Aristotle On Pleasure Essays - Nicomachean Ethics,

Aristotle On Pleasure After nine books of contemplating different aspects of the human good, Aristotle uses this opportunity to claim contemplation as the highest form of pleasure. The final book in Nicomachean Ethics is concerned with pleasures: the understanding of each kind, and why some pleasures are better than other pleasures. The book is essentially divided into two main parts, being pleasure and happiness. I will use Terence Irwins translation and subdivisions as a guiding map for my own enquiry, and any quotation from will be taken from this text. Irwin divides the book into three sections: Pleasure, Happiness: Further discussion, and Ethics, Moral Education and Politics. With this order in place, I will go chronologically through each claim and argument, using both the text and commentaries on the text to provide an understanding and clarify any misconceptions of the arguments presented. At 1172a20 Aristotle makes his case for the ethical importance of pleasure. He says that not only do we educate childrenby pleasure and pain, [but] enjoying and hating the right things seems to be most important for virtue of character. It because of this importance that pleasure needs to be considered. Aristotle also cites the importance of pleasure because of the controversy that surrounds it with regards to the dispute about whether pleasure is the good or it is altogether base (1172a 28). The question as to whether or not pleasure is altogether base lies in the argument that since the many lean towards pleasure and are slaves to pleasures, we must lead them in the contrary direction, because that is the way to reach the intermediate condition (1172a 30). Anyone who offers the claim that all pleasures are altogether base would have to be free from ever seeking any type of pleasure, in any degree to award any sort of truth to this claim. St. Thomas Aquinas responds similarly to this in saying: It hardly seems correct for people to say what they do not believethat pleasures are just evil to withdraw us from them, because in questions of human actions and passions we give less credence to words that to actions. For if a man does what he says is evil, he incites by his example more than he restrains by his word (Aquinas, 862). Following the lead of both Aristotle and Aquinas, it becomes clearer that neither believe that it is pleasure is evil in itself. Since the groundwork is then laid out, and there can be no objection to Aristotles calling pleasure what it is, he proceeds with his arguments. At 1172b10 Aristotle marks that that no sound argument can prove that pleasure is the good. He then uses Eudoxus arguments as his starting point. Eudoxus thought that pleasure is in the category of the good, and divided his thoughts into three parts. For each of the parts, I will quote in full, to ensure that the arguments are not misinterpreted. In the first, he saw that those animals: Both rational and non-rational seek it. (b) In everything, what is choiceworthy is decent, and what is most choiceworthy is supreme. (c) Each thing finds its own good, just as it finds its own nourishment. (d) Hence, when all things are drawn to the same thing [i.e. pleasure], this indicates that it is best for all. (e) And what is good for all, what all aim at is the good (1172b 10-15). In an initial response to this, Aristotle remarks that that Eudoxus arguments were considered good because of the arguments in themselves, but because of the character of the man. His second argument makes the same claim from the contrary. He said that: (a) pain in itself is to be avoided for all. (b) Similarly, then, its contrary is choiceworthy for all. (c) What is most choiceworthy is what we choose not because of, or for the sake of, anything else. (d) And it is agreed that this is the character of pleasure, since we never ask anyone what his end is in being pleased, on the assumption that pleasure is choiceworthy in itself. His final argument is simply that when pleasure is added to any other good, e.g. to just or temperate action, it makes that good more choiceworthy; and