Ethics with Aristotle

Abstract This book turns a philosophical lens on to the main themes of Aristotle's Ethics, offering detailed discussions of happiness as an end, virtue, character development, voluntary agency, prohairesis (rational choice), practical wisdom, incontinence, pleasure, and the theoretic ideal. It shows how Aristotle's essentially practical orientation in ethics affects the content as well as the method of his inquiry. Closely examined topics include the difference between practical thinking (about particulars) and the thinking of the “statesman,” the category of “the noble,” the Aristotelian roots of justice in human development, the ambiguities of the craft analogy, how pleasure relates to value judgment, human happiness versus that of God, the uses of leisure, and the eccentricity of the theoretic ideal in the eyes of many of Aristotle's contemporaries. The discussion mainly follows the Nicomachean Ethics, but explores some distinctive doctrines of the Eudemian Ethics too.