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book350 BCE

Nicomachean Ethics

Disciplines:
philosophy
ethics
virtue ethics/virtue
ancient greece

Summary

Aristotle's foundational treatise on ethics — arguing that the good life (eudaimonia, flourishing) consists of virtuous activity in accordance with reason — that virtues are habits cultivated through practice rather than rules to follow — and that the good life requires external goods and social context.

Core Contribution

Creates virtue ethics — the Nicomachean Ethics' account of the virtues (as mean states between excess and deficiency), practical wisdom (phronesis), and the relationship between individual flourishing and political community is the foundational document of virtue ethics and the most sophisticated ancient account of moral psychology.

Historical Influences

Socrates Plato

Intellectual Lineage

Aristotle's Lyceum lecturesNamed after Nicomachus

Allied Works

Politics Eudemian EthicsAfter Virtue

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Aquinas Virtue ethics revival

Intellectual Posterity

Virtue ethics EudaimoniaPhronesisThe meanAristotelian ethics

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