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i.1.1 The poet who declared his opinion at the god’s site in Delos, inscribing it on the gateway of the Temple of Leto, distinguished the good, the fine and the pleasant as not all belonging to the same thing. He wrote: ‘Finest is what is most just, best is being healthy, most pleasant of all is to attain what one desires.’ We should not agree with him. For happiness, being finest and best, is the most pleasant of all things.

i.1.2 There are many points of interest concerning each kind of object and nature that create difficulty and need examining. Some of these pertain only to our knowing, others pertain to the acquisition of the object and to actions as well. i.1.3 Regarding those that involve only theoretical philosophy, we must state, when the right opportunity presents itself, whatever is appropriate to the field of enquiry. i.1.4 First, however, we must examine what living well consists in and how it is to be achieved.

Do all who acquire this label get to be happy by nature, as with tallness and shortness and differences in skin colour? Or is it through learning, happiness being a kind of knowledge? Or is it through some sort of practice? After all, people acquire many qualities not by nature or learning but by habituation; bad qualities if they are badly habituated, good qualities if they are well habituated. Or is it in none of these ways, i.1.5 but in one or other of the following: by the influence of some divine force, like those people possessed by nymphs or gods, as if inspired; or by luck, since many people claim that happiness and good fortune are the same thing? i.1.6 Evidently it comes to be present in people in all or some or one of these ways. For pretty much everything one gets can be attributed to these sources, since actions based on thought can be grouped together with those that result from knowledge.

The opening line of the Nicomachean Ethics introduces one of Aristotle’s best-known contributions to philosophy: ‘Every skill and every enquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good.’ This captures an inspiring and optimistic view of human nature, as does the equally famous opening of the Metaphysics, ‘All human beings by nature desire to know.’ Striving for the good and striving for knowledge are two of the key elements of Aristotle’s profound view of what is significant in the life of human beings. Less well known is the emphasis Aristotle places on the role of pleasure, healthy pleasure at least, in a good human life. And that view is featured in the opening sentences of his other major work on happiness and successful human living, the Eudemian Ethics. Aristotle criticizes the wise old poet Theognis for driving a wedge between what is pleasant and what is fine and good. ‘We should not agree with him. For happiness, being finest and best, is the most pleasant of all things.’

Aristotle’s unexpected focus on the pleasantness of the happy life is just one of the many significant, though often subtle, differences between Aristotle’s two authoritative books on ethics, distinguished since antiquity by the epithets ‘Nicomachean’ and ‘Eudemian’. These labels allude to his son Nicomachus and his famous student Eudemus of Rhodes. The reason why these two labels were chosen to designate Aristotle’s two works on ethics, Aristotle’s motivation for writing two different books on the topic, and the relationships between them are all issues mired in uncertainty and controversy. Each of these questions demands proper discussion, but at the outset we want to draw attention to some important basic facts about Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics which make it eminently worth reading and indeed studying with as much care and attention as we routinely devote to the Nicomachean Ethics. First and foremost, it is important to recognize that the Eudemian Ethics is a complete treatment of happiness and the good human life, and in our view it was probably the first one Aristotle wrote. And if this is so, then it clearly demands our attention as a discussion of fundamental human values written by one of the great philosophers of the western tradition. But the nature of the work has been controversial, and so we should begin with a bit of background.

iii.1.1 We have stated in general terms that the virtues involve mean points, that they are concerned with decision, and that their opposites are vices, and what these are. Now let us take the virtues individually and discuss them in sequence, beginning with courage.

iii.1.2 It is pretty much universally held both that being courageous is about one’s fears, and that courage is one of the virtues. Earlier, in our list, we distinguished fear and recklessness as opposites, and in fact these are in a way contrary to one another. iii.1.3 So clearly those who are described in terms of these states will likewise be contrary to one another – the coward, who is described in terms of being more fearful and less confident than one ought, and the reckless person, described in terms of being such as to be less fearful and more confident than one ought. This is where the term is derived from: the reckless person is named derivatively after recklessness.

iii.1.4 Courage is the best disposition with respect to fear and confidence. One should be neither like the reckless, who display deficiency with regard to the former and excess with regard to the latter, nor like cowards, who do the same, except not in the same respects but the other way around – they have a deficiency of confidence and an excess of fear. Hence it is clear that courage is the mean disposition between recklessness and cowardice, this being the best.

vii.1.1 We must investigate friendship, what it is and what qualities it has; who is a friend, and whether friendship is a term used univocally or in many ways; and if it is used in many ways, how many; and also how one should interact with a friend and what the justice associated with friendship is. This investigation is no less important than the investigation of what is fine and choiceworthy in character traits. vii.1.2 For it is a particular function of the political art to produce friendship; and people say that virtue is useful for this reason, since those who are treated unjustly by one another cannot be friends to each other. vii.1.3 Moreover, we all say that justice and injustice have a particular bearing on friends; and we think that the same man is both good and a friend, and that friendship is a state connected to character. And if one wants to bring it about that people not commit injustice it is a good idea to make them friends to one another, since true friends do not commit injustice. vii.1.4 But it is also the case that if they are just they will not commit injustice. Consequently justice and friendship are either the same thing or nearly so.

vii.1.5 In addition, we hold that a friend is one of the greatest goods and that friendlessness and isolation are most dreadful, since our whole life and our voluntary associations are bound up with friends. For we pass our days either with members of our household, or with our relatives, or with our companions, or with our children, parents or our wife. vii.1.6 And the private justice that deals with our friends is the only one that is up to us, while that which involves other relationships is subject to legislation and is not up to us.

iv.1.1 We must examine justice and injustice, the kinds of actions that they are concerned with, the kind of mean point that justice is, and what it is a mean between. iv.1.2 Let our investigation use the same method as our preceding discussions.

iv.1.3 Now we see that everyone wishes to speak of justice as the kind of state that makes people inclined to do just deeds, to act justly, and to wish for what is just. Injustice is spoken of in the same manner, as that which makes people do injustice and wish for what is unjust. So let this be laid down as our initial outline too.

iv.1.4 There is a disanalogy between kinds of knowledge and capacities on the one hand, and states on the other. It seems that with a capacity or a kind of knowledge, the same one encompasses opposites, whereas any state that is opposite to another does not encompass opposites. For example, opposite outcomes do not result from health, only healthy ones, since we say that someone walks healthily whenever he walks as a healthy person would.

ii.1.1 Next we must discuss what follows, taking a new starting point. All good things are either within the soul or external to it, and the more choiceworthy of these are those within the soul, a distinction we also make in the exoteric works. For wisdom, virtue and pleasure are in the soul, and some or all of these are considered by everyone to be the goal. Of those in the soul, some are states or capacities, others activities and processes. ii.1.2 Let these distinctions be assumed and let it be assumed further, concerning virtue, that it is the best disposition or state or capacity of each of the things that have some use or function. This is clear from induction, since we consider things to be this way in all cases. For example, a cloak has a virtue, since it has a function and use, and its best state is its virtue. The same applies to a boat and a house, and so on, and hence to the soul, since it has some function.

Let us assume that the better state has a better function. And, ii.1.3 just as states are related to one another, let the functions that arise from them be so related. And let the function of each thing be its end. ii.1.4 So it is evident from this that the function is better than the state. For the end, being the end, is the best thing, since it has been laid down that what is best and ultimate is the end, and all the other things are for its sake. So it is clear that the function is better than the state and the disposition. ii.1.5 But ‘function’ has two senses. Some things have a function that is over and above their use. For example, the function of the builder’s art is not building but a house, and the function of the art of medicine is not healing or treating, but health. With other things, their use is their function. For example, the function of sight is seeing and the function of mathematical knowledge is studying. Hence, where a thing’s use is its function, the use is necessarily better than the state.

viii.1.1 One might wonder whether it is possible to use each thing both for its natural purpose and otherwise – and this either in itself or, on the other hand, incidentally. For example, an eye; one might use it to see or also otherwise, to mis-see, by displacing it so that one object appears as two. Both of these use it as an eye, because it is an eye, but there is another, incidental use; for instance, if it were possible to sell it or to eat it. viii.1.2 So too for knowledge. One can use it genuinely and also to make a mistake; for instance, when one voluntarily writes incorrectly one uses one’s knowledge as ignorance, as when one twists one’s hand out of place; and dancing girls sometimes use their feet as hands and vice versa.

viii.1.3 If all virtues are forms of knowledge it would also be possible to use justice as injustice and one would then commit injustice by performing unjust acts on the basis of justice, as one can also perform ignorant acts on the basis of knowledge. But if this is impossible, it is obvious that the virtues would not be forms of knowledge. And if it is not possible to be ignorant on the basis of knowledge, but only to make a mistake and to perform the same actions as are done on the basis of ignorance, then certainly one will also not do anything based on justice as though it were based on injustice. But again, if wisdom is knowledge and something that is true, then it too will behave in the same way. It would then be possible to act foolishly on the basis of wisdom and to make the same mistakes as a fool would make. But if the use of each thing as what it is were simple, then in acting that way people would also be acting wisely.