Nicomachean Ethics
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Nicomachean Ethics
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Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#2I took a “History of Philosophy” class as a GE my freshman year of college. It’s pretty astounding, when you start tracing it back, how much of our law, literature, politics, ethics, and aesthetics come from, like, four or five Greek guys.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#3I took a “History of Philosophy” class as a GE my freshman year of college. It’s pretty astounding, when you start tracing it back, how much of our law, literature, politics, ethics, and aesthetics come from, like, four or five Greek guys.
From works written down by four or five Greek guys, or by other guys who cited those Greek guys as the source.
The fact that our surviving records all happen to funnel through those guys is not proof that it all originated with those guys. It is highly likely that they were both building on an extensive unrecorded philosophical tradition, and participating in a broader contemporary cultural conversation whose other participants have merely not been lucky enough to have their names recorded by history.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#4I read this book during law school. The conclusions are nice, but the book writing is obtuse.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#5This book is the foundation of my worldview. The message I took away from it is that there is a skill of being good at being a person, and that goodness in terms of what we now consider to be ethics will follow from that.
Worthy of note in particular is eudaimonia as a concept, especially the debate between whether it is happiness or goodness. I read it (somewhat loosely) as being the process by which a person's behaviours engender virtuous cycles in their communities and themselves.
It's been a long time since I read it but I'd recommend it to anyone. Maybe I'll revisit it before lockdown is out.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#6I read HN because it's the only place on the Internet where a link to a Wikipedia page on Nicomachean Ethics could hit the #1 position.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#7I read this book during law school. The conclusions are nice, but the book writing is obtuse.
Or maybe you were too young ;)
And maybe such complex problems don't come with very clear solutions.
Re-read it :D
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#8This is one of the books that, until yo do read it, you think (because that is the “folklore wisdom”) will be a huge bore.
Then it blows your mind, and you start to understand freedom.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#9I read this book during law school. The conclusions are nice, but the book writing is obtuse.
Or maybe you were too young ;) And maybe such complex problems don't come with very clear solutions. Re-read it :D
Aristotle is notoriously a terrible writer. A lot of these books are thought to just be lecture notes and things like that pieced together. Compare that to something like Plato's and it's a big difference. I imagine nobody will ever beat Kant in the terrible writing department though.
Re: Nicomachean Ethics
#10This book is the foundation of my worldview. The message I took away from it is that there is a skill of being good at being a person, and that goodness in terms of what we now consider to be ethics will follow from that. Worthy of note in particular is eudaimonia as a concept, especially the debate between whether it is happiness or goodness. I read it (somewhat loosely) as being the process by which a person's beha…
Have you also read Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" from 1981? As I understand it basically revived Aristotelian virtue ethics as a viable philosophical theory, indeed by thoroughly criticizing modern (post-Enlightenment) justifications of morality. It's probably my favorite book of modern philosophy.