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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Short History of Ethics: a History of Moral Philosophy From the Homeric Age To the Twentieth Century CHAPTER 7: ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS “EVERY CRAFT and every inquiry, and similarly every action and project, seems to aim at some good; hence the good has been well defined as that at which everything aims.” The book which Aristotle opens with this trenchant sentence is traditionally known as the Nicomachean Ethics (it was either dedicated to or edited by Aristotle’s son Nicomachus), but its subject matter is declared to be “politics.” And the work which is called the Politics is presented as the sequel to the Ethics.

Both are concerned with the practical science of human happiness in which we study what happiness is, what activities it consists in, and how to become happy. The Ethics shows us what form and style of life are necessary to happiness, the Politics what particular form of constitution, what set of institutions, are necessary to make this form of life possible and to safeguard it. But to say only this is misleading.

For the word πολιτικός does not mean precisely what we mean by political; Aristotle’s word covers both what we mean by political and what we mean by social and does not discriminate between them. The reason for this is obvious. In the small-scale Greek city-state, the institutions of the πόλις are both those in which policy and the means to execute it are determined and those in which the face-to-face relationships of social life find their home.

In the assembly a citizen meets his friends; with his friends he will be among fellow members of the assembly. There is a clue here to the understanding of parts of the Ethics which later on we shall have to follow up. For the moment we must return to the first sentence. Good is defined at the outset in terms of the goal, purpose, or aim to which something or somebody moves. To call something good is to say that it is under certain conditions sought or aimed at.

There are numerous activities, numerous aims, and hence numerous goods. To see that Aristotle is completely right in establishing this relationship between being good and being that at which we aim, let us consider three points about the use of the word good.