Still reading Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics. I've noticed, or tell myself I've noticed, this rhetorical tic he has of tapping the drowsy reader on the shoulder with such locutions as:
And if we look more deeply into the nature of things, we find . . . .
What follows is generally of interest, though not always in the way that Aristotle may have imagined. For instance:
The subject of pain we will make clearer later. Life in itself, however, is good and pleasant. It seems to be so from the fact that all men desire it, and especially the good and happy; for to them, life is most desirable, as theirs is the happiest life.
Not sure he's seeing deeply here—yes, happy people, in particular, are inclined to think life is good: thank you for that, O Great Philosopher. I don't think I've reached the section where he disposes of the presumably dissenting opinion of the miserable. But I've made it as far as this, in Book X:
The truth perhaps may be stated thus: Pleasures are desirable, but not if they are immoral in their origin; just as wealth is pleasant, but not as a reward for turning traitor to one's country, or as health is, but not at the cost of eating any food, however disagreeable.
I conclude he's not one of those who'd ask to substitute a side salad for the french fries. Here he is, sail full of wind, back in Book VIII:
[F]riendships are most permanent when the two persons get the same thing, such as pleasure, from one another; and not only the same thing, but from the same source, as happens between two wits, though not between a lover and his beloved. For these do not find pleasure in the same things; the pleasure of one is in beholding the object of his love, and of the other in being courted by his lover.* Then when beauty passes away, the friendship sometimes passes away too; for the lover then finds no pleasure in the sight of his beloved, and the beloved is no more courted by his lover. On the other hand, lovers often remain friends, if their characters are similar, and familiarity has taught them to love each other's character. But those who give and receive not pleasure but profit are both less true and less constant friends. Friendships based on utility are dissolved as soon as the advantage comes to an end, for in them there is no love of the person, but only a love of profit.
This is ostensibly a work on ethics, but the strongest passages describe what is, not what ought to be, and the conclusion is Marxian: the deeper you see, the more the field is filled by economics. There is more to upset the earnest classicists at Prager U and Florida's New College, for the editor's footnote in the edition I'm reading (indicated by the asterisk above) refers to the following admonition: "The reader must remember that in the time of Plato and Aristotle, the only love that was considered dignified in Athens and worth taking seriously was that between two men, not between man and woman."
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