Aristotle

Much thought has been given, and many pages have been devoted, to the debate between "literalist" and "spiritualist" interpretations of Aristotle on sense perception.[1] The literalists, broadly, hold that in perception the organ quite literally takes on the perceived quality – eyes become red and tongues become salty – and that that is all that needs to be said.

In Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes two central claims about the substantive content ofeudaimonia or “happiness”: (1) that happiness is “activity of the soul in accord with virtue”[1]; and (2) that happiness “needs external goods,” such as friends, wealth, and political power.[2] Taken independently, each of these claims is intuitively plausibl

The aim of this paper is to compare two of the most vexing passages in Aristotle’s ethical works, Nicomachean Ethics (NE) IX.9 and Eudemian Ethics (EE) VII.12. Both chapters discuss the same topic, whether the self-sufficient person will have friends, and both answer ‘yes’. So it is natural to see same argument in both chapters.[1]But this, I argue, is mistaken.