PHI 1104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Byronic Hero, Intellectual Virtue, Nicomachean Ethics
19 Feb 2016
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We can be said to live the life of reason in two ways. Intellectual virtue: the father by himself or with other fathers. If happiness is activity in accord with virtue, it is reasonable for it to accord with the supreme virtue, which will be the virtue of the best thing. Hence complete happiness will be its activity in accord with its proper virtue, and so we have said that this activity is the activity of study. (1177a10-15) It is the virtue of the best part (the rational soul) directed at the highest things. Consequently it is the purest pleasure: that is, it is unmixed with the body. One criticism aristotle offers of the life of honour is that it is not self sufficient. Criticism of the life of honour because it depends on those who do the honoring. Moreover, the self-sufficiency we spoke of will be found in study more than in anything else.
