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The Ethics of Aristotle - Penn State Hazleton

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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Ethics</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Aristotle</strong>because the Scientific Man must in some cases depend ondemonstrative Reasoning.It comes then to this: since the faculties whereby we alwaysattain truth and are never deceived when dealing with matterNecessary or even Contingent are Knowledge, Practical Wisdom,Science, and Intuition, and the faculty which takes inFirst Principles cannot be any <strong>of</strong> the three first; the last, namelyIntuition, must be it which performs this function.VIIScience is a term we use principally in two meanings: in thefirst place, in the Arts we ascribe it to those who carry theirarts to the highest accuracy; Phidias, for instance, we call aScientific or cunning sculptor; Polycleitus a Scientific or cunningstatuary; meaning, in this instance, nothing else by Sciencethan an excellence <strong>of</strong> art: in the other sense, we thinksome to be Scientific in a general way, not in any particularline or in any particular thing, just as Homer says <strong>of</strong> a manin his Margites; “Him the Gods made neither a digger <strong>of</strong> theground, nor ploughman, nor in any other way Scientific.”So it is plain that Science must mean the most accurate <strong>of</strong>all Knowledge; but if so, then the Scientific man must notmerely know the deductions from the First Principles but bein possession <strong>of</strong> truth respecting the First Principles. So thatScience must be equivalent to Intuition and Knowledge; itis, so to speak, Knowledge <strong>of</strong> the most precious objects, witha head on.I say <strong>of</strong> the most precious things, because it is absurd tosuppose [Greek: politikae], or Practical Wisdom, to be thehighest, unless it can be shown that Man is the most excellent<strong>of</strong> all that exists in the Universe. Now if “healthy” and “good”are relative terms, differing when applied to men or to fish,but “white” and “straight” are the same always, men must allowthat the Scientific is the same always, but the PracticallyWise varies: for whatever provides all things well for itself, tothis they would apply the term Practically Wise, and committhese matters to it; which is the reason, by the way, that theycall some brutes Practically Wise, such that is as plainly have afaculty <strong>of</strong> forethought respecting their own subsistence.And it is quite plain that Science and [Greek: politikae]cannot be identical: because if men give the name <strong>of</strong> Science135

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