A Review of Aristotle's System of Ethics; A Prelection Read Feb. 16, 1867 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1867 Excerpt: ... I will just add here, as it will be constantly referred to hereafter, that one of the principal characteristics of ancient, as distinguished from modern Philosophy and literature, is that it looks at things from the objective side. This which is true in general, and has been observed by historians of ancient philosophy, is especially true of moral philosophy. Mackintosh, in his Diss. on Eth. Phil., has observed that it is characteristic of all the ancient ethical systems--he adds and of most modern down to Bentham and Paley--that in them some external object is proposed as the aim and end of life, such as the good (Plato), the summum bonum or ultimate good (as it is best translated; good being thereby represented as the end of all action), happiness or pleasure. It is only in modern systems that we find the rule of life deduced from an internal principle such as Conscience, a Moral Sense, or Duty: so far at any rate we shall find in the sequel that the distinction holds good. In Aristotle, and I believe I may say in most or all of the ancient ethical systems, duty, to something or somebody, though it may be, and must be, implied, --for the ordinary language of mankind implies it, as for instance when a Greek says Set or To Beov, and we say ought--is never distinctly and consciously put forward as a principle of action. An exception however must be made to some extent in favour of the Stoics, whose morality, especially in the later times of Seneca and Epictetus, makes a much nearer approach to Christian Ethics, --so that Seneca was even said by the Fathers to Christianize--in this, that it recognises the difference between the internal feeling or motive which prompts the act and the act itself; in that they held, in the very spirit of Christ's own teaching, th.