Customer Reviews

Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the "Nicomachean Ethics"

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The convo b/w Socrates and Aristotle picks up most intensely toward the end of the book - I'd say around the pleasure chapter. Anyway, I liked her development of the Hesiod line, which she refers to throughout the work. I'd say the best part of this book is her analysis of the ethical virtues. I thought her analyses of shame were superb; although Aristotle doesn't really delve so much into this emotion, Burger cleverly interweaves it into her discussion of the virutes of character, such as courage, and she carries shame, or so it seemed to me, throughout the entire book! Besides shame, a non-virtue - as she understands it, Burger carries the greatness of soul virtue throughout the work - most interestingly is when she links it to phronesis, and thus to the beautiful and to the just. She also heavily writes on praise and blame, on which ethical virtues rest, throughout. Her Benardete-like diagrams for Book 5 are very helpful. Her discussion of intellectual virtue offers insight into how desire plays a role in phronesis. She has a lot on phronesis - how it relates to sophia, nous (esp p126), the legislative art, etc.; this should prove useful for those who (will) study A's Politics.