Nikomakhos'a Etik (Nicomachean Ethics)

Ten books, written in Athens in the second half of the fourth century BC. It reads less like a book prepared for publication than like lecture notes, and its structure shows it: some places are compressed, some are left open with "this too should be considered".

It is not certain who the Nicomachus in the title is. According to the most common view, he is Aristotle's son. Since Aristotle's father was also named Nicomachus, some say the title refers to the father, and others say the son edited the text. There is no agreement on when it was written. Classic readings such as W. D. Ross's place the book in Aristotle's last period in Athens, that is, between 335 and 322 BC.

As a Turkish edition I saw the translation by Saffet Babür on Kitapyurdu: Bilgesu Yayıncılık, October 2020, 240 pages. There are other translations too; I have not set any of them side by side and compared them. In this piece I build the chapter details by following the book's public domain Ross translation chapter by chapter, so the numbers follow Aristotle's own order of books and chapters, not the pages of whatever edition you have in hand.

The starting question: everything aims at some good

The first sentence carries the whole book: every art, every inquiry, every action seems to aim at some good. Aristotle says that aims are linked to one another. Bridle-making is for riding, riding is for war. The chain has to stop somewhere; there has to be an end we want for its own sake. He calls it "the good for man" and notes that everyone calls this happiness, that is, eudaimonia, but people differ over what it is.

He also explains his method at the outset: it is wrong to look for mathematical precision in ethics, and being content with the precision the subject allows is the mark of an educated person. This warning sets the tone of the book. Aristotle does not write rules; he draws a map that says "in most cases, it is like this".

Books one and two: the aim and habit

Book one first eliminates ways of life. He calls the life of pleasure something fit for cattle; about the life of honor he says honor lies in the hands of those who give it, and that money is only a means. The third life, the life of contemplation, is still waiting. Then comes a respectful but clear objection to Plato's idea of a single Form of the Good: the word "good" has many meanings, it cannot be reduced to a single common form, and even if it could, it would be of no use in everyday life.

Chapter seven contains the famous function argument: the work of a human being is activity of the soul in accordance with reason, and happiness is doing this with virtue, over a complete life. Then comes the discussion of external goods and fortune. He dwells at length on Solon's saying "call no one happy until you see the end"; he asks whether the fate of the dead, of descendants, touches happiness. His answer is cautious: there are effects, but they are slight. What surprises people most in this section is that Aristotle openly says part of happiness is left to fortune. I went further into this word in my piece on eudaimonia.

Book two describes how character is built. Moral virtue does not come from birth; it is formed by habit: one becomes a builder by building. Virtue is not a feeling, nor a capacity, but a lasting state, that is, hexis. I worked through this section in detail in my piece on hexis. The doctrine of the mean is also here: courage lies between cowardice and rashness, generosity between prodigality and stinginess. He says the mean is not in the same place for everyone, that he is talking about a mean "relative to us". And he draws a line: some actions, such as adultery, theft and murder, have no mean; they are wrong in themselves.

Chapter nine offers practical advice. He suggests leaning toward the opposite side from whichever extreme your tendency runs to, as you would straighten a bent stick. Getting angry is easy; getting angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right reason is hard.

Books three and four: choice and the individual virtues

Book three looks for where responsibility begins. What is done under compulsion or through ignorance does not count as done willingly. Choice is narrower than what is done willingly: deliberation is only about things within our power, and we deliberate not about ends but about means. Chapter five has a hard conclusion: both virtue and vice are in our power, because character comes from the repetition of individual actions. Someone who acts unjustly again and again makes himself an unjust person.

Then two virtues are taken up: courage and temperance. For courage he chooses noble death in war as the example and lists its false kinds: the courage of the citizen soldier, of the experienced, of the passionate, of the hopeful and of the ignorant. In temperance he looks at the pleasures tied to the senses of touch and taste, and gives an interesting verdict: self-indulgence is more voluntary than cowardice, and so more blameworthy.

Book four is a catalog of virtues: generosity, magnificence, greatness of soul, the nameless mean concerning honor, good temper, friendliness, truthfulness, wit and shame. I think this is the most dated part of the book, but skipping it would also be wrong, because this is the kitchen where the idea of the mean is cooked.

Books five and six: justice and practical wisdom

Book five deals with justice. In one sense justice is complete virtue, but complete virtue toward another person. In its narrower sense it is giving the right to whoever is in the right. Distributive justice is the allocation of shares according to merit; corrective justice is the judge equalizing the harm. In exchange, he says, money is the representative of demand. The distinction between natural and legal justice is here too: one has the same force everywhere, the other changes by agreement. I especially liked the idea of equity in chapter ten: the justice that corrects the law where it falls short because it speaks in general terms.

Book six distinguishes kinds of reason. He lists five states by which the soul reaches truth: art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophical wisdom and intuitive reason. Practical wisdom, that is, phronesis, is defined as the capacity to deliberate well about what is good for ourselves and for the good life as a whole. The young can become masters of geometry but very rarely of practical wisdom, because it requires experience. Chapters twelve and thirteen contain one of the book's most important theses: being clever, that is, knowing how to reach a goal, is mere "smartness" if the goal is bad. Practical wisdom is not possible without moral virtue, and moral virtue is not complete without practical wisdom. In my Phronesis diary I wrote about what this distinction told me on a day when no method was working.

Book seven: not doing what you know, pleasure

Book seven deals with akrasia, the state of knowing and not doing. Socrates had said such a thing could not exist, that someone who knows would not do wrong. Aristotle says this contradicts the observed facts and proposes a solution: knowing something and using that knowledge at that moment are not the same thing. Like the knowledge of someone asleep, drunk or mad. The general principle is in hand, but in this concrete situation it is not seen. He also distinguishes the weak (who deliberates but cannot act) from the impetuous (who does not deliberate at all). He compares akrasia to epilepsy: an intermittent condition, whereas vice is permanent. The person who cannot hold himself back feels regret, and so can be set right. In my piece on akrasia I wrote about how the sentence heard most often with ADHD, "I know but I can't do it", overlaps with this debate.

After chapter eleven the book turns to pleasure, and its view of it is surprisingly gentle. It answers one by one those who say pleasure is bad, redefines pleasure as unimpeded activity, and ends book seven by opening a door to friendship.

Books eight and nine: friendship

This is the warmest part of the book. Book eight opens by saying that nobody would choose to live without friends, even if they had all other goods. Then it divides friendship into three: friendships based on utility, on pleasure and on virtue. The first two end when their reasons disappear. The third lasts, but it takes time: two people who have not eaten salt together cannot be said to know each other. There are not many people in a complete friendship. He also looks at political orders and family relations: friendship between father and son, husband and wife, ruler and ruled is not equal, so the love has to be proportional to merit. Under tyranny there is almost no friendship, because there is no justice.

Book nine goes into the fine details. Mutual equalization in unequal friendship, how friendship ends, the good person's harmony with himself ("a friend is another self"), goodwill being "inactive friendship", the benefactor loving more than the one who receives the favor. In chapter eight his defense of the good person loving himself is striking: he says the real selfishness is grabbing wealth and honor, while the good person can give these up to increase his share of what is noble. Chapter nine argues that the happy person also needs friends, chapter ten puts a limit on the number of friends, and chapters eleven and twelve deal with the place of friends in bad times and good, and with living together as the essence of friendship. In my Philia diary I tried to translate this into my own life.

Book ten: pleasure, contemplation, laws

The last book first returns to pleasure. It weighs Eudoxus's claim that pleasure is the good: pleasure is worth choosing, but the fact that it can be added to other goods shows that it is only one of the goods. Against the view that takes pleasure to be a movement, he says pleasure is complete at every moment and describes it as an end that completes the activity "like the bloom of youth".

In chapter six he says happiness is not a state but an activity, and should not be sought in amusement. Chapters seven and eight are the book's surprising peak: the highest happiness is the contemplative activity of reason, the best part in a human being, theoria. The political and moral life is secondary, in his view a happiness more dependent on external goods. He says the gods too are occupied with contemplation. Chapter nine connects the book to lawmaking: knowing virtue is not enough, it has to be lived; most people are made good not by words but by habit and law. In the end Aristotle says "perhaps it is best that we ourselves study this" and moves on to politics.

Its greatest strengths

First, it builds character as the accumulation of actions. To someone who asks who they are, this book says: look at what you do. This idea still works two thousand three hundred years later.

Second, it does not turn ethics into a list of rules. In the sections on method and in book six he says that where rules are not enough, perception steps in. To me this seems to describe the ceiling of piling up methods with ADHD. Of course Aristotle knew nothing of ADHD, and I do not read this as evidence; I find it very fruitful as a way of reading. I worked through the idea of building character from the practical side in my piece on building habits.

Third, it devotes two whole books to friendship. If a fifth of an ethics book is about friendship, then what that book calls "the good life" is not something lived alone.

Weak points and criticisms

The book is lecture notes. Some sections are short, some are scattered, and in places it repeats itself. Books five, six and seven are shared with the Eudemian Ethics, and the reason is debated: they may have been put in place of lost books, or an editor may have shaped both texts.

The scope is narrow. The book's virtuous person is a free male citizen with leisure and money. In book one it says openly that external goods are needed to be happy, and in book eight it takes the hierarchies of husband and wife, ruler and ruled, as natural givens. Greatness of soul in book four, that is, knowing you are entitled to your own great honor, is the part that feels most foreign to me. Commentators debate whether it only reflects the values of the Athenian gentleman or is a general conclusion.

The function argument is also contested. Both the assumption that a human being has a single function and the move from the function of the species to the good of the individual are found forced.

The really big tension is between book one and book ten. Book one builds happiness as activity in accordance with virtue, and if there is more than one virtue, it speaks of the most complete one. Book ten names this most complete virtue as contemplation. Commentators differ on how to reconcile these two books. I think the two do not quite fit, and Aristotle may have seen this himself, because in book ten he calls the moral life "secondary happiness".

Who it is for, and who it is not for

For everyone who has not tired of asking of their own life, "am I living well?". Especially for those who want to know why a method did not work when it did not. It is not the wrong door for a first introduction to philosophy either, but on one condition: you do not have to read the whole book in order. Starting with books one, two, six, eight and nine is enough.

Who is it not for? For someone looking for a list of moral rules. The book does not tell you what you should do; it tells you what kind of life comes from what kind of person you become. For someone who wants a quick, ready answer, it is also a reading that takes patience.

Its place on the shelf

It stands at the center of the philosophy shelf on this site. Sisifos Söyleni is about accepting that meaning is not given and carrying on, while this book says meaning is sought in what is done. Reading the two one after the other is a tense and fruitful order. İnsanın Anlam Arayışı, for its part, answers the same question in extreme conditions. The Eudaimonia, Philia, Akrasia and Phronesis pieces in the diary came out of this book.

Closing

I think the most honest thing this book gives to the present is saying that the good life is not a mood. I may be living well even on a day when I do not feel happy, but for that I have to look at what I repeated that day. Aristotle does not comfort; he hands responsibility back.