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nydus/The Nicomachean Ethics of AristotlePublic

This work constitutes one half of a comprehensive treatise on political and social science, focusing on the study of human conduct and character. It functions as an independent inquiry that complements Aristotle’s Politics by exploring the practical activities of human life.

Page 263 of 423
Table of Contents

BOOK VII

therefore are good as a matter of result.)

Again, the very fact of their being violent causes them to be pursued by such as can relish no others: such men in fact create violent thirsts for themselves (if harmless ones then we find no fault, if harmful then it is bad and low) because they have no other things to take pleasure in, and the neutral state is distasteful to some people constitutionally; for toil of some kind is inseparable from life, as physiologists testify, telling us that the acts of seeing or hearing are painful, only that we are used to the pain and do not find it out.

Similarly in youth the constant growth produces a state much like that of vinous intoxication, and youth is pleasant. Again, men of the melancholic temperament constantly need some remedial process (because the body, from its temperament, is constantly being worried), and they are in a chronic state of violent desire. But Pleasure drives out Pain; not only

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