• Aristotle’s main project in the Nicomachean Ethics is to investigate the nature of the highest good for humans and explain how this highest good can be achieved
  • Books I, II, and III.1-5 set out a conceptual framework about linking together function (ergon), virtue (arete), and flourishing (eudaimonia)
  • The remainder of the work details specific virtues and practical considerations around how to attain them
  • He’s clear that he thinks the aim of ethics is practical, as well as theoretical.
• The Doctrine of the Mean is introduced in II.5-6, and is of central importance to Aristotle’s subsequent discussion of virtue.
• Book I: a characterisation of happiness, the ultimate human good.
  • Description of the political science
    • Precision appropriate to subject matter
    • Starting from common beliefs (endoxa)
  • Qualities of happiness
  • Function Argument (I.7)
  • Introduces importance of virtue
• Book II: acquisition of virtue.
  • Virtuous action vs virtuous character
  • Habituation
  • Role of pleasure and pain
  • Doctrine of the Mean (II.5-6)
• Book III: the prerequisites for virtue, and initial examples
  • Voluntariness and responsibility
  • Decision, deliberation, wish
  • Bravery and temperance
• Book IV: more specific virtues of character
  • Generosity, magnificence, magnanimity
  • Other virtues (e.g. friendliness, truthfulness, wit)
• Book V: justice as a virtue and a mean
  • General justice and special justice
  • Distributive justice and corrective justice
  • Decency (as going beyond justice)
  • Relations with other people
• Book VI: the intellectual virtues
  • Sophia vs phronesis
  • Nous, teche, episteme
  • Prudence vs cleverness
  • Unity of the virtues (VI.12-13)
• Book VII: akrasia, and pleasure
  • Reply to Socrates
  • Different types of knowledge (and of akrasia)
  • Practical syllogism
  • First treatment of pleasure – anti-anti-hedonism, not a process/becoming
• Book VIII: friendship
  • Three types (pleasure, utility, virtue)
  • Between unequals; reciprocity; honour in exchange for utility
  • Friendships and communities
• Book IX: more friendship
  • Self-love of the virtuous person
  • Goodwill
  • The value of friends; how many are needed
• Book X: nature of pleasure, and conclusion on happiness
  • Pleasure as that which completes an activity
  • Theoria as the highest good, something divine
  • Importance of the political science; moral education