The Final End
Trace each goal to what it serves until you reach what is wanted for its own sake.
How it helps
It separates true ends from mere means and clarifies what a life is aiming at.
Understand in about 5 minutes
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle argues that the human good is happiness, reached by exercising virtue, and that virtue is a settled habit aiming at the mean between excess and defect.
Idea map
The book in 8 ideas
The Human Good Aristotle argues that happiness is the chief good, reached through a life of virtuous activity guided by reason.
-
Happiness
The chief good is happiness, the final and self-sufficient end at which all action aims.- Chief Good An end sought for itself.
- Final & Self-Sufficient Wanted only for its own sake.
- Not Pleasure or Honour More than pleasure or honour.
-
-
Work of Man
Happiness is the activity proper to a human being: a working of the soul in accordance with reason.- Proper Function Man has a proper work.
- Rational Soul A life of the rational soul.
- Whole Life Excellence over a whole life.
-
-
Moral Virtue
Moral virtue is a settled disposition, formed by habit and lying in a mean between excess and defect.- Habit We become what we do.
- Early Training Early habit shapes character.
- The Mean Between too much and too little.
- The Virtues Courage, temperance, justice.
-
-
Choice & Responsibility
Virtue and vice belong to voluntary acts of deliberate choice, for which we are praised or blamed.- Voluntary Origin lies in the agent.
- Deliberation Thinking out the means.
- Deliberate Choice Desire after deliberation.
-
-
Intellectual Virtue
Excellence of the rational part includes practical wisdom for action and contemplative wisdom for truth.- Practical Wisdom Reason guiding good action.
- Joined to Virtue Wisdom and goodness together.
-
-
Weakness of Will
Incontinence is knowing the better course yet being mastered by appetite and acting otherwise.- Mastered by Appetite Passion overrules reason.
-
-
Friendship
Friendship is a virtue or attended by virtue and is most necessary for a flourishing life.- Kinds Use, pleasure, or virtue.
- Shared Life The good life is shared.
-
-
Contemplation
The highest happiness is the contemplative life, the activity of reason at its best.- Activity of Reason Reason on highest things.
- Most Godlike Nearest the divine.
-
Mental models
3 ways of thinking you can use
Habituation
Character is built by repeated action; we become what we repeatedly do.
How it helps
It makes virtue a matter of practice and early training rather than mere knowledge.
Aiming at the Mean
Look for the middle point between excess and defect, fixed by reason and relative to the situation.
How it helps
It gives a practical test for right feeling and action in particular cases.
Summary
The essence in plain English
The Nicomachean Ethics begins from the observation that every art, inquiry, action, and choice aims at some good. Because we do not pursue every end for the sake of something further, Aristotle reasons that there must be a chief good which is desired for its own sake, and that knowing it would give direction to a whole life.
On the name of this good there is general agreement: people call it happiness, and equate it with living well and doing well. On its nature there is dispute. Aristotle sets aside pleasure, wealth, and honour as the chief good, since each is either shared with animals, merely a means, or dependent on the opinion of others rather than secure as one's own.
To say what happiness is, Aristotle asks after the work proper to a human being. Mere life and sensation are shared with plants and animals; what is peculiar to man is a life of the rational part of the soul. The human good is therefore an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence, carried out over a complete life rather than in a single moment.
Excellence is divided into intellectual and moral. Moral virtue does not arise in us by nature, for nature gives only the capacity; it is formed by custom. We become just by doing just actions and brave by doing brave ones, so that the habits we acquire from early training make a decisive difference to the kind of people we become.
Moral virtue, Aristotle concludes, is a settled disposition lying in a mean between excess and defect, the middle point relative to us and determined by reason as a person of practical wisdom would fix it. The treatise is practical in aim: its purpose is not merely to know what virtue is, but to help its student become good.
Key concepts
Terms to know
- Happiness as the Chief Good
- Happiness is the final and self-sufficient end that all action seeks, identified with living and doing well.
- Why it matters: It gives the inquiry its target and orders every lesser good beneath it.
- The Work of Man
- The human good is found in the activity proper to a human being: a working of the soul in accordance with reason.
- Why it matters: It turns happiness from a vague feeling into excellent activity over a complete life.
- Virtue as a Mean
- Each moral virtue is a settled state aiming at the mean between excess and defect, determined by reason.
- Why it matters: It explains how virtue is judged and why both too much and too little go wrong.
Selected Quotes
Short passages from the source
So then Happiness is manifestly something final and self-sufficient, being the end of all things which are and may be done.
by doing just actions we come to be just; by doing the actions of self-mastery we come to be perfected in self-mastery; and by doing brave actions brave.
Virtue then is in a sense a mean state, since it certainly has an aptitude for aiming at the mean.
Source
Text used for this page
Source text: Project Gutenberg edition of The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
HTML text: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438-images.html
Project Gutenberg states that this ebook is for use at no cost with almost no restrictions in the United States and most other parts of the world, subject to local law.
Composed c. 340 BCE; Project Gutenberg does not list a translator for this edition.