Eudemian Ethics I.1

The Unity of the Good, the Beautiful, and the Enjoyable

In the sacred precinct on the island of Delos, he who declared his opinion, distinguishing what’s good and what’s beautiful and what’s enjoyable as not all existing in the same thing, inscribed the following verse at the entryway to the temple of Leto:

Most beautiful is doing right,
The greatest good is having health,
But that which brings the greatest joy
Is to obtain your heart’s desire.

However, we do not agree with him. For fulfillment, being the best and most beautiful of all things, also brings the greatest joy.

Many of the matters requiring our attention about each thing and each nature introduce impasses and must be looked into. Some of these contribute only to our knowing, whereas others relate to getting things and taking action. Regarding those which are the concern of that passionate practice of sagacity which solely cultivates our attention, when the right occasion presents itself we must state what is inherent to that inquiry. But foremost we must look into what it is to live well and how to attain it.

Do all who happen to be called fulfilled become that way by nature, as with those who are tall or short or differ in complexion? Or do they learn to be that way, so that fulfillment is a kind of understanding? Or do they become that way through a sort of training (for many qualities exist in human beings not by nature or from learning but through enculturation, worthless ones if worthlessly enculturated, worthy ones if worthily enculturated)? Or is it none of those ways, but in one or the other of these: either breathed upon us by some divinity as if inspired (as happens to people possessed by some nymph or god) or by luck (for many say that fulfillment and good fortune are the same thing). That its presence exists in people by all of these or some of them or one of them is not unclear, for pretty much everything that happens comes down to these sources, and even all the actions that result from thinking things through can be brought under the heading of understanding.

Finding fulfillment - that is, living blessedly and beautifully - consists especially in three things which are thought to be most preferable: some people say the greatest good is wisdom, some excellence, some enjoyment. Yet some contest about the importance of these for fulfillment, saying one of them contributes more to it than another: some say that wisdom contributes as a greater good than excellence, others that excellence is greater than wisdom, yet others that enjoyment is even greater than both of those. Moreover, some say that a fulfilled life consists in all of these, some two, some a certain one.