Friday, November 26, 2021

Nicomachean Ethics

 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/books/review/book-review-aristotles-nicomachean-ethics.html

The link is to a review of the translation that I read by Harry Jaffa, a thinker I admire. 

Why read Nicomachean ethics? 

In my case it was because it is referenced so often in many of the books that I read, I became embarrassed that I had never read it. Now having done so,  I'd recommend reading something like "The Interpretive Essay" at the back of the translation I read instead. 

The book was written about 330 BC, which gives great creedence to Solomon's observation in Ecclesiastes 1:9

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."

What is the good life? How can I be happy? What is the best society? What is virtue? How can I be virtuous?  What is the meaning of life given that we did? Is this it, or is there an afterlife? 

While Aristotle could have known of the Hebrew Bible, chronologically, there is no evidence that he did, 

One the first page of the interpretive essay, we have this quote from Micah 6:8"He has told you O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

While Aristotle would reject that statement because he sees there as being many "gods", and therefore many views of "the good", this work is a valiant, but ultimately confusing and questionable attempt to define "the good" or "how to be happy". 

As Jaffa says in the linked: 

The debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any other.
The Ethics at least makes a valiant attempt to escape pagan muli"god" relativism and that attempt is worthy of being oft referenced. For this of us that believe that history DOES matter, this is at least close to THE foundational work of our secular history.

For a Christian, the biggest realization is that Christ answers the "difficult questions" that Aristotle struggled and largely failed to answer. 

One of the many wonderful freedoms of Christianity is that our search for "happiness" and "virtue" are answered in Christ.

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