Nicomachean Ethics

After these things, it perhaps follows next to discuss pleasure. For it seems to be most intimately associated with our race, which is why people educate the young, steering them by pleasure and pain; and it also seems to be of the greatest importance for the virtue of character to enjoy what one ought and to hate what one ought. For these extend through the whole of life, having weight and power toward virtue and the happy life; for they choose pleasant things and avoid painful things; and concerning such matters, it would seem least of all right to pass them over, especially since they involve much controversy. For some say that pleasure is the good, while others, on the contrary, say it is utterly bad, some perhaps being convinced that it is so, and others thinking it is better for our life to declare pleasure to be among bad things, even if it is not so; for they think that the many lean toward it and are slaves to pleasures, wherefore it is necessary to lead them to the contrary; for they think that they would thus reach the mean. But perhaps this is not well said. For arguments about feelings and actions are less credible than facts; so when they clash with what is perceived by sensation, they are despised and undermine the truth as well; for he who censures pleasure, if he is once seen aiming at it, seems to incline toward it on the ground that all pleasure is of this nature; for making distinctions is not the way of the many. Therefore, true arguments seem to be most useful not only for knowledge, but also for life; for being in harmony with facts they are believed, and so they encourage those who understand them to live in accordance with them. Of such matters, then, enough; let us go over what has been said about pleasure.

​Eudoxus, then, thought that pleasure is the good because he saw all things, both rational and irrational, aiming at it; and in all things that which is desirable is good, and that which is most of all so is the best; and the fact that all things are drawn toward the same object indicates that this is for all the best thing (for each thing finds its own good, just as it finds its food), and that which is good for all, and which all aim at, is the good. But his arguments were believed more because of the virtue of his character than on their own account; for he seemed to be exceptionally temperate; so he was not thought to say these things as a friend of pleasure, but because this was how it was in truth. And he thought it was no less manifest from the contrary; for pain is in itself avoided by all, and similarly its contrary is desirable; and that is most of all desirable which we choose not because of something else nor for the sake of something else; and pleasure is admittedly of this nature; for no one asks for the sake of what he is pleased, implying that pleasure is desirable in itself. And when added to any of the goods, it makes it more desirable, for instance, to acting justly and being temperate, and the good is increased by itself. Now this argument seems to show it to be one of the goods, and no more so than any other; for any good is more desirable with another good than when isolated. Indeed, by such an argument Plato also refutes the view that pleasure is the good; for he argues that the pleasant life is more desirable with wisdom than without it, and if the mixed is better, pleasure is not the good; for the good does not become more desirable by having anything added to it. And it is clear that nothing else can be the good which becomes more desirable when combined with any of the things that are good in themselves. What, then, is there of this nature, in which we also can share? For it is something of this sort that is being sought. But those who object that that which all things aim at is not good, are talking nonsense. For what seems to all, this we say is; and he who destroys this conviction will not say anything more convincing. For if only foolish things desired them, there would be something in what they say, but if wise things also do, how could they be saying anything? And perhaps even in base things there is some natural good superior to themselves, which aims at their proper good. Nor does what they say about the contrary seem to be well said. For they say that, if pain is bad, pleasure is not on that account good; since bad is opposed to bad as well, and both are opposed to that which is neither—saying this not badly indeed, but not speaking the truth in the present case. For if both were bad, both ought to have been avoided, and if neither was bad, neither ought to have been avoided, or both in like manner; but as it is, they clearly avoid the one as bad and choose the other as good; and in this way indeed they are opposed.