추가 적립 안내

Preface
Chronology
Introduction
Further reading
A note on the text
Synopsis

Bk. I The object of life - 3
Bk. II Moral goodness - 31
Bk. III Moral responsibility : two virtues - 50
Bk. IV Other moral virtues - 82
Bk. V Justice - 112
Bk. VI Intellectual virtues - 144
Bk. VII Continence and incontinence : the nature of pleasure - 167
Bk. VIII The kinds of friendship - 200
Bk. IX The grounds of friendship - 228
Bk. X Pleasure and the life of happiness - 254
App. 1 Table of virtues and vices - 285
App. 2 Pythagoreanism - 287
App. 3 The sophists and Socrates - 289
App. 4 Plato's theory of forms - 292
App. 5 The categories - 295
App. 6 Substance and change - 296
App. 7 Nature and theology - 300
App. 8 The practical syllogism - 302
App. 9 Pleasure and process - 303
App. 10 Liturgies - 305
App. 11 Aristotle in the middle ages - 306

Glossary of Greek words - 310
Index of names - 313
Subject index - 316

CHAPTER. 1

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the first systematic treatise on ethics. Over two millennia after it was written, it is still among the best. Even philosophers and intellectuals not sympathetic to Aristotle's philosophy in general or his ethics in particular admit its greatness. It speaks to human beings about themselves and their relations to others as clearly, forcefully, and systematically today as it did when it was written (or dictated) 2,500 years ago. It would also be hard to over estimate its historical importance. Virtually every moral philosopher has to deal with the issues grappled with in the Nicomachean Ethics , and many of the positions argued for by Aristotle have been adopted, sometimes in an almost wholesale fashion, by other philosophers. St. Thomas Aquinas' ethics, for example, is very Aristotelian, both in its overall outline and its details. Without too much exaggeration, it would be called Christianized Aristotelianism. As the patron saint of the Catholic Church, Aquinas has thus passed on a large part of Aristotle's ethics to Christians the world over.

Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Stagira in Thrace. He was the son of Nicomachus, a physician to the king of Macedonia. At about the age of seventeen, Aristotle went to Athens to study and become a member of the Academy of Plato. Plato, the founder of the Academy, was himself the student of Socrates. Plato is usually, and rightly, thought to be the first systematic and comprehensive philosopher in Western civilization. (Socrates was not, and neither were the pre-Socratic philosophers: he developed no metaphysics, for example, and the pre-Socratics developed no ethics.) Every branch of philosophy was home to Plato. Aristotle studied at the Academy for over twenty years. He undoubtedly had extensive tutelage under and personal contact with Plato. Although he had great respect for Plato, he eventually came to disagree with him on a number of issues, some of them in ethics.

After Plato's death in 348 or 347 BC, Aristotle left Athens and eventually was invited to tutor Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedonia. This Alexander is more commonly known as Alexander the Great, and conquered many foreign lands. Eventually Alexander's empire included almost the entire ancient world. Despite tutoring Alexander for a number of years, Aristotle seems to have had little to no influence on him. (And vice versa: Alexander showed, by example, the importance of the idea of a political empire, but Aristotle's philosophy remained committed to the primacy of the much smaller city-state.)

Enhanced by new apparatus, this classic of Western philosophy is as profound and thought-provoking as ever

Of Aristotle’s works, few have had as lasting an influence on subsequent Western thought as The Nicomachean Ethics. In it, he argues that happiness consists in “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue,” defining “virtue” as both moral (courage, generosity, and justice) and intellectual (knowledge, wisdom, and insight). Aristotle also discusses the nature of practical reasoning, the different forms of friendship, and the relationship between individual virtue and the state. Featuring a lucid translation, a new introduction, updated suggestions for further reading, and a chronology of Aristotle’s life and works, this is the authoritative edition of a seminal intellectual masterpiece.

＊New Introduction and bibliography by acclaimed scholar Jonathan Barnes
＊New chronology of Aristotle's life and works