The Practicality of Virtue Ethics

For those of you still interested in further reading (if any!), here is a paper arguing that virtue ethics may in fact be impossible and yet still both practical and desirable.

Tom asked me recently why I don't read contemporary philosophy; this is a good example of why. For thousands of years at least some have striven for the virtues, and those who have lived lives that we often still remember. 

Edward Abbey wrote a few critical things about philosophy, although he was deeply interested in the subject. Once he wrote, "I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife."

Yet I think the most devastating thing he wrote was this: "In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy."

The idea that the virtues are impossible, because some psychology researchers in rooms somewhere found that they were difficult, is no kind of argument. It's another indoor philosophy. Go tell the Spartans. 

Ol’ Arlo

Now you know what has to be done. 

But here, then, also this:

And, therefore, one more. 

Roast Thanksgiving

My wife appealed for a non-turkey feast this year, and of course I am usually easy for her to convince. We did Roast Beast instead, and in fact roast everything: baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, and baked breads and pies. Hard cheese, I guess, which wasn’t roasted. 

Easy feasting, though. Turns out a standing rib roast is a great variation if you want a vacation from the usual turkey and dressing. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.9

The last chapter of the last book is upon us, and it's a very long one for Aristotle. 

If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our programme has reached its end? Surely, as the saying goes, where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them; with regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it, or try any other way there may be of becoming good. Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character which is gently born, and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness.

Not everyone has an equal capacity for virtue. We have seen this repeated many times, especially in Book IV. This is not only due to environmental issues -- for example, the presence or absence of a good upbringing -- but also due to these issues that Aristotle describes as character-based. Plato, meanwhile, had belabored repeatedly in his dialogues that great men often fail to produce great sons: even an extraordinary family will only sometimes, and not reliably, produce people with the highest capacity for virtue. This is a major theme of both the Protagoras and the Republic, for example. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.8

In the penultimate chapter of the ultimate book, Aristotle considers the claim of the vita activa that I was defending in the commentary on X.7.

But in a secondary degree the life in accordance with the other kind of virtue is happy; for the activities in accordance with this befit our human estate. Just and brave acts, and other virtuous acts, we do in relation to each other, observing our respective duties with regard to contracts and services and all manner of actions and with regard to passions; and all of these seem to be typically human. Some of them seem even to arise from the body, and virtue of character to be in many ways bound up with the passions. Practical wisdom, too, is linked to virtue of character, and this to practical wisdom, since the principles of practical wisdom are in accordance with the moral virtues and rightness in morals is in accordance with practical wisdom. Being connected with the passions also, the moral virtues must belong to our composite nature; and the virtues of our composite nature are human; so, therefore, are the life and the happiness which correspond to these.

This active life is a human life, then; and, therefore, a life so oriented is humane. It is a fit life for a human being. 

Perverse Incentives

Hard cases make bad law, as we know. So too laws that are designed to protect "young women" rather than for the general purpose of applying an equal legal standard to all of society; we human beings readily take stern steps to avoid upsetting the beautiful and fertile young women among us. 

Liberal judges who decide not to jail violent career criminals and sadistic psychopaths ought to be held liable when the felons attack innocent citizens. Two horrendous, unprovoked attacks on helpless young women on public transit in recent weeks would never have happened if the legal system had done what it’s designed to do. 

The problem here is the context: we live in a society in which almost no trials happen at all, because aggressive charging coupled with plea bargains almost always prevent any trial of an accused. It's 98% of Federal criminal trials, and 95% of state-level ones. 

The system is not failing on the side of leniency for the accused, even if it is possible to find two recent cases out of the lives of four hundred million people. Making judges liable if they happen to release someone who later commits a crime would only add an additional incentive to send people to prison for a long time without worrying too much about whether or not they actually did anything wrong. The US is already the world's leading producer of prison population; if anything, we should be trying to reduce the number of Americans in prison if we can find good ways of doing so. 

It's a dangerous world. Freedom and protection are oppositional goods; the more protected you are, the less free. Everyone can and should be horrified by the murder in Charlotte, for example, but it doesn't follow that we need even more incentive to put people in prison for long sentences. Prison doesn't work anyway: nobody gets reformed. More of a bad solution is not a good answer to any problem. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.7

Just as we had to go slow when we were starting, because so many unfamiliar concepts were being deployed that we needed to map down, at this point the conclusions should be familiar and obvious. That said, there are surprises yet to come.

If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us. Whether it be reason or something else that is this element which is thought to be our natural ruler and guide and to take thought of things noble and divine, whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be perfect happiness. That this activity is contemplative we have already said.

It's still somewhat surprising that perfect happiness is contemplative. That has already been said, but it isn't obvious even so: most of the virtues are actualized through action, rather than by thinking alone. The courageous man doesn't just think the brave things, but acts on them; it is only in the vita activa that the virtues get to be lived-out.  

Now this would seem to be in agreement both with what we said before and with the truth. For, firstly, this activity is the best (since not only is reason the best thing in us, but the objects of reason are the best of knowable objects); and secondly, it is the most continuous, since we can contemplate truth more continuously than we can do anything. And we think happiness has pleasure mingled with it, but the activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvellous for their purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected that those who know will pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire.

It is easy to see how this model pleased later monotheistic thinkers; the ability to contemplate God's perfection and glory is a ready substitute for this model of contemplating what is best in practical life. For Aquinas, the greatest and highest purpose of men is this contemplation of God.  

Aristotle is not thinking of religion at all here, however. He is speaking of reason as 'that which is most divine in men,' but the exercise is not a ritual: it's carrying out activity in accord with reason, rather than prayer or imaginations. It's only contemplative in the sense that it is a pleasure to contemplate what is best, highest, most honorable. It's even more of a pleasure to contemplate that you did such things with your time and skill.

And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity. For while a philosopher, as well as a just man or one possessing any other virtue, needs the necessaries of life, when they are sufficiently equipped with things of that sort the just man needs people towards whom and with whom he shall act justly, and the temperate man, the brave man, and each of the others is in the same case, but the philosopher, even when by himself, can contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is; he can perhaps do so better if he has fellow-workers, but still he is the most self-sufficient. And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action.

Aristotle first raised the issue that the end of ethics should be self-sufficient in I.4, there as a possibility that should be sought if it could be found. It turns out that philosophical contemplation is a good you can have even by yourself, whereas most of the virtues require someone to act upon -- to treat justly, or to be brave against, or the like. Thus, since this is the most self-sufficient of the possible goods, it has the standing that we have been looking for from the beginning of the inquiry. 

And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

Is that why we make war? We seem to be staging up for a war in Venezuela right now, which it would be possible to live in peace without fighting. Wars of choice were well known in the Athenian era, too: the best story from those days is Thermopylae, where the war was unchosen and forced and where a few stood against many. Yet Xenophon's story, which we spent last winter with, was all about Greek mercenaries going to fight in someone else's war for profit and because they were good at it. 

Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely.

Indeed. Von Clausewitz: "Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult." 

Warlike actions are completely [unleisurely] (for no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war; any one would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter); but the action of the statesman is also unleisurely, and-apart from the political action itself-aims at despotic power and honours, or at all events happiness, for him and his fellow citizens-a happiness different from political action, and evidently sought as being different. So if among virtuous actions political and military actions are distinguished by nobility and greatness, and these are unleisurely and aim at an end and are not desirable for their own sake, but the activity of reason, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself (and this augments the activity), and the self-sufficiency, leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the supremely happy man are evidently those connected with this activity, it follows that this will be the complete happiness of man, if it be allowed a complete term of life (for none of the attributes of happiness is incomplete).

It is true that being a philosopher is more self-sufficient than war; war needs an army or two. It is much more leisurely; and it doesn't tend to make one weary. All the same, speaking practically, I enjoyed war a lot more than I usually enjoy peace. For that matter, I enjoyed the rescue operations in the hurricane better than I enjoy peace. 

In a way this should be unsurprising: in those situations in which 'everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,' it's easy to know what reason directs you to do next. The necessity of the problem drives you and those you are working with to align your efforts in accord with reason, and to pursue the next virtuous thing: the brave thing, sometimes the just thing, the self-disciplined thing. 

That seems to be eudaimonia as Aristotle has described it: it is the life of the warrior.  Yet here, at the end, we get an endorsement of a much less active and more leisurely life. Philosophers tend to love this part of the book, as it seems to endorse their mode of life as the highest of all possible ones for human beings. I admit that I've always found this section's conclusions implausible. 

But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not in so far as he is man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine is present in him; and by so much as this is superior to our composite nature is its activity superior to that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue. If reason is divine, then, in comparison with man, the life according to it is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. This would seem, too, to be each man himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of his self but that of something else. And what we said before' will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest.

So there you go. If Aristotle's analysis is right, you now know how to be happy. Go and do it, if it seems right to you that you should. 

Another Cowpunching Song

Nicomachean Ethics X.6

We can now begin the final assault on the EN's slopes. 

Now that we have spoken of the virtues, the forms of friendship, and the varieties of pleasure, what remains is to discuss in outline the nature of happiness, since this is what we state the end of human nature to be. Our discussion will be the more concise if we first sum up what we have said already. We said, then, that [happiness] is not a disposition; for if it were it might belong to some one who was asleep throughout his life, living the life of a plant, or, again, to some one who was suffering the greatest misfortunes. If these implications are unacceptable, and we must rather class happiness as an activity, as we have said before, and if some activities are necessary, and desirable for the sake of something else, while others are so in themselves, evidently happiness must be placed among those [activities] desirable in themselves, not among those desirable for the sake of something else; for happiness does not lack anything, but is self-sufficient. Now those activities are desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought beyond the activity. And of this nature virtuous actions are thought to be; for to do noble and good deeds is a thing desirable for its own sake.

This is a restatement of what we've already learned: happiness is an activity; it is one of those activities that is chosen for itself, not as a means to something better; and that it is bound up with virtuous action. These are highly important conclusions; we immediately get an aside.

Pleasant amusements also are thought to be of this nature; we choose them not for the sake of other things; for we are injured rather than benefited by them, since we are led to neglect our bodies and our property. But most of the people who are deemed happy take refuge in such pastimes, which is the reason why those who are ready-witted at them are highly esteemed at the courts of tyrants; they make themselves pleasant companions in the tyrants' favourite pursuits, and that is the sort of man they want. Now these things are thought to be of the nature of happiness because people in despotic positions spend their leisure in them, but perhaps such people prove nothing; for virtue and reason, from which good activities flow, do not depend on despotic position; nor, if these people, who have never tasted pure and generous pleasure, take refuge in the bodily pleasures, should these for that reason be thought more desirable; for boys, too, think the things that are valued among themselves are the best. It is to be expected, then, that, as different things seem valuable to boys and to men, so they should to bad men and to good. Now, as we have often maintained, those things are both valuable and pleasant which are such to the good man; and to each man the activity in accordance with his own disposition is most desirable, and, therefore, to the good man that which is in accordance with virtue. Happiness, therefore, does not lie in amusement; it would, indeed, be strange if the end were amusement, and one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself. For, in a word, everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else-except happiness, which is an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.

This is an important point too, although one we should have well-mapped-down by now. Happiness is not merely the kind of experience we have when amused. Ironically that is mostly what contemporary Americans mean when they use the phrase: "I was happy" means something like "I was engaged in my favorite amusements." There is something better, and higher, intended here. 

The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. And we say that serious things are better than laughable things and those connected with amusement, and that the activity of the better of any two things-whether it be two elements of our being or two men-is the more serious; but the activity of the better is ipso facto superior and more of the nature of happiness. And any chance person-even a slave-can enjoy the bodily pleasures no less than the best man; but no one assigns to a slave a share in happiness-unless he assigns to him also a share in human life. For happiness does not lie in such occupations, but, as we have said before, in virtuous activities.

This is closer to Teddy Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life" than it is to a life of amusement; more about saddles and rifles than it is about beer by warm fires. 

Meeting David Foster

So, one of the nice things about last week's trip was the opportunity to meet our friend Mr. Foster for the first time in person. He brought along an intelligent and interesting colleague, and we had a very pleasant discussion there in DC. 

I do not, however, own "an arsenal" of weapons as is apparently is reputed. I have a small, select collection of weapons, many of which are medieval (several swords, for example), others of which are historical from other periods (mostly cowboy guns from the days when I was interested in SASS), and all of which are perfectly lawful in case that's of interest to anyone reading this. Just to be clear. You're thinking of that other old milblogger, John "the Armorer" Donovan. 

We do have bears and motorcycles, though.

Decompression

It might seem strange that after six days’ travel I’d want to get out on the road, but it’s a very different sort of road. 

Licklog Gap is always a peaceful stop.

Super Sport

So the home where the strategic planning session was had, of all things, an El Camino SS parked in the driveway. I asked who it belonged to; the answer I got was “My old man.” They did not appreciate what a badass muscle car was sitting outside. The guy even said, “It’s speedy, but it doesn’t have air conditioning.”

Dude. 

Georgetown

In my last full day in the National Capital Region, I’m helping to run a strategic planning session in Georgetown. I don’t usually get over here because it is not tied into the Metro rail system, intentionally to keep poorer people out. 

I could rent a car, but hate driving in DC; in the spring when I ride my motorcycle up, I’m too busy with the Memorial Day activities. 

There is still a tavern, unlike in Georgia where many Revolutionary era towns named “…Tavern” changed their names after their county went dry. 

Strangely this is the Lutheran church; I usually see Anglican churches in this style.

Very rich and powerful people who seem to think of this existence as broadly ‘middle class.’

Refuse Unlawful Orders

The ground here was carefully chosen; it is sometimes in fact a legal requirement that soldiers etc. refuse to obey unlawful orders. It’s not only not treason or “sedition” to suggest it, it’s merely a restatement of black-letter law. 

Even so, the standard for such a refusal is high and requires interpretation by one’s conscience. A court martial had better agree, too, if you are to evade serious consequences. 

Jeano

Like Food Under Communism

“Dark humor is like food under Communism:

Not everyone gets it.”

Also like Communism, it sounds promising…

…but turns out to be deeply disappointing.

No stars. 

Traveling

I’ll be back in DC from tomorrow until Saturday morning. David Foster and I will be meeting for lunch; if any of the rest of you are in town and inclined, let me know. 

Child safer

We finally made some headway in the child custody case I'm helping a neighbor with. We were experiencing unexpected difficulty getting the case transferred from San Antonio, the location of the divorce ten years ago, to this county, where the 13YO has lived most of her life and still lives. At long last, though there's still a mandamus pending, the local judge got a secure grip on the jurisdiction and scheduled the first hearing on a motion for temporary custody orders. Dad and his lawyer having inexplicably declined to attend, we put on grandma's riveting case yesterday through her own testimony and got an order granting her temporary custody, allowing dad only supervised visits.

I always enjoy watching courtroom dramas, in large part because the argument and testimony are coherent, dramatic, and revealing. Those of us who've done jury duty know how rare that is in real life, where the lawyers mumble and bore everyone, and witnesses have no gift for exposition. Yesterday grandma put on a tour de force, an unrehearsed and heartbreaking but cogent story, right to the point, a vivid picture of what she and her granddaughter have been enduring for the last year. She's such a little, soft-spoken thing, but her intelligence, moral core, and steely spine shone through.

Our lawyer had a good day, too. She took command of the proceedings and ably exploited the default by opposing counsel. Afterward, when we all went for coffee, a former client of hers recognized her and came over to express profound gratitude for her help in a divorce and custody case. A nice way to end a working week!

Nicomachean Ethics X.5

One last chapter on pleasure, then we close out the EN with a discussion of happiness.

For this reason pleasures seem, too, to differ in kind. For things different in kind are, we think, completed by different things (we see this to be true both of natural objects and of things produced by art, e.g. animals, trees, a painting, a sculpture, a house, an implement); and, similarly, we think that activities differing in kind are completed by things differing in kind. Now the activities of thought differ from those of the senses, and both differ among themselves, in kind; so, therefore, do the pleasures that complete them.

Here we have finally reached the useful advice that this study of pleasure in the Ethics was after. It turns out that pleasures are the immaterial goals of our activities. Thus, if your life is not adequately pleasant, you need more goals to pursue, because you will find pleasure at the end of them. For that reason the goals need to be things you can actually bring to completion. Great tasks (like pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy) will require a long time of working before any pleasure is obtained at the end. They may still be worth pursuing, but if your problem is that your life is unpleasant, pick smaller-scale activities that will lead you to success in a more reasonable period of time. 

Now, that said, we have also learned that the noble is both more worthy of pursuit, and more ultimately pleasant. The great pursuits that are (or hopefully are) within your power can fall into that category. Pursuing them can be the mark of a good life; but you need to fit them into a life that also includes a lot of smaller-scale victories that can sustain you along the road.  

This may be seen, too, from the fact that each of the pleasures is bound up with the activity it completes. For an activity is intensified by its proper pleasure, since each class of things is better judged of and brought to precision by those who engage in the activity with pleasure; e.g. it is those who enjoy geometrical thinking that become geometers and grasp the various propositions better, and, similarly, those who are fond of music or of building, and so on, make progress in their proper function by enjoying it; so the pleasures intensify the activities, and what intensifies a thing is proper to it, but things different in kind have properties different in kind.

To my certain knowledge we have here among us a mathematician, a professional musician, and an architect. Aristotle was thinking of men like you specifically when he wrote this. 

This will be even more apparent from the fact that activities are hindered by pleasures arising from other sources. For people who are fond of playing the flute are incapable of attending to arguments if they overhear some one playing the flute, since they enjoy flute-playing more than the activity in hand; so the pleasure connected with fluteplaying destroys the activity concerned with argument. This happens, similarly, in all other cases, when one is active about two things at once; the more pleasant activity drives out the other, and if it is much more pleasant does so all the more, so that one even ceases from the other. This is why when we enjoy anything very much we do not throw ourselves into anything else, and do one thing only when we are not much pleased by another; e.g. in the theatre the people who eat sweets do so most when the actors are poor. Now since activities are made precise and more enduring and better by their proper pleasure, and injured by alien pleasures, evidently the two kinds of pleasure are far apart. For alien pleasures do pretty much what proper pains do, since activities are destroyed by their proper pains; e.g. if a man finds writing or doing sums unpleasant and painful, he does not write, or does not do sums, because the activity is painful. So an activity suffers contrary effects from its proper pleasures and pains, i.e. from those that supervene on it in virtue of its own nature. And alien pleasures have been stated to do much the same as pain; they destroy the activity, only not to the same degree.

"Proper" in this sense means "the one that belongs to the thing under discussion." It's not "proper" in the sense of etiquette. If you're lifting weights and you hurt yourself doing so, you'll stop (at least until you heal). 

Now since activities differ in respect of goodness and badness, and some are worthy to be chosen, others to be avoided, and others neutral, so, too, are the pleasures; for to each activity there is a proper pleasure. The pleasure proper to a worthy activity is good and that proper to an unworthy activity bad; just as the appetites for noble objects are laudable, those for base objects culpable. But the pleasures involved in activities are more proper to them than the desires; for the latter are separated both in time and in nature, while the former are close to the activities, and so hard to distinguish from them that it admits of dispute whether the activity is not the same as the pleasure. (Still, pleasure does not seem to be thought or perception-that would be strange; but because they are not found apart they appear to some people the same.) As activities are different, then, so are the corresponding pleasures. Now sight is superior to touch in purity, and hearing and smell to taste; the pleasures, therefore, are similarly superior, and those of thought superior to these, and within each of the two kinds some are superior to others.

The last highlighted point is another practical warning. To return to the Ph.D. example, you may have a desire for a doctorate; but you won't do the activity as well if you don't take pleasure in it. Even a very strong desire might be abandoned, but if you're enjoying it you'll keep doing it. If you're not, it's very likely you won't (and certain that you won't if the proper pain associated with the pursuit becomes too strong, as it does for very many people: the process is arduous). If you find that you don't take pleasure in it, you probably won't ever be great at it.

Each animal is thought to have a proper pleasure, as it has a proper function; viz. that which corresponds to its activity. If we survey them species by species, too, this will be evident; horse, dog, and man have different pleasures, as Heraclitus says 'asses would prefer sweepings to gold'; for food is pleasanter than gold to asses. So the pleasures of creatures different in kind differ in kind, and it is plausible to suppose that those of a single species do not differ. But they vary to no small extent, in the case of men at least; the same things delight some people and pain others, and are painful and odious to some, and pleasant to and liked by others. This happens, too, in the case of sweet things; the same things do not seem sweet to a man in a fever and a healthy man-nor hot to a weak man and one in good condition. The same happens in other cases.

The idea that the animal has a proper function is Aristotelian; it's the telos of the thing. I have often thought that if you could ask the horse, he might prefer standing in a field eating all day to any of the various functions to which humanity has put him. But from our perspective, there's a proper function; and a horse pressed into service will indeed sometimes seem to be really enjoying performing. However, there's a danger that Aristotle is imposing a human perspective on the animal here rather than taking the animal's pleasure seriously on its own terms. 

But in all such matters that which appears to the good man is thought to be really so. If this is correct, as it seems to be, and virtue and the good man as such are the measure of each thing...

This is a modification of Protagoras' position that 'man is the measure of all things,' which Plato had opposed by stating that a god ought to be the right measure. Aristotle declines both positions: no, it is only the good man who has the virtues who is the correct measure.  

That, of course, is how we got to the ruling that the horse has a proper function of serving man's interests. A good man with the virtues said so and that's the standard, thus that is the horse's propepr function, quod erat demonstrandum.

...those also will be pleasures which appear so to him, and those things pleasant which he enjoys. If the things he finds tiresome seem pleasant to some one, that is nothing surprising; for men may be ruined and spoilt in many ways; but the things are not pleasant, but only pleasant to these people and to people in this condition. Those which are admittedly disgraceful plainly should not be said to be pleasures, except to a perverted taste; but of those that are thought to be good what kind of pleasure or what pleasure should be said to be that proper to man? Is it not plain from the corresponding activities? The pleasures follow these. Whether, then, the perfect and supremely happy man has one or more activities, the pleasures that perfect these will be said in the strict sense to be pleasures proper to man, and the rest will be so in a secondary and fractional way, as are the activities.

That invocation of 'the supremely happy man' as the judge of what pleasures are most proper gives us the jumping-off point for the discussion of happiness. 

Nicomachean Ethics X.4

These chapters on pleasure are significantly longer than most of what we've seen earlier in the book. 

What pleasure is, or what kind of thing it is, will become plainer if we take up the question again from the beginning.

You've seen this move from Aristotle throughout, and as I've mentioned, it's a very common approach of his. He brings in a lot of machinery from the Physics about what makes motion possible. By "motion" means something technical again, which he will explain to you but it's not quite the way we use the word: it's any sort of process by which change comes to be.

Seeing seems to be at any moment complete, for it does not lack anything which coming into being later will complete its form; and pleasure also seems to be of this nature. For it is a whole, and at no time can one find a pleasure whose form will be completed if the pleasure lasts longer. For this reason, too, it is not a movement. For every movement (e.g. that of building) takes time and is for the sake of an end, and is complete when it has made what it aims at. It is complete, therefore, only in the whole time or at that final moment. In their parts and during the time they occupy, all movements are incomplete, and are different in kind from the whole movement and from each other. For the fitting together of the stones is different from the fluting of the column, and these are both different from the making of the temple; and the making of the temple is complete (for it lacks nothing with a view to the end proposed), but the making of the base or of the triglyph is incomplete; for each is the making of only a part.

A point he makes about motions that are for the sake of an end is that the parts of the motion generally have to come in a certain order. The temple example here is a little opaque, but the point is easy to understand: you have to make the foundation before you can raise the walls, and the walls need to be raised before a roof can be installed. So the thing coming-to-be has an order even over and above the form you are putting the material into: the process by which it can come to be is a determined feature of reality. 

They differ in kind, then, and it is not possible to find at any and every time a movement complete in form, but if at all, only in the whole time. So, too, in the case of walking and all other movements. For if locomotion is a movement from to there, it, too, has differences in kind-flying, walking, leaping, and so on.

Locomotion is more in line with how we tend to use the word "motion," but there is also here a determined set of necessary things that have to be done in order. If I want to walk to the mountaintop I first leave my house, then I cross the forest, then I climb the slopes, and only then can I step onto the summit. 

(There's another crucial point about locomotion in the Physics, which is that all of these motions involve locomotion: Aristotle's understanding of the way things come to be is that you have to bring things into contact physically; he does not for example have a concept of gravity. If you want to throw a rock into the lake, you have to go to the rock, pick it up, and then throw it. Why does it fall? Natural place, as mentioned in the commentary on II.1: the rock you threw is moving to where the elemental rock belongs in the universe, which it will do if not arrested. Why does it keep moving in the air after you let go of it? His theory was that the air moved out of its way when you threw it kind of circles around behind it and continues to push it along.)

And not only so, but in walking itself there are such differences; for the whence and whither are not the same in the whole racecourse and in a part of it, nor in one part and in another, nor is it the same thing to traverse this line and that; for one traverses not only a line but one which is in a place, and this one is in a different place from that. We have discussed movement with precision in another work...

The Physics, obviously. 

...but it seems that it is not complete at any and every time, but that the many movements are incomplete and different in kind, since the whence and whither give them their form. But of pleasure the form is complete at any and every time. Plainly, then, pleasure and movement must be different from each other, and pleasure must be one of the things that are whole and complete. This would seem to be the case, too, from the fact that it is not possible to move otherwise than in time, but it is possible to be pleased; for that which takes place in a moment is a whole.

From these considerations it is clear, too, that these thinkers are not right in saying there is a movement or a coming into being of pleasure. For [movement or coming-to-be] cannot be ascribed to all things, but only to those that are divisible and not wholes; there is no coming into being of seeing nor of a point nor of a unit, nor is any of these a movement or coming into being; therefore there is no movement or coming into being of pleasure either; for it is a whole.

What kind of things are not divisible, even conceptually? He has named some mathematical objects that don't really exist in the world; a point is defined as having no magnitude, so there's nothing to divide. But pleasure isn't a mathematical object either, of course. It is, however, still necessarily then immaterial, for all material things can be divided and have magnitude.

Since every sense is active in relation to its object, and a sense which is in good condition acts perfectly in relation to the most beautiful of its objects (for perfect activity seems to be ideally of this nature; whether we say that it is active, or the organ in which it resides, may be assumed to be immaterial), it follows that in the case of each sense the best activity is that of the best-conditioned organ in relation to the finest of its objects. And this activity will be the most complete and pleasant. For, while there is pleasure in respect of any sense, and in respect of thought and contemplation no less, the most complete is pleasantest, and that of a well-conditioned organ in relation to the worthiest of its objects is the most complete; and the pleasure completes the activity.

Here he is continuing the analogy to sight that he opened with: sight is in the organ of the eyes, but sight as we experience it is not material. You can close one eye, but you can't divide the experience you have of seeing into physical parts.  

But the pleasure does not complete it in the same way as the combination of object and sense, both good, just as health and the doctor are not in the same way the cause of a man's being healthy.

This is a concept that was important to Aristotle: 'being healthy' causes health, so the fact that all your organs are properly working is what causes the experience of being healthy. A doctor can also cause you to be healthy, sometimes, by applying surgery or other techniques; but it is not the same way of causing your health, and indeed an inferior one if you can just be healthy. 

(That pleasure is produced in respect to each sense is plain; for we speak of sights and sounds as pleasant. It is also plain that it arises most of all when both the sense is at its best and it is active in reference to an object which corresponds; when both object and perceiver are of the best there will always be pleasure, since the requisite agent and patient are both present.) Pleasure completes the activity not as the corresponding permanent state does, by its immanence, but as an end which supervenes as the bloom of youth does on those in the flower of their age. So long, then, as both the intelligible or sensible object and the discriminating or contemplative faculty are as they should be, the pleasure will be involved in the activity; for when both the passive and the active factor are unchanged and are related to each other in the same way, the same result naturally follows.

So pleasure is not like building a temple; it's not a motion or a movement because it can't be divided into parts. It's also not like the way in which seeing is the purpose of the eyes, because we also experience pleasure from seeing beauty, so it's an additional sort of end -- not one that supplants sight as the purpose of the eye, the end for which eyes are made, but another sort of end.  It's not weird to have two ends, because in Aristotle you have four causes, each of which can have an independence (although they often don't; formal and final cause often turn out to be the same, or efficient and material).

How, then, is it that no one is continuously pleased? Is it that we grow weary? Certainly all human beings are incapable of continuous activity. Therefore pleasure also is not continuous; for it accompanies activity. Some things delight us when they are new, but later do so less, for the same reason; for at first the mind is in a state of stimulation and intensely active about them, as people are with respect to their vision when they look hard at a thing, but afterwards our activity is not of this kind, but has grown relaxed; for which reason the pleasure also is dulled.

One might think that all men desire pleasure because they all aim at life; life is an activity, and each man is active about those things and with those faculties that he loves most; e.g. the musician is active with his hearing in reference to tunes, the student with his mind in reference to theoretical questions, and so on in each case; now pleasure completes the activities, and therefore life, which they desire. It is with good reason, then, that they aim at pleasure too, since for every one it completes life, which is desirable. But whether we choose life for the sake of pleasure or pleasure for the sake of life is a question we may dismiss for the present. For they seem to be bound up together and not to admit of separation, since without activity pleasure does not arise, and every activity is completed by the attendant pleasure.

They do admit of separation conceptually, however. Note the distinction, also technical in Aristotle, between a "motion" -- which this can't be because it has to be immaterial -- and an "activity." Activities can be immaterial and indivisible; in addition to these examples, the Unmoved Movers in Aristotle's Physics VIII and Metaphysics XII are supposed to be pure activities, i.e. Forms. 

A pure activity can thus be everlasting, since there's no motion to complete and no material parts to wear out. That's one reason it's a puzzle for Aristotle that our pleasure activity comes to an end after a while, which he is explaining here.