Pleasure and Flourishing — Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
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July 26 - Chapters 4 through 5 outlines Aristotle's own view about pleasure in relation to flourishing. In previous chapters Aristotle has debunked the views that (1) pleasure is the supreme good, that (2) pleasure is bad, and that (3) all pleasures are choiceworthy.
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Which opinion, if any, is Aristotle's own view about pleasure?
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book X, which is about pleasure and human flourishing.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is the full-time job of being a human being?
2. What is the systematic structure of the human potential?
3. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
4. How does one come to acquire any of it? (E.g. pride, ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, fairness, friendliness, …)
5. How does one formulate right desires?
6. How is one to recover from being bad to becoming a good person?
7. What is entailed in and what is required of being a friend?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.