Scholarship on Aristotle’s NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (hereafter “the Ethics”) flourishes in an almost unprecedented fashion. In the last ten years, universities in North America have produced on average over ten doctoral dissertations a year that discuss the practical philosophy that Aristotle espouses in his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics. Since the beginning of the millennium there have been three new translations of the entire Ethics into English alone, several more that translate parts of the work into English and other modern (...) languages, and half a dozen collections of new articles discussing Aristotle’s Ethics. Such an outpouring of scholarship has produced an almost unmanageable wave of books, articles, and reviews. Through my topical bibliography, I seek to organize this wealth of scholarly writing so as to make it manageable both to scholars working across the disciplines of philosophy, classics, history, and politics, and to scholars pursuing theses on specific topics within the Ethics. The bibliography takes as its model and is much indebted to that compiled by Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji in their Articles on Aristotle, Volume 2: Ethics and Politics (1977), which was further updated and incorporated into the complete bibliography to all of Aristotle’s writings in Barnes’s Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995). Although I have taken guidance from their model, my bibliography differs in one main respect. Whereas Barnes et al. were more selective and annotated their bibliography, I have been more comprehensive in my inclusion of items. I have sought to include all books and journal articles concerned with the Ethics written in English over the last 120 years; additionally, I have sought to include representative and central works of scholarship written on the Ethics in French, German, and Italian during the same period of time. (shrink)

La exaltación aristotélica del ideal contemplativo de vida en Ética a Nicómaco X fue muy influyente en la historia de la filosofía y sus efectos se prolongan mucho más allá del Helenismo y de la Antigüedad tardía. Sin embargo, es en Política VII 1-3 donde Aristóteles presenta la consideración más detallada de los géneros de vida y, en particular, la oposición entre la política y la filosófica. El propósito de este trabajo es reconsiderar el elogio de la vida contemplativa del (...) final de la EN y recuperar el significado político que el proemio ético que antecede al diseño de la pólis ideal tiene en esta discusión, con vistas a mostrar la correspondencia que existe entre la redefinición de práxis en Pol. VII 3 y la jerarquía de la felicidad en EN X 7-8. (shrink)

The view of happiness that I propose in this article and derive on the basis of Aristotle’s and Henri Bergson’s ideas recommends that we must first understand life as an activity – not as a sum of accumulated experiences and things; nor a set of projects; nor fateful or haphazard events that befall us, but as a formative activity in which we play a key role. Ἐνέργεια or de l’action are at the core of life and it is by getting (...) a hold of this creative core that we stand to live happily (Aristotle) or joyously (Bergson). For both thinkers, the possibility of happiness and joy comes to the fore, to no small extent, as a certain orientation in our thinking, i.e., as φρόνησις and θεωρία, for Aristotle, and as philosophy for Bergson. Our thoughts inform our choices and actions as well as our view of the world, grounding our sense of meaning, purpose, and value of action. It is by reckoning with the ever-unfolding act of life and with our own actions in it (actions which can be vicious, senseless, and unexamined or creative and constitutive of a life well-lived) that we also take hold of the possibility of happiness and joy. (shrink)

Aristotle’s complete picture of human flourishing departs problematically from our commonplace conceptions of personal moral goodness when he draws rapid conclusions in Book X concerning the eudaimonic supremacy of theoria; a static comprehension of the timeless order of nature exemplified by the academic philosopher. I develop a sympathetic account of this anxiety as a philosophically legitimate ground of resistance to Aristotle, but go on to make a further case drawing on resources from Aristotle, particularly the relationship between phronesis and theoria (...) and the role of friendship, which I believe can bring about significant if not total allayment of the worry and reconcile us to an Aristotelian approach for the justification of the ethical life. (shrink)

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient , complete without qualification , peculiar to humans , excellent , and best and most complete . Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient, complete without qualification, peculiar to humans, excellent, and best and most complete. Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.