The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

longer say that the happy man leads a pleasant life for why should he need it if it be not good ? Nay he may just as well lead a painful life : for pain i neither bad nor good, if pleasure be neither ; so wh]

should he avoid pain ? The life of the good man then, would be no pleasanter than others unless th( exercise of his faculties were pleasanter.

Of the 14. Those who say that though some pleasure

.mres^,anT are vcry desirable — to wit, noble pleasures — th«

Hon between plcasurcs of the body, with which the profligate and concerned, are not desirable, should consider th pleasant. nature of these pleasures of the body. Why [if the;

are bad] are the opposite pains bad ? for the opposite of bad is good. Are we to say that the " necessary '

pleasures are good in the sense that what is not bac is good ? or up to what point are they good ?

Those faculties and those motions or activities which do not admit of excess beyond what is good,* do not admit of excessive pleasure ; but those which admit of excess admit also of excessive pleasure. Now, bodily goods admit of excess, and the bad man is bad because he pursues this excess, not merely because he pursues the necessary pleasures ; for men always take some delight in meat, and drink, and the gratification of the sexual appetite, but not always as they ought. But with pain the case is reversed : not merely the excess of pain, but pain " generally is to be avoided ; f for the opposite of exces2t <{>fvyft [tj$] Autttjj' = \vTrr} (pfvKT6s iffriy.

Ive pleasure is not painful, except to the man who irsues the excess.*

But we ought to state not only the truth, but ilso the cause of the error ; for this helps to produce '»nviction, as, when something has been pointed out to us which would naturally make that seem true which is not, we are more ready to believe the truth. And so we must say why it is that the bodily pleasures seem more desirable.

First of all, then, it is because of it« efficacy in expelling pain, and because of the excessiveness of the pain to which it is regarded as an antidote, that men pursue excessive pleasure and bodily pleasure j^enerally. But these remedies produce an intense eling, and so are pursued, because they appear in trong contrast to the opposite pain.

(The reasons why pleasure is thought to be not good are two, as we said before : (1) some pleasures are the manifestation of a nature that is bad either from birth, as with brutes, or by habit, as with bad men : (2) the remedial pleasures imply want ; and it is better to be in a [natural] state than in a transition to such a state ; but these pleasiures are felt whUe a want in us is being filled up, and therefore they are only accidentally good.f)

• Pain generally (oXcay) is bad, to be avoided.