Here Aristotle deals with the opinion that the ultimate goal of action is the experience of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This will take us back to the doctrine that the soul has three parts or faculties and to a discussion about how they relate.

In these chapters, Aristotle discusses what sort of thinking goes into a moral decision. Socrates and other thinkers have claimed that science and morality are fundamentally the same sort of reasoning, but Aristotle differs. Even though deliberation does use universal principles, these are of a...