(Previous: Eudemian Ethics I.4.)
There are many other matters about which beautiful discernment is not easy, especially the very one that everyone believes is straightforward and known to all: namely what is to be preferred in life and what, once obtained, would satisfy our needs. After all, many things happen that cause people to give up living, such as disease, unbearable pain, or a storm of calamities. On account of these things, at least, clearly it would be preferable not to have been born in the first place, if one had been given the choice. Add to this the kind of life we lived when we were children: no one in their right mind would put up with going back to that again. Moreover, many things that involve neither joy nor distress, or involve joys which are not beautiful, are such as to make not being better than living. On the whole, if we gather up all the things that everyone does and experiences but nevertheless unwillingly (because none of them are done or experienced for their own sake), and add on an infinite length of time, for the sake of these no one would choose living over not living.
Furthermore, no one who is not utterly servile would prefer living merely for the joys of food or sex if deprived of the joys of knowing and seeing and the other forms of awareness given to human beings. Clearly to someone having this preference it makes no difference if they are born beast or human. At any rate in Egypt the ox that is worshipped as Apis has free rein in these things even more than many monarchs. Likewise no one would prefer living due to the joys of sleeping - for what is the difference between sleeping an unbroken slumber from one's first day to one's last for a thousand years or however long you may please, and living as a plant? Such at least seems to be the sort of life that plants partake in, as also do babies (for once they come to be inside their mothers they continue growing, while sleeping the whole time). So these sorts of things make it plain that what is well and good in life eludes those who look into the matter.
They say that when someone kept raising such difficulties with Anaxagoras and kept asking him about that for the sake of which one would want to be born rather than not, he replied "to devote one's attention to the vault of heaven and the arrangement of the entire world-order". So for him anyway that for the sake of which living is preferable was some sort of understanding.
On the other hand, all those who call blessed Sardanapallus or Smindurides the Sybarite or any of the others who live a life of enjoyment apparently assign fulfillment to delight. Certain others would not select wisdom or bodily pleasures over the actions that proceed from excellence; after all, there are some who prefer this not only for the sake of a good reputation but even if they won't be esteemed for their actions. However, many statesmen don't come by the name truly, for they aren't statesmen in truth: the statesman is committed to beautiful actions for their own sake, whereas the multitude engage in this living for the sake of personal gain and getting more than their share.
From what we have said, plainly everyone refers fulfillment to three ways of life: civic involvement, love of sagacity, and enjoyment. Of these, bodily pleasures and enjoyments are not unclear, both what they are and how and from what they come about. Thus there is no need to search out what these are, but instead search out whether or not they contribute something to fulfillment and how they do so and whether these are the pleasures that must be ascribed to living beautifully (if indeed any must be) or whether it is necessary to partake of these in some other way, whereas it is through different pleasures that the fulfilled person is thought to live joyfully and not just painlessly.
But we must consider these matters later on. First we must give attention to excellence and wisdom, what is the nature of each, and whether they are parts of the good life, either themselves or the actions arising from them, since fulfillment is referred to them if not by everyone then at least by those people who are worthy of account.
Now Socrates the elder thought that our completion is to know excellence, and he sought out the "what-is" of justice and courage and each of the parts of excellence. And it was reasonable that he did this, for he thought that all the excellences are forms of understanding, so that knowing justice and being just happen at the same time (after all, no sooner does one learn geometry or house-building than one is a geometer or a house-builder). Thus he searched out what excellence is, but not how or from what it comes to be. This is what happens in the forms of understanding that are directed to attention, for there is nothing more to astronomy or natural science or geometry than knowing and paying attention to the nature of the things that form the basis of these forms of understanding, even if incidentally nothing prevents them from being useful to us for many necessities.
Yet with the forms of understanding directed to making, the completion is other than the understanding or the knowing (for example, health is the completion of medicine and good order or some such is the completion of statecraft). Surely, knowing each of the beautiful things is also beautiful; yet in the case of excellence the most glorious thing is not to know what it is but to know how it arises. What we wish for is not to know what courage is but to be courageous, nor to know what justice is but to be just, as we wish to be healthy more than to know what it is to be healthy and to have good traits more than to know what it is to have good traits.
(Next: Eudemian Ethics I.6.)
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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