Honest Money

AAristotle’s ethics is a rational eudemonism in which moral freedom is recognised without being elaborated, but in which obligation is unknown. (1)

In his examination of the nature of happiness in his “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle says:
if we assume that the function of man is a certain kind of life, namely, an activity or series of actions of the soul, implying a rational principle, and if the function of a good man is to perform these well and rightly; and if every function is performed in accordance with its proper excellence: if all this is so, the conclusion is that the good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.
There is a further qualification: ‘in a complete lifetime’. One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one day. Similarly neither can one day, or a brief span of time, make a man blessed and happy. (2)

Friedrich August von Hayek says that for Aristotle, only actions aiming at perceived benefit to others are morally approved and actions solely for personal gain must be bad. (3)

 Ivo Cerckel
honestmoney@maktoob.com
http://twitter.com/ivocerckel/

NOTES

(1)
Maurice De Wulf,  “Précis d’Histoire de la Philosophie” , Louvain, E. Nauwelaerts éditeur, 1950,  9th  ed.,  p. 30, paragraph 34:
la morale d’Aristote est un eudémonisme rationnel.
elle connait la liberté morale, sans l’approfondir
mais elle ignore l’obligation

(2)
Aristotle  “Nicomachean Ethics’ ,  J.A.K. Thomson translation, revised by Hugh Tredennick, published by Penguin Books, 1976, 2004, p. 16, 1098a13-19

(3)
F.A. Hayek, (W.W. Bartley III, ed.), “The Fatal Conceit – The Errors of Socialism”, The University of Chicago Press, 1989 (originally published 1988, paperback edition 1991), p. 46:
Since only actions aiming at “perceived benefit to others” were, to Aristotle mind,  morally approved, actions solely for personal gain must be bad.