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‘And if all good things that are held in honour are objects of emulation (i. e. of emulous exertion, what we vie with others in trying to acquire), all the virtuous must needs be of this same kind (ἐντίμους), and everything that is profitable and productive of benefit to the rest of the world, because all benefactors and good men in general are held in honour. And especially those good things of which the enjoyment’ (particularly sensual enjoyment: see the account of the three kinds of lives, the ἀπολαυστικός, πρακτικός, and θεωρητικός, Eth. Nic. I 3: compare III 13, 1118 a 31, τῇ ἀπολαύσει, ἡ γίνεται πᾶσα δἰ ἁφῆς καὶ ἐν σιτίοις καὶ ἐν ποτοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἀφροδισίοις λεγομένοις, VII 6, 1148 a 5, σωματικαὶ ἀπολαύσεις) ‘can be shared by one's neighbours, wealth for instance, and personal beauty, more than health’. The enjoyment of beauty may no doubt be ‘shared by one's neighbours’, because the sight of it is always agreeable; but how it, or health, can be called ‘an object of emulation’, I own I am at a loss to see. No help is given by the Commentators. Did Aristotle, absorbed in his distinction, forget for a moment that the instances selected were inappropriate to the topic he was employed in illustrating?
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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