Rating: 
Summary: Readers: Read!
Review: There is a Kind of consensus among scholars that erudition is a condition sine qua non in approaching the field of the History of Ideas or philosophy. Everyone will agree with the Japanese smart guy ("Reader Beware")when he says that one can get anywhere one wants by way of rational deductions or syllogistics. There is no question about it. Aristotle or anyone else ever disputed it, as far as I know. If you say that the aim of human life and the supreme good of the existence of man (as well as his distinctive carachter) is picking his nose, you might as well succeed in proving it by way of deduction, as the smart guy from Japan actually did, as long as...another person, or a comunity of persons share the same premisses with you, your point of departure, which happens to be, in this particular case, that man's ultimate good is picking his (or her) nose. But when this "sharing" is not a reality, you cannot expect in a sane mind that you would be able to convince others or make them believe or assume that your reasoning or your conclusions are true. But what is really in question here is the more or less full assesment of Aristotle's ethics. What does it mean? What is the purpose of it? If there is such meaning and such purpose about it is it universally valid in all it's features or only in some or only in it's general conclusions or in all or in none of these? Well, that is why this review begins with the statement that "erudition" (wich is not mine) is a condition sine qua non to the study of the history of ideas. All Aristotle's reasoning is built up upon what the greeks knew by "endoxon", wich is a set of premisses that the "contenders" of a dialectic debate must accord altogether betweem them and with the audience too just for starters, and which are OUT of DISCUSSION. This does not mean that they are self-evident or simply true, tout court: this only means that the people so to say "exposed" to them (in a rational debate) accord them altogether, believe or simply state them, with no critical consideration whatsoever. The first "endoxon" of all in the Nichomachean Ethics is exactly that "all things naturally points to some good", and the final conclusion, built upon this principal and other secundary "endoxoi", is that "the ultimate good towards which the Human life naturally aims is happiness (eudaimonia)". To be sure, if you reject right away the first and principal premisse of Aristotle's rational construction there is no "Endoxon", i.e there is no dialectical debate - which is almost the only methodology used in the Nichomachean - and you can save your money and read the selections of the reader's digest if you wish. Otherwise, you might as well admit that you never give the question of Ethics as a science (for that is what the thing here is all about) a serious or systematic thought and concede - if only, for the sake of game - Aristotle all the premisses he may present you in order to see where it will eventually lead you. Perhaps you get out of it with a clearer thought of the question. Perhaps not. But you may never expect to find in this or any other systematization of thought a final statement about what is the ultimate good or a ultimate definition of your own essence. There is no such thing. Aristotle was trying to get at a more rigorous assessment of the validity of the ethical "endoxoi" (the premisses) assumed by the people of his culture and time - particularly the wisest ones, the philosophers and poets - by the people of the polis of Athenas, and check them one by one with what he thought to be better instruments than the simple "common sense", a veritable methodology, a serious research of the truth and validity of that propositions. The wise guy from Japan is wrongful, in my point of view, by anachronism (lack of historical and philosophical sense)and superficiality of thought, for not having the proper background and knowledge (erudition) to assess the context and the real "nexus" of Aristotle's discourse . Just like a "philosophe" of the Enlightenment (Iam flattering him) he thinks reason to be one and the same in all fields of investigation, cultures and times and that the mere act of reasoning is a evidence of the truth of what one says. I think Aristotle has perhaps a little bit more to offer than a jeau de mots when you read him with an open and humble disposition of mind.
Rating:
Summary: Virtue is its own reward
Review: Whenever I read the ancient philosophical texts, which I do because I tend to believe that they're good for me and that old wisdom is sometimes (but not always) the best wisdom, I try to identify their influence on modern times and literature. One of the principal messages in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that of the importance of personal virtue, and many images and stories in this tradition instruct us by illustration either real or fictional about virtue's rewards, that he or she who acts in an acceptable manner will reap worldly (and heavenly) benefits. By somewhat of a contrast, Aristotle had contended that virtue is its own reward, that is, to be virtuous is to be happy, and he expounds this idea in the body of writings called the Nicomachean Ethics.Defining virtue as a desirable state of character, Aristotle enumerates the different categories of virtue--courage, temperance, thrift, modesty--and proceeds to explain that the ideal human state is one that seeks the mean, or intermediate, quantity of each of these virtues, the excess or deficiency of which is called a vice. For example, a deficiency of courage, called timidity, is certainly a vice; but likewise an excess of courage, called rashness, is faulty behavior as well. (An "excess" of a virtue may sound like a good thing, but Aristotle means an excess in the sense of lacking judgment or wisdom; for example, stepping in front of a speeding car may take courage, but it is more accurately described as rashness and would not be considered by anybody to be virtuous behavior, unless there were a higher purpose in doing so, such as to save someone else's life. But rashness is at least closer to the virtuous mean than is timidity.) To those that would say that virtue has rewards outside of itself, Aristotle might reply that virtue rather has effects or consequences. A man who attains virtue earns pride, which is the "crown of the virtues" despite the fact that in a different context it can be regarded as a deficiency of modesty, and therefore is happy. A virtuous man is likely to exercise justice (a man who performs a just act is just only if the act is voluntary) and equity (if you steal a man's watch, you owe him a watch), and this behavior wins him friendship (with other people of similar virtue, of course; evil people gain evil friends), which results in pleasure (no man is an island). Unlike the sophists, Aristotle is not teaching virtue or dispensing advice to his students (one of whom was Alexander the soon-to-be-Great) to make them more virtuous; he is suggesting that virtue may be developed by observing the effects of our behavior, since none of us is perfect. Virtue is not a state of perfection but an understanding of how to minimize our tendency to submit to our baser impulses.
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