Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Homepage

Syllabus

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Syllabus

Course Readings

  • Key Terms Necessary to Understand
  • Summary of Nicomachean Ethics from Wikipedia
  • Discussion/Analysis of Nicomachean Ethics from the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy

    Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

  • Book I

    1. Chapter 1: What does the first sentence of Chapter 1 mean? What is Aristotle saying in the whole of Chapter 1?
    2. Chapter 2: Why is politics (political science) the "master art"?
    3. Chapter 3: Hhow much exactness should we look for in discussing these ideas, and why? Who should or should not discuss these things, and why?
    4. Chapter 4: What is the highest good, and why? What are "first principles" and why must we start with them? What characteristics must students of this study have, and why?
    5. Chapter 5: What three things might bring happiness? What does not, and why?
    6. Chapter 6: No questions (here Aristotle disagrees with Plato's conception of the "Forms" or "Ideas."
    7. Chapter 7: How do we know that happiness is the chief, final, and self-sufficient good? What is the "function" of a plant? An animal? A human? Why does this "outline of the good" so far make up "more than half the whole" of the concepts of the entire Nicomachean Ethics?
    8. Chapter 8: What are the attributes of happiness, and what is additionally needed for happiness?
    9. Chapter 9: Is happiness acquired by learning, by training by divine gift, or by chance? Which is the best or most common method?
    10. Chapter 10: When does happiness occur: while we are living, at the point of death, or after death, and why?
    11. Chapter 11: No questions.
    12. Chapter 12: No questions.
    13. Chapter 13: What must the student of politics study, and why? What are the parts of the soul? What are the two types of virtue/excellence?

  • Book II
    1. Chapter 1: What are the two kinds of virtue, and how do we acquire each of these virtues?
    2. Chapter 2: What does our "present inquiry" aim at, and how much exactness can we hope for? What is "defect," "excess," and the "mean"?
    3. Chapter 3: What is the relationship of moral virtue to pleasure and pain?
    4. Chapter 4: What is the difference between doing good and being good?
    5. Chapter 5: What are the three things found in the soul, and which one is virtue, and why?
    6. Chapter 6: What is the virtue of a human, and what is moral virtue?
    7. Chapter 7: What are the various virtues, along with their excesses and deficiencies?
    8. Chapter 8: Regarding courage, do most people err by wanting more or less pain? Regarding moderation, do most people err by wanting more or less pleasure?
    9. Chapter 9: Is being good easy or difficult, and why? If we err on one extreme, how can we best correct ourselves?

  • Book III
    1. Chapters 1 through 5: No questions.
    2. Chapter 6: What does the coward fear, and what does the brave man fear?
    3. Chapter 7: How is the brave/courageous man defined? How are the two extremes defined, between which courage is the mean?
    4. Chapter 8: How is passion mistaken for bravery? How is ignorance mistaken for bravery?
    5. Chapter 9: Is it harder to accept pain or avoid pleasure? Why? (you'll have to think about this).
    6. Chapter 10: Specifically with what kinds of pleasures is temperance concerned? What is the self-indulgent person like?
    7. Chapter 11: What is the difference between the self-indulgent person and the temperate person? Which occurs more often: an excess of desire for pleasure, or a defect of desire for pleasure?
    8. Chapter 12: What is more subject to reproach: intemperance or cowardice, and why? What is being intemperate similar to?

  • Book IV
    1. No Questions; the virtues were covered in our discussions of Books II and III.

  • Book V
    1. Chapter 1: What is justice, and why is it a "complete" virtue or "the whole" of virtue?
    2. Chapter 2: As discussed in the last paragraph of chapter 2, what are the two main types or forms of justice, and what are the two sub-types of the second main form/type of justice?
    3. Chapter 3: How should amounts of things be distributed when distributed according to merit? (hint: a proportion is a geometric mean, not an arithmetic mean). What do different types of regimes view as "merit"?
    4. Chapter 4: How should injustice in transactions be corrected: by geometric proportion or arithmetic proportion?
    5. Chapter 5: In the last paragraph of Chapter 5, justice is said to be a mean between doing injustice and having (allowing) injustice done to oneself. What, then, might be general terms to describe the excess and deficiency of justice?
    6. Chapters 6-11: no questions.

  • Book VI
    1. Chapter 1: What are the two kinds of virtues? What is the difference between the "knowing" and the "calculating" (or "deliberating") parts of the soul?
    2. Chapter 2: What two elements of the soul comprise the totality of human nature?
    3. chapter 3: What are the five intellectual "powers"?
    4. Chapter 4: Why is art merely a skill (power) and not a virtue?
    5. Chapter 5: What is the intellectual excellence of "practical judgment"? Of what use is practical judgment?
    6. Chapter 6: What is "intellect"?
    7. Chapter 7: What is "wisdom"? Why is neither politics nor practical judgment the "most serious kind of knowledge"? How does wisdom differ from practical judgment?
    8. Chapter 8: How does politics differ from practical judgment? How are they the same?
    9. Chapter 9: What is "skilled deliberation"?
    10. Chapter 10: What is astuteness?
    11. Chapter 11: Of thoughtfulness, astutenes, perception, and wisdom, which come by nature and which are acquired?
    12. Chapter 12: If theoretical wisdom neither contemplates happiness nor works towards happiness, what relation does it have to happiness (flourishing/eudaimonia)? Also, what is the difference between practical judgment and cleverness?
    13. Chapter 13: What is the difference between natural virtue and practical judgment?

  • Book VII
    1. Chapters 1-10: No questions (these concepts were covered in our discussion of the virtues in Books II and III).
    2. Chapter 11: What are the various ideas regarding whether pleasure is good or bad?
    3. Chapter 12: What is the nature of pleasure? What is a pleasure that has no bodily pain or bodily desire?
    4. Chapter 13: Is pleasure good? Why? How is happiness defined?
    5. Chapter 14: Why do so many people mistakenly believe that bodily pleasure is the only (or highest) pleasure?

  • Book VIII
    1. Chapter 1: How necessary is friendhship to human life, and why? What is the difference between friendship and justice?
    2. Chapter 2: What three types of things are loveable, and what does every individual person love?
    3. Chapter 3: What are the three types of friendship? What sort of friendships do older people tend to have and why? What sort of friendships do younger people tend to have, and why? How durable are these types of friendships? What is "complete" friendship, how durable is it, and how common is it and why?
    4. Chapter 4: What is the difference between friends and lovers? What sort of lovers become friends? Can base (unvirtuous) people have friends, and why?
    5. Chapter 5: What is the most charactertic mark of friends?
    6. Chapter 6: How many of each of the three types of friends can a person have, and why?
    7. Chapter 7: How should love be distributed in friendship between unequals?
    8. Chapter 8-14: No questions.

  • Book IX
    1. Chapters 1-2: No questions
    2. Chapter 3: When does a friendship end?
    3. Chapter 4: Why and how are we friends with ourselves? When are we not a friend to ourself, and why not?
    4. Chapter 5: How is goodwill different than friendship?
    5. Chapter 6: No questions
    6. Chapter 7: How is doing a favor like making a work of art?
    7. Chapter 8: Who ought we be best friends with, and why?
    8. Chapter 9: Why does a serious and good person need good friends for one's own contemplation and flourishing?
    9. Chapter 10: How many friends can we realistically be good friends with?
    10. Chapters 11-12: No questions

  • Book X