Nicomachean Ethics

Introduction

The Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle's major ethical treatise and the foundational text of Western virtue ethics. Ten books of compressed analysis develop a comprehensive account of eudaimonia (human flourishing) as the final end of action, of the moral and intellectual virtues as the activities constituting it, of phronesis (practical wisdom) as the master capacity for navigating particular situations, and of friendship as a central condition of the flourishing life. The work has been read continuously for nearly 2,400 years and remains the canonical first text in virtue ethics courses.

Form, length, date, language

The Ethics is a treatise rather than a dialogue, in ten books totaling roughly 100,000 words in Greek. The text is widely understood to be a set of lecture notes rather than a polished work for publication — the style is compressed, sometimes elliptical, with the rhythms of teaching rather than writing. It was composed during Aristotle's mature period at the Lyceum, conventionally dated c. 340–335 BCE. The original language is Attic Greek.

The title is a puzzle. Nicomachean may refer to Aristotle's son Nicomachus (who is sometimes credited as the editor of the work) or to Aristotle's father Nicomachus. The work is sometimes paired with the Eudemian Ethics, an earlier and shorter treatment that overlaps three books with the Nicomachean; the relationship between the two ethical works has been a continuing scholarly puzzle.

Why it was written

The Ethics belongs to the practical sciences in Aristotle's classification of knowledge — the sciences whose end is not theoretical understanding but action. In Book I Aristotle warns that the work will not benefit the young, who lack the experience to apply it, or those who follow their passions, who will lack the will to. The aim is the formation of the mature practical agent, not an academic ethical theory.

The specific intellectual context is the dispute with Platonism. Plato had argued in the Republic that knowledge of the Form of the Good was the foundation of ethics. Aristotle, in Ethics I.6, rejects this approach: even if there were a Form of the Good, it would not help the practical agent in deciding what to do here, now. The good for human beings must be sought in the activity of human beings, not in a separate metaphysical realm.

Structure and argument

Book I is the foundational argument. All human action aims at some good; the highest good (the one we want for its own sake, not for the sake of anything further) is eudaimonia; eudaimonia consists in activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, over a complete life; this account is established by the function argument (what is the function distinctive of human beings? rational activity; the good of a thing is the excellent performance of its function; therefore eudaimonia is excellent rational activity).

Book II develops the account of moral virtue as a habituated disposition. Virtue is acquired by performing virtuous acts under guidance until they become second nature. Each moral virtue is a mean between two extremes (the doctrine of the mean): courage between cowardice and rashness, generosity between miserliness and prodigality.

Books III–IV examine specific moral virtues (courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, and others), each analyzed in its mean-and-extremes structure. The treatment includes a careful analysis of voluntary action, choice, and deliberation.

Book V is devoted to justice in its various forms (distributive, corrective, reciprocal), with an extended treatment that has shaped Western legal and political theory.

Book VI introduces the intellectual virtues, of which phronesis (practical wisdom) is the master capacity for ethical action. The relationship between phronesis and the moral virtues is mutual: one cannot have full moral virtue without phronesis, nor phronesis without the moral virtues.

Book VII addresses akrasia (weakness of will) — the puzzle of how someone can know the better and do the worse. Aristotle's answer engages and partly accepts the Socratic claim that no one does wrong knowingly, while modifying it to allow for an interrupted or partial use of knowledge.

Books VIII–IX are devoted to friendship. The analysis distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue; the last is the highest, possible only between virtuous people, and constitutive of the flourishing life. This is the longest sustained philosophical treatment of friendship in the Western tradition.

Book X returns to the question of eudaimonia and argues, controversially, that contemplative activity (theoria) is the highest form of human flourishing, surpassing even the practical virtuous life. The relationship between this final claim and the more inclusive account in Book I is one of the most-debated questions in Aristotelian scholarship.

Key passages

• NE 1094a1–1094b11 — the opening: all human action aims at some good.
• NE 1097b22–1098a20 — the function argument.
• NE 1103a14–1103b25 — virtue is acquired by habituation.
• NE 1106b36–1107a8 — the doctrine of the mean.
• NE 1110a1–1111b3 — voluntary and involuntary action.
• NE 1139b14–1140b30 — the analysis of phronesis.
• NE 1146b30–1147b19 — akrasia and the use of knowledge.
• NE 1156a6–1158a36 — the three types of friendship.
• NE 1177a12–1179a32 — the contemplative life as highest.

Reception history

The Ethics shaped the entire subsequent tradition of Western moral theory. The Stoics and Epicureans developed their ethical systems in part as responses to it; Hellenistic and Roman moral philosophy was largely conducted within the framework Aristotle had set. The medieval Islamic tradition (especially Averroes and Al-Farabi) produced major commentaries; through Arabic translation the Ethics returned to the Latin West in the thirteenth century and became central to Scholastic moral theology. Aquinas's commentary on the Ethics is one of the great medieval works.

Early modern moral philosophy largely moved away from Aristotelian virtue ethics toward rule-based (Kantian) and consequence-based (utilitarian) alternatives. The virtue tradition went dormant in mainstream academic philosophy from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century.

The revival began with G.E.M. Anscombe's 1958 essay Modern Moral Philosophy, which argued that modern ethics had lost the conceptual resources to ground itself and that recovery of Aristotelian virtue ethics was needed. Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre (whose After Virtue, 1981, is the most influential single revival), Rosalind Hursthouse, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Julia Annas have developed the resulting tradition. Contemporary virtue ethics is now a major position in normative theory, and the Nicomachean Ethics its founding text.

Contemporary engagement

The Ethics is taught in undergraduate ethics courses across the anglophone world; the standard English translations are W.D. Ross's (revised by J.O. Urmson for the Princeton Aristotle), Terence Irwin's (Hackett, 1999), and Roger Crisp's (Cambridge, 2000). Major recent commentaries include Sarah Broadie's Ethics with Aristotle (1991) and the multi-volume Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Clarendon series. Active scholarly debates concern the structure and integration of the work's argument (the dominant vs. inclusive question about eudaimonia in Books I and X), the adequacy of the doctrine of the mean as an analytical tool, the relation between virtue and the emotions, and the contemporary applicability of Aristotelian phronesis to professional ethics, leadership, and education.

Further reading

• Aristotle — the author
• Aristotelianism — the tradition founded on this and his other works
• Virtue — the central topic
• Eudaimonia — the end the Ethics is organized around
• Plato — the teacher whose ethics this work both extends and corrects
• Aquinas — the great medieval commentator

The canonical text of Western virtue ethics. The most read single philosophical treatise after the Republic.