A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle's works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. This edition also includes an updated list for further reading and a new chronology of Aristotle’s life and works.Īristotle (384–322 B.C.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Thomson’s translation has been revised by Hugh Tredennick, and is accompanied by a new introduction by Jonathan Barnes. Aristotle’s work has had a profound and lasting influence on all subsequent Western thought about ethical matters. 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. He argues that happiness consists in ‘activity of the soul in accordance with virtue’, for example with moral virtues, such as courage, generosity and justice, and intellectual virtues, such as knowledge, wisdom and insight. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets out to examine the nature of happiness. Similarly neither can one day, or a brief space of time, make a man blessed and happy’ (Summary from Wikipedia)įor further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit .‘One swallow does not make a summer neither does one day.

It is therefore practical rather than theoretical in the original Aristotelian senses of these terms.

Aristotle describes his ethical work as being different from his other kinds of study, because it is not just for the sake of contemplating what things are, but rather to actually become good ourselves. Opinions about the relationship between the two works, for example which was written first, and which originally contained the three common books, is divided. Books V, VI, and VII of the Nicomachean Ethics are identical to Books IV, V, and VI of the Eudemian Ethics. In many ways this work parallels the similar Eudemian Ethics, which has only eight books, and the two works can be fruitfully compared. The work consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes said to be from his lectures at the Lyceum which were either edited by or dedicated to Aristotle's son, Nicomachus. LibriVox recording of The Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle.

The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle