ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s writings. The similarities between Aristotle’s approach to ethics and economics and Wicksteed’s in CSPE are remarkable. As an examination of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (hereafter NE) reveals, Wicksteed has adopted many of the principles defended by Aristotle in this book. For instance, Aristotle argues that an enquiry into human choice and behaviour must begin with what is familiar to us because ‘facts are the starting-point’ (Aristotle 1987: I, iv, 1095a, 15-25; 1095b, 5) of it. It is very important to begin the analysis from first principles that are well established (by induction, perception or habituation), because on them depends the whole analysis. As Aristotle has put it,
But each set of principles we must try to investigate in the natural way, and we must take pains to determine them correctly, since they have a great influence on what follows. For the beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are cleared up by it.
