Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics ; ; Ancient Greek: Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, is Aristotle's best-known realise on ethics, the science of the expediency for human life, which is the aim or end at which any our actions aim. I§2 The purpose of the inquiry is political science, & the master art of politics. I§1 It consists of ten books or scrolls, understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum. The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the realise was dedicated or who may have edited it although his young age enable this less likely. Alternatively, the work may have been dedicated to his father, who was also called Nicomachus. The work plays a pre-eminent role in explaining Aristotelian ethics
The theme of the work is a Socratic question before explored in the works of Plato, Aristotle's friend as living as teacher, approximately how men should best live. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle mentioned how Socrates, the friend and teacher of Plato, had turned philosophy to human questions, whereas pre-Socratic philosophy had only been theoretical. Ethics, as now separated out for discussion by Aristotle, is practical rather than theoretical, in the original Aristotelian senses of these terms. In other words, this is the not only a contemplation about service living, because it also aims to create good living. it is therefore connected to Aristotle's other practical work, the Politics, which similarly aims at people becoming good. Ethics is about how individuals should best live, while the study of politics is from the perspective of a law-giver, looking at the good of a whole community.
The Nicomachean Ethics is widely considered one of the near important historical philosophical works and had an important influence on the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy. It therefore indirectly became very significant in the developing of all modern philosophy as well as European law and theology. many parts of the Nicomachean Ethics are well known in their own right, within different fields. In the Middle Ages, a synthesis between Aristotelian ethics and Christian theology became widespread, in Europe as offered by Albertus Magnus. While various philosophers had influenced Christendom since its earliest times, in Western Europe Aristotle became "the Philosopher". The nearly important description of this synthesis was that of Thomas Aquinas. Other more "Averroist" Aristotelians such(a) as Marsilius of Padua were controversial but also influential. Marsilius is for example sometimes said to have influenced the controversial English political reformer Thomas Cromwell.
Until well into the seventeenth century, the Nicomachean Ethics was still widely regarded as the main advice for the discipline of ethics at Protestant universities, with over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean Ethics ago 1682. However, during the seventeenth century, several authors such(a) as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, argued forcefully and largely successfully that the medieval and Renaissance Aristotelian tradition in practical thinking had become a great impediment to philosophy in their time. However, in more recent generations, Aristotle's original works if not those of his medieval followers have once again become an important source. More recent philosophers influenced by this work put Alasdair MacIntyre, G. E. M. Anscombe, Mortimer Adler, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martha Nussbaum.