Aristotle embarks on a lengthy and tedious discussion of the relationship between knowledge and wise and right acts on the one hand, and lack of restraint and judgment on the other hand. He spends much time making sharp divisions between terms and how they relate to one another and how the end result can be correct and yet not right as in established on truth.
There is a theme throughout this reading that everything that people do is somehow for the good although everyone has a different view of what is good. As I read this I found myself reminded of Spock, of Star Track notoriety, referring to the “good of the many” and similarly Aristotle delves into dividing and comparing which “good” is of more consequence than the other good. I was still thinking “live long and prosper.” Although as Aristotle points out wealth doesn't equate to happiness and only benefits a few and not “the many.”
Virtue and knowledge seem to be on the top of the heap as far as the greatest good and Aristotle devoted much time showing how deliberation and choice are the foundations for our personal responsibility to acquire knowledge. And how knowledge was as a commodity which can be acquired is in and in turn can be taught as well as able to be learned.
At the end or near to it at least, Aristotle expresses a thought which I felt could be said to transcend the centuries from the time he penned it as he concluded that it is “not possible to be good in the governing sense without practical judgment, nor to have practical judgment without virtue of character. And as far as I could tell he deemed virtue of character to be the greatest possible good one could possess.
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