Reading Club: Aristotle's Ethics

​Reading for This Session

For our first Reading Club, we’ll begin with one of the foundational works on the question at the heart of this series: What does it mean to live a good life?

Please read Books I–III of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics before we meet.

Across these three books, Aristotle asks:

What is the highest good we can pursue?
What does it mean for a human being to flourish?
How do we develop virtue and character?
What role do habit, pleasure, and pain play in becoming good?
When are our actions genuinely voluntary?
How should we understand choice, responsibility, courage, and self-control?

Recommended Edition

Our preferred translation is Terence Irwin’s translation, Third Edition (Hackett). It is clear, philosophically precise, and includes an excellent introduction, notes, headings, and glossary.

Terence Irwin, Nicomachean Ethics — Hackett, Third Edition (https://hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/ancient-philosophy/nicomachean-ethics-irwin-third-edition)

You can also search Amazon for ISBN 978-1-62466-815-9 to make sure you are purchasing the correct Irwin Third Edition.

Free Version

You do not need to purchase a book to participate. The complete W. D. Ross translation is available free through the MIT Internet Classics Archive:

Read Nicomachean Ethics free online — MIT Classics Archive (https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html)

For this meeting, you only need Books I, II, and III.

Come having read as much as you reasonably can. The purpose isn’t to arrive with Aristotle mastered. It’s to arrive ready to think together about his central question: What does it take to live well?