Study Questions for Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics Book IInstructor: Dr. Jan Garrett
Last revised date: August 1, 2007
Study Questions for use with T. H. Irwin's translation (Hackett, 1999). This version prepared in July 2007.
It is important to learn how to find a passage by use of Bekker page, column, and line indicators. The Bekker edition is a standard Greek edition of Aristotle's works. Most Aristotle translations include Bekker numbers, usually in the margins, so that scholars can check the translations against the original Greek. The "Bekker number" references also enable those who have a translation to pick out a line or a passage with greater precision than they could referring to a page number. ("1094b1" refers to p. 1094, second column, line 1 in the Bekker edition, or to the translator's version of the corresponding text in the Bekker original. Line 1 corresponds to the first line in the relevant column of the Bekker edition.)
Book I
1. How does Aristotle initially describe the good? (1094a) What division does he make among ends? Explain: the hierarchy of ends corresponds to the hierarchy of goods. . . . to the hierarchy of actions, arts and sciences.
2. Do we choose everything for something else? (a20) Explain.
3. What science studies the highest good? Why is it so called? (1094b6-10)
4. What methodological point does Aristotle make at 1094b13-15, b20-23? See also 1098a26-35.
5. Why does Aristotle implicitly require of his listeners that they already be "educated" before they listen to his lectures on politics? (What does "educated" seem to mean?) (1094b23-1095a2)
6. What further reasons does Aristotle give for excluding immature people from the audience of his political lectures? (1095a3-11)
7. What distinction does Aristotle make at 1095b2-5? How do we get the principles from which to begin? How does this point relate to his earlier requirements for listening to lectures on political science?
8. What three conceptions of the best life does Aristotle distinguish? (1095b14-1096a5) Why are the first two incomplete? Why does Aristotle exclude money making as part of the good life? (1096a6-11)
Discuss: "Aristotle's discussion of the conceptions of the 'best life' is flawed because he denies that anyone can really pursue wealth for its own sake."
9. On what basis does Aristotle challenge the allegedly Platonic view that the good is a single (wholly unambiguous) idea? (1096a24-33) [Note: what-it-is, quality, quantity, etc. are the names of Aristotle's basic categories. "What-it-is" is sometimes replaced by "substance."]
10. Why does Aristotle reject Plato's notion of the Good Itself, understood as separate from particulars? Why does he reject Plato's notion of the eternity of the Good? (a35-b5)
11. Why are goods which have different accounts (true definitions of their essences) nevertheless called by the same name?
12. Why does he find the Platonic Good irrelevant to ethics? (1097a4-14)
13. What characteristics does Aristotle attribute to the good? (1097a18-20; 28-31; 1097b8-16)
14. When is it true to say that X is a "more complete good" than Y? When is it true to say that X is "complete without qualification"? (1097a30-35)
15. What does A. mean by "self-sufficient"? (1097b14-16) Why is happiness most choiceworthy? (1097b16-20)
16. How does Aristotle reach the conclusion that the human good is the activity of the soul in accord with virtue? (1098a16; begin from 1097b24) What does he then add at 1098a18-20?
17. How does Aristotle block the demand to deduce the premises of his argument from yet more ultimate principles? (1098b1-5) How, for Aristotle, do we acquire principles in political inquiry? (Review question)
Note how 1098b9-1099b8 interact with common beliefs and traditional wisdom ("the phenomena") to verify Aristotle's account of happiness.
18. In what respect is happiness reached by human effort alone? (1099b15-1100a5) What role does virtue play in happiness? (1100b7ff)
19. How can accidents affect happiness? (1100b23ff) Can a virtuous person become miserable? (1100b33ff)
20. How does Aristotle argue that virtue is insufficient for happiness? (1101b10ff) Note that he associates being praised with virtue but being celebrated with happiness.
21. What does the paragraph at 1102a7-12 tell us about Aristotle's purposes in studying virtue (the major topic of the Nicomachean Ethics)?
22. Why does he undertake an inquiry about the soul? Why is this digression brief and limited? (1102a13-28)
23. What two parts of the soul does Aristotle distinguish? (1102a27-29) What does he tell us about the wholly nonrational part? (1102a34-1102b13; b30-31)
24. Into what two parts is the remaining part subdivided? How does this last distinction help account for the difference (among people who have a correct general idea of what should be done) between people who give into temptation (incontinent), people who resist temptation (continent) and people who are not tempted (brave or temperate)? (1102b13-1103a4)