THE ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE


INTRODUCTION

The _Ethics_ of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his
_Politics_ is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject.
This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of
human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science. In the
two works taken together we have their author's whole theory of human
conduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity which
is not directed merely to knowledge or truth. The two parts of this
treatise are mutually complementary, but in a literary sense each
is independent and self-contained. The proem to the _Ethics_ is an
introduction to the whole subject, not merely to the first part; the
last chapter of the _Ethics_ points forward to the _Politics_, and
sketches for that part of the treatise the order of enquiry to be
pursued (an order which in the actual treatise is not adhered to).

The principle of distribution of the subject-matter between the two
works is far from obvious, and has been much debated. Not much can be
gathered from their titles, which in any case were not given to them by
their author. Nor do these titles suggest any very compact unity in the
works to which they are applied: the plural forms, which survive so
oddly in English (Ethic_s_, Politic_s_), were intended to indicate the
treatment within a single work of a _group_ of connected questions. The
unity of the first group arises from their centring round the topic of
character, that of the second from their connection with the existence
and life of the city or state. We have thus to regard the _Ethics_ as
dealing with one group of problems and the _Politics_ with a second,