Cambridge University Press
0521817420 - Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics - An Introduction - by Michael Pakaluk
Frontmatter/Prelims

ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

In this engaging and accessible introduction to the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s great masterpiece of moral philosophy, Michael Pakaluk offers a thorough and lucid examination of the entire work, uncovering Aristotle’s motivations and basic views while paying careful attention to his arguments. Pakaluk gives original and compelling interpretations of the Function Argument, the Doctrine of the Mean, courage and other character virtues, akrasia, and the two treatments of pleasure. The chapter on friendship captures Aristotle’s doctrine with clarity and insight. There is also a useful section on how to read an Aristotelian text. This book will be invaluable for all student readers encountering one of the most important and influential works of Western philosophy.

MICHAEL PAKALUK is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Clark University, Massachusetts. He has published extensively in the history of philosophy, including Plato, Aquinas, Hume, and Reid, as well as in political philosophy, philosophical logic, and early analytic philosophy.

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ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS by Michael Pakaluk

ARISTOTLE’S
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

An Introduction

MICHAEL PAKALUK

Clark University, Massachusetts

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© Michael Pakaluk 2005

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First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-81742-4 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-81742-0 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-52068-3 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-52068-1 paperback

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Contents

Preface

I vividly remember my first encounter with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in my first semester of college. I was assigned the text as part of an introductory course in the history of philosophy. My professor, Ed McCann, had said in lecture that it was widely accepted that Aristotle and Kant towered above all other philosophers, on account of their depth and comprehensiveness. So I had the highest expectations as I went off to the library, the text of the Nicomachean Ethics in hand, to grapple with Aristotle’s thought.

But lulled perhaps by the soft hum of the heating system in the library, or by the plush comfort of the leather chair into which I had sunk, I simply could not stay awake while reading. I would read a chapter or two of the Ethics; then nod off to sleep; then wake up and read another chapter; and then fall asleep again; and so on. During my brief periods of wakefulness, it was my impression that I was following the argument, and that what Aristotle was saying was, after all, commonsensical – a very common first impression of the Ethics, as it turns out. And yet really I was hardly understanding the text. What was happening was that the seeming obviousness of Aristotle’s claims allowed me to run my eyes over the text fairly quickly, and yet the density and concentration of the underlying argument, to the extent that I did grasp it, caused a kind of intellectual overload, from which I would then escape by falling asleep.

This experience, although not entirely pleasant, gave me a wary admiration for the Ethics. It seemed a serious work – difficult and appropriately challenging – while also being congenial and in many respects evidently right. My troubles in understanding the text seemed completely compatible with my professor’s high estimation of Aristotle. But I was impatient with myself: I wanted truly to understand the Ethics and learn what it had to offer.

Sooner than I could have imagined, I had another chance. In my second semester, not knowing quite what I was getting into, I sought to enroll in and was accepted into a seminar on political philosophy for upperclassmen. One of the first readings for the seminar was Aristotle’s Ethics. Each member of the seminar was required to give a presentation during the semester, and I rather foolishly volunteered to give the presentation on the Ethics. It was unwise, of course, for me to offer to give one of the first presentations of the semester in an advanced seminar designed for upperclassmen, but I imagined that by agreeing to do the presentation I could force myself to acquire an understanding of the Ethics.

I soon came to realize, however, the bind that I was in. In a kind of panic, and without a plan or system, I started reading quickly through secondary literature on the Ethics, hoping to find some interpretative key. I came across an article – I cannot remember exactly what or by whom – which claimed that the Ethics is from first to last “teleological” in outlook. That is correct, but I had no idea then what “teleological” meant. No matter: in my presentation to the seminar, I parroted the claim, and I used this theme, which I did not understand, to introduce and summarize the rather vague points I made about the text. Needless to say, I was completely dumbfounded when the professor, Nathan Tarcov, led off the discussion following my presentation by asking me to define what I meant by “teleological”!

I would be assigned the text a third time before my undergraduate years were over, this time, oddly enough, in a course entitled “Nonscientific Knowledge.” The professor for this course, Hilary Putnam, a philosopher of science, assigned the Ethics as a kind of culmination of the argument of the course, which was directed at breaking down any sharp distinction between “facts” and “values.” Earlier we had examined arguments from Iris Murdoch’s book The Sovereignty of the Good for the claim that words that indicate a person’s character (for instance, “kindly,” “persevering”) are not purely evaluative but are also essentially descriptive. Assertions that use words that purport to say how the world is also carry with them an evaluation. Aristotle’s Ethics, the professor claimed, was a kind of

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