Brief Post: Reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Week-by-week

Starting the New Year off Virtuously with the Catherine Project

πᾶσα τέχνη καὶ πᾶσα μέθοδος, ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε καὶ προαίρεσις, ἀγαθοῦ τινὸς ἐφίεσθαι δοκεῖ: διὸ καλῶς ἀπεφήναντο τἀγαθόν, οὗ πάντ᾽ ἐφίεται.

Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that that the good is that at which all things aim.

—Nicomachean Ethics 1094a, 1-3

I first read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in freshman seminar at St. John’s College in Annapolis. I’m tempted to say it’s my favorite work by my favorite author from the whole year, but that pits it against other strong contenders including Plato, Homer, Thucydides, Plutarch, and Euclid, not to mention other works from Aristotle himself. (As I write this and think back on my time in college, I can’t help but be incredibly grateful that I received a genuine, rigorous liberal education free from so much of the distracting political and social strife on campuses today, not to mention the overall dumbing down of higher education generally. I really should get down on my knees in thanks, or maybe give them some money.) I returned to the Ethics again my senior year for an intensive preceptorial, and have since come back to it now and then, usually to refresh my memory on some quote I think is genuine but want to double check isn’t a false memory implanted by the internet-fake-quote-industrial complex.¹

Starting January 31st, I will have the pleasure of leading a tutorial on the Ethics with a group of 6-ish co-readers as part of the Catherine Project, a free virtual Great Books program. We will meet weekly for twelve weeks, with each session lasting around two hours. The Ethics has ten books, each book about 20-25 pages in English, which means roughly a book per week with some time to spare. The students will be writing—and I will be reviewing—weekly responses to the readings. It’s called a “tutorial” but really is a St. John’s-style seminar where the “tutor” functions less as an authority and more as the lead/model student (One of the many idiosyncrasies of St. John’s is that, in keeping with all classes being discussion-based instead of lectures, there are no professors, since there is nothing to profess. Rather, we have tutors.)

If you’re interested in Great Books, and especially if you have the time and interest to read and discuss them with others for a few hours a week, I highly recommend you check out the Catherine Project. It is a truly wonderful organization founded by St. John’s tutor (and Econtalk guest!) Zena Hitz that makes reading and discussing great books accessible “to adults 16 years or older from all educational backgrounds and walks of life”. For those who never click links, some of the other authors being read in tutorials and reading groups this semester include (but are not limited to): Descartes, Plato, Euripides, Farid ud-Din Attar, Maimonides, Homer, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Jane Austen, Junichirō Tanizaki, Cervantes, Hobbes, Hesse, Laozi, Jung, Shakespeare, Murasaki Shikibu, Whitman, whoever wrote Beowulf, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Gospel of Luke, Wendell Berry(!), and more. There are also more technical “subject tutorials”: currently on offer are “The Art of Writing”, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek language.

Resources I’ll be using:

1. The Loeb Classical Library has an enormous number of Greek and Latin texts with facing English translations. The quality of the English translation varies from work to work, but generally they are at least okay. In this case I’ll be using this primarily to consult the Greek text.

I can’t recommend Book Darts highly enough if you want to mark pages without destroying them.

2. Bartlett and Collins’ translation is advertised as being as literal as possible while still being readable. Obviously, I haven’t gone through the entire text to check for accuracy, but it reads well, the translation holds up whenever I’ve gone back to consult the Greek, and it has a good reputation among people who know a whole heck of a lot more about Ancient Greek and Aristotle than I do². It has an interpretive essay, a helpful glossary, thorough index (something you really miss when a book lacks one), and a neat "table of virtues”. I haven’t read this one cover to cover yet, so I will probably have this be my primary text.

3. I read Joe Sachs’ translation in college because he had been a tutor there for decades and it seemed like the translation to read. It has held up, and is still the one I open when looking up a passage. Sachs makes a number of interesting and often idiosyncratic translation choices, always well argued for if not always perfectly elegant. For example, the Greek ἕξις (hexis) is often translated as “characteristic”, “disposition”, or “habit”, but Sachs chooses “active condition”, which I think correctly captures the subtlety of Aristotle’s use of the word. He translates ἐνέργεια (energeia) as “being-at-work” instead of the more common “activity”, which I also approve of, despite its almost Germanic cumbersomeness. Sachs pays close attention to etymology as well as Aristotle’s particular technical use of the words when making his translation choices, and I continue to endorse his version.

The translation of the first lines of the Ethics at the top are by Mr. Sachs.

4. The Perseus Digital Library has both the Greek original and English translation available for free as well, not to mention another “2,412 works in 3,192 editions and translations (1,639 in Greek and 636 in Latin)” according to the website.

Along with my students, I might write my own reflections as we go and post them here, but that’s assuming I have anything interesting to say.

If you’ve never read Aristotle, and especially if you are skeptical of the value of reading philosophy from over two millennia ago, consider skimming the first couple pages of book I of the Ethics, or perhaps Book VIII, on friendship (The Perseus link above or any of the other online translations are easily accessible).

Wishing all of you a year of health and happiness, ideally surrounded by friends—

Notice what book Aristotle is holding there?

…ἄνευ γὰρ φίλων οὐδεὶς ἕλοιτ᾽ ἂν ζῆν, ἔχων τὰ λοιπὰ ἀγαθὰ πάντα…

…for without friends, no one would choose to live, even if he possessed all other goods…

—Nicomachean Ethics 1155a5

1. A digression, since quotes and mis-quotes are something of a hobby for me: the IFQI-complex has misattributed all manner of sayings to Aristotle. Some bear more or less of a resemblance to something he actually wrote, although would only count as translations in the sense that Coleman Barks produced “translations” of Rumi. Many others appear simply made up. The quality of most ranges from banal wisdom to idiotic. Some samples of things Aristotle didn’t write are “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.” “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is an act, not a habit.” “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.” “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” “Character is made by many acts; it may be lost by a single one.”

2. “‘Authority is the weakest kind of proof,’ according to Boethius.” —According to Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q. 1, Art 8.