Aristotle (2024). Nicomachean Ethics 1.1

Aristotle (2024). Nicomachean Ethics. Second Edition. Translated With Introduction and Notes By C. D. C. Reeve Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.

 

 1.1 Goods and ends

Every craft and every methodical inquiry(Hodos: route or road) and likewise every action(Praxis) ^[각주:1] and deliberate choice seems to aim at some good. That is why they correctly declare that the good is what all aim at.^{[각주:2][각주:3]} 

Craft	Methodical Inquiry (Hodos: route or road)
Action(Praxis)	Deliberate choice

 

Alro Ends
Para (over and above) EEnds	Craft

Action merely intentional: even a child who does not have a capacity to deliberately choose (lacks practical reasoning).

Actions in a strict sense: the actualization of our rational faculty.

seeing, knowing and thinking: logically internal ends in the activity. 

they can also have para ends.

productive crafts or any things to pursue para ends.

Two kinds of eudiamonia: generosity, being a citizen, being virtuous citizen, friendship

This kind of eudimonia is not continious. 

internal alro ends.

The life of practical wisdom has a para ends, the life of contemplation

A certain difference, however, appears to^[각주:4] exist among ends(telos); for some are activities(energeia)^[각주:5]  while others are works(ergon)^[각주:6] of some sort beyond the activities themselves. But wherever there are ends beyond the actions, in those cases, the works are naturally better than the activities. And since there are many sorts of actions and of crafts and sciences, their ends are many as well; for health is the end of medicine, a ship of shipbuilding, victory of generalship, and wealth of household management.^[각주:7]

But since some of these fall under some one capacity(dunamis)^[각주:8]—as bridle making falls under horsemanship, along with all the others that produce equipment for horsemanship, while this and every action in warfare fall under generalship, in the same way, others fall under different ones—in all such cases, the ends of the architectonic ones^[각주:9] are more choiceworthy than the ends under them; for these too are pursued for the sake of the former. It makes no difference whether the ends of the actions are the activities themselves or some other thing beyond them, just as in the sciences we have mentioned.^[각주:10]

1. The noun praxis (verb: prattein) is used in a broad sense to refer to any intentional action, including one performed by a child or wild beast (1111a25–26, 1111b8–9), and in a narrower one to refer exclusively to what results from deliberation (bouleusis) and deliberate choice (prohairesis), of which neither wild beasts nor children are capable (1099b32–1100a5, EE 1224a28–29). The narrower sense may be the one intended here. [본문으로]
2. Aristotle apparently commits the logical fallacy of inferring from the fact that there is a good that each aims at that there is a good that all aim at. This is like inferring from the fact that each boy loves a girl (but not necessarily the same one) that there is a girl all boys love. 1094a18–b7 suggests a way to defend the inference in the cases most pertinent to ethics. Any good or end is aimed at or desired either because of itself or because of something else. Eventually this chain of “becauses” must terminate in an end or good, X, that is desired solely because of itself. If all such chains terminate in the same X, as the existence of an architectonic science with an end or good that circumscribes all the others suggests, then X will be the human good—that is, the one unique good that all human beings, in aiming at any good whatsoever, thereby aim at. For a hint on how to extend the claim beyond human beings to other living things and the very elements themselves, see 1153b32n527 [본문으로]
3. It is attributed to Eudoxus at 1172b9–10, where “all” clearly means not “all things” but all animals, whether rational or non-rational. [본문으로]
4. Appearances (phainomena) are things that appear to be so but that may or may not be so. Things that appear so to everyone or to wise people who have investigated them are endoxa, or acceptable beliefs. The role of both phainomena and endoxa in ethics are discussed at 1145b2–7. [본문으로]
5. The actualization (entelecheia) or use (chrêsis) of a capacity (dunamis) or state (hexis), as when an agent is currently engaging in deliberately chosen action, is an activity (energeia), by contrast with a movement (kinêsis). This contrast is explored in NE 10.4. When the activity is something’s function—as delib erately chosen action is (part of) a human being’s function—then “the function is the end (telos), and the activity is the function” (Met. 1050a21–22). A second sort of end is one that is the further end of an activity of this first sort. Thus, functions are also of two sorts: “But the function is said of things in two ways. For of some things the function is beyond the use—for example, the function [= end] of the craft of building is a house, not building, and the function [= end] of the craft of medicine is health, not making healthy or medically treating. In the case of other things, though, the use is the function [= activity]—for example, the function [= activity] of sight is seeing, and the function of mathematical science is con templation. So it is necessary, where the use is the function [= activity], for the use to be better than the state” (EE 1219a11–18). Just as the house is better than the activity of building, then, so the actualization or use of a state or of a capacity is better than the state or capacity itself (NE 1094a16–18). But, though one sort of further end is a product or work, such as a house or health, another can be a state. Thus, the actualization of practical wisdom, which is a state of the soul, is a valuable end, choiceworthy because of itself but also for the sake of theoreti cal wisdom and its actualization (1145a6–11, 1177b4–26). Correlated with this difference is one in the states themselves. The actualization or use of a productive state or capacity, such as building, is an incomplete activity, since it is not itself an end, while that of other sorts of states, such as scientific knowledge, is a complete activity, since it is an end (Met. 1048b18–35). Productive states are discussed in NE 6.4, where they are contrasted with practical or action related ones. [본문으로]
6. Aristotle uses the noun ergon for (1) the function or activity that is the actualization or use of a state, such as the knowledge of the craft of medicine, and for (2) works that are the further results of that activity. [본문으로]
7. The names of these crafts or sciences are: iatrikê (“medicine”), naupêgikê (“shipbuilding”), stratêgikê (“generalship”), and oikonomikê (“household management”). The ending -ikê signifies that either epistêmê (“science”) or technê (“craft”) should be supplied or presupposed, so that iatrikê is “the science of medicine,” and naupêgikê is “the craft of shipbuilding.” Since a craft is a productive science, it usually does not matter much which we choose. [본문으로]
8. The term dunamis (plural: dunameis) is used by Aristotle to capture two different but related things. (1) As in ordinary Greek, it signifies a power or capacity something has, especially one to cause movement in something else (pro ductive dunamis) or to be caused to move by something else (passive dunamis). (2) It signifies a way of being F, being capable of being F (or being F in potentiality) as distinguished from being actively F (or F in actuality; see 1168a5–15). Here the use of the term indicates that Aristotle is thinking of the crafts and sciences in his usual way, as psychological capacities or states of the soul, not as abstract structures of propositions or sentences of the sort found in textbooks (see 1139b15–18, 1181b2). (3) However, in a sense related to (1) a dunamis may also be a thing that “the excellent person has the capacity to use well and the base person to use badly” (†MM 1183b28–30). See 1101b12n106. [본문으로]
9. Aristotle distinguishes between craftsmen of different degrees of excellence: (1) The lyre player and the good lyre player have the same function, but the latter has “the superiority that is in accord with the virtue (for it is characteristic of a lyre player to play the lyre and of an excellent one to do so well)” (NE 1098a8–12). (2) Some craftsmen know all that is in the craft hand book, so to speak, but when it comes to problems that lie outside it, and so require deliberation, they sometimes arrive at reasons that are false (1140a28–30). These people know all the true handbook reasons but not the true deliberative ones. They may be good craftsmen for routine jobs, but, lacking the relevant sort of wis dom, they are not good for hard cases. (3) Some craftsmen are wise in that they are the most exact practitioners of their craft (1140b9–10). They know not just the true handbook and deliberative reasons but the ultimate explanatory ones—those that might be found in the most rigorous treatises on the craft’s starting-points. Thus what distinguishes “those doctors who pursue their craft in a more philosophi cal or wisdom-loving way” is that their search for the “primary starting-points of health and disease” leads them to begin by considering nature in general (Sens. 436a17–b1; also Juv. 480b22–30). This third class is that of the architectonic craftsmen, who, because they know the ultimate explanatory starting-points, have the most control or authority; and political science seems to be the “most architectonic science” (NE 1094a26–27). Hence, “the ones who above all do actions, even external actions, in a controlling way are their architectonic craftsmen, who do them by means of their thoughts” (Pol. 1325b22–23). [본문으로]
10. Suppose that the end of someone’s action is to do well in action (1139b1–4), and that doing well in action consists in actualizing or using his virtuous state of character, then the end of his action will be the activity consisting in the actualization of that state. Because the sciences mentioned have ends beyond their actualization or use, they are not like this. [본문으로]