Pleasure and Pain in the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Definitions of Moral Virtue

Abstract

Both undisputably Aristotelian Ethics – the Eudemian and the Nicomachean Ethics – are set up as a conceptual analysis prompted by the definition of happiness. The definition of happiness is arrived at in the very first thematic section in both Ethics. Happiness is the chief and supreme good the obtainment of which all our actions are subordinated to. The definition of happiness is not only pivotal to moral philosophy as Aristotle conceives of it, but also provides the elements for the subsequent parts of the treatise, as the following sections build on and unfold what is mentioned in or presupposed by it, both treatises being concluded with a discussion about first and second happiness, thus closing the loop in what looks like a ring construction. Both definitions have at their core the notion of moral virtue. In their grand lines, both definitions are pretty similar. However, there are several differences worth stressing when one looks more accurately at the Eudemian and the Nicomachean definitions on moral virtue. The most important one, on which this chapter is focused, concerns the role pleasure and pain play in the Eudemian definition, whereas, in the Nicomachean version, they no longer appear in the definiens, where instead one finds the decisive mention of the practically wise person as he determines, absent from the Eudemian version. These differences have consequences on the way one is supposed to conceive happiness and the moral agent as such.