Introduction
Aristotle,
“Ethica
Nicomachea”
Before I start presenting some important for
me excerpts from this book by Aristotle,
I would like to answer to some general questions, someone non-expert like me,
might want to pose right away.
- “..this book by Aristotle..”, how did this “book” by Aristotle reach us from the fourth century B.C, an era when people were not even aware of paper? (Not even the Chinese themselves- who are said to have invented it - were aware of it before 105 AD).
In the 4th
century BC “books” were written on papyrus sheets stuck one after the other
forming this way a roll (cylinder), sometimes some metres long.
One could find
and buy these rolls at the market place.
A brief
story of the adventure of Aristotle’s books follows:
After the
death of the philosopher, his books had been inherited by Theophrastus, his most loyal student.
Theophrastus passed them on
to Nileas from Asia Minor.
Nileas’ heirs were not interested in the precious
corpus of the great teacher but at least managed to save it, burying it in an
underground hatch.
This is the way it was saved by the voracity of the rulers
of Pergamos, whose ambition was to create a big library like the Ptolemaios
kings of Egypt.
At the
beginning of the 1st century BC, Apellicon, an Athenean book lover, found them out –who knows how- and brought
them back to Athens.
When
Syllas, conquered Athens, in 86 BC, he sent Aristotle’s books to Rome, among
other rich loot.
More
adventures awaited them in Rome, until Andronicus from Rhodes published them
during the second half of the 1st century BC.
It’s strange that the
books that were saved were the philosopher’s personal notes, in one single
copy, and not the other books which belonged to people outside the school and
could be found in lots of copies in the city.
Not even one of them was saved!
- Another question: Why is the book called Nicomachea?
Aristotle was
the son of Nicomachos, the doctor of the king of Macedonia. He had a son,
also called Nicomachos.
There is no
answer however, about the choice of the title.
We don’t even know if the
philosopher himself or someone else (an editor maybe?) gave these titles to the
Ethics corpus of Aristotle.
- Why should I read a philosophical text with the word Ethics in its title?
A word that
brings to mind Christian ways of behavior, not at all attractive. This has nothing
to do with the real content of the book.
As
professor P. Kontos says, all of us today are imbued firstly with the
Aristotelean Ethics and secondly with the Kantean Ethics. So, here is one good
reason to read it.
Ethics
started being organized on a scientific basis since the 2nd half of
the 5th century BC.
What this new science tried to discover, to teach
was:
Behaviour for a better life.
Protagoras, in the famous dialogue by Plato, first gives
an answer to the following ethical question:
what is the most important thing
that a young person should be taught in order to have a better life?
And the
answer he gives is ευβουλία.
A word by
which he wants to say: a young person should be taught to think wisely and with
virtue about his home matters but the city matters as well.
Democritos, in the north, at the same era says that the
actions are not the most important thing in a man’s life but to feel calm and
serene with no big fears nor with big ambitions either.
Aristotle used the word ευδαιμονία which we are going to analyse
in the second post which will be based on the book, Ethica Nichomachea, by Aristotle, the great philosopher.
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