PATIENT
The Nicomachean Ethics
COMPOSED
c. 335–322 BCE (approx.)
FORM
A treatise on ethics
SETTING
Aristotle's Lyceum, Athens
CHIEF COMPLAINT
What is a good human life, and how does anyone get one?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) starts from the plain observation that everything aims at some good, works out that the highest good is a kind of activity over a whole life, and then spends nine more books on how character is formed, how choices are made, and what friends are for. The answer is not a rule or a theory but a skill: seeing, in each case, what is right to do. Virtue is a settled state built by repeated acts, so we become just by doing just things.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
FLOURISHING
Living and doing well over a whole life. The end for which everything else is chosen.
HABIT AND STATE
Virtue is a settled state formed by repeated acts. We become just by doing just things.
THE MEAN
The right amount, relative to the person and the moment, between too much and too little.
PRACTICAL WISDOM
The judgment to see what to do in the case in front of you, which no rule can supply.
FRIENDSHIP
Three kinds: for advantage, for pleasure, and for virtue. The first two end when the advantage or pleasure ends; the third lasts as long as the friends are good.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —A treatise built from plain observations rather than a grand theory: everything aims at some good, and we can ask what the aim of a human life is.
- —Argues from everyday cases, such as the trainer who feeds a wrestler like Milo differently from a beginner, and the swallow that does not make a spring.
- —Says early that the subject allows only so much exactness.
- —Answers a question in each part: what is the good, what is virtue, how do we choose, what are friends for.
- —The goal is to become good, not just to know about it.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
The philosophical backbone of the Roman and Stoic guides. Cicero's On Duties takes the four cardinal virtues Aristotle's school handed on, and Seneca and Epictetus argue with his claim that external goods matter to happiness, since the Stoics held that virtue alone is enough. It is also Plato's most important answer: the Republic and the Phaedo place the highest knowledge in a world of Forms, and Aristotle replies that the good has to be something people can do and attain here. For a first read, try Terence Irwin (Hackett), Roger Crisp (Cambridge) or Joe Sachs (Focus); the full guide quotes a public-domain nineteenth-century English translation.