Overview
Aristotle's treatise on ethics, likely compiled by his son Nicomachus from lecture notes, is the founding text of virtue ethics. It asks what the good life for a human being consists in, and answers that it is a life of activity in accordance with virtue, which is itself a habit rather than a feeling.
The Nicomachean Ethics was composed in the mid-fourth century BCE as part of Aristotle's teaching at the Lyceum. It is one of the two versions of his ethical lectures (the Eudemian Ethics is the other); the Nicomachean version is longer and more influential. It has shaped ethical thinking — Aquinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, contemporary virtue ethics — for more than two thousand years.
Key Ideas
Eudaimonia
Often translated as happiness, the word really means human flourishing — an activity of soul in accordance with virtue, across a whole life.
The doctrine of the mean
Virtue is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency — courage between recklessness and cowardice, for example.
Virtue as habit
You become just by doing just actions repeatedly, not by thinking about justice. Virtue is formed through practice.
Friendship as central
Aristotle devotes two long books to friendship, distinguishing friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue — only the last is the real thing.
Contemplation as highest
The life of philosophical contemplation is, for Aristotle, the highest form of human activity, though a good political life is also available.
Who should read this
Readers serious about ethics who want to understand the virtue tradition from its source. Particularly useful for readers tired of rule-based (Kantian) or outcome-based (utilitarian) ethics and interested in a framework that makes character, rather than actions or outcomes, the central question.
Who might skip it
Skip if you want a smooth read — Aristotle's prose, even in translation, is dense and lecture-note-like. Skip also if you cannot tolerate period prejudices; Aristotle's views on women, slaves, and manual labour are profoundly of his time.
The verdict
One of the essential philosophy books. The Terence Irwin translation is the scholarly standard; the W. D. Ross translation is freely available online and reads well. Read a book at a time, slowly, ideally with a good commentary alongside — Sarah Broadie's Ethics with Aristotle is worth the effort.
One swallow does not make a summer; neither does one day. Similarly, neither can one day, or a brief space of time, make a man blessed and happy.
— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
If you liked this
After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre for the modern revival. The Politics by Aristotle as the companion to the Ethics.