10 am | Stillwell Room
<aside> 💡 This is a fun one! We talk about the classics a lot, read alouds, and great reads for youth, but sometimes we forget to read great depth and mission classics for ourselves. This workshop is an introduction to learning the language of the greats!
As we seek to broaden and deepen our thinking, our ability to serve others increases. Sometimes all we need to turn things up a notch is a little help over that first hurdle, or a little extra insight from a mentor, or simply a group of like-minded friends to bounce ideas around with. This is what studying Aristotle has done for me and I know you’ll have a similar experience.
</aside>
Open as a word Doc: Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.docx
Or continue reading below.
Translated by Joe Sachs
Ian added italics
Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that the good is that at which all things aim. But a certain difference is apparent among ends, since some are ways of being at work, while others are certain kinds of work produced, over and above the being-at-work*.
And in those cases in which there are ends of any kind beyond the actions, the works produced are by nature better things than the activities.
And since there are many actions and arts and kinds of knowledge, the ends also turn out to be many: of medical knowledge the end is health, of shipbuilding skill it is a boat, of strategic art it is victory, of household management it is wealth. But in as many such pursuits as are under some one capacity--in the way that bridle making and all the other skills involved with implements pertaining to horses come under horsemanship, while this and every action pertaining to war come under strategic art, and in the same way other pursuits are under other capacities--in all of them the ends of all the master arts are more worthy of choice than are the ends of the pursuits that come under them, since these latter are pursued for the sake of those arts.
And it makes no difference whether the ends of the actions are the ways of being at work themselves, or something else beyond these, as they are with the kinds of knowledge mentioned.
If, then, there is some end of the things we do that we want on account of itself, and the rest on account of this one and we do not choose everything on account of something else (for in that way the choices would go beyond all bounds, so that desire would be empty and pointless), it is clear that this would be the good, and in fact the highest good.
Then would not an awareness of it have great weight in one’s life, so that, like archers who have a target, we would be more apt to hit on what is needed? But if this is so, one ought to try to get a grasp, at least in outline, of what it is and to what kind of knowledge or capacity it belongs.