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Aspasius, Michael of Ephesus, Anonymous: On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8-9 PDF

248 Pages·2011·1.79 MB·English
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ASPASIUS On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 with ANONYMOUS Paraphrase of Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9 and MICHAEL OF EPHESUS On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 9 This page intentionally left blank Commentators on Aristotle on Friendship ASPASIUS On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 with ANONYMOUS Paraphrase of Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9 and MICHAEL OF EPHESUS On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 9 Translated by David Konstan LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com First published in 2001 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Paperback edition first published 2014 © David Konstan, 2001 David Konstan asserts his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3071-6 PB: 978-1-7809-3910-0 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3909-4 Acknowledgements The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the British Academy; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/GW). The editor wishes to thank Joseph G. DeFilippo, Hélène Longpré, Vasilis Politis, Michael Trapp, Jan Szaif, Ruth Webb and Stephen White for their comments and Robbert M. van den Berg and Han Baltussen for preparing the volume for press. Typeset by Ray Davies Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Conventions vii Introduction 1 Aspasius: On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 Textual Emendations 12 Translation 13 Notes 45 English-Greek Glossary 49 Greek-English Index 53 Index of Names 57 Anonymous: Paraphrase of Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9 Textual Emendations 60 Translation 61 Notes 115 English-Greek Glossary 119 Greek-English Index 124 Index of Names 130 Michael of Ephesus: On Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 9 Textual Emendations 133 Translation 135 Notes 215 English-Greek Glossary 221 Greek-English Index 226 Index of Names 232 Subject Index 233 This page intentionally left blank Conventions [] Square brackets enclose words or phrases that have been added to the translation or the lemmata for purposes of clarity. <> Angle brackets enclose conjectures relating to the Greek text, i.e. additions to the transmitted text deriving from parallel sources and editorial conjecture, and transposition of words or phrases. Accompanying notes provide further details. () Round brackets, besides being used for ordinary parentheses, contain transliterated Greek words and Bekker page references to the Aristotelian text. * Lemmata are marked with an asterisk when they are not distin- guished as such in Heylbut’s text, but appear as part of the commentary. To Khachig Introduction The eighth and ninth books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are devoted to an analysis of philia, a subject that Aristotle also treats in the Eudemian Ethics (Book 7) and the Magna Moralia (Book 2).1 That Aris- totle’s is the most sustained and profound discussion of philia to survive from Greek antiquity is beyond question. It is equally clear that philia is one of the fundamental value terms in classical Greek. Given that this is so, it is the more remarkable that there is still no consensus on what philia means, or even how to render it in English. The surviving ancient and medieval Greek commentaries on these books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, translated in this volume, pro- vide invaluable evidence as to how Aristotle’s arguments were received in the philosophical schools that flourished in the centuries after Aristotle wrote. They also illuminate important aspects of Aristotle’s treatment of philia, and shed light on what the concept might have meant to a writer of Greek in late antiquity. The commentaries do not, however, entirely resolve the perplexities attaching either to the term philia itself or to Aristotle’s discussion of it; and they introduce some further interpretative problems of their own (consider, for example, Aspasius’ effort (181,24- 182,3) to turn Aristotle’s words, ‘a democracy is least wicked’ (1160b19-20), into their opposite, ‘democracy is worse than the others’, in conformity with his own preference for monarchy). All of which is to the good, inasmuch as it encourages further thought on the nature of philia. All English translations of Aristotle’s Ethics with which I am familiar render the term philia as ‘friendship’ (translations into other modern languages typically employ amicizia, amistad, amitié, Freundschaft, and the like). On occasion, in the versions that follow, I do so as well. More often, however, I translate philia as ‘love’. I believe that this is the core sense of the Greek word, and that even when it is applied, as it frequently is, to the relationship between friends (philoi), it primarily denotes the affection that obtains between them, and may properly be rendered as ‘love’ in these contexts as well. In some cases, the word ‘friendship’ is obviously absurd as an equivalent to philia, for example, when Aristotle speaks of a mother’s philia for her infant child, and retaining ‘friendship’ makes Aristotle’s arguments sound odd or nonsensical. In other cases, however, as in the affection that may arise between commercial partners, it sounds strange to speak of love, and I have bowed to the necessity of

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