Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion

7/8/2018 NOTE: For abbreviations regarding Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (translations etc.), see post 44 (6/29/2018) below.
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Aristotle articulated his ethical philosophy in two major works: the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and the Eudemian Ethics (EE). Many scholars believe that other ethical writings attributed to Aristotle were written by his followers, not by Aristotle himself. The present initial post contains only general bibliographical remarks about the NE and EE. Later comments may treat Aristotle's ethical discussions in greater depth. As always, other group members are welcome to post their own understandings and interpretations.

I first read Sir David Ross's English translation of the NE in 1969. Ross's translation was the best available at that time, and it still has its virtues. Unlike many of his contemporary translators, Ross did not assume that the reader was fluent in Greek. Accordingly, his translation corresponded closely to the original Greek, which I consulted in the Loeb Classical Library edition.

I am currently reading Joe Sachs's translation of the NE (first published in 2002). Sachs's translations of Aristotle endeavor to bypass latter-day Latin jargonized accretions and return to the original meaning of the philosopher. Although linguistic distortions of Aristotle's thinking mostly affect Aristotle's more theoretical works, Sachs discusses some errors that have crept into Aristotelian translations of the NE as a result of anachronistic readings of Aristotle's original intent.

Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins recently published Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: A New Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). This appears to meet the high standard of Straussian translations. Although I have both the Kindle and hardcover editions of this work, I have not yet studied it in any depth, and it is unclear to me why Bartlett and Collins considered the earlier Sachs translation inadequate. For Sachs also appeared to be adhering to Straussian exactitude in his translations of ancient Greek texts.

Scholars have long considered the NE the most important of Aristotle's works on ethics. Recent scholarship has, however, demonstrated that the EE was the dominant text used for centuries after Aristotle's death, and it was only later that the NE superseded it. Here the work of British philosopher and scholar Anthony Kenny has been foundational. The NE and EE contain three common books (Books 5, 6, and 7 of the NE and Books 4, 5, and 6 of the EE). Although these common books probably originated in the EE, they were frequently merely cross-referenced in later Greek and English texts of the EE. In 2011, Kenny published the first complete English translation of the EE. He had earlier published a comparative analysis of the history and substance of the two texts: Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship Between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). As of the time of the present post, I have ordered the latter book and have the Kindle edition of Kenny's 2011 translation, but I have not yet read either.

Brad Inwood and Raphael Woolf translated and edited the second complete English translation of the EE in 2013. I recently read this translation and the editorial matter associated with it. Inwood and Woolf carefully analyzed the Greek texts and manuscripts that have survived the centuries and made difficult editorial judgments regarding them. Their translation appears to be as accurate as possible under the circumstances. Although they disagree with Kenny on some relatively minor issues, they acknowledge his demonstration that "it is virtually certain that the Eudemian Ethics, in its complete eight-book form, was treated as the standard text of Aristotelian Ethics from Aristotle’s death in 322 BCE until the time of Aspasius, author of the earliest surviving commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, in the early second century CE." Inwood and Woolf, introduction to Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Kindle ed., Kindle loc. 127-30.

The similarities and differences between the NE and the EE are discussed in the above-referenced editorial discussions and elsewhere. Such substantive matters are beyond the scope of the present post, but I may address them in later comments.

6/20/2018 NOTE:

When I wrote the preceding comment, I was under the impression that the Eudemian Ethics might be more authoritative than the Nicomachean Ethics. I have now revised that view. Although the Eudemian Ethics may have been more popular in earlier centuries, it appears that the Nicomachean Ethics is the more complete philosophical analysis. I am not, however, an expert on this issue, and the reader might usefully compare the two works to consider where and why they differ. I now have Anthony Kenny's comparative analysis (referenced above) but so far have not studied it in any depth.

This comment is a continuation of posts 57-59 in the Jacques Derrida topic. The relevant portions of those posts are as follows:

Feliks wrote (post 57): "p.s. Alan I'll be finally getting 'round to a first hand reading of Nicomachean Ethics this month--pretty exciting! I might make a post 'or two' (no more) in the wonderful Aristotle thread anon!"

Alan wrote (post 58): "I had intended to get back to the Nicomachean Ethics a few weeks ago but, after a brief initial foray, got sidetracked studying Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crito and the transcript of Leo Strauss's course on these works. I'm preparing a long comment, which I will post sometime this week, on Plato's Apology and Crito. Thereafter I had intended to read some other of Plato's works before returning to Aristotle. But if you are going to read the Nicomachean Ethics now, I may do the same. I don't know which translation you are using, but I would recommend Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", trans. and ed., Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). I have this translation in both Kindle ebook and hardcover; a paperback edition is also available. Bartlett and Collins begin their "Note on the Translation" with the following statement (p. xv): "This translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics attempts to be as literal as sound English permits. We hold that literal translations, while certainly having their limits and even frustrations, nonetheless permit those without a reading knowledge of the original language the best possible access to the text." Footnotes and an appendix ("Key Greek Terms") discuss, inter alia, the translators' decisions regarding important Greek terms in the text. The old translation of Sir David Ross, which I read in college and reread in the 1980s and/or 1990s, is also not bad."

Feliks wrote (post 59): "Alas! Not realizing the superior quality of this Chicago recommendation; I went with the Penguin Edition! This always happens to me. Anyway it would be very rewarding to read it at the same time as yourself, and post questions as they arise. Let's do so! My edition is on its way to me in the mail. Say, maybe its not too late to send it back and get the Chicago version... "

My continuation of this discussion in the present thread:

Penguin editions usually have popularized translations that are not very good. The current Penguin edition (per Amazon) appears to be a 1976 revision by Hugh Tredennnick of an older translation by J. A. K. Thomson. Tredennick and Thomson were both British professors. I don't know enough about their translation of the Nicomachean Ethics to opine, one way or another, on its accuracy. I would, however, recommend that you order the Bartlett/Collins translation. If you cannot return the Penguin edition (which you should be able to do if you ordered it via Amazon), you would then have two translations to compare. This may end up costing you a few more bucks than you originally intended to spend, but I think it is worth it.

Yes, let's read the Nicomachean Ethics at the same time and compare notes. If others wish to join in, that is fine. But I'd rather not establish a particular schedule for reading it. We all have different schedules, and I read very slowly, often comparing what I read to the Greek.

Agreed. Let the pace of life impel the turning of the pages. As a general rule I would say I read 10 pages of anything, per day, (or ideally 20 unless it is very dense). My daily commute is 43 minutes each way so, that's where I fit in my leisure reads.

Alan, shall I delete my remarks in the Derrida thread which led here?

Feliks wrote: "Alan, shall I delete my remarks in the Derrida thread which led here?"

No, we can leave our comments, which I have reproduced here, in the Derrida thread. Perhaps someone reading that thread in the future will find the discussion that will occur here more interesting than the discussion of postmodernism there.

The following is an excerpt (pages xv-xvii) from the "Note on the Translation" section of Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", trans. and ed., Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011):

"This translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics attempts to be as literal as sound English usage permits. We hold that literal translations, while certainly having their limits and even frustrations, nonetheless permit those without a reading knowledge of the original language the best possible access to the text. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, unable to read a word of Greek, still became a supreme interpreter of Aristotle on the basis of William of Moerbeke’s remarkably faithful translations of Greek into Latin, just as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) became “the Commentator” on “the Philosopher” despite having had access to the works of Aristotle only in Arabic translation.

"To be sure, we do not claim to have attained such fidelity to the original as did the great medieval translators. What is more, the distance between contemporary English and ancient Greek is often great, and any simple substitution of this English word for that Greek one would result in a largely unintelligible hash, one no longer in Greek but not yet in English either. What, then, do we mean by “literal translation”? We begin from the assumption or prejudice that Aristotle composed the Ethics with very great care—whether or not the text we have consists of or is derived from lecture notes—and hence that he chose every word with (as Maimonides would say) “great exactness and exceeding precision.” We have attempted to convey that exactness and precision. In practice this means that we have rendered all key terms by what we hold to be the closest English equivalent, resorting to explanatory footnotes when the demands of idiom or intelligibility have made this impossible. Readers may therefore be confident that an appearance of nature, for example, is due to the presence of the same Greek word or family of words (phusis, phuein) in the original. It hardly needs to be said that the identification of “key terms” and their English counterparts depends finally on the translators’ interpretation of Aristotle, on an understanding of his intention. The outlines of that understanding are found in the interpretive essay; the choice of key terms and their equivalents, in the list of Greek terms and the glossary. . . .

"Aristotle’s Greek is notoriously terse or compressed, and where the grammar or meaning of the Greek clearly requires supplying a noun or verb or phrase, we have done so without encumbering the translation with square brackets. We have instead reserved the use of such brackets to indicate the inclusion of words or phrases that in our judgment are required for sense but that are to a greater degree open to interpretation or debate; occasionally, we use square brackets also to note an alternative translation that captures the nuance of a term. In addition to alerting readers to departures from strict consistency or literalness, the notes explain historical and literary allusions and the more important textual difficulties or alternatives; all dates in the notes are BCE."

Alan and Feliks,

I'd be happy to join you as time permits.

I have the Rackham translation (Loeb) as well as the Ross translation. My library doesn't have the new translation, so I could only get it for a few weeks on an interlibrary loan basis.

Should I look for posts on the Derrida thread?

Robert wrote: "Alan and Feliks,

I'd be happy to join you as time permits.

I have the Rackham translation (Loeb) as well as the Ross translation. My library doesn't have the new translation, so I could only get ..."

Great! The Ross translation is much better than the Rackham translation, though it's nice to have the Greek text in the Loeb edition. The posts will be in the present thread.

I managed to halt the Penguin edition before it shipped and in its place I ordered the U of Chi version. Will be in my hands in a few days. This exercise will be a pleasant diversion this month.

Alan, you might 'broadcast a message to all members' to alert other interested readers in our midst? You do this so rarely I doubt it would be taken amiss by anyone. There's 1,841 members, (something I didn't realize) so perhaps it might catch on. And Aristotle is surely worth it...

Feliks wrote: "I managed to halt the Penguin edition before it shipped and in its place I ordered the U of Chi version. Will be in my hands in a few days. This exercise will be a pleasant diversion this month.

A..."

Feliks, I'm glad you were able to obtain the Bartlett/Collins translation. Thank you for the suggestion regarding a message to all members. As you will have seen by now, I have now done this.

Hello, I just got the message.

I read the EN for another group earlier this year.

I went with the Bartlet Collins, although I was also trying to read the Aquinas commentary concurrently. Aquinas was very helpful on some points, and rarely (maybe once) tried to square Aristotle's text, or argument, with Christian orthodoxy.

At any rate, I would be glad to try breezing through this time, or maybe firming up my grasp on Aristotle's meaning.

I got through all of the B/C translation, but set aside the Interpretative Essay for another time.

Christopher wrote: "Hello, I just got the message.

I read the EN for another group earlier this year.

I went with the Bartlet Collins, although I was also trying to read the Aquinas commentary concurrently. Aquinas ..."

Sounds good! You'll be quite an expert, having been recently through the experience of reading and discussing it.

I recently won a copy of the B/C translation at a homeschool conference I went to. When I saw your message I decided it was fate telling me I need to read it. I will be happy to join along!

Ashley wrote: "I recently won a copy of the B/C translation at a homeschool conference I went to. When I saw your message I decided it was fate telling me I need to read it. I will be happy to join along!"

Congratulations on winning the book, and welcome to the reading group.

Alan
I have just picked up on your invitation to read along with the Group as you tackle Aristotle, and would like to participate.
It is a long time since I read the NE and I look forward to renewing my acquaintance with what I recall to be a rather taxing text.

Rodney wrote: "Alan
I have just picked up on your invitation to read along with the Group as you tackle Aristotle, and would like to participate.
It is a long time since I read the NE and I look forward to renewi..."

Thanks, Rodney. I look forward to your participation.

Alan, you are reading a lot of ethics lately in preparation for your next publication, yes?

Feliks wrote: "Alan, you are reading a lot of ethics lately in preparation for your next publication, yes?"

Correct. A while ago, I was focusing on the issue of free will from the perspectives of twentieth- and twenty-first century academic philosophy, physics, and neuroscience. I have 10-15 books on that subject. I needed a break from that reading, which is why I returned, for the time being, to Plato and Aristotle. I'll get back to the recent literature on free will, but I can only take so much of it at one time.

The provisional title of my forthcoming work is Reason and Human Ethics. It will probably take me several years to write. I don't expect it to be published until sometime in the 2020s.

I would like to read the work too, and I wonder which version is most suitable for a non-native speaker. I appreciate your comments.

Özgün wrote: "I would like to read the work too, and I wonder which version is most suitable for a non-native speaker. I appreciate your comments."

Fortunately, Aristotle does not get into a lot of scholarly jargon, though he does have some key terms. In reality, all of us who do not read Greek fluently are non-native speakers from Aristotle's perspective. The English translations I mentioned in yesterday's message to all group members should be intelligible to everyone with some knowledge of English. The Bartlett/Collins edition (University of Chicago Press) is especially helpful with explanations of important terms and concepts.

Nicomachean Ethics Reading Group

As I mentioned in my June 20, 2018 message to all Political Philosophy and Ethics group members, let's commence the discussion of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics on July 10, 2018. That will give everyone interested in participating in this reading group time to acquire the book (if they don't already have it) and begin reading it. Additionally, since we are doing this during the summer, people will be traveling for summer vacations.

On July 10, we will begin discussion of Book 1. Some participants may have read/reread the entire work by then. That is fine, but it certainly is not obligatory to read the entirety of it by that time. We'll start with Book 1 and go from there.

Alan wrote: " I was focusing on the issue of free will from the perspectives of ..."

Thanks for the invitation Alan. I read NE with a different group a while ago, I ended up switching between multiple translations as I struggled with particular passages. I welcome an excuse to dig up my notes again.

I'm curious about your project on reasons and human ethics - would you be addressing/ commenting on Derek Parfit?

My first observation is this: I don't think the modern, casual perception of Aristotle is that he is even associated with ethics as much as other philosophers are. As far as I have ever been able to tell (outside academic circles) most people seem to think Aristotle was some kind of early scientist such as a Leucippus or a Lucretius. A taxonomer and an anatomist, interested in the 'categories' of things and phenomenon; an 'organizer' of facts and evidence. This unflattering impression is what I see prevailing in the public mind. Some folks are dimly aware that he wrote on politics; less so that he wrote on religion. Anyone involved in theatre or literature, usually realizes that he also wrote on the arts. But his reputation in ethics seems mostly unknown to today's man-in-the-street.

Alan wrote: "Aristotle articulated his ethical philosophy in two major works: the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and the Eudemian Ethics (EE). Many scholars believe that other ethical writings attributed to Aristotle ..."

The early preference for the "Eudemian Ethics" over "Nicomachean Ethics" may be connected to the idea that the latter was not by Aristotle, but by his son, Nicomachus: a view shared by, e.g., Cicero (who liked the NE).

This is discounted by modern scholarship, mainly because Nicomachus died very young, and the NE seems to be the product of mature reflection. (Not impossible, of course, but unlikely.)

In the end, no one knows why or how the two versions of the Aristotelian Ethics got their names, although there are some speculations.

Eudemus was the name of a student, who may have preserved the text, or to whom the written version (both are thought to have originally been lecture courses) was directed. The NE *could* have been directed by Aristotle to his son, as a sort of philosophical legacy on proper behavior (but I find this a stretch).

Confusingly, Nicomachus was a family name, and if Aristotle had anything to do with the name he might have been thinking primarily of honoring his father, instead.

I also took part in the recent discussion of the NE, and I may or may not participate in this one -- I've committed myself to some heavy reading over the next couple of months, and may not have the time and energy.

Alan wrote: "To All "Political Philosophy and Ethics" Group Members:"

Thanks for the invitation Alan. I’ll occasionally pop in as an observer on the sidelines. My focus is on today’s “Political Philosophy and Ethics” of the ruling-class throughout the spectrum of governance. We can only hope any exercise in studying the great philosophers of past ages could provide constructive guidance in today’s political philosophy and ethics; for our current state of governance here in the US certainly could use such guidance.

As you know, my focus is exploring the physical laws of nature, of which we are a product of, to political philosophy and ethics. I feel humanity is flowing much too long in the ocean of those elite philosophers; interpretation as a function of one’s bias to the point of reading between the lines (“distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching”). The objective of my interpretation from those few (esoteric) who explore the laws of nature to translation for the many (exoteric). Such translation can be a guide from the physical laws of nature ( see “Constructal Theory” folder) as a filter enhancing the esoteric teachings from those great philosophers of past ages.

Lia wrote (post 21): "I'm curious about your project on reasons and human ethics - would you be addressing/ commenting on Derek Parfit?"

I have read some twentieth and twenty-first century ethical philosophers and scholars but have not yet reached Parfit. I'll check him out at some point.

The focus of my current reading is indicated in my ethics and free will Goodreads reading lists. My forthcoming book will be a substantial revision (more likely a total replacement) of my 2000 book First Philosophy and Human Ethics: A Rational Inquiry (Philosophia Publications, 2000). Since writing that book, most of my views on politics and economics and some of my views on metaphysics and ethics have changed, as I have indicated in my online Errata, Revisions, and Supplemental Comments to that book.

Feliks wrote (post 22): "My first observation is this: I don't think the modern, casual perception of Aristotle is that he is even associated with ethics as much as other philosophers are. As far as I have ever been able t..."

So much for "the modern, casual perception of Aristotle . . . ." No wonder he was an elitist.

Thank you, Ian, for your post 23, which contains some interesting information.

Mike wrote (post 24): "As you know, my focus is exploring the physical laws of nature, of which we are a product of, to political philosophy and ethics."

As I have previously indicated, I fundamentally disagree with what I understand to be Mike's and Adrian Bejan's reductive and analogical methodology, but I will reserve further comment until after I have read their books (which I won't have time to do in the near future).

Alan wrote: "I have read some twentieth and twenty-first century ethical philosophers and scholars but have not yet reached Parfit. I'll check him out at some point."

I tried to get through it, find it very impressive, but difficult without an interlocutor. If you do end up working through Parfit, I'd love to read your running commentaries and possibly discuss some of his points.

And thanks for the links.

Lia wrote: "I tried to get through it, find it very impressive, but difficult without an interlocutor. If you do end up working through Parfit, I'd love to read your running commentaries and possibly discuss some of his points."

Thanks, Lia, for calling my attention to Parfit. I have now downloaded on Kindle his three-volume work On What Matters. I may read his discussion of free will in volume one immediately.

This work is quite comprehensive in scope, and I look forward to reading the whole thing (if that is even possible). My forthcoming book will not be as academic as those of Parfit and other contemporary philosophy professors, but Parfit's book looks to be more interesting to me than some of the other academic productions of the last many decades that I have read (or partially read).

I'm glad you find that relevant, Alan. I hope you will have a look atReasons and Persons as well, I suspect it would also be very relevant to your topic (and IMO more "canonical.")

Here is the link to the group discussion from earlier this year:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

This is a link to the complete 'lecture course' of Thomas Aquinas in Latin and English:

https://dhspriory.org/thomas/Ethics.htm

And this is the English version only:

https://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/...

Some of the medieval terminology differs from modern, but it's a matter of switching out one term for another, for the most part.

As Allan Bloom says in his introduction to the Republic, William of Moerbeke was one of the most scrupulously literal translators of all time, to the point where his translations are clues to philologists as to Aristotle's original texts.

Lia wrote (post 31): "I'm glad you find that relevant, Alan. I hope you will have a look atReasons and Persons as well, I suspect it would also be very relevant to your topic (and IMO more "canonical.")"

Thanks. I have now also downloaded Reasons and Persons. I have lately been reading Kindle ebooks rather than paper books whenever possible, as (1) I have run out of physical space for paper books, and (2) I often have problems, in my old age, reading paper books that have smaller print. Fortunately, all of these Parfit Kindle ebooks reproduce the pagination of the corresponding paper books.

You're preaching to the choir, Alan :-) (though I'm a kobo/ iBooks girl). I don't know how people used to read philosophical texts without ebooks. I have to C&P paragraphs of philosophical texts out of my ebooks onto a virtual notepad to "translate" into my own words, or I just can't follow. (I suppose you can do the same with a cell phone camera with a printed text.)

I hope you'll share your notes on Parfit, I'd be keen to read them.

^The harder a text is, the better it is for your brain. The brain's a muscle, in a way. Needs regular workouts to stay active.

Lia wrote (post 34): "I hope you'll share your notes on Parfit, I'd be keen to read them."

It will probably be quite awhile before I begin reading Parfit systematically. I read his discussion of free will in volume one (Chapter 11) of On What Matters yesterday. His procedure is like that of other academic philosophy of the past many decades—a kind of procedure that I do not take to naturally. This is why I have gone back, for the time being, to Plato and Aristotle. Strangely, though I have no background in science (other than my own reading), I find some work on neuroscience and free will more congenial to my way of thinking than recent academic philosophy. For example, I have begun reading The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley. Schwartz, a neuropsychiatrist, is a research professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. Begley is a science writer. Apart from the digressions into Buddhist meditation (of which I have never been enamored), this book is quite interesting and presents a significantly different paradigm from what one usually sees in academic philosophy. Nevertheless, since I've just started reading the book, I can't say whether I will end up agreeing with it.

Getting back to the topic at hand, as I have stated elsewhere, Aristotle takes what amounts to a biological approach to human ethics: what does it mean to be a human being? This is perhaps congruent with Schwartz's neuropsychiatric approach. As one of my professors said in class long ago, "If empiricism is great, then Aristotle is terrific!"

On a point of information, Alan, are we allowed in posts to use the Greek, or should we transliterate any quotations?

Rodney wrote: "On a point of information, Alan, are we allowed in posts to use the Greek, or should we transliterate any quotations?"

Using Greek is fine, though please provide also an English translation. Note, however, that Goodreads does not correctly reproduce the eta letter (it converts it to nu). Accordingly, I would hyperlink to the original Greek text (say, on Perseus) and/or transliterate the Greek text in the Goodreads comment.

Having postponed picking up Aristotle for quite some time now, this seems like a perfect opportunity for me. I would therefore be more than happy to join your reading group this summer. I just ordered the new translation, but as I live in Sweden and the Swedish equivalent of amazon do not have it in stock I won't have in my hands within the next couple of weeks or so. Thus, I will most probably start out with the e-book version of the Ross translation.

Kalle wrote: "Having postponed picking up Aristotle for quite some time now, this seems like a perfect opportunity for me. I would therefore be more than happy to join your reading group this summer. I just orde..."

Very good. Note: My paternal grandparents were born and raised in Sweden before moving to the US when they were young (early twentieth century). Although my father spent most of a summer in Sweden when he was a boy, I have never been there. However, my grandparents, their siblings, and their wide circle of Swedish friends often spoke of it. Next summer my wife and I will be going on a Baltic cruise that includes stops in Stockholm and Gotland as well as Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, and Estonia.

My copy has arrived. It's a handsome book with butter-soft paper; large print; and numbered sections for each paragraph, along the margin. I like that very much indeed. And its dimensions, just barely small enough to fit in my shoulder sling bag. Not a whopper or a juggernaut.

Alan E, is your better half joining us for this exercise?

Feliks wrote: "My copy has arrived. It's a handsome book with butter-soft paper; large print; and numbered sections for each paragraph, along the margin. I like that very much indeed. And its dimensions, just bar..."

You probably have the paperback edition of the Bartlett-Collins translation. I bought the hardcover when it first came out in 2011 (before the paperback was available). I also have the Kindle edition.

Unless the paperback differs from the hardcover, the numbers along the margin are not paragraph numbers but rather standard Bekker pagination and line numbers. This is explained on p. xvii as follows:

"The translation is based on Ingram Bywater’s edition of the Greek text (Ethica Nicomachea [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894]) . . . . The numbers and letters found in the margins of the translation reproduce as closely as possible the standard Bekker pagination, based on his 1831 edition of the works of Aristotle as it appears in Bywater’s edition. We refer to books of the Ethics and also their chapters by Arabic numerals; these divisions, it should be said, are not due to Aristotle."

Aristotelian scholars routinely cite the Bekker pagination so that readers of different editions of the Nicomachean Ethics can easily find the location being referenced. Virtually all translations contain the Bekker pagination notations. In the Kindle edition of the Bartlett/Collins translation, the Bekker page numbers are inserted in brackets in the text of the translation instead of being reproduced in the margins.

Mimi has the Kindle edition. Although she hopes to find time to read this work and participate in the reading group, she also has some major preexisting time commitments regarding other projects. Accordingly, she may or may not be able to participate in the discussion.

Nicomachean Ethics Reading Group: TRANSLITERATION

I thought I would post some information about transliteration before we begin our substantive discussion of the Nicomachean Ethics.

As indicated in my post 38 above, I have found that when I copy and paste from an online Greek text of the Nicomachean Ethics (using Perseus), Goodreads transforms the Greek letter eta into the Greek letter nu. For this reason and for the additional reason that probably most of the participants in this reading group will not be familiar with the Greek alphabet, I suggest that we use transliterations of Greek (with English definitions, of course), when appropriate. The actual Greek text (in Greek letters) can be hyperlinked if one wishes to do so. A handy table of standard ancient Greek-English transliterations can be found in the Wikipedia article Romanization of Greek. For those who have access to the seventeenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, see Table 11.4.

Note that eta is rendered ē. Omega is rendered ō. Persons with Microsoft Office 2010 (English) can locate and type these letters with macrons by clicking "insert" and then "symbol" at the top of the screen. I have created my own keyboard shortcuts in Word for these "macronized" (if that's a word) letters so that I can easily type them.

7/2/2018 update: see posts 66-71 below.

Nicomachean Ethics Reading Group: ABBREVIATIONS

I suggest that we use the following abbreviations (when we wish to abbreviate) in the Nicomachean Ethics reading group discussions. I may add some abbreviations later, and group members are welcome to suggest additional abbreviations.

Bartlett/Collins: Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", trans. and ed. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Bywater: Aristotle, Ēthikōn Nikomacheiōn, ed. J. Bywater (online Greek text).

EN : Ēthikōn Nikomacheiōn. This is the title affixed to the Greek text of the Nicomachean Ethics. The title of the Latin text is Ethica Nicomachea. Scholars sometimes use the abbreviation EN even in the context of English translations of the work.

Loeb: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans. and ed. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934) (Greek-English edition).

NE : Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (various English translations).

Ostwald: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis, IN: Library of Liberal Arts, 1962).

Penguin edition: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans J. A. K. Thomson, rev. with notes and appendices Hugh Tredennick, introduction and further reading by Jonathan Barnes (London: Penguin, 2004).

Perseus: Aristotle, Ēthikōn Nikomacheiōn, ed. J. Bywater (online Greek text).

Rackham: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans. and ed. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934) (Greek-English edition).

Reeve: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2014).

Ross: The "Nicomachean Ethics" of Aristotle, trans. and ed. David Ross (London: Oxford University Press 1966; first published 1925).

Ross/Ackrill/Urmson: Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. David Ross, rev. J. L. Ackrill and J.O. Urmson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Sachs: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2002).

The Penguin Edition I avoided is this:
J.A.K. Thomson (Translator); Jonathan Barnes (Introduction), Hugh Tredennick (Editor)

Feliks wrote: "The Penguin Edition I avoided is this:
J.A.K. Thomson (Translator); Jonathan Barnes (Introduction), Hugh Tredennick (Editor)"

I have added this to the abbreviations listed in post 44 under "Penguin edition." If you refresh your screen, you will see it.

Thanks.

After reading the introduction, I am struck by the translators’ need to act as apologist to the modern and post-modern readers. Are we really at a place where all truth has to be subjective or relative? Can we not accept any ultimate truths? Or even acknowledge that some things are just not ethically sound no matter where or when you live? It just strikes me as sad in this world of overly “protecting” our youth and young adults from any possible offense. It’s a strange time to be alive. And I’m only 32.

Ashley. With so many translations being mentioned, could you please clarify which 'introduction' you are referring to?

Ashley is referring to the Bartlett/Collins edition/translation (see her post 12, June 20, 2018) above.

Although I have been outside of academia (not counting law school) since 1971, it is my understanding that postmodernism is currently dominant in the humanities and, to an extent, in other academic disciplines there. This is not a new development. Leo Strauss (1899-1973) spent much of his academic career opposing historicism (a form of relativism) and positivism (see, for example, his book Natural Right and History [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953]). This is not coddling the students; rather, it is responding to the dominant strains of academic thought. Many, if not most, students arrive in college with a bias toward some sort of relativism and/or positivism (I see this with some of my younger relatives). Accordingly, Bartlett and Collins are just trying to counteract that. They certainly are not trying to coddle the students. To the contrary, they are trying to educate them.

It may be different at colleges affiliated with one religion or another (though Bartlett is a professor at Boston College, a Jesuit Catholic research university), but those colleges do not represent the mainstream of today's academia.

To be fair, colleges never had to deal with the onslaught of e-pinionizing handed to them by social media and post-modernism all at once. The 'death of expertise' results in a melee. But to my way of thinking, it is the irresolute campus which can't insulate itself from these media-trends. I posted a link in the 'Public Rhetoric' thread which cites just such a case. California campuses are utterly awash in a sea of clamoring voices lately. Debate is a farce. The problem facing schools is perhaps too many parties shouting for different 'revisionisms' to all happen at once. Anyway, good observation Ashley.