I'm taking an online course on Aristotle's Ethics. Fascinating! Here are the notes I scribbled down during the first lecture:

NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS, Lecture 1 - Book 1, Chap 1 & 2

The goal of every choice is some good.

Character (Greek) charese - etching

We need to ask what is good and how to be it.

"The good is that at which all things aim." Every art, inquiry, action and choice.

- Art is that which is produced. Designed and executed with skill and purpose.
- Inquiry is methodical investigation.
- Action is praxis - practice.
- Choice - prohiresis (?) Choice is the basis of human freedom. Your choices are very important and they make you what you are.

Every time you make a choice, it etches a mark on your soul and makes you what you are.

Every thing done aims at SOME good.
All things aim at THE good.

There's a contrast between Good and Beautiful.
And there's a contrast between Some and The.

Ends are purposes. Check the ultimate good of an action, not just the immediate one.
Beautiful is the highest form of good.

Read Thomas Aquinas's commentary on Nichomachean Ethics.

It is beautiful to say that all of our actions, taken together, aim at THE good.
There is a hierarchy of the good. The first 20 lines of the book direct us to start looking at the universe vertically. The Good, the Better, the Beautiful.

Read The Discarded Image, by C.S. Lewis.

The Beautiful is the good that is chosen for its own sake (not a means to something else). Hence, the highest form of good.