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Updated: May 20, 2025
By choiceworthy in themselves are meant those from which nothing is sought beyond the act of Working: and of this kind are thought to be the actions according to Virtue, because doing what is noble and excellent is one of those things which are choiceworthy for their own sake alone.
If then to the man in a high state of happiness existence is in itself choiceworthy, being naturally good and pleasant, and so too a friend's existence, then the friend also must be among things choiceworthy. But whatever is choiceworthy to a man he should have or else he will be in this point deficient. The man therefore who is to come up to our notion "Happy" will need good Friends.
It seems then to be plain that Pleasure is not the Chief Good, nor is every kind of it choiceworthy: and that there are some choiceworthy in themselves, differing in kind, i.e. in the sources from which they are derived. Let this then suffice by way of an account of the current maxims respecting Pleasure and Pain.
In fact, it is by just such an argument that Plato proves that Pleasure is not the Chief Good: "For," says he, "the life of Pleasure is more choiceworthy in combination with Practical Wisdom than apart from it; but, if the compound better then simple Pleasure cannot be the Chief Good; because the very Chief Good cannot by any addition become choiceworthy than it is already:" and it is obvious that nothing else can be the Chief Good, which by combination with any of the things in themselves good comes to be more choiceworthy.
The Just then is this proportionate, and the Unjust that which violates the proportionate; and so there comes to be the greater and the less: which in fact is the case in actual transactions, because he who acts unjustly has the greater share and he who is treated unjustly has the less of what is good: but in the case of what is bad this is reversed: for the less evil compared with the greater comes to be reckoned for good, because the less evil is more choiceworthy than the greater, and what is choiceworthy is good, and the more so the greater good.
But in being the objects of Friendship men delight for its own sake, and so this may be judged to be higher than being honoured and Friendship to be in itself choiceworthy.
Now depravity there is none in regard of these things, for the reason assigned above, that each of them in itself is a thing naturally choiceworthy, yet the excesses in respect of them are wrong and matter for blame: and similarly there is no Imperfect Self-Control in respect of these things; that being not merely a thing that should be avoided but blameworthy.
1110b What kind of actions then are to be called compulsory? may we say, simply and abstractedly whenever the cause is external and the agent contributes nothing; and that where the acts are in themselves such as one would not wish but choiceworthy at the present time and in preference to such and such things, and where the origination rests with the agent, the actions are in themselves involuntary but at the given time and in preference to such and such things voluntary; and they are more like voluntary than involuntary, because the actions consist of little details, and these are voluntary.
The right contained in itself all that was necessary for the happy life, the wrong was the only evil, and made men miserable whether they knew it or not. As virtue was itself the end, it was of course choiceworthy in and for itself, apart from hope or fear with regard to its consequences. Moreover, as being the highest good, it could admit of no increase from the addition of things indifferent.
Or we might say thus, that the Pleasures are choiceworthy but not as derived from these sources: just as wealth is, but not as the price of treason; or health, but not on the terms of eating anything however loathsome.
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