The Nicomachean Ethics - Softcover

Aristotle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1684220440 ISBN 13: 9781684220441

Publisher: Martino Fine Books, 2016

Synopsis

Previously published as “Ethics”, Aristotle's “The Nicomachean Ethics” addresses the question of how to live well and originates the concept of cultivating a virtuous character as the basis of his ethical system. Here Aristotle sets out to examine the nature of happiness, and argues that happiness consists in 'activity of the soul in accordance with virtue', including moral virtues, such as courage, generosity and justice, and intellectual virtues, such as knowledge, wisdom and insight. The Ethics also discusses the nature of practical reasoning, the value and the objects of pleasure, the different forms of friendship, and the relationship between individual virtue, society and the State. Aristotle's work has had a profound and lasting influence on all subsequent Western thought about ethical matters. 

About this title

About the Author

Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"),it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.

About this edition

• Publisher: Martino Fine Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1684220440
• ISBN 13: 9781684220441
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 346