Ethics With Aristotle

476 Pages·1993·43.38 MB·English

by  Sarah Broadie

E T H I CS WITH
A R I S T O T LE
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E T H I CS W I TH
A R I S T O T LE
S A R AH B R O A D IE
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
19911
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland Madrid
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1991 by Sarah Broadie
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1993
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Broadie, Sarah Waterlow.
Ethics with Aristotle / by Sarah Waterlow Broadie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-506601-4
ISBN 0-19-508560-4 (pbk)
I.Aristotle—Ethics. 2. Ethics, Ancient. I. Title.
B491.E7B7 1991
171'.3—dc20 90-33456 CIP
9876
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated
to
Frederick Broadie
who set the field
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Foreword
I had intended, originally, to cover in one work all the ethical topics that have come
down to us from Aristotle, but was unable to make room here for some that certainly
deserve a place. Hence the absence of what I would have had to say about Aristotle
on the individual moral virtues, on friendship, on justice and on the foundations of
politics. I have likewise had to postpone for the time being any systematic attempt
to situate Aristotle's views in relation to contemporary ethics or in the history of
philosophy itself. My main concern here was to make as clear as I could what has
registered with me as crucial for the understanding of Aristotle's ethics.
Although the Eudemian Ethics is still much less well known than it deserves, I
have followed tradition in treating the Nicomachean Ethics as the principal text,
including, of course, the common books V-VII (= EE IV-VI). I have, however,
gone to the EE for general support throughout, as well as for the special light it sheds
on the contingency of the voluntary, the structure of rational choice and the virtue
of nobility. I agree with those who identify the EE as the first home of the common
books, but nonetheless take it that Aristotle himself would have sanctioned placing
them in the Nicomachean context. None of my arguments depends on assigning a
Eudemian or a Nicomachean origin to any given passage in the common books. Nor
have I had to presuppose any particular order of composition as between the two
treatises.
Except where it is otherwise stated, I have used the Revised Oxford Translation
when quoting from Aristotle.
Hamden, Connecticut S. B.
August 1990
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Acknowledgements
I thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for honouring me with
a fellowship taken in 1986. The fellowship period included my first semester on the
faculty of Yale University, and I thank the Yale administration for permitting me
leave of absence during that time.
Ethics with Aristotle was completed too soon for me to take account of Richard
Kraut's Aristotle on the Human Good (Princeton, 1989). But since my work was read
by him for Oxford University Press and provoked pages of thoughtful comments, I
have benefited from his views, if not in one way then in another, and I wish to thank
him for that.
I am grateful to Celene Abramson for her help with the indices; to Glena Ames
for superb secretarial assistance; and to Cynthia Read and her staff at Oxford Uni-
versity Press, New York, for their care and dispatch in seeing this book through the
printing.
And here it is appropriate for me to express deep thanks for the unfailing support
of Kate Thuillier, who helped from whichever side of the Atlantic whenever she
could be most effective.
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