Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

If within the course of your college education, most of your professors do not begin the semester with some reference to Aristotle and our collective indebtedness to him then you are being cheated and chances are your "very learned" professor was also cheated. Here is a listing of Aristotle's writings that would still be worth your time to read and then I will briefly address his Nicomachean Ethics.

Categories; On Interpretation; Prior Analytics; Posterior Analytics; Topics; Sophistical Refutations; Physics; On the Heavens; On Generation and Corruption; Meteorology; On the Soul; On Sense and and the Sensible, On Memory; On Sleep; On Dreams; On Divination in Sleep; On Length and Shortness of Life; On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration; History of Animals; Parts of Animals; Movement of Animals; Progression of Animals; Generation of Animals; Metaphysics; Nicomachean Ethics; Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Rhetoric; Poetics

It surprised me when I first read Aristotle's Ethics and it surprises my Great Books students year after year that this ancient Greek philosopher starts with the question of happiness in his writing on ethics. It no longer surprises me, but still surprises them that he also spends a great deal of time discussing friendship in his writing about ethics.

Adler asks, related to Aristotle's Ethics, "Why does happiness involve a complete life"? (45) In Book One of Aristotle's Ethics it states, "For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has enough for his daily needs. For many of the wealthiest men have been unfavoured of fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had excellent luck. The wealthy man, it is true, is better able to content his desires, and bear up against sudden calamity. The man of moderate means has less ability to withstand these evils, from which, however, his good luck may keep him clear. If so, he enjoys all these following blessings: he is whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune, happy in his children, and comely to look upon. If in addition to all this, he ends his life well, he is truly the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate."

Maybe part of the reason is that Aristotle, always with the end (telos) in mind, recognizes that like any event, it is best to judge if it was "good" at the end when you can look back on the whole. Many a person has certainly declared "I am happy" and later declared "I am miserable". One needs to also note the way in which Aristotle connects, happiness, goodness, and the good life.

Translations:
I have come to greatly appreciate the following translators and their respective translations:
-Joe Sachs
-Terence Irwin
-Jonathan Barnes
-W.D. Ross