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is the life conjoined with virtue furnished with
sufficient means for taking part in virtuous actions1; while objections to this position we must pass over
in the course of the present inquiry, and reserve them for future consideration,
if anyone be found to disagree with what has been said.On the other hand it
remains to say whether the happiness of a state is to be pronounced the same as
that of each individual man, or whether it is different. Here too the answer is
clear: everybody would agree that it is the same; for all those who base the
good life upon wealth in the case of the individual, also assign felicity to the
state as a whole if it is wealthy; and all who value the life of the tyrant
highest, would also say that the state which rules the widest empire is the
happiest; and if any body accepts the individual as happy on account of virtue,
he will also say that the state which is the better morally is the happier.
But there now arise these two
questions that require consideration: first, which mode of life is the more
desirable, the life of active citizenship and participation in politics, or
rather the life of an alien and that of detachment from the political
partnership; next, what constitution and what organization of a state is to be
deemed the best,—either on the assumption that to take an active part
in the state is desirable for everybody, or that it is undesirable for some men
although desirable for most. But as it is
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the latter question that is the business of political study and
speculation, and not the question of what is desirable for the individual, and
as it is the investigation of politics that we have now taken up, the former
question would be a side issue, and the latter is the business of political
inquiry.Now it is clear that the best constitution is the system under
which anybody whatsoever would be best off and would live in felicity; but the
question is raised even on the part of those who agree that the life accompanied
by virtue is the most desirable, whether the life of citizenship and activity is
desirable or rather a life released from all external affairs, for example some
form of contemplative life, which is said by some to be the only life that is
philosophic.2 For it is manifest that these are the two
modes of life principally chosen by the men most ambitious of excelling in
virtue, both in past times and at the present day—I mean the life of
politics and the life of philosophy. And it makes no little difference which way the truth lies; for assuredly the
wise are bound to arrange their affairs in the direction of the better
goal—and this applies to the state collectively as well as to the
individual human being. Some persons think that empire over one's neighbors, if
despotically exercised, involves a definite injustice of the greatest kind, and
if constitutionally, although it carries no injustice, yet is a hindrance to the
ruler's own well-being; but others hold almost the opposite view to
these—they think that the life of action and citizenship is the only
life fit for a man, since with each of the virtues its exercise in actions is
just as possible for men engaged in public affairs and in politics as for those
who live a private life.
1 Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1099a 32, Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1179a 4 ff.
2 Perhaps the Greek should be altered to give ‘which alone is said to be desirable by some philosophers.’
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