Another short chapter today.
These questions having been definitely answered, let us consider whether happiness is among the things that are praised or rather among the things that are prized; for clearly it is not to be placed among potentialities.
As I've mentioned in the discussion of I.2 and I.6b, this is following a parallel argument from the Rhetoric. Aristotle holds, I said, that when "incomparable things are being weighted against each other -- should I prefer this meal, or that victory at war? -- honor provides the common ground for valuation." Here we are going to talk about things like that, but we have a further mechanism for differentiating them into the merely 'praised' versus the more valuable 'prized.'
Everything that is praised seems to be praised because it is of a certain kind and is related somehow to something else; for we praise the just or brave man and in general both the good man and virtue itself because of the actions and functions involved, and we praise the strong man, the good runner, and so on, because he is of a certain kind and is related in a certain way to something good and important. This is clear also from the praises of the gods; for it seems absurd that the gods should be referred to our standard, but this is done because praise involves a reference, to something else. But if if praise is for things such as we have described, clearly what applies to the best things is not praise, but something greater and better, as is indeed obvious; for what we do to the gods and the most godlike of men is to call them blessed and happy. And so too with good things; no one praises happiness as he does justice, but rather calls it blessed, as being something more divine and better.
So when we praise strength or bravery, a fast runner or even a just man, we are celebrating those qualities because they point to the easier acquisition of something that is a good in itself. Strength is good because it lets you do more work, which is good because it obtains whatever the end result of the labor was meant to be. Bravery is good because it can help you obtain victory in war and peace through strength -- but victory is good because it can bring a just peace, whereas such peace is good because it enables the best kind of human life.
This is to be contrasted with the truly prized things, the things we really want for themselves rather than as a mere means to something else.
Eudoxus also seems to have been right in his method of advocating the supremacy of pleasure; he thought that the fact that, though a good, it is not praised indicated it to be better than the things that are praised, and that this is what God and the good are; for by reference to these all other things are judged.
This thread will grow only stronger in the Christian period, though Aquinas and others will have to point out that the Goodness of God is not equivalent to the goodness of men; rather, that the word 'good' just has a different and categorically lesser meaning when applied to any created thing. Eudoxus was another head of the Academy, one of Aristotle's teachers as Iakovos was one of mine. Sadly, all of his works have been lost.
Praise is appropriate to virtue, for as a result of virtue men tend to do noble deeds, but encomia are bestowed on acts, whether of the body or of the soul. But perhaps nicety in these matters is more proper to those who have made a study of encomia; to us it is clear from what has been said that happiness is among the things that are prized and perfect. It seems to be so also from the fact that it is a first principle; for it is for the sake of this that we all do all that we do, and the first principle and cause of goods is, we claim, something prized and divine.
So there you have it. There's a little bit of an ambiguity in this discussion, as even the things that are prized are also praised, and encomia turn out to be just higher and more formal forms of praise.
The real issue is whether you seek the thing in order to obtain other things, or if the thing itself is your end. Happiness is an end in itself. Bravery gives you the victory, which combined with justice can give you a lasting peace, which itself enables the conditions for the best kind of life. The thing you are seeking in such a life is happiness, eudaimonia.
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