{"id":263,"date":"2021-03-29T11:31:32","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/chapter\/9-how-is-the-end-to-be-realized\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T12:13:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T12:13:30","slug":"9-transition-from-ethics-to-political-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/chapter\/9-transition-from-ethics-to-political-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Section 9: Transition from Ethics to Political Philosophy"},"content":{"raw":"If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our program has reached its end? Surely, as the saying goes, where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them. [35]<\/sub> With regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know. But we must try to have and use virtue, [1179b1]<\/sub> or try any other way there may be of becoming good.\r\n\r\nNow if arguments were in themselves enough to make people good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, [5]<\/sub> and such rewards would have been provided. But as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character which is gently born and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are unable to encourage the majority of people to nobility and goodness. [10]<\/sub>\r\n\r\nFor the majority do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear. And they do not abstain from bad actions because they are shamefulness but through fear of punishment. Living by their emotions, they pursue their own pleasures and what leads to them, and the opposite pains, and have not even a concept of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. [15]<\/sub>\r\n\r\nWhat argument would reform such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument the traits that have long been incorporated into a person's character. Perhaps we must be content if, when all the influences by which we are thought to become good are present, we get some share of virtue.\r\n\r\nNow some think that we are made good by nature, [20]<\/sub> others by habit, and still others by teaching. Nature's part evidently does not depend on us but is present as a result of some divine causes in those who are truly fortunate. Argument and teaching, we may suspect, are not powerful with everyone. But the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and [25]<\/sub> noble hatred, like earth that is to nourish the seed. For someone who lives as the emotions direct will not hear an argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does. And how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? And in general emotions seem to yield not to argument but to force. The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble [30]<\/sub> and hating what is base.\r\n\r\nBut it is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under appropriate laws and customs. For to live temperately and resiliently is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason, their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law and customs. For they will not be painful when they have become customary. [35]<\/sub>\r\n\r\nBut it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention. [1180a1]<\/sub> For they must, even when they are grown up, practice the same things and be habituated to them. Thus, we need laws for this as well. And generally speaking we need laws and customs to cover the whole of life, since most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than the sense of what is noble.\r\n\r\nThis is why [5]<\/sub> some think that legislators ought to encourage people to be virtuous and urge them forward for the sake of the noble, on the assumption that those who have been well advanced by the formation of habits will attend to such influences; and that punishments and penalties should be imposed on those who disobey and are of inferior nature, while the incurably bad should be completely banished. A good person (they think), since he lives with his mind fixed on what is noble, [10]<\/sub> will submit to argument, while a bad person, whose desire is for pleasure, is corrected by pain like a beast of burden. This is also why they say the pains inflicted should be those most opposed to the pleasures such people love.\r\n\r\nHowever that may be, if, as we have said, someone who is to be good must be well trained and habituated, [15]<\/sub> and go on to spend his time in decent practices and neither willingly nor unwillingly do bad actions, and if this can be brought about if people live in accordance with a sort of reason and right order, provided this has force--if this is true, the paternal command does not have the required force or compulsive power. And neither, in general, does the command of one individual, unless he be a king or something similar. [20]<\/sub> But the law has compulsive power, while it is at the same time a rule proceeding from a sort of practical wisdom and reason. And while people hate other individuals who oppose their impulses, even if those opposing them are doing so rightly, the law in its ordaining of what is good is not burdensome.\r\n\r\nIn the Spartan city-state alone, or almost alone, the legislator [25]<\/sub> seems to have paid attention to questions of nurture and occupations. In most city-states such matters have been neglected, and each man lives as he pleases, Cyclops-fashion, \"to his own wife and children laying down the law.\" Now it is best that there should be a public and proper care for such matters. But if they are neglected by the community, [30]<\/sub> it would seem right for each person to help his children and friends towards virtue, and that they should have the power, or at least the will, to do this.\r\n\r\nIt would seem from what has been said that someone can do this better if he makes himself capable of legislating. For public supervision plainly comes about through laws, and good supervision through good laws. [35]<\/sub> Whether the laws are written or unwritten would seem to make no difference, nor [1180b1]<\/sub> whether they are laws providing for the education of individuals or of groups--any more than it does in the case of music or gymnastics and other such pursuits. For as in city-states laws and prevailing types of character have force, so in households do the injunctions and the habits of the father, and these have force even more because of [5]<\/sub> the tie of kinship and the benefits he confers. For the children start with a natural affection and disposition to obey.\r\n\r\nFurther, one-on-one education has an advantage over communal education, just as one-on-one medical treatment does. For while rest and abstinence from food are generally good for someone with a fever, for a particular person they may not be. And a boxing instructor presumably does not prescribe the same style of fighting to all his pupils. [10]<\/sub> It would seem, then, that the detail is worked out with more precision if there is individual supervision, since each person is more likely to get what suits his case.\r\n\r\nBut the details can be best looked after, one by one, by a doctor, gymnastic instructor, or anyone else who has the general knowledge of what is good for everyone or for people of a certain kind. For expert knowledge is and is said to be concerned with what is universal. [15]<\/sub> Nevertheless, some particular detail may perhaps be well looked after by a non-expert, if he has studied accurately in the light of experience what happens in each case, just as some people seem to be their own best doctors, though they could give no help to anyone else. Yet it will perhaps be agreed that if someone does wish to become master of some skill [20]<\/sub> or systematic knowledge he must go to the universal, and come to know it as well as possible. For, as we have said, systematic knowledge is concerned with the universal.\r\n\r\nMaybe someone who wants to make people better by his care, whether many people or few, must try to become capable of legislating, if it is through laws that we can become good. [25]<\/sub> For to get anyone whatsoever--anyone who is put before us--into the right condition is not something any random person can do. If someone can do it, it is the person who has knowledge, just as in medicine and all other matters that involve supervision and prudence.\r\n\r\nMust we not, then, next examine whence or how one can learn how to legislate well? Is it, as in all other cases, from statesmen? Certainly knowledge of how to legislate well seems to be a part [30]<\/sub> of statesmanship or political wisdom. Or is a difference apparent between political wisdom and the other disciplines and capacities? In the others, the same people teach the disciplines and practice them; for example, doctors or painters. But when it comes to political wisdom, although the sophists profess to teach it, [35]<\/sub> it is practiced not by any of them but by politicians, who would seem to do so [1181a1]<\/sub> by a certain ability and experience rather than of thought. For they are not found either writing or speaking about such matters, although that would be a nobler occupation perhaps than composing speeches for the law-courts and the assembly. Nor again are they found to have made statesmen of their own [5]<\/sub> sons or any other of their friends. But one expects that they would if they could, since there is nothing better than such a skill that they could have left to their cities, or could prefer to have for themselves or for those dearest to them. Still, experience seems to contribute not a little. Otherwise they could not have become politicians [10]<\/sub> by familiarity with politics. And so it seems that those who aim at knowing about political wisdom need experience as well.\r\n\r\nBut those of the sophists who profess to have political wisdom seem to be very far from teaching it. For, to put the matter generally, they do not even know what kind of thing it is nor what kinds of things it is about. Otherwise they would not have classed it as identical with rhetoric or even inferior to it, nor have thought that knowing how to legislate [15]<\/sub> is something easy by collecting the laws that people view as good. They say it is possible to select the best laws as though even the selection did not demand intelligence and as though right judgement were not, as in matters of music, the greatest thing. For while people experienced in any field discern rightly the works produced in it, and understand by what means or how they are achieved, [20]<\/sub> and what harmonizes with what, the inexperienced must be content if they do not fail to see whether the work has been well or ill made--as in the case of painting. Now laws are, as it were, the \"works\" of political wisdom. How then can one learn from them to be a legislator, or judge which are laws best? [1181b1]<\/sub> People don't even seem to become physicians by a study of textbooks.\r\n\r\nYet textbooks try to state not only the treatments, but also how particular classes of people can be cured and should be treated--distinguishing the various habits of body. But while this seems useful to experienced people, [5]<\/sub> to the inexperienced it is valueless. Surely, then, while collections of laws and constitutions may be serviceable to those who can study them and judge what is good or bad and what enactments suit what circumstances, those who go through such collections without a practiced ability will not have right judgement, [10]<\/sub> unless it be as a spontaneous gift of nature, although they may perhaps become more intelligent in such matters.\r\n\r\nNow our predecessors have left the subject of legislation unexamined. It is perhaps best, therefore, that we should ourselves study it, and in general study the question of the constitution, in order to complete to the best of our ability our philosophy of human affairs.\r\n\r\nFirst, then, [15]<\/sub> if anything has been said well in detail by earlier thinkers, let us try to review it. Then in the light of the constitutions we have collected, let us study what sorts of influence preserve and destroy states, and what sorts preserve or destroy the particular kinds of constitution, and to what causes it is due that some are well and others ill administered. When these have been studied, [20]<\/sub> we shall perhaps be more likely to see with a comprehensive view, which constitution is best, and how each must be ordered, and what laws and customs it must use, if it is to be at its best. Let us make a beginning of our discussion.\r\n\r\n[This discussion is continued in Aristotle's\u00a0Politics<\/em>.]","rendered":"

If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our program has reached its end? Surely, as the saying goes, where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them. [35]<\/sub> With regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know. But we must try to have and use virtue, [1179b1]<\/sub> or try any other way there may be of becoming good.<\/p>\n

Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make people good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, [5]<\/sub> and such rewards would have been provided. But as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character which is gently born and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are unable to encourage the majority of people to nobility and goodness. [10]<\/sub><\/p>\n

For the majority do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear. And they do not abstain from bad actions because they are shamefulness but through fear of punishment. Living by their emotions, they pursue their own pleasures and what leads to them, and the opposite pains, and have not even a concept of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. [15]<\/sub><\/p>\n

What argument would reform such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument the traits that have long been incorporated into a person’s character. Perhaps we must be content if, when all the influences by which we are thought to become good are present, we get some share of virtue.<\/p>\n

Now some think that we are made good by nature, [20]<\/sub> others by habit, and still others by teaching. Nature’s part evidently does not depend on us but is present as a result of some divine causes in those who are truly fortunate. Argument and teaching, we may suspect, are not powerful with everyone. But the soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of habits for noble joy and [25]<\/sub> noble hatred, like earth that is to nourish the seed. For someone who lives as the emotions direct will not hear an argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does. And how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? And in general emotions seem to yield not to argument but to force. The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble [30]<\/sub> and hating what is base.<\/p>\n

But it is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under appropriate laws and customs. For to live temperately and resiliently is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason, their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law and customs. For they will not be painful when they have become customary. [35]<\/sub><\/p>\n

But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention. [1180a1]<\/sub> For they must, even when they are grown up, practice the same things and be habituated to them. Thus, we need laws for this as well. And generally speaking we need laws and customs to cover the whole of life, since most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than the sense of what is noble.<\/p>\n

This is why [5]<\/sub> some think that legislators ought to encourage people to be virtuous and urge them forward for the sake of the noble, on the assumption that those who have been well advanced by the formation of habits will attend to such influences; and that punishments and penalties should be imposed on those who disobey and are of inferior nature, while the incurably bad should be completely banished. A good person (they think), since he lives with his mind fixed on what is noble, [10]<\/sub> will submit to argument, while a bad person, whose desire is for pleasure, is corrected by pain like a beast of burden. This is also why they say the pains inflicted should be those most opposed to the pleasures such people love.<\/p>\n

However that may be, if, as we have said, someone who is to be good must be well trained and habituated, [15]<\/sub> and go on to spend his time in decent practices and neither willingly nor unwillingly do bad actions, and if this can be brought about if people live in accordance with a sort of reason and right order, provided this has force–if this is true, the paternal command does not have the required force or compulsive power. And neither, in general, does the command of one individual, unless he be a king or something similar. [20]<\/sub> But the law has compulsive power, while it is at the same time a rule proceeding from a sort of practical wisdom and reason. And while people hate other individuals who oppose their impulses, even if those opposing them are doing so rightly, the law in its ordaining of what is good is not burdensome.<\/p>\n

In the Spartan city-state alone, or almost alone, the legislator [25]<\/sub> seems to have paid attention to questions of nurture and occupations. In most city-states such matters have been neglected, and each man lives as he pleases, Cyclops-fashion, “to his own wife and children laying down the law.” Now it is best that there should be a public and proper care for such matters. But if they are neglected by the community, [30]<\/sub> it would seem right for each person to help his children and friends towards virtue, and that they should have the power, or at least the will, to do this.<\/p>\n

It would seem from what has been said that someone can do this better if he makes himself capable of legislating. For public supervision plainly comes about through laws, and good supervision through good laws. [35]<\/sub> Whether the laws are written or unwritten would seem to make no difference, nor [1180b1]<\/sub> whether they are laws providing for the education of individuals or of groups–any more than it does in the case of music or gymnastics and other such pursuits. For as in city-states laws and prevailing types of character have force, so in households do the injunctions and the habits of the father, and these have force even more because of [5]<\/sub> the tie of kinship and the benefits he confers. For the children start with a natural affection and disposition to obey.<\/p>\n

Further, one-on-one education has an advantage over communal education, just as one-on-one medical treatment does. For while rest and abstinence from food are generally good for someone with a fever, for a particular person they may not be. And a boxing instructor presumably does not prescribe the same style of fighting to all his pupils. [10]<\/sub> It would seem, then, that the detail is worked out with more precision if there is individual supervision, since each person is more likely to get what suits his case.<\/p>\n

But the details can be best looked after, one by one, by a doctor, gymnastic instructor, or anyone else who has the general knowledge of what is good for everyone or for people of a certain kind. For expert knowledge is and is said to be concerned with what is universal. [15]<\/sub> Nevertheless, some particular detail may perhaps be well looked after by a non-expert, if he has studied accurately in the light of experience what happens in each case, just as some people seem to be their own best doctors, though they could give no help to anyone else. Yet it will perhaps be agreed that if someone does wish to become master of some skill [20]<\/sub> or systematic knowledge he must go to the universal, and come to know it as well as possible. For, as we have said, systematic knowledge is concerned with the universal.<\/p>\n

Maybe someone who wants to make people better by his care, whether many people or few, must try to become capable of legislating, if it is through laws that we can become good. [25]<\/sub> For to get anyone whatsoever–anyone who is put before us–into the right condition is not something any random person can do. If someone can do it, it is the person who has knowledge, just as in medicine and all other matters that involve supervision and prudence.<\/p>\n

Must we not, then, next examine whence or how one can learn how to legislate well? Is it, as in all other cases, from statesmen? Certainly knowledge of how to legislate well seems to be a part [30]<\/sub> of statesmanship or political wisdom. Or is a difference apparent between political wisdom and the other disciplines and capacities? In the others, the same people teach the disciplines and practice them; for example, doctors or painters. But when it comes to political wisdom, although the sophists profess to teach it, [35]<\/sub> it is practiced not by any of them but by politicians, who would seem to do so [1181a1]<\/sub> by a certain ability and experience rather than of thought. For they are not found either writing or speaking about such matters, although that would be a nobler occupation perhaps than composing speeches for the law-courts and the assembly. Nor again are they found to have made statesmen of their own [5]<\/sub> sons or any other of their friends. But one expects that they would if they could, since there is nothing better than such a skill that they could have left to their cities, or could prefer to have for themselves or for those dearest to them. Still, experience seems to contribute not a little. Otherwise they could not have become politicians [10]<\/sub> by familiarity with politics. And so it seems that those who aim at knowing about political wisdom need experience as well.<\/p>\n

But those of the sophists who profess to have political wisdom seem to be very far from teaching it. For, to put the matter generally, they do not even know what kind of thing it is nor what kinds of things it is about. Otherwise they would not have classed it as identical with rhetoric or even inferior to it, nor have thought that knowing how to legislate [15]<\/sub> is something easy by collecting the laws that people view as good. They say it is possible to select the best laws as though even the selection did not demand intelligence and as though right judgement were not, as in matters of music, the greatest thing. For while people experienced in any field discern rightly the works produced in it, and understand by what means or how they are achieved, [20]<\/sub> and what harmonizes with what, the inexperienced must be content if they do not fail to see whether the work has been well or ill made–as in the case of painting. Now laws are, as it were, the “works” of political wisdom. How then can one learn from them to be a legislator, or judge which are laws best? [1181b1]<\/sub> People don’t even seem to become physicians by a study of textbooks.<\/p>\n

Yet textbooks try to state not only the treatments, but also how particular classes of people can be cured and should be treated–distinguishing the various habits of body. But while this seems useful to experienced people, [5]<\/sub> to the inexperienced it is valueless. Surely, then, while collections of laws and constitutions may be serviceable to those who can study them and judge what is good or bad and what enactments suit what circumstances, those who go through such collections without a practiced ability will not have right judgement, [10]<\/sub> unless it be as a spontaneous gift of nature, although they may perhaps become more intelligent in such matters.<\/p>\n

Now our predecessors have left the subject of legislation unexamined. It is perhaps best, therefore, that we should ourselves study it, and in general study the question of the constitution, in order to complete to the best of our ability our philosophy of human affairs.<\/p>\n

First, then, [15]<\/sub> if anything has been said well in detail by earlier thinkers, let us try to review it. Then in the light of the constitutions we have collected, let us study what sorts of influence preserve and destroy states, and what sorts preserve or destroy the particular kinds of constitution, and to what causes it is due that some are well and others ill administered. When these have been studied, [20]<\/sub> we shall perhaps be more likely to see with a comprehensive view, which constitution is best, and how each must be ordered, and what laws and customs it must use, if it is to be at its best. Let us make a beginning of our discussion.<\/p>\n

[This discussion is continued in Aristotle’s\u00a0Politics<\/em>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"menu_order":9,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-263","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":245,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/263\/revisions\/1196"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/245"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/263\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}