Kitap 7
4
For when we are not in need of something, then we all seek people to share our enjoyments, and beneficiaries rather than benefactors;and we can judge them better when we are self-sufficing than when in need, and we most need friends who are worthy of our society.
5
But about this question we must consider whether perhaps, although the view stated is partly sound, in part the truth escapes us because of the comparison.i.e. of man with God, l. 8 above; cf. Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1245b 13. The matter is clear if we ascertain what life in the active sense and as an End is.
6
It is manifest that life is perception and knowledge, and that consequently social life is perception and knowledge in common. But perception and knowledge themselves are the thing most desirable for each individually (and it is owing to this that the appetition for life is implanted by nature in all, for living must be deemed a mode of knowing).
7
If therefore one were to abstract and posit absolute knowledge and its negation (though this, it is true, is obscure in the argument as we have written it, but it may be observed in experience), there would be no difference between absolute knowledge and another person’s knowing instead of oneself; but that is like another person’s living instead of oneself, whereas perceiving and knowing oneself is reasonably more desirable. For two things must be taken into consideration together, that life is desirable and that good is desirable, and as a consequence that it is desirable for ourselves to possess a nature of that quality.τοιαύτην = ἀγαθήν.
