Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
H. Rackham, Ed.

For the above considerations seem to show that even if any good or evil does penetrate to them, the effect is only small and trifling, either intrinsically or in relation to them, or if not trifling, at all events not of such magnitude and kind as to make the unhappy happy or to rob the happy of their blessedness. [6]

It does then appear that the dead are influenced in some measure by the good fortune of their friends, and likewise by their misfortunes, but that the effect is not of such a kind or degree as to render the happy unhappy or vice versa.12.

These questions being settled, let us consider whether happiness is one of the things we praise or rather one of those that we honor¹; for it is at all events clear that it is not a mere potentiality.² [2]

Now it appears that a thing which we praise is always praised because it has a certain quality and stands in a certain relation to something. For we praise just men and brave men, in fact good men and virtue generally, because of their actions and the results they produce; and also we praise those who are strong of body, swift of foot and the like on account of their possessing certain natural qualities, and standing in a certain relation to something good and excellent. [3] The point is also illustrated by our feeling about praises addressed to the gods: it strikes us as absurd that the gods should be referred to our standards, and this is what praising them amounts to, since praise, as we said, involves a reference of its object to something else. [4] But if praise belongs to what is relative, it is clear that the best things do not merit praise, but something greater and better: as indeed is generally recognized, since we speak of the gods as blessed and happy,³ and also ‘blessed’ is the term that we apply to the most godlike men; and similarly with good things—no one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a ‘blessing,’ deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise. [5]

Indeed it seems that Eudoxus⁴ took a good line in advocating the claims of pleasure to the prize of highest excellence, when he held that the fact that pleasure, though a good, is not praised, is an indication that it is superior to the things we praise, as God and the Good are, because they are the standards to which everything else is referred. [6]

For praise belongs to goodness, since it is this that makes men capable of accomplishing noble deeds, while encomia⁵ are for deeds accomplished, whether bodily feats or achievements of the mind. [7] However, to develop this subject is perhaps rather the business of those who have made a study of encomia. For our purpose we may draw the conclusion from the foregoing remarks,