This topic is analogous to, not identical with, that in § 4. When anything in excess is preferable to, or finer and nobler than, the excess of something else, then the former in its ordinary state is preferable to the other. See the passage of Polit. IV (VII) 1, quoted in § 4. Top. Γ 3, 118 b 4, ἔτι οὗ ἡ ὑπερβολὴ τῆς ὑπερβολῆς αἱρετωτέρα, καὶ αὐτὸ αἱρετώτερον, οἷον φιλία χρημάτων: αἱρετωτέρα γὰρ ἡ τῆς φιλίας ὑπερβολὴ τῆς τῶν χρημάτων. Omne maius continet in se minus. τὸ φιλεταῖρον...μᾶλλον κάλλιον] Victorius, followed by Buhle, and Waitz, Org. 116 b 24, understand μᾶλλον κάλλιον as a double comparative, a form of expression not unfamiliar to Aristotle (see Vict. on this place, and Waitz, Org. 116 b 24, II p. 465), but certainly not employed by him here. The μᾶλλον denoting the ‘excess’ of the two qualities, which is absolutely essential to the illustration of the topic, is added for that reason to φιλέταιρον and φιλοχρήματον, the comparison being conveyed by κάλλιον: and thus the topic is exemplified. ‘Excess in love of friends being fairer, and nobler than that in love of money, friendship in its average degree is to be preferred to a similar average of love of money’. See also note on II 8, 3.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.