Aristotle · Fourth century BCE
Read Nicomachean Ethics with context
Aristotle asks what it means to live well through distinctions that must answer to the variety of human action. The argument moves among purposes, habits, choices, emotions, laws, and friendships. Try its examples closely: a definition of virtue is only a beginning if acting well still requires recognizing what matters in a particular situation. You can read the text, save notes and quotes, and follow the passage paths below.
Key Reading Paths
- Becoming a person through repeated acts: Building and playing the lyre provide analogies for acquiring virtue. How can someone begin to act justly before possessing a settled just character?
- Not every failure to know excuses an act: Aristotle distinguishes acting through ignorance from acting in ignorance. Test the distinction against his examples of intoxication and anger.
- Correcting a rule without abandoning justice: A universal law can fail to fit a particular case. What kind of judgment corrects the law’s generality while remaining faithful to its purpose?
- Knowing without bringing knowledge to bear: Passion is compared with conditions in which knowledge is possessed but not fully active. Ask whether this account explains or merely redescribes acting against one’s judgment.
- Wishing good for another person’s sake: The account of complete friendship distinguishes concern for a person from an incidental benefit. What relation does it establish between affection and a judgment about character?
Questions for comparison
- Compare the need for particular judgment with Wentworth’s praise of firmness in Persuasion. What does a memorable image omit that an actual situation demands?
- Set Aristotle’s account of friendship beside Montaigne’s refusal to explain his bond beyond the persons themselves. How much can a general account preserve of a singular relation?
Teaching with these readings
Use the lyre-player analogy to distinguish an action, a habit, and a state of character. Ask students to explain a possible difficulty in the analogy rather than treating the example as proof by itself.
Place the mean beside equity. Have students identify the role of judgment in both passages and consider how a reasoned decision can avoid becoming merely a personal preference.