The Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s Greatest Philosophical Achievement

Jun 4, 2008

A review of the Penguin Classics editions of The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's great philosophical work on happiness, virtue and moral character.

Aristotle, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, was perhaps the greatest of the ancient Greek polymaths. As well as being an exceptional philosopher, he also wrote authoritatively on a vast variety of other subjects, including physics, biology, politics, theatre, music and astronomy.

Together with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle is considered an important founding figure behind Western Philosophy and The Nicomachean Ethics is considered to be his most important work on the subject. Comprised of ten books made up of notes from his lectures concerning the idea of Virtue Ethics at the Lyceum, The Nicomachean Ethics is believed, although it is not expressly stated in the book, to have been edited by or dedicated to Aristotle’s son Nicomachus.

Virtue Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics begins with the idea that “every art or applied science and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and every choice, seem to aim at some good; that good, therefore, has been well defined as that which all things aim”.

Simply put, Aristotle taught that virtue (the “good”) has to do with the proper function of a thing. An example given is that an eye is only a good eye in that it can see, since the proper function of an eye is in fact to see.

Aristotle developed this idea by reasoning that man must therefore have a function that is uncommon to anything else and that this function must be an activity of the soul. This activity of the soul can be identified as a happiness or virtue (named by Aristotle as “eudaimonia”) which is necessary for a good life. In order for man to live a good life, he must live a balanced life, existing between excess on one hand and deficiency on the other.

This idea of eudaimonia is broken down into its constituent parts and then thoroughly developed and discussed in the ten books that make up the complete Nicomachean Ethics:

Penguin Classics Edition

Since The Nicomachean Ethics is made up of a series of lecture notes and so was not originally meant to be read as a single cohesive document, it can be a little dry and heavy going in places. The sheer volume of ideas that are discussed could also prove rather intense to the casual reader if it were not for the clarity of the translation by J.A.K. Thompson and the informative editing (including unobtrusive footnotes, a glossary of Greek words and theoretical explanations) of Hugh Tredennick.

This Penguin Classics edition also features an introduction by Jonathan Barnes which helpfully provides the reader with a basic foundation of the study of ethics and Aristotle’s own idea of Virtue Ethics.Thompson, Tredennick and Barnes are all respected and highly knowledgeable scholars of Aristotle and so their contributions to the text make the Penguin Classics edition of The Nicomachean Ethics highly accessible to those new to the theory of ethics and, since it includes the full translation of all ten of the original books, it is an excellent edition for more series students of philosophy too.

The copyright of the article The Nicomachean Ethics in Philosophy Books is owned by Erin Britton. Permission to republish The Nicomachean Ethics in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.