Aristotle, XIX, Nicomachean Ethics (Loeb Classical Library®) (Hardcover)

by Aristotle (Author), H. Rackham (Translator)

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Product Description

Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BCE, was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367–347); subsequently he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor and at this time married Pythias, one of Hermeias's relations. After some time at Mitylene, in 343–2 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip's death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of 'Peripatetics'), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander's death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322.

Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as follows: I Practical: Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics (on the good of the family); On Virtues and Vices. II Logical: Categories; Analytics (Prior and Posterior); Interpretation; Refutations used by Sophists; Topica. III Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc. IV Metaphysics: on being as being. V Art: Rhetoric and Poetics. VI Other works including the Constitution of Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship. VII Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 704 pages
• Publisher: Loeb Classical Library; 2nd edition (June 10, 1934)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674990811
• ISBN-13: 978-0674990814
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #255,034 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Aristotle's Ethics: The Art of Living, June 19, 2000

By	Agis Liberakis (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

I bought this book almost accidentaly, for having nothing better to do one night on a business trip to Pretoria. Being Greek, I have a love-hate relationship with the Ancients: brought up to marvel at their genius, but feeling alienated by an education system that force-fed us with sterile, badly translated texts, which always seemed irrelevant to our lifes. This book opened my eyes to the true meaning of "Philosophy". The translation is in modern English, free from the back-to-front syntax of the Ancient Greek text (which makes it impossible to understand the meaning of a sentence until you reach the end of it!).

The subject matter is "Ethics". However, a modern author may have called it something more akin to "The Meaning of Life" or "The Art of Living". Aristotle proceeds with simple and clear logic, to reveal the objective of human struggle in this life. He demonstrates a deep understanding of the Human Being, what we are and what we are not, what makes us act in one way or another and what makes us feel joy or distress. He addresses anxienties of the modern human, such as the question of nature or nurture, the moral action versus the practical, violence versus non-violence. His recommendations for living this life in a manner that is meaningfull and rewarding are profound yet simple. I found myself shaking my head in recognition at every example or conclusion. I felt a fresh wind in my chest, as if it was I who was discovering this knowledge, not some 2.5 thousand year old man.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to discover more about how to live this life, but feels foreign to current eastern-derived, philosophical/religious fashions which, even when illuminating, can appear alien to the western way of thinking.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Binding, May 12, 2008

By	T. Warmath (Fort Worth, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are considering this volume for its parallel Greek and English, then it is your only choice. I am not reviewing the Greek or English, as you know what you're in for with a Loeb. The one star is the result of a poorly produced volume. The newer Loeb volumes are very poorly bound. My copy of Nichomachean Ethics has a number of pages stuck together by binding glue to a point beyond the center margins and all the way into the text. Most new Loebs I've examined have this same problem, and I've seen them fall out of the binding in less than a semester of use. Older Loebs that I have seen in libraries seem to be bound much better, and I've known professors with Loeb volumes from the seventies that are holding up all right relative to their use and age. I'll avoid buying these new.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars about halfway through it., December 20, 2006

By	eliot - See all my reviews

this book is beautiful for context when reading kierkegaard or thomas aquinas. for instance, take patience; where on the scale between passivity and wrath does turning the other cheek fit in? it is necessary to understand this in order to understand the teleological suspension of the ethical or to understand the theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, as departures from ethics. btw, father messick in an earlier review writes that the writers of the declaration of independence had an aristotelian mindset and i will not argue that point. i would just like to point out that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is commandeered, so to speak, from the writings of adam smith, i.e., life, liberty and the pursuit of property. also that thomas jefferson much preferred continental philosophers, such as locke and rousseau, to the ancient greeks as is evident in his letters. loeb library is the right choice for poor students of greek such as myself. i also have homer and hesiod.