ABSTRACT
Pleasure is discussed in two different places in the Ethics, once in Book VII at the end of the treatment of moral failure, and once at the start of Book X, introducing the final definitive discussion of eudaimonia. Neither discussion refers to the other, and it remains something of a puzzle why they are both included in the Ethics at all. This puzzle provides one of the most obvious reminders that Aristotle wrote two treatises on ethics. Book VII is one of the books which is common to both the Nicomachaean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics as those books have come down to us; Book X appears only in the Nicomachaean Ethics. Was the original home of Book VII in the Eudemian Ethics or not, and was it written earlier or later than Book X? Commentators have more commonly taken the view that the Book X passage is the later, and have detected a more detailed and sophisticated discussion of the issues than is to be found in Book VII. But this view is by no means beyond challenge, and a good case can be made for dating the two passages in the reverse order.1 I shall not attempt to settle these issues here; I take the view that the differences between the two passages are not so radical as to indicate any important shift in Aristotle’s position. They may well reflect the fact that discussions of the issues involved had a slightly different focus depending on who was actively involved at different times.
