(Previous: Eudemian Ethics I.1.)
Focusing now on these things, everyone capable of living as guided by their own commitments must set up some target of living beautifully - whether honor or reputation or wealth or culture - toward which they will look in doing all of these actions, because not organizing one's way of life around something that makes it complete is a sign of much foolishness. First and foremost, then, one should determine for oneself, neither hastily nor sluggishly, what of ours living well consists in, and the thing without which human beings cannot attain it. For that without which it is impossible to be healthy is not the same thing as being healthy, and something similar holds in many other cases; thus living beautifully is not the same as that without which it is impossible to live beautifully. Some of these things are not specific to health or to living but are common to everything, as it were, both traits and actions (for instance, without our share of breathing or being awake or movement nothing either good or bad would exist for us); whereas others are more in the nature of each thing, and these must not escape our notice (for the aforementioned things are not inherent to vigor in the same way as eating meat or taking a walk after dinner). These are the grounds for disagreement about fulfillment, both what it is and what brings it into being; for some consider things without which one cannot be fulfilled to be part of fulfillment.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)