Concept and property

According to Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics is a work of political science, and political science considers “just and kalon things” (i.3, 1094b14). He devotes a whole book to a discussion of justice, but he offers no explicit discussion of the kalon. The Eudemian Ethics begins by rejecting the view expressed in the Delian epigram, that the most kalon, the best, and the pleasantest are three different things. Aristotle affirms that happiness is the one thing that has all three superlative properties (1214a1–8). But he does not support this claim with a detailed account of the kalon. It is not surprising, then, that critics have tried to fill this gap in Aristotle, or that they have found it difficult to reach agreement.

I want to discuss some of the questions that arise about the kalon in the Ethics, with some reference to the use of “kalon” elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus. I will not consider other potentially relevant sources of evidence. These sources include the Platonic corpus, the use of “kalon” and its Latin equivalent “honestum” in later ethical thought, and, more generally, the use of “kalon” in non-philosophical Greek in and before Aristotle’s time. I leave them aside because I am not confident that they have been adequately studied for our present purposes.