HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics) by…
Loading...

The Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics) (edition 2004)

by Aristotle (Author), Hugh Tredennick (Editor), J. A. K. Thomson (Translator), Jonathan Barnes (Introduction)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
10,05358728 (3.87)66
This new edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is an accurate, readable and accessible translation of one of the world's greatest ethical works. Based on lectures Aristotle gave in Athens in the fourth century BCE, Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most significant works in moral philosophy, and has profoundly influenced the whole course of subsequent philosophical endeavour. It offers seminal, practically oriented discussions of many central ethical issues, including the role of luck in human well-being, moral education, responsibility, courage, justice, moral weakness, friendship and pleasure, with an emphasis on the exercise of virtue as the key to human happiness. This second edition offers an updated editor's introduction and suggestions for further reading, and incorporates the line numbers as well as the page numbers of the Greek text. With its emphasis on accuracy and readability, it will enable readers without Greek to come as close as possible to Aristotle's work.… (more)
Member:Librarianus
Title:The Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics)
Authors:Aristotle (Author)
Other authors:Hugh Tredennick (Editor), J. A. K. Thomson (Translator), Jonathan Barnes (Introduction)
Info:Penguin Classics (2003), Edition: 1, 400 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***
Tags:None

Work Information

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

  1. 219
    Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (mcaution)
    mcaution: Virtue ethics gets its best defense and fullest exposition.
  2. 222
    The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand (mcaution)
    mcaution: A new morality grounded completely in reason, based upon the facts of reality. Presents "selfishness" in proper context and does away with its common false dichotomy.
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 66 mentions

English (47)  Catalan (3)  Spanish (2)  French (2)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Dutch (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (57)
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
Leather cowhide, Castalia Library, limited edition of 750 ( )
  TomLopez | Dec 9, 2023 |
I know I'm supposed to like this "foundational document of Western culture." I understand its importance, but I would feel perfectly fine if I never had to think about this book again. Give me poet-hating Plato over Aristotle; at least he is lively. ( )
  Jeanne.Laure | Oct 3, 2023 |
This book’s a difficult case. On one hand there’s the infamous defense of slavery and the statements on the inferiority of women, and parts of the book seem downright pedestrian. But a closer reading of Aristotle on slavery suggests he supported a rather different and probably far more limited form than was his society’s practice. (If this is correct, implementing this version would have likely caused a revolution in the ancient Greek socieo-economic system, quite possibly eliminating the class which had the leisure to philosophize, but Aristotle doesn’t follow up on these implications here or in the Politics.) Perhaps a closer reading of Aristotle on women might suggest something less unenlightened than at first blush, and we should be careful about keeping historical and cultural context in mind and not unreflectively applying 21st c. views to the 4th c. BC. If nothing else, he writes of women with more sympathy and humanity than is typical of ancient Greeks (notable atypicals being Euripides and of course Sappho). And when you’ve been wading through some of the seemingly pedestrian material to the point that you’re losing faith in “the master of those who know,” suddenly the penetrating, profound, nuanced, and original mind reappears, notably in his discussion of “intellectual virtue.”

I won’t try to synopsize or critique this work other than to point out, as others have, that the Christian conception of the individual’s struggle with sin (and the “post-Christian” derivatives of this concept) significantly illumines a blind spot in ancient Greek psychology (or so I believe). However, Aristotle doesn’t try to prove the Socratic/Platonic notion that people never willingly choose to do wrong. Rather, he makes a compelling case that only a virtuous life is truly satisfying and that any rational and critically-thinking person should see this and live accordingly. It might be the most effective argument for ethical living that doesn’t rely on divinity (although there is a non-causal [at least in the modern sense] tie to divinity). It doesn’t try to say we ought to live a certain way; just that nothing else truly satisfies the most fundamental natural needs of man. Aristotle neither has to make an exclusive claim nor does he need to prove his claim: experience demonstrates it conclusively (he believes). (I probably wouldn’t have grasped this without reading Jonathan Lear’s thoroughly excellent Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, which has also helped me better understand Aristotle on slavery and on many other things.)

This is an argument which seems to have been forgotten in our “post-Christian” West as it’s been searching for a way to re-ground its inherited ethics (some of which are quite different from Aristotle’s, but that’s a comparison and critique I said I wouldn’t get into). Whether it’s a strong enough argument and whether it could succeed widely are open questions; Aristotle believed most people are neither inclined to virtue nor susceptible to rational argument, so he probably wouldn’t expect this argument to have much influence. But for the few, it seems possibly more sound than any ethical theory from Kant to Rawls. Perhaps Kant, Rawls and other moderns have hoped for something that could be convincingly translated for the masses. Like Aristotle, I’m skeptical that that could be done successfully. I also think Aristotle’s probably right that most people are motivated largely by animal desires and only effectively constrained by the threat of force, primarily through law (Aristotle’s almost starting to sound like a Calvinist). Which leaves a larger open question about ethics and contemporary society that I won’t try to address. Suffice it to say that Aristotle’s consciously preaching to a choir – explaining virtue to the already virtuous – not trying to convert heathens. ( )
  garbagedump | Dec 9, 2022 |
Classic treatise on ethics. I certainly see the underpinnings of modern ethical thought. ( )
  wahoo8895 | Nov 20, 2022 |
Mais um manual do pensador grego pé no chão, das listas de diferenciação. Aqui, aprendemos que se a questão não é o sumo bem da polis, então convém olhar para a felicidade, a boa vida da atividade virtuosa sendo uma finalidade em si, objeto da ética - essa nova área independente do conhecimento. Devemos lá chegar pelo conhecimento, prática das virtudes, habituação moral, com moderação, desenvolvendo bem nossas disposições de caráter, como bons humanos que somos, animais racionais. Entre o medo e a confiança, a coragem; entre a audácia e a covardia, a cautela, entre o prazer e dor, a temperança, entre a cólera e a apatia a calma, entre verdadeiro e falso o verossímil, entre aprazível e detestável, a espiritualidade. Mas a média é móvel - avaliemos as situações e contextos, e as decisões são caso a caso, lidas a partir do quadro categórico.

Há ações não-voluntárias por ignorância ou involuntárias por compulsão, ambas envoltas num contexto desfavorável e de responsabilidade diluída. Então falamos daqueles que tem akrasia. Então, existem componentes circunstanciais para atingirmos a boa vida. A lida com o dinheiro, da liberalidade que equilibra no dar a prodigalidade e a mesquinharia, a magnificência, que brilha perante a vulgaridade e a avareza. Assim também analisamos o orgulho, a ambição e a relação com a raiva, a interação social, franqueza e perspicácia (ser sagaz socialmente). E melhor ter amigos, sendo o melhor amigo o que não o é por interesse, mais por gostar do outro, no amor completo.

(é possível distinguir um homem feliz de um outro o observando dormir. E o mais feliz deles, imerso em sonhos de razão teórica, sem esquecer da política, será o filósofo) ( )
  henrique_iwao | Aug 30, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
The volume before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. ... Together these bring the original text within the compass of every intelligent reader.
 

» Add other authors (88 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Aristotleprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Apostle, Hippocrates G.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ķemere, InāraTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bons, J.A.E.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Broadie, SarahEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Brown, LesleyEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Chase, D. P.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dirlmeier, F.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gray, AntonyTypesettersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Griffith, TomEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Knuuttila, SimoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Krapinger, GernotTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Martínez Manzano, TeresaForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ophuijsen. J. M. vanEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ostwald, MartinTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pallí Bonet, JulioTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pannier, ChristineTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Peters, F. H.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rackham, HarrisTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ross, W. D.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rowe, C. J.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Selina, TonyCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, J. A.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Thomson, J. A. K.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Verhaeghe, JeanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Warrington, Johneditor and translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Watt, StephenIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Zariņš, VilnisForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Every practical science has an end.
Why read the Ethics?

--Introduction
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
This is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethice in translation. Do not combine with editions including the Ancient Greek text.
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (3)

This new edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is an accurate, readable and accessible translation of one of the world's greatest ethical works. Based on lectures Aristotle gave in Athens in the fourth century BCE, Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most significant works in moral philosophy, and has profoundly influenced the whole course of subsequent philosophical endeavour. It offers seminal, practically oriented discussions of many central ethical issues, including the role of luck in human well-being, moral education, responsibility, courage, justice, moral weakness, friendship and pleasure, with an emphasis on the exercise of virtue as the key to human happiness. This second edition offers an updated editor's introduction and suggestions for further reading, and incorporates the line numbers as well as the page numbers of the Greek text. With its emphasis on accuracy and readability, it will enable readers without Greek to come as close as possible to Aristotle's work.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.87)
0.5 1
1 13
1.5 2
2 39
2.5 12
3 162
3.5 21
4 246
4.5 31
5 206

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

» Publisher information page

Tantor Media

An edition of this book was published by Tantor Media.

» Publisher information page

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,230,561 books! | Top bar: Always visible