ABSTRACT
The Ethics will strike the modern reader as, if not exactly chaotic, at least rather loosely written. For a start, the traditional division into ‘Books’ and ‘chapters’ is almost certainly not Aristotle’s, and we should not allow it to distract us.2 Some topics run over from one book to another (as for example, friendship straddles the division
between Books VIII and IX, and the moral virtues are treated in Books II and IV and V). Within a single book, too, successive chapters often seem to hop from one topic to another almost without warning. To some extent this is the result of the editing, but it also reflects the nature of ethics as a subject, comprising as it does several issues which are loosely related to one another rather than tightly interlocking. Still, we should not exaggerate. Whether it is Aristotle’s or that of a later editor, there is at least some structure, and an intelligible sequence of topics, along the following lines:
I What do we aim at in life? What is it that would make living worthwhile? A worthwhile life must surely involve developing our specifically human characteristics to the full. How could we find out what those are? Upon reflection, we can see that what is most characteristically human about ourselves is the way in which thought colours all our lives – not just our intellectual pursuits, but also our feelings and emotions, our choices and relationships.
