the activity is at its most complete and perfect.
• And that means the activity of a faculty (whether sensory or intellectual) that is in good condition, operating on the best and most suitable object that falls under its capacity.

The pleasure perfects and completes the activity. But the pleasure doesn’t “perfect” or “complete” the activity in the same sense as the object of perception (when it’s good) and the perceiving faculty (when it’s working well) “perfect” the activity by being its necessary components. These are more like conditions for the activity, whereas pleasure is an outcome or accompaniment that enhances it. This is just as health and a doctor don’t cause you to be healthy in the very same sense (a doctor is an external agent of health, while health is the state itself).

It’s clear that for each kind of perception, there’s a corresponding pleasure. (For example, we speak of sights and sounds that give us pleasure.) And it becomes especially obvious that pleasure accompanies activity when the perception in question is the best kind and is operating on the best possible object. If they both fit that description – the object perceived (let’s call it A) and the thing doing the perceiving (let’s call it B) – there will be a continuous pleasure, as long as object A is there to act upon faculty B, and faculty B is there to be acted upon by object A.

And the pleasure perfects and completes the activity, not in the same way as the underlying disposition or faculty does (by already being in place as a capacity). Pleasure perfects activity as a kind of emergent, supervening feature that adds a finishing touch – like the “bloom” of youth, that fresh radiance that accompanies being young and healthy. So, as long as the object of thought or perception is as it should be, and likewise the faculty that is doing the discriminating (perceiving) or the contemplating (thinking) is in good condition, then there will be pleasure in the resultant activity. As long as these conditions (good object, good faculty, proper relation) stay the same and stand in the same relation to one another…

So, in all these kinds of praiseworthy actions, a good person is clearly awarding themself the larger share – the share of what’s truly honorable. Therefore, you should be “selfish” in this good sense, as we have said. But you should not be selfish in the way most people are (by just being greedy).

9. Do We Need Friends to Live a Flourishing Life?

Another thing people disagree about is whether, to flourish in life (to be truly happy and live well), you will or won’t need friends and loved ones.

Some people say that the most blessed and well-off individuals, who can meet all their own needs, have no need for friends.

• They argue that since these fortunate people already have all the good things in life, they are self-sufficient and don’t need anything further.
• A friend, who is a kind of “other self,” is usually there to supply the things that you can’t get on your own.
• This leads to sayings like: “When the gifts of the gods are good, what need is there for friends?”

But it seems a bit absurd, if we’re assigning all the good things in life to our “blessed” or “flourishing” person, not to give them any friends – when friends are supposedly the greatest of all external goods!

Also, consider these points:

• If being a friend is more about doing good for others than receiving good from them;
• And if a key feature of being a good person is helping others;
• And if it’s a finer and more honorable thing to do good for friends and loved ones than for strangers;
• Then a good man will need people he’s going to do good things for.

That’s why people also puzzle over whether you need friends more when you’re enjoying good fortune or when you’re down on your luck. It seems you need them in both situations:

• If you’re down on your luck, you need friends who are going to help you.
• And when you’re enjoying good fortune, you need friends so you have someone to help and to share your life with.

And surely it’s absurd to make our flourishing, blessed person a loner. Nobody would choose to have every good thing in life all by themselves. People are social beings by nature; it’s our nature to share our lives with others. So, that must apply to flourishing, prosperous people too. They have all the naturally good things in life, and a social life is one of them. And it’s obvious that it’s better to pass your time with friends and loved ones, especially with good people, than with strangers or just anyone. So, to flourish, you do indeed need friends and loved ones.

In that case, what are those first people (who say friends aren’t needed for flourishing) really saying? And is there any truth in their view? Maybe it’s that most people think that “friends” just means friends of the useful kind.

• It’s true that a flourishing man (one who is prosperous and has all he needs) won’t have any need for those kinds of useful friends, since he already has all the good things in life.
• He also won’t need many pleasure-friends, or perhaps only to a limited degree, because his life is already pleasant and has no need for extra, imported pleasure from outside. So, since he doesn’t seem to need these common kinds of friends, people might mistakenly think he just doesn’t need friends at all.

But that’s surely not the case. We said, back at the start of our discussions, that flourishing is a kind of activity. And activity is obviously something ongoing, not something you just passively have, like a possession. And if:

1. Flourishing depends on living an active life; and
2. A good person’s activity is morally good and pleasant in itself (as we said at the very beginning); and
3. What’s “our own” (things connected to us, like our actions or friends) is one of the things that gives us pleasure; and
4. We’re generally more able to observe others and their actions clearly than we are able to observe ourselves and our own actions; and
5. The actions of good people, who are also our friends, give us pleasure (if we too are good people), because these actions have both naturally pleasurable features (being good) and a connection to us (being “our own” through friendship)… …it follows that to truly flourish, you’ll have to have morally good friends. This is because one of your aims in a flourishing life is to observe actions that are both morally good and, in a sense, “your own.” The actions of a good person who’s your friend nicely fit that description.

Also, people think that if you’re flourishing, you should be enjoying life; you should be happy. But a loner’s life is hard. It’s not easy to exercise your virtues continually and actively all on your own. But doing good things with others, and for others – that’s easier. So, that way, your virtuous activity (which is enjoyable in itself) will be more continuous – and continuous, unimpeded activity has to be a feature of any truly flourishing life. (A good person, simply by being a good person, takes pleasure in others’ actions that express goodness, and is bothered by actions caused by badness, just as a musician enjoys beautiful songs but finds bad ones painful.)

Also, by sharing your life with good people, you get a sort of training in how to be a good person – as the poet Theognis says.

Thinking about it more scientifically, it does seem that a morally good friend is a naturally desirable thing for any good person.

1. We said earlier that what’s naturally good is always good, and pleasant, to a good person.
2. And people define being alive, for all animals, by their capacity for perceiving things, and for human beings by their capacity for perceiving or thinking. But a capacity only truly exists for the sake of exercising it; the key thing is in the actual exercising of that capacity. So that implies that being alive, in the key sense, means actually perceiving, or thinking.
3. Being alive is something good and pleasant in itself. It’s a definite, positive state, and what’s definite and positive is part of the nature of what’s good. (And whatever’s naturally good is also good and pleasant for a good person. That’s why being alive seems pleasant to everyone – perhaps because everyone, to some extent, sees themselves as good or values their own existence. But for our purposes here, we shouldn’t consider a depraved or corrupted form of life, or even life filled with overwhelming pain. That kind of life is indeterminate and chaotic, and so are all its features. This will be explained more fully in the next section, when we talk more about pain.)
4. So, being alive, in itself, is good, and something we enjoy. (This also seems to be the case from the fact that everybody desires to live, and especially people who are morally good and flourishing. Theirs is the most desirable kind of life; for them, living is flourishing in the fullest sense.)
5. When you see something, you also perceive that you are seeing; and when you hear something, you perceive that you are hearing; and when you walk, you’re aware that you’re walking. With all the rest of our activities, there’s always a part of us that’s aware that we’re exercising that capacity. So, if we’re perceiving, we’re also aware that we’re perceiving, and if we’re thinking, we’re aware that we’re thinking.
6. To be aware that we’re perceiving, or thinking, is to be aware that we exist. Because to exist, or to be alive, as we just said, is to be perceiving or thinking.
7. To be aware that you’re alive is something that gives you pleasure in itself, since being alive is a natural good, and to be aware that you hold that natural good gives you pleasure.
8. Being alive is especially desirable for good people. For them above all, existing is good and pleasant (they experience pleasure from perceiving the intrinsic good that they have within themselves).
9. As a good person, you relate to a friend the same way as you relate to yourself (because a friend is, in a sense, a “second self”). So, just as your own existence is desirable for you, so is your friend’s existence – or in very nearly the same way.
10. And existing, we said, is desirable through your perceiving yourself as good and active. That kind of awareness is pleasurable in itself. Therefore, you also need to share the awareness of your friend’s existence. That’s what happens when you share your life with a friend, converse with them, and share your thoughts. (Surely for human beings, that’s what “sharing a life” or “spending your time with someone” means. We don’t just mean grazing the same patch of grass together, like cattle.)

So, if you’re really flourishing in life, your own existence is intrinsically desirable (because it’s naturally good and pleasant). And your friend’s existence is desirable for you in very nearly the same way. So, it follows that the friend, too, is something desirable for you to have. And what’s “desirable” for you, by definition, is something you’ve got to have, or you’ll be missing out in that area of life. So, yes, to flourish you will need some friends, and you’ll need them to be good people.

10. How Many Friends Should You Have?

So, does that mean that you should make as many friends as possible?

In the case of xenoi (guest-friends or formal acquaintances), people tend to agree with Hesiod’s motto: “It’s a bad idea to have too many; but it’s just as bad to not have any.” Will that apply to having true friends as well? Is it not just a bad idea to have no friends, but also to have a huge number of them?

Well, consider these points:

• If we mean friends of the useful kind, the saying seems exactly right. Returning favors and services to a large number of people is hard work. Life is too short; you just don’t have time for that. So, any such useful friends that you have beyond the number that you actually need for your own livelihood are unnecessary. They can actually get in the way of living well and honorably. So, you simply don’t need a huge number of them.
• A small number of pleasure-friends is also enough, just as you only need a little bit of spice with your food to make it enjoyable.

What about morally good friends (friends based on virtue)? Should you try to make as many of them as you can? Or is there some sort of measure or limit to the quantity of true friends you can have – like with the size of a city?

• You can’t make a functioning city out of just ten people.
• And if you have 100,000 people, that’s not really a single, manageable city anymore either. As for the right number of citizens for a city, well, it’s surely not some single, exact number. It’s a whole range between an upper and a lower limit.

Likewise with friends, there’s an upper limit to the number of true friends that you can have.

• Surely it’s the largest number of people that you can actively share your life with. (Because that’s what we thought was the key thing in friendship.)
• And it’s pretty clear that it’s not possible to share your life deeply with a very large number of people; you’d spread yourself too thin.
• Also, for true communal friendship, they’d all have to be friends with one another too (if you’re all planning to hang out together as a group of close friends). And for that to be true of a very large number of people is pretty tricky.
• It’s also hard to genuinely sympathize with all the joys and pains of a lot of other people and make them your own. Chances are you’ll often find yourself in a position where you’re having to feel happy for one friend and upset for another at the very same time, which is difficult.

So, maybe it’s a good idea not to try to have as many friends as you possibly can. It’s better to have just as many as are enough for truly sharing a life with.

In any case, it doesn’t even seem possible to be a very close friend to lots of people. This is for the same reason that you can’t be romantically in love with more than one person at a time (at least not with the same intensity). That kind of deep love tends to be a sort of maximum of affection, something you can usually only feel intensely towards one person, or a very few. And very strong friendship, too, can usually only be with a small number of people.

And that’s just the way it seems to work in practice.

• You don’t find large groups of people all becoming very close, deep friends.
• And in the famous stories of great friendships, it’s always two people, or a very small group. People who do seem to have lots of “friends” and interact with everyone on familiar terms surely aren’t actually true, close friends with anyone (except perhaps in the general way that fellow citizens can be friendly). We often call those types “people-pleasers” or overly agreeable. Now, you can be friends with lots of people in that general fellow-citizen way without being a people-pleaser; you can just be a genuinely nice and sociable person. But to be true, deep friends with lots of people on the basis of their goodness and their intrinsic qualities – you can’t do that. You should be happy to find even a small number of friends like that.

11. Friends in Good Times and Bad Times

Here’s a question: when do you need friends more? In times of good fortune or in times of adversity? It seems they’re required in both situations.

• When people are down on their luck, they need support.
• When their fortunes are up, they need people to share their life with and people they can help, because good people want to do good.

So, in adversity, friendship is more of a necessity. That’s why in that situation, you especially need the useful kind of friends who can provide practical help. When you’re enjoying good fortune, friendship is more something honorable and good in itself. So then you look for morally decent friends, since those are the people it’s more desirable to do good things for and to spend your time with.

In fact, just the mere presence of our friends, both in times of good fortune and in adversity, gives us pleasure and comfort. When we are in distress, we get relief when friends share our pain.

• This raises another question: are they, as it were, literally helping us carry a burden? Or is that not quite it?
• Maybe it’s that their presence itself is a pleasure, and the realization that they’re feeling our pain with us somehow lessens our own distress.
• Anyway, whether it’s for that reason or for some other reason that people are uplifted by their friends in difficult times – let’s not worry too much about the exact mechanism for now. The main point is, it does seem to work that way.

But the presence of friends when you are suffering seems to be a kind of mixed experience.

• On the one hand, just seeing your friends is a pleasure, especially when you’re having a hard time. Their presence acts as a support and stops you from feeling too distressed. A friend is someone with the power to make you feel better, just by the mere sight of them and by what they say, if they’re good at saying the right thing at the right time. This is because a true friend knows your character, and knows what pleases you and what pains you, what cheers you up and what upsets you.
• On the other hand, the awareness that your friend is upset because of your misfortunes is painful. Nobody wants to be a cause of pain to their friends.
• That’s why people who are tough by nature take care not to spread their own pain and distress to their friends. A man like that may even try to be strong for his friends and not show his upset. If he can’t avoid being upset, he certainly doesn’t want his friends getting excessively upset as well. In general, he doesn’t let his friends moan and groan about his misfortunes because he doesn’t even like to moan about them himself.
• But (according to ancient stereotypes) females, and men considered “womanish,” sometimes enjoy it when people whine and wail along with them. They love those people who overtly show shared sorrow, thinking, “They care about me; they feel my pain.”
• And in all things, obviously, you should try to imitate the better type of person (the one who is resilient and considerate of others’ feelings).

When you’re enjoying good fortune, the presence of your friends offers both a pleasant way of passing your time and the enjoyable awareness that they’re taking pleasure in your blessings. So, I’d say what you should do is this:

• Be eager to invite your friends to share in your good fortune – because doing good for others and sharing happiness is an honorable thing.
• But be reluctant to invite them into your misfortunes. You should share the bad stuff in your life as little as possible. (Hence the saying: “One of us being miserable is plenty.”)
• Ideally, you should call on friends for help in misfortune only when they’re going to be a very big help to you with very little trouble or burden to themselves.

But when it comes to you going to your friends’ aid, I’d say the reverse applies.

• If your friends are in trouble, you should go to their aid without even being called, and eagerly. Because being a friend means helping out, and especially helping out friends who are in need – and ideally, without them even having to ask. (Because that’s more honorable, and a greater pleasure, for both of you – for you to give freely, and for them to receive help without the embarrassment of asking.)
• But as for when friends are enjoying good fortune and success: well, by all means, be eager to help them achieve it (we need our friends for that kind of support too). But when it comes to taking favors from them during their good times, you should hang back a bit. There’s nothing honorable in constantly looking for perks or benefits from your successful friends.
• On the other hand, you should probably also try to avoid getting a reputation for being a killjoy or ungracious by constantly refusing their kind offers. That sometimes happens.

So, all in all, the presence of our friends seems desirable in all contexts of life.

12. Shared Life as the Essence of Friendship

So, is it like this? When people are romantically in love with someone, what they cherish most of all is seeing them. They’d choose that way of perceiving their beloved over all the other senses, since their love often arises and primarily exists through that sense of sight. So, is it that, in a similar way, what friends want more than anything else is to share life?

• Because friendship is a kind of sharing, a kind of partnership.
• And your relationship with your friend matches your relationship with your own self (a friend is like another self).
• And in your own case, your awareness that you exist is desirable. So, your awareness that your friend exists must be desirable too.

Also, we exercise friendship by sharing a life. So, it’s no surprise that that’s what friends aim to do.

And whatever “existing” or “living” means to each group of friends – that is, whatever their fundamental reason is for wanting to be alive at all – that’s what they want to spend their time doing with their friends.

• So, some friends drink together.
• Some play dice or games together.
• Some train together in athletics.
• Some hunt together.
• Some do philosophy together. In each case, they spend their time together doing whatever it is that they most cherish in life. Because what they want is to share life with their friends; so they do the things, and share in the things, that they think amount to really living.

Now, for bad people, “friendship” (if it can be called that) is often corrupting.

• They share in each other’s morally bad actions.
• And because they are often fickle and impressionable, they become even more wicked by assimilating to one another and reinforcing bad habits.

But the friendship of decent people is itself decent, and it grows more so as they spend their time together.

• It’s as if they become better people by exercising their friendship and by correcting one another’s mistakes in a gentle way.
• They’re shaped by one another, by their shared likes and dislikes for what is good and honorable. Hence the line from the poet Theognis: “From noble men, you will learn noble things.”

All right, I think that’s all we need to say about friendship and love. Next, we should give an account of pleasure.

Book X

1. Introduction to Pleasure

Next, I think it would make sense to give an account of pleasure.

Pleasure, after all, seems to be something deeply ingrained in human nature.

• That’s why people educate the young by steering them with pleasure and pain.
• Also, enjoying the things you should enjoy, and hating the things you should hate, seems hugely important for developing a good character.
• These feelings of pleasure and pain extend through your whole life. They have a major impact and a powerful influence on how good a person you are and on whether you flourish in life.
• This is because pleasure shapes our choices: people choose and value the things that give them pleasure, and they avoid the things that cause them pain.

So, we certainly don’t want to skim over such an important topic, especially since it involves a major controversy.

• Some people say pleasure is the key good in life, the ultimate goal.
• Others say the exact opposite: that pleasure is an utterly bad thing.

Maybe some of the people who claim pleasure is bad are actually convinced that it’s true. But others might just think it’s better, for the practical effect it’ll have on people’s lives, to declare that pleasure is bad, even if they don’t fully believe it themselves.

• They might argue: “Ordinary people tilt strongly towards pleasure; they’re like slaves to their pleasures. So, we have to lead them in the opposite direction by telling them pleasure is bad. That way, they might end up somewhere in the middle, in a more balanced state.”

I’m not so sure that’s a good argument. The thing is, theoretical claims about any matters that involve our emotions, feelings, and actions are always less believable than how life really works. So, when these claims clash with what we can plainly see is the case in real life, people tend to dismiss them as nonsense. And when that happens, the truth itself can get thrown out along with the flawed arguments.

• For example, some philosopher might say that pleasure is bad. But if he’s then seen at some point actively seeking pleasure, his actions imply that pleasure is something desirable – and perhaps desirable in any form. This is because most people can’t make fine distinctions between different types of pleasure.

So, it seems to me that the most useful philosophical claims are always the ones that are true. They are useful not just for knowing what is the case, but also for their positive effect on how we live. Since true claims are in harmony with how life really works, people find them believable. And that’s how these true ideas come to motivate people (who understand them) to live their lives according to them.

2. Eudoxus’s View: Pleasure as the Chief Good

Alright, so the philosopher Eudoxus thought that pleasure was the key good in life. He believed this for several reasons:

1. He saw that all things strive after pleasure. This includes all animals, whether they are rational (like humans) or non-rational. He argued that in all cases, what is desirable for a being implies that it is good for that being. And what’s most desirable for a being must be that being’s highest good. So, the fact that all animals gravitate towards the same thing (pleasure) indicates that pleasure is the highest good for all. We can assume that each type of animal naturally seeks out its own good, exactly as each seeks out its own proper food. And if pleasure is good for all, and it’s what all things strive for, it must be the key good in life.

His arguments seemed plausible to many people, more on account of his excellent character than just on their own merit. Eudoxus was known as a man of extraordinary moderation and self-control. So, people assumed he wasn’t making these claims simply because he was a lover of pleasure himself. They thought things must actually be the way he claimed.

2. Eudoxus thought it was equally obvious from looking at pleasure’s opposite: pain. Pain, he said, is intrinsically undesirable for all animals; all creatures naturally avoid it. So, its opposite, pleasure, must be intrinsically desirable for all.

3. Also, what’s most desirable (by definition) is whatever we choose for its own sake, not because of something else or for the sake of some other thing. And pleasure undeniably fits that description. We never ask someone who’s doing something for pleasure, “Yes, but why do you want to experience pleasure?” We treat pleasure as desirable in itself.

4. Furthermore, when pleasure is added to any other good thing, it makes that good thing even more desirable. For example, if you add pleasure to acting fairly or moderately, those actions become even more appealing. And what is good only increases by having more of itself (more good) added to it.

(That particular argument, by the way – that pleasure added to good makes it more desirable – only seems to show that pleasure is one sort of good, not necessarily more important than any other good. After all, any good thing combined with any other good thing becomes more desirable than it is on its own. In fact, Plato even uses much the same argument against the idea that pleasure is the key good. He argues that a pleasant, enjoyable life is more desirable when combined with wisdom than without it. And if that combination (pleasure + wisdom) is better than pleasure alone, then pleasure can’t be the key good. This is because nothing can be added to the true key good that would make it more desirable. And obviously, that applies to anything else: X can’t be the chief good if X becomes more desirable by being combined with any other intrinsic good.)

(So, what does fit that description of being the chief good – something to which nothing can be added to make it better – while also being something we can actually share in and experience? That’s the outline of what we’re looking for here when we search for the highest human good.)

Now, some people object to Eudoxus’s first point by denying that “what all things strive after must necessarily be good.” But that’s got to be nonsense. What seems to be the case to everyone and everything, we generally assume is the case. If you dismiss that sort of universal evidence, you’re certainly not going to be able to put something more plausible or believable in its place. I mean, if it was just the non-thinking animals that desired pleasure, those objectors might have had a point. But since it’s the smart ones too (humans), how could there possibly be anything in their claim? (And surely, even in the lower animals, there’s a kind of natural force or instinct, something greater than they are individually, that strives for their proper good.)

These objectors also don’t seem to be right in what they say about pleasure’s opposite, pain. They might say that even if pain is a bad thing, it doesn’t automatically follow that pleasure is a good thing. They argue, “Because one bad thing, A, can be the opposite of another bad thing, B, and both can also be opposites of something neutral that isn’t A or B.” And they’re not wrong about that general logical point. But that’s not to say it applies in this specific case of pleasure and pain. If both pleasure and pain were bad things, then they should both be undesirable. And neither should be in the desirable “neutral” class (or if they were neutral, both should be equally so). But that’s not how it is in reality. People obviously shun pain as something bad and choose pleasure as something good. So, that’s the way that they’re opposites: one is bad, and one is good.

3. Further Arguments About Pleasure and Goodness

Also, the fact that pleasure isn’t a quality (like being tall or blue) doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing. After all, the activities and behaviors that express our moral goodness (like brave actions or just dealings) aren’t qualities either. Neither is flourishing itself (true happiness). Yet these are all considered good.

Opponents also say that what’s good is determinate and definite, while pleasure is indeterminate because it comes in degrees (you can feel more or less pleasure).

• So, if they’re basing that judgment on the way we feel pleasure, then the same thing is going to be true even of, say, being fair and the other moral virtues. They’d agree that we evidently possess those qualities to greater or lesser degrees, and we act on our virtues to varying degrees. That is to say, we can be brave people, or fair people, by degrees; and we can act fairly or moderately in varying degrees.
• And if it’s just a judgment about pleasures as such (the nature of pleasure itself), then I suspect that their explanation (that it’s indeterminate) isn’t the real reason pleasure might seem problematic, especially given that some pleasures are pure and some are mixed with pain or other sensations.

And anyway, why shouldn’t pleasure be like health?

• Health is generally considered a determinate good, yet it clearly comes in degrees.
• The ideal balance of elements for health isn’t exactly the same in everyone, or even the same for one given person all the time.
• Health can be “relaxed” (less than perfect but still good) up to a point and still persist; it clearly exists in different degrees. So, something like that could also be the case with pleasure. It could be a determinate good that nonetheless admits of degrees.

Also, opponents assume that the key good in life is something perfect and complete. They also assume that processes, and in particular processes that bring something about, are incomplete until they reach their end. They then try to show that pleasure is a process and brings about something (and is therefore incomplete and not the chief good).

But I don’t think that’s right. It’s not even clear that pleasure is a process.

• Every process seems to have its own way of being fast or slow, if not in itself (like perhaps the motion of the cosmos, which might be constant) at least relative to something else. But neither of those (being fast or slow) applies to the feeling of pleasure. You can certainly be quick to start feeling pleasure in something (just as you can be quick to get angry), but you can’t feel pleasure itself at high speed – not even relative to something else. It’s not like walking or growing, or anything like that which unfolds over time. In other words, you can transition into a state of pleasure quickly or slowly, but you can’t then exercise that state (that is, actually feel pleasure) quickly or slowly in the same way a process unfolds.
• And does pleasure “bring about something”? How so? (They can’t just be vague about that.) You don’t get just anything coming into being from just anything. When something (X) comes into being, what it comes out of is usually what it also dissolves back into. This model doesn’t seem to fit pleasure.

Opponents also say: “What pleasure brings about, that’s what pain destroys.” And they claim that pain is the lacking of your natural state, and pleasure is the refilling and restoring of that natural state.

• But those (lacking and refilling) are things that happen to the body. So, if pleasure is the refilling of your natural state, it should be the thing where the refilling is going on (i.e., the body) that feels the pleasure. But it doesn’t seem to be the body itself that feels pleasure in this direct way. So, pleasure is not the refilling itself.
• Rather, we should say that, when the refilling is going on, you feel pleasure (just as when you’re being cut, you feel pain). The pleasure is an experience that accompanies the restoration.

Their view (that pleasure is a refilling of a lack) seems to be based only on the pleasures and pains to do with eating and drinking. The idea is that people get into a state of need (hunger, thirst), first experience that as pain, then feel pleasure at filling up again. But that doesn’t happen with all pleasures.

• The pleasures of learning, for example, are generally painless throughout the activity.
• Of the sensory pleasures, so are the pleasures of smell.
• The pleasures of hearing and seeing are also often without prior pain or lack (in plenty of cases).
• The same is true for pleasures from remembering and anticipating good things. So, what shall we say all those pleasures “bring about”? There’s no prior need or lack of anything in these cases. So, there’s nothing that can be “refilled.”

And to those people who go on about the “disgraceful” kinds of pleasures, you could reply in a few ways:

1. First, those things aren’t actually, or universally, pleasurable. When things are pleasurable only to people whose character or physical condition is poor, we don’t have to think those things actually are pleasurable in a true sense, except to those particular people – just like with things that are only considered healthy, sweet, or bitter by people who are sick; or things that only look white to people with an eye infection.
2. Or you could say this: those pleasures (like those from shameful acts) are desirable in some way (they offer some gratification), but they’re just not desirable when they arise from those specific things or actions. This is similar to how we might say that being rich is desirable, but not if it comes from an act of betrayal; or that health is desirable, but not if you have to eat just anything (including harmful things) to achieve it.
3. Or maybe there are different kinds of pleasure. The pleasures that arise from honorable things are just of a different kind from those that arise from shameful things. It’s not even possible to experience the pleasure that an ethical person experiences without being an ethical person, or the pleasure a true musician experiences from music without being a musician, and so on with other activities and their proper pleasures.

And the fact that a friend is a different thing from a flatterer shows, arguably, that pleasure is not the highest good, or at least that there are different kinds of pleasure that have different moral values.

• A friend spends time with you with a view to what’s genuinely good for you.
• A flatterer (or “flunky”) spends time with you with a view to giving you immediate pleasure (to gain favor).
• And flatterers are generally criticized, while true friends are praised. So, we must see that their companionship has different aims and values.

Also, consider these points:

• Nobody would choose to live their whole life with the mind of a child, even if it meant enjoying to the absolute full all the things that children enjoy.
• And nobody would choose to get pleasure from doing something utterly shameful, even if they were guaranteed never to experience any pain or negative consequences as a result of it.
• Also, there are plenty of things that we’d still value highly even if they didn’t bring us any pleasure at all – like seeing, remembering, knowing things, and having our moral virtues. Even if pleasures inevitably do accompany these things, that doesn’t affect my point. The point is, we’d choose to have them even if no pleasure came from them.

So, it seems pretty clear from all this that:

• Pleasure is not the key good in life (the single highest good).
• Not every pleasure is desirable.
• But also, there are some pleasures that are desirable – specifically, desirable in themselves. And those good pleasures are different in kind from the undesirable ones, or they differ in what they arise from.

4. The True Nature of Pleasure: An Activity, Not a Process

So, what is pleasure, or what kind of thing is it? Maybe we’ll get a clearer sense of that if we take it up again from the beginning with a fresh approach.

Consider the act of seeing. Seeing is complete at any moment that it’s occurring. That is to say, it’s not lacking anything that has to come about at some later stage to bring its form to completion. When you are seeing, your seeing is whole and fully itself in that instant.

And pleasure seems to be something like that.

• That is, it’s something whole and complete at any given moment. There’s no instant you could freeze a pleasure, such that it has to go on for more time before its form is completed. If you are feeling pleasure, that feeling is fully what it is in that moment.

That’s why pleasure is not a process or a movement towards something.

• Every process or movement takes a certain amount of time and is directed towards a goal – the process of building a house, for example. A process is only complete once it produces the thing it’s aiming at. So, it’s only complete when viewed over the whole time it takes, or at its endpoint.
• But all processes, in their individual parts and during the time they take, are incomplete. They also differ in kind both from the whole, completed process and from each other.
  • Fitting the stones of a column together, for example, is a different part of the process from fluting the column (carving grooves in it).
  • And both of these parts are different from the whole process of making the temple.
  • And as for “making,” though making the temple as a whole is “complete” (it doesn’t lack anything relative to the overall project once finished), the sub-process of making the foundation or making a decorative part like a triglyph is “incomplete” in itself, in that each is just the making of a part of the whole.
• So, processes differ in kind, and it isn’t possible to freeze a process at any particular moment and find it complete in its form. It’s only complete, if at all, over the whole of the time it takes to reach its end.

The same is true even of walking and similar movements.

• If moving is a kinēsis (a process of change) from one place to another place, then there are different forms of that, too – flying, walking, jumping, and so on.
• And they don’t just differ in that way; there are also different sub-processes going on even, say, within walking itself. Moving “from one place to another” isn’t the same over the whole length of a stadium as it is over just a part of it. And it isn’t the same in one part of the stadium as in another. Even crossing the finishing line here isn’t the same as crossing a finishing line there. Because you don’t just cross “a line”; you cross a line that is in a specific location. And this bit of the line is in a different location from that one over there.

So, though our detailed treatment of kinēsis (processes of change and movement) is set out elsewhere (in works on physics), it’s safe to say here that a process is not complete at each moment. Rather, most processes are incomplete and differ in kind at each moment – if, for example, moving from this spot to that spot makes for a different kind of moving or a different stage of the movement.

Pleasure, by contrast, is complete in its form at every moment it is experienced. So, it’s clear that these two things – process and pleasure – must be different from one another. Pleasure belongs to the class of things that are whole and complete in themselves at any given instant.

The same thing also seems to follow from the fact that it’s not possible for a process of change to take place other than over a certain period of time. But it is possible to feel pleasure without it necessarily being extended over any particular period of time. It’s complete in every instant, however small.

From these facts, it’s also clear that people are not right to say that pleasure can be the object of a process of change, or that any process brings about pleasure as its product.

• You can’t attribute those things (being a process or product of a process) to everything; only to things that are divisible into parts and that aren’t already whole.
• There’s no process, for example, that “brings about” the act of seeing itself (seeing is an activity, not a product). There’s no process that brings about a geometrical point or a numerical unit (these are indivisible concepts).
• And conversely, none of those things (seeing, a point, a unit) is a process or brings about some further thing X into being through a process.
• So, there’s no process that brings about pleasure either, because pleasure is something whole and complete in each moment.

Every sense (sight, hearing, etc.) operates on an object of perception. Each sense is completely and perfectly active when it’s in good working order and is operating on the finest of the objects that fall under its capacity. That’s what we see as the ideal case of complete, perfect activity for a sense. (And let’s say it doesn’t matter for this argument whether we say it’s the sense itself that’s “active,” or the faculty or organ that has the sense.) So, for each of the senses, the best kind of activity is that of a sense organ in the best possible working order operating on the best or most suitable object that falls under it. That kind of activity is the most complete and perfect – and also the most pleasurable.

• Because for every kind of perception, and also for every kind of thought and higher contemplation, there’s a corresponding pleasure.
• And it’s most pleasurable when the activity is at its most complete and perfect.
• And that means the activity of a faculty (whether sensory or intellectual) that is in good condition, operating on the best and most suitable object that falls under its capacity.

The pleasure perfects and completes the activity. But the pleasure doesn’t “perfect” or “complete” the activity in the same sense as the object of perception (when it’s good) and the perceiving faculty (when it’s working well) “perfect” the activity by being its necessary components. These are more like conditions for the activity, whereas pleasure is an outcome or accompaniment that enhances it. This is just as health and a doctor don’t cause you to be healthy in the very same sense (a doctor is an external agent of health, while health is the state itself).

It’s clear that for each kind of perception there’s a corresponding pleasure. (For example, we speak of sights and sounds that give us pleasure.) And it becomes especially obvious that pleasure accompanies activity when the perception in question is the best kind and is operating on the best possible object. If they both fit that description – the object perceived (let’s call it A) and the thing doing the perceiving (let’s call it B) – there will be a continuous pleasure, as long as object A is there to act upon faculty B, and faculty B is there to be acted upon by object A.

And the pleasure perfects and completes the activity, not in the same way as the underlying disposition or faculty does (by already being in place as a capacity). Pleasure perfects activity as a kind of emergent, supervening feature that adds a finishing touch – like the “bloom” of youth, that fresh radiance that accompanies being young and healthy. So, as long as the object of thought or perception is as it should be, and likewise the faculty that is doing the discriminating (perceiving) or the contemplating (thinking) is in good condition, then there will be pleasure in the resultant activity. As long as these conditions (good object, good faculty, proper relation) stay the same and stand in the same relation to one another, you naturally get the same pleasant outcome.

In that case, why is it that you can’t ever be in a continuous state of pleasure? Is it that you get tired? That’s true of all human things: they’re incapable of continuous activity. So, you don’t get continuous pleasure either, because pleasure always accompanies or “tracks” an activity.

Some things delight us when they’re new and fresh, but they don’t give us the same amount of pleasure later, for the same reason of fatigue or changing engagement.

• At first, our mind is drawn into them and engages with them very intensely (in visual terms, it’s like staring at something captivating).
• Later, our engagement isn’t the same. It’s more casual or accustomed. So, the pleasure fades.

You might think the reason everyone desires pleasure is that everyone also strives to be alive.

• Being alive is a kind of activity.
• And each of us lives by exercising whatever faculties (abilities) we value most, on whatever things (objects or pursuits) we value most.
  • If you’re a musician, for example, you exercise your hearing on music.
  • If you love learning, you exercise your intellect on objects of contemplation or study.
  • And so on for everyone else.
• And pleasure perfects and completes our activities. So, that means it perfects being alive, too (since life is activity). And that’s what people desire.

So, it makes sense that people also strive for pleasure. This is because for each person, pleasure perfects and completes being alive, which is something desirable.

As for whether we choose being alive for the sake of pleasure, or pleasure for the sake of being alive – for now, let’s not worry too much about that particular question. The two things seem to be very tightly bound together. There’s no way of separating them:

• Without life’s activity, there can be no pleasure.
• But pleasure perfects and completes every activity, making it more fully what it is.

5. Pleasures Differ in Kind

That’s also why pleasures surely differ in kind.

We generally assume that things that are different in kind are completed and perfected by things that are also different in kind.

• That seems to be true, for example, both of products of nature (e.g., animals are different in kind from trees, and each achieves its perfection in its own way).
• It’s also true of products of human craft (a painting is different in kind from a statue; a house is different from a tool, and each is perfected by different qualities). And in the same way, we assume that activities that differ in kind are perfected by pleasures that are different in kind.
• Intellectual activities are different in kind from the activities of our senses.
• And sensory activities themselves differ in kind from one another (seeing is different from tasting). So, the pleasures that perfect these different activities must also differ in kind.

It’s also clear from the fact that each pleasure is intimately tied to the activity it perfects. This is because the pleasure that corresponds to an activity actually enhances the activity.

• People are better at judging all the details of something, and more able to master an activity, when they get pleasure from engaging in it.
• For example, people become expert at geometry, and better at figuring out all the answers, if they enjoy doing geometry.
• And the same goes for people who love music, or people who love building, and so on – they all improve at their particular task if they enjoy doing it. So, the corresponding pleasures enhance the activities. But the things that enhance activity X, activity Y, and activity Z have to be specific to X, Y, and Z. And if activities X, Y, and Z are different in kind, so are the specific pleasures that enhance them.

We can see the same thing even more clearly from the fact that our activities are actually impeded by pleasures that arise from another, unrelated source.

• For example, people who love flute music can’t pay attention to a conversation if they hear someone playing a flute in the background. This is because they enjoy the flute music more than the activity they’re currently engaged in (the conversation). So, the pleasure they get from the flute music disrupts their other activity.
• And the same thing happens in other cases: whenever someone engages in two activities at the same time, the one that gives them more pleasure tends to knock out the other. And if it gives them a lot more pleasure, it does so all the more, sometimes to the point where they can’t even engage in the other activity at all.
• That’s why when we’re enjoying something intensely, we often can’t do anything else.
• And, conversely, if we aren’t particularly entertained by something we are supposed to be doing, we tend to do other stuff – like people eating snacks at the theatre. They’re most likely to do it when the acting is lousy and not engaging their attention with its own proper pleasure.

So, given that:

• The pleasure specific to our activities refines them, prolongs them, and improves them,
• While outside pleasures (from other sources) mess them up, …it’s clear that these two kinds of pleasure (specific vs. outside) are very different.

In fact, outside pleasures have pretty much the same disruptive effect as the pains that are specific to an activity. Pains specific to our activities disrupt them.

• Like, say, if you find writing or doing arithmetic boring and tiresome (painful). You just don’t do it – you simply don’t write, you don’t do the arithmetic – if the activity is painful like that. So, the pains specific to an activity have exactly the opposite effect on it as its specific pleasures. (By “specific to it,” I mean the pleasures or pains that arise from engaging in the activity itself.) And outside pleasures, as I just said, have pretty much the same disruptive effect as pain. They disrupt the activity, only not in exactly the same way (one distracts by being too pleasant, the other by being unpleasant).

Now, activities differ from one another in their decency or badness.

• Some activities are desirable (good).
• Some are undesirable (bad).
• Some are neither particularly good nor bad (neutral). So, the same goes for the pleasures that correspond to these activities. Because there’s a pleasure specific to each activity.
• So, a pleasure specific to a morally good activity is a decent and good pleasure.
• And a pleasure specific to a bad activity is a nasty and bad pleasure. It’s just like with desires:
• Desires for honorable things are praiseworthy.
• Desires for shameful things are blameworthy.

But the pleasures that come from our activities are actually more specific to them, more closely tied to them, than our desires are.

• Desires are often distinct from the activities themselves, both in the times they occur (e.g., desire before action) and in their nature.
• But the pleasures are right there in the activities, and so hard to distinguish from them that people even argue over whether the activity is the same thing as the pleasure.
• Not that anyone really thinks that pleasure just is thinking, or just is perceiving, for example. (Of course not. That would be silly.) I just mean that because pleasure and its proper activity can’t be separated, to some people they feel as if they’re the same thing.

So, pleasures differ from one another in all the same ways that activities do.

• For example, seeing differs from touch by being a “purer” sense (less mixed with physical contact or bodily need).
• And hearing and smell are considered purer than taste.
• So, their corresponding pleasures differ from one another in the same respect of purity.
• And intellectual pleasures (from thinking and contemplation) are purer than all sensual pleasures.
• And within both groups (intellectual and sensual), some specific pleasures are purer than others.

Also, each kind of animal seems to have its specific kind of pleasure, just as it has its specific task or function – that is, the pleasure that corresponds to its characteristic activity. If we just look at it case by case, we can make that clear.

• Horses, dogs, and human beings, for example, all have different pleasures.
• As Heraclitus says: “Donkeys would rather have the sweepings off your kitchen floor (straw or chaff) than gold.” Food is a more pleasurable thing than gold if you’re a donkey. So, the pleasures of the different kinds of animals themselves differ in kind. And it seems likely that the pleasures appropriate to a given species of animal don’t vary much within that species.

But there’s certainly plenty of diversity in the pleasures of human beings.

• The very same things give some people pleasure but cause other people pain.
• Some things are painful and distressing or loathsome to some people, but enjoyable and pleasing or attractive to others.
• That also happens with the way things taste sweet: the same things don’t seem sweet to someone who has a fever as they do to someone who is healthy.
• And the same thing won’t seem hot to someone who’s unfit or unwell as it does to someone in good physical shape.
• And it works the same way with many other things too.

But surely, in all those kinds of cases, the way things really are is how they seem to a good person, or to someone who is in a good and healthy condition. And if we’re right about that – as we surely are – and the measure of each thing (what is truly good, truly pleasant, etc.) is goodness itself and the good person as such, then it follows that:

• Actual, true pleasures are what seem to be pleasures to a good person.
• And actually pleasurable things are the ones a good person enjoys.

And if the things a good person finds distasteful seem pleasurable to someone else, what’s so surprising about that? There are so many ways that human beings can be depraved, corrupted, and damaged in their natures or habits. Those things that please corrupt people aren’t really pleasurable in a true or healthy sense. They’re just pleasurable to those particular people, to people in that unhealthy or corrupt condition.

So, the pleasures that are undeniably shameful – clearly, we just shouldn’t say they’re pleasures at all, other than for people who are depraved.

And as for the pleasures we do think of as morally decent, which sort, or which particular one of them, should we say is the characteristically human form of pleasure? Or is that clear from looking at our characteristic human activities? Because our true pleasures match our proper activities. So, whether there’s just one kind of activity, or several, that go with being a human being whose life is complete, perfect, and blessed (flourishing), the pleasures that perfect those specific activities can properly be termed the true pleasures of a human being. The rest of the things people find pleasant can be treated as human pleasures of a second rank, or a third or fourth rank, just like their corresponding activities.

6. Flourishing is Virtuous Activity, Not Amusement

So, now that we’ve talked about virtues, and forms of friendship and love, and pleasures, what remains is for us to give an outline account of what it is to flourish and prosper, since we’re assuming that’s our overall goal as human beings. Maybe we can shorten the discussion by recapping some of what we’ve already said.

So, we said that flourishing isn’t just a matter of having a certain state of character. If it were, you could be “flourishing” even if you were in a coma your whole life, living the life of a vegetable; or even while suffering the most appalling misfortunes. So, if we’re not happy with that idea, and it seems more plausible to assume that flourishing is some kind of activity (as we said in our earlier discussion); and if, of our various activities:

• Some are necessities, only desirable because they get us other things,
• And some are desirable in themselves, …obviously we have to assume that flourishing is one of these latter types of activity: an activity desirable in itself, and not because it gets us something else. This is because a flourishing, blessed life has nothing missing from it. It meets all its own needs; it is self-sufficient.

Activities are “desirable in themselves” when there’s nothing you’re trying to get out of them besides the activity itself. And surely something that fits that description is a life of being an actively good person. Doing things that are honorable and good – that’s something desirable in itself.

You might say: “So are parties, and having fun. People don’t choose to party to get other things out of it.”

• If anything, they’re harmed more than benefited by excessive partying, through neglect of their health and their finances.
• And most of the people typically hailed as “flourishing” or “prosperous” men (like powerful rulers or wealthy individuals) often throw themselves into those kinds of pursuits.
• That’s why tyrants and other powerful people often have especially high regard for men who are good at making people laugh and creating amusement in those settings. Funny guys are a pleasure to have around in exactly the pastimes these rulers are attracted to. So, those are the kind of men they seek out. The reason these amusements are sometimes thought to imply a flourishing, blessed life is that powerful rulers tend to spend all their leisure time enjoying them.

But surely, those kinds of people (powerful rulers who only pursue amusement) don’t prove anything about what true flourishing is.

• Moral goodness and intellect – the things that give rise to truly good activities – don’t depend on being powerful or wealthy.
• And just because those people (who may lack refined taste) have never experienced the purer kind of pleasure, the more gentlemanly kind, and instead throw themselves into physical pleasures – that’s no reason to think those physical pleasures really are more desirable. After all, don’t little boys assume the things they like the most are the best things, too? So, it’s only to be expected that bad people and decent people will see different things as valuable, just like little boys and grown men do.

So, as I’ve said several times, what’s actually valuable or actually pleasurable is whatever is valuable or pleasurable for a good person. And for each person, the exercising of their particular good disposition (their virtue) is the most desirable kind of activity. So, for a good person, that means exercising goodness. Therefore, no, flourishing is not about partying, or just fun and games.

In any case, it seems absurd to say that the goal of life is just our amusement, and that we go to all the trouble that we go to, and suffer hardships our whole lives, just so we can play around and party. Almost all the things that we choose, we choose for the sake of some further thing – except flourishing itself. Because flourishing is the ultimate goal of life. And the idea that we do all the serious things in life and toil away just so that we can then play around seems silly. What an extremely childish suggestion!

The opposite idea, that you play so that you can get on with serious things (as the wise Scythian Anacharsis said) – that seems right.

• Play is surely a form of relaxation.
• And it’s because people can’t toil continuously that they need to relax.
• So, relaxation isn’t a goal in itself. It’s there for the sake of enabling further activity.

And we think a flourishing life is one of exercising goodness (virtue). But that kind of life is a serious business. You can’t achieve that while just playing around. And we speak of spoudaia – “serious” or “earnest” things – as also being better than things that are jokey and playful. And we say that the activity of anything better – whether it’s the better part of us (our reason), or a better person – is itself more spoudaia (that is, “better,” but by its root meaning, “more serious”). And the activity of something better must itself be a superior activity, which means it’s more important to our flourishing.

Also, anyone at all can indulge in physical pleasures – a slave just as much as the best of men. But nobody would say that a slave is flourishing, to any degree. (Would we even say a slave, in that condition, is truly “living” a fully human life?) No, flourishing doesn’t depend on those kinds of diversions or amusements. It depends on the ways we exercise our goodness, as we said before.

7. Flourishing as Contemplative Activity

If flourishing is about exercising our goodness, or exercising our virtues, it makes sense for it to be the exercising of our very best kind of virtue. And that would have to be the virtue specific to the best part of us.

Now, whether that best part is our intellect or something else – whatever it is that by its nature seems to rule us and to lead us, and to have a conception of all that is beautiful and divine in the cosmos (whether that part is actually divine itself, or as divine as anything in us can be) – surely the exercising of that part of us, according to its specific virtue, ought to be the most perfect form of flourishing. And that activity is contemplating the highest truths of the cosmos – as we’ve said before.

That seems consistent both with what we said earlier and with the truth. That kind of activity (contemplation) really is the best.

• This is because intellect is the best element within us.
• And the best possible objects of knowledge are the ones we use our intellect to grasp.

Also, contemplation is the most continuous kind of activity. It’s easier for us to contemplate continuously than to perform any kind of physical or practical action continuously.

Also, we assume pleasure is an ingredient of flourishing. And of the various forms of exercising our virtues, the exercising of higher knowledge (contemplation of the cosmos) is undeniably the most pleasurable. Certainly, philosophy (the pursuit of that knowledge) involves the most extraordinary pleasures: extraordinary in their purity and dependability. And it stands to reason that people who possess that knowledge must pass their time even more enjoyably than people who are still seeking it.

Also, we’ve talked about a flourishing life being self-sufficient (meeting its own needs). And that will surely apply, above all, to the contemplative life.

• Someone with higher philosophical knowledge and someone who is just (and possesses the other moral virtues) both need the bare necessities of life.
• But assuming they’re adequately supplied with those, a just person still needs other people he’s going to treat justly, and people to help him do it. The same goes for someone moderate, or brave, and all the rest of the moral virtues; they require social interaction and specific circumstances.
• But a person with higher philosophical knowledge can contemplate all by himself. And the more such knowledge he has, the more he can contemplate alone. Sure, it’s probably better to have collaborators or fellow thinkers. But even so, he can “meet his own needs” for this activity more than anyone engaged in practical virtues.

Also, this (contemplation) is surely the only activity we value purely for itself. After all, we get nothing out of it beyond the contemplating itself. But with our practical activities (like politics or business), we always gain something (sometimes more, sometimes less) besides the doing of the action itself.

Also, surely a flourishing, blessed life should be one of leisure.

• When we’re busy in practical life, it’s usually so that we can eventually be at leisure. We fight wars so that we can have peace.
• Now, our practical virtues are exercised largely in political life or warfare. And our actions in those domains surely take away our leisure and must be aiming at something beyond themselves. This is completely true in the case of warfare. Nobody chooses to go to war just so they can be at war, or works to achieve war for its own sake. (You’d have to be a sort of homicidal maniac to want to turn your allies into enemies, just so as to bring about battles and bloodbaths.)
• But even the activity of a statesman allows no true leisure and aims to achieve other things beyond the engaging in politics itself – things like power and prestige, or, more to the point, a flourishing life for himself and for his fellow citizens. This flourishing is therefore clearly not the same thing as the political activity itself; it’s what politicians are searching for. Obviously, we assume this goal is something other than the search itself.

Of all the ways of exercising virtues by action, it’s actions in politics and war that stand out as by far the finest, most honorable, and most important in the practical realm. But they’re exactly the ones that rob us of leisure. They aim at some further goal, and they aren’t desirable just in themselves. Exercising your intellect (contemplation), by contrast, is exceptionally leisurely because it’s purely contemplative and doesn’t aim at any goal beyond itself. It has its own particular pleasure, and that pleasure enhances the activity, making it more complete and sustainable.

8. Secondary Flourishing and External Goods

The contemplative life, then, has all the required features of flourishing:

• It meets its own needs (it is highly self-sufficient).
• It’s leisurely.
• You never get tired of it, within human limits.
• And all the other things we attribute to a blessed, flourishing life are quite clearly what you get with this kind of contemplative activity. So, that must be how to flourish completely as a human being – provided it goes on for the length of a complete life (because nothing connected with a truly flourishing life should be incomplete or cut short).

A life like that is surely superhuman. That is to say, it isn’t simply as a human being (with all our ordinary human limitations) that you’ll live a life like that. It’s insofar as there exists something divine within you (your intellect or reason). And that bit of us is far superior to the compound being that we are (body and soul mixed). So, to the same degree, the activity of this divine part (contemplation) is superior to the exercising of our other sort of virtue (our moral virtues, which are tied to our human, composite nature).

So, if intellect is something divine compared to the rest of the human being, then a life guided by the intellect is also a divine life in comparison with an ordinary human life. But that doesn’t mean we have to follow the old motto and only “think human thoughts,” since we’re human, or “think on mortal things since we’re mortal.” No. We should try to transcend our mortality as much as possible and do everything we can to live our life according to the very best element within us (our intellect). Yes, our intellect may be small in physical bulk, but in its power and its exaltedness, it far surpasses everything else we have.

It’s also, surely, what you truly are. Because it’s the part of you that’s in charge; it’s the better part of you. So, it would be absurd not to choose the life of what you truly are – your own best life – and instead choose some other, lesser thing’s life!

And what we said before will apply here as well: what’s proper to each thing’s nature is best and most pleasurable for that thing. So, that means that for a human being, a life of the intellect (contemplation) is the best and the most pleasurable life, since intellect is what a human being is, most of all. So, that’s the form of life by which you’re flourishing the most, too.

The Life of Moral Virtue: A Second-Best Flourishing

The second-best way to flourish is to live a life of exercising the other type of virtue: your moral goodness (character virtues like courage, justice, moderation). All the ways we exercise moral virtue are distinctly human.

• We do things that are fair, for example, or brave, and the other things that express our virtues, towards one another.
• We do this by taking care in our exchanges and in meeting each other’s needs, and in all manner of actions, and in our feelings, to observe what’s fitting for each case.
• And all those things are clearly tied to our shared humanity.

Some of these moral virtues even seem to arise from our physical body. And goodness of character (moral goodness) has multiple ties to our feelings and emotions. And then practical wisdom, in turn, is closely bound up with moral goodness, and moral goodness with practical wisdom. This is true because the principles practical wisdom uses are set down by the virtues of character; but then getting things exactly right in all aspects of character depends on practical wisdom. So, since these moral virtues are dependent upon our feelings too, they must be features of our composite being (our combined body and soul). And the virtues of our composite being are human virtues. Hence, so is a life of exercising those virtues, and the kind of flourishing that goes with it.

But the exercise of the pure intellect (contemplation) has no such direct ties to the body and emotions. (For now, that’s all we need to say about its separateness. To explain what I mean in full detail is beyond our purpose here.) And surely, the contemplative life only needs external resources to a small extent, or at least to a lesser extent than being a morally good person in an active, practical life does.

• I mean, let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that both kinds of life need the bare necessities equally (even if, in fact, a statesman is more likely to exert himself physically, and so on, and might need more). There won’t be a huge difference there, in basic needs.
• But when it comes to the activities themselves, there’s going to be a huge difference in what’s required.
  • To be generous, for example, you’ll need money for doing generous things.
  • As a fair person, you’ll need resources for paying people back what is due. (Just wanting to be generous or fair isn’t enough; that’s invisible. And even people who aren’t fair can pretend that they want to treat everyone fairly.)
  • And to be brave, you need power or opportunity if you’re actually going to accomplish anything that goes with that virtue.
  • And to be moderate, you need the opportunity for indulgence (which you then resist). Otherwise, how’s anyone supposed to know you’re moderate – or indeed, that you possess any other virtue that requires specific circumstances for its expression?

Also, people argue over whether what matters most with moral goodness is the choice and intention, or the actions themselves. It seems to depend on both. So, the complete package of moral virtue obviously must require both good intentions and good actions. And for actions, you often need lots of resources; and the greater the actions and the more honorable they are, the more resources you generally need.

But someone engaged in contemplation doesn’t need any of those kinds of external things, at least not for the activity of contemplation itself. If anything, those external things and practical demands just get in the way of his contemplating. But, as a human being, and as someone who lives a life with other people, the contemplative person still chooses to do all the things that go with being a morally good person. So, he will need those kinds of external things – for the purpose of living a good human life alongside others.

The fact that we flourish, perfectly and completely, by engaging in contemplation can also be made clear by the following comparison with the gods. We take it for granted that the gods are especially “blessed”; they represent an ideal of “flourishing.” But what kinds of actions are we supposed to attribute to them?

• Can they do things that are fair and honest? Or isn’t there something absurd in imagining the gods making contracts, trading, returning money that’s been lent to them, and all that kind of thing?
• Can we assign them brave actions? Shall we imagine the gods standing up to frightening situations and facing down danger because it’s the honorable thing to do?
• Or generous actions? Who are they going to be giving stuff to? And it’s absurd to think of them using cash or anything like that.
• And how could they do things that are moderate? It’s a pretty paltry sort of praise, to say that the gods don’t have any sordid cravings or bad desires to control. In fact, if we go through all the moral virtues like that, it seems quite clear that all things related to practical actions are trivial for the gods, and beneath their divine nature.

On the other hand, everyone takes it for granted that the gods are at least alive. So, they must have some sort of activity, right? They can’t just be asleep the whole time, like Endymion in the myth. So, if something is alive, but doing practical things isn’t an option for it – and much less making physical things – then what’s left for it to do other than contemplation? So, it follows that God’s activity – which is exceptional in its blessedness – must be one of pure contemplating. So, it also follows that, of all possible human activities, the one most closely akin to that divine activity (contemplation) will make us flourish more than any other.

Another indication of this is the fact that none of the other animals can in any sense “be blessed” or “flourish” in this full human sense – and notice that they’re completely deprived of the kind of contemplative activity we’re discussing.

• The gods have a life that is wholly blessed.
• Human life is blessed to the extent that it allows some sort of imitation of that divine kind of contemplative activity.
• But none of the other animals gets to “flourish” because none of them can experience contemplation to any degree at all. So, flourishing is exactly coextensive in the universe with contemplating. The more a being has the ability to contemplate, the more that being flourishes – and this is not just by coincidence, but because of the intrinsic value of its contemplating. Contemplation’s value is in itself. So that shows, again, that flourishing, or being blessed, is some form of contemplating.

As a human being, you’ll also need a moderate amount of external wealth and good fortune. Our human nature can’t completely meet its own needs for a life of contemplation without some external support. Your body has to be healthy; it needs a supply of food and the other forms of care and attention. That being said, we certainly shouldn’t think you’ll need huge quantities of material possessions to flourish, just because it isn’t possible to flourish entirely without any external goods at all.

• “Meeting your needs” doesn’t require excessive wealth.
• And neither does virtuous action. It’s quite possible to do honorable things without being lord of vast lands and seas.
• You can be an actively good person even from moderate means. That’s perfectly plain to see. After all, ordinary private citizens are surely able to do morally decent things as much as powerful rulers – in fact, perhaps even more so, as they may have fewer corrupting influences. So, it’s enough to have a moderate amount of external goods. A life of exercising your goodness in that way will be a life of “flourishing” and “prospering.”

The wise statesman Solon was surely right about the people he declared “blessed.” He named men who were only modestly provided with material wealth, but who’d performed, as he saw it, “glorious deeds” and lived out their lives moderately and virtuously. It’s perfectly possible to do the things you ought to do as a good person with only a modest amount of property. The philosopher Anaxagoras, likewise, evidently thought that a “flourishing” or “prosperous” man wasn’t necessarily someone wealthy or powerful. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if his idea of a flourishing life seemed absurd to most people, because most people judge flourishing and prospering only by external goods like wealth and power. That’s the only thing they notice at all. So, the views of other wise philosophers seem to be in harmony with our claims about flourishing.

And that kind of agreement among wise people does carry a certain amount of weight. Some weight, at least. But the truth in practical matters is ultimately judged from the realities of life itself. Those must have the final word. So, we should always test the claims that people have made in the past by holding them up against how things actually work in life.

• If the theories are in harmony with the facts of life, then we should accept them.
• But if they’re at odds with life, we should take them for what they are – mere theories.

Someone who exercises their intellect and cultivates their intellect is surely in the best possible condition any person can be in. And such a person is the most beloved by the gods.

• Because if the gods have any concern for human affairs, as people generally assume they do, then it would make sense that they take pleasure in the best element in human beings – the thing most closely akin to themselves. Our intellect is that thing.
• And it would make sense that they reward those people who value and cherish that intellectual part of themselves most of all. They would reward them for caring about the things the gods themselves love (truth, reason, understanding) and for acting correctly and honorably. And it’s quite clear that all of those qualities apply, above all, to a person devoted to higher philosophical knowledge and contemplation. So, that kind of person is most beloved by the gods. And it stands to reason that the same person must also be flourishing the most. So, by that argument, too, it’s higher philosophy and the life of contemplation that makes us flourish most completely.

9. From Theory to Practice: The Need for Laws and Education

So, if we’ve now said enough, in broad outlines, about these things – about flourishing, the virtues, friendship and love, and pleasure – should we feel that we’ve achieved what we set out to do with this inquiry?

Not really. Because, as we said, our goal in practical matters like ethics isn’t just to theorize about all the things we’re supposed to do, and to know about them. Our real goal is to do them. So, the same applies to goodness. Knowing about it isn’t enough. We also have to try to have it and use it. We have to strive, in every way we can, to actually become good people.

Now, if philosophical arguments and ethical theories were enough on their own to make people decent and good, they’d rightly “earn many a fine, fat fee,” as the poet Theognis says. And all we’d need to do to make society good is provide people with plenty of those arguments. But as it is, theories and arguments only seem to have the power to motivate and encourage young people who are already of a gentlemanly character. They can take an already noble nature, one genuinely devoted to what’s honorable, and make it ready for goodness to take hold and develop fully. But with most people, the common people, arguments seem powerless to motivate them to become decent human beings.

The trouble is that common people, by their nature, don’t respond to a sense of shame or honor. They only respond to fear. They don’t refrain from bad behavior because it’s shameful; they only refrain if they fear punishment. They live by emotion and feeling. They pursue the pleasures that go along with their immediate feelings, and whatever will get them those pleasures. And they try to avoid any pains that are the opposite of those pleasures. But as for what’s truly honorable – and truly and deeply pleasurable in a good way – they’re not even aware of it. This is because they’ve never even had a taste of it.

So, with people like that, how could philosophical argument possibly transform them? It’s simply not possible, or at least not easy, when bad habits and desires have long taken hold in people’s characters, to pry them out with argument alone. But we may be able to achieve goodness if all the things that we need to become decent people are already in place – things like good natural predispositions, good habits, and good teaching. That’s probably the best we can hope for.

How do people become good?

• Some think it’s a matter of your nature (you’re born that way).
• Some say it’s by habit (you learn through practice).
• Some say it’s by being taught (through reason and instruction).

So, the part of it that’s innate – our natural predispositions – obviously isn’t something you can do much about by your own efforts. It’s something that some people seem to have through some divine cause; these are the lucky people, in the truest sense.

As for argument and teaching, I suspect that it may not be effective for everyone. The student’s soul has to be well “tilled” beforehand by good habits, so that they already enjoy the right things and already hate the right things – like a field that’s been well prepared to nurture seed.

• Someone who lives by their emotions and immediate feelings wouldn’t listen to any argument that tried to turn them from their course. They might not even understand it.
• How can you possibly persuade someone like that to see things differently? In general, emotion seems not to yield to argument. It only yields to force or strong influence.
• So, the student’s character has to be, in a sense, already inclined towards goodness. It has to already have a liking for what’s honorable and a distaste for what’s shameful.

But it’s hard to get the right kind of guidance on being a good person, right from early childhood, if you haven’t also been raised under the right kinds of laws and social norms.

• To live with moderation and resilience isn’t something most people naturally enjoy, especially not young people.
• That’s why the rearing of children, and their day-to-day activities, need to be regulated by law. (Things won’t seem so painful once they become accustomed to them through habit.)

And it surely isn’t enough just for people to get the right kind of upbringing and care only while they’re young. As grown men and women, too, they have to engage in the pursuits and acquire the habits proper to their age and responsibilities. So, we need laws to cover that too, and in general to govern every stage of life. This is because most people respond to compulsion more than to reason; to penalties more than to what’s honorable.

That’s why some people think that while, of course, lawmakers should call upon all citizens to be good people, and urge them to do what’s honorable for its own sake (knowing that at least those who’ve been set on a decent path by good habits will respond to that appeal), they also have to impose punishments and penalties on people who disobey, and whose natural tendencies aren’t as good. And some people – the incurably wicked – they might have to remove from society altogether.

• Only a decent person, on this view, lives his life guided by what’s honorable, or will be responsive to reason.
• A scoundrel, striving only for pleasure, has to be kept in line with pain, like a beast of burden.
• That’s also why they say that the pain used as punishment needs to be, in each case, whatever kind is the precise opposite of the wrongful pleasure the person was attracted to.

So, as we’ve said, anyone who’s going to be a good person has to be:

1. Brought up the right way.
2. Given good habits.
3. And from there, live their life in decent pursuits and never do bad things, whether wilfully or otherwise. And that can only happen if people live their lives according to some sort of intelligence and under the right sort of order; and that order has to be strong and have authority.

Now, a father’s orders just don’t have that kind of strength. They can’t compel obedience in the same way as law. Nor, in general, can the orders of any one individual man (unless he’s a king, or someone with similar absolute authority). But law does have the power to compel. And law is, or should be, reason. It derives from some sort of wisdom and intelligence. And though people often can’t stand it when other human beings oppose their impulses (even if those humans are right to do so), law can order us to do what’s decent without being personally oppressive to anyone.

Yet it’s only in Sparta (along with one or two other cities) that their lawmaker seems to have taken any serious interest in the upbringing of children, or in how people are to employ their time throughout life. In the vast majority of cities, those kinds of things have been neglected. Everyone lives just as they please, with each man, like the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, “acting as lawman to his children and his wife,” without regard for any common standard.

So, the best thing would be for there to be public provisions for moral education – communal systems for ensuring people are raised correctly. But if such things are being neglected by the community, I suppose it falls to each individual to help his own children, and his family and friends, become good people. Or at least that should be his aim.

And from what we’ve been saying, it seems you’d be most able to do that (help others become good) if you yourself became an expert on law and lawmaking.

• Because all public education obviously works through laws (and decent public education is the product of good laws).
• And whether that means written laws or unwritten social norms, that shouldn’t make any difference in principle. Nor should it matter if the laws are for the education of just one person or many (just as it wouldn’t make any difference in the case of teaching music, athletics, or other pursuits – the principles of good teaching apply).
• And a father’s ideas and habits hold sway within each household in much the same way as laws and the national character hold sway in each city – or even more so, given the strong family bonds and all the good things a father has done for his children. These factors naturally make children affectionate and obedient from the outset.

In fact, individual education may even be better than communal education in some ways – just as with medical treatment.

• It might be a general rule that someone with a fever benefits from rest and fasting, but that specific rule might not be the best for this or that particular individual with a fever.
• And a boxer surely doesn’t use the exact same style of fighting with all his opponents; he adapts to each one. So, when the care and education taken over someone is personal and individualized, it’s likely to be more precisely honed to that individual’s needs. Each person is more likely to get what’s just right for them.

Of course, you’re certainly best able to attend to someone individually (as a doctor, physical trainer, or moral educator) by also having general, scientific knowledge of the relevant field. You need to know what’s generally the case for everyone, or for anyone in that particular condition or situation.