Eudemian ethics. / Books I, II, and VIII PDF
Preview Eudemian ethics. / Books I, II, and VIII
ISBN 0-19-824020-1 ,!7IA1J8-ceacae!:t;K;k;K;k CLARENDON ARISTOTLE SERIES General Editors J. L. ACKRILL AND LINDSAY JUDSON Also published in this series Categories and De Interpretatione J. L. ACKRILL De Anima Books II and III D. W. HAMLYN De Generatione et Corruptione C. J. F. WILLIAMS De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I D. M. BALME New impression with supplementary material by Allan Gotthelf Metaphysics Books M and N JULIA ANNAS Physics Books I and II W. CHARLTON New impression with supplementary material Physics Books III and IV EDWARD HUSSEY Other volumes are in preparation ARISTOTLE Eudemian Ethics BOOKS I, II, and VIII Translated with a Commentary by MICHAEL WOODS Second Edition CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dares Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 1982, 1992 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 0-!9-824020-1 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION The purpose of this volume, as of others in the series, is to provide a new translation of a philosophical text of Aristotle, of a kind to serve the needs of philosophers without knowledge of Greek, and a philosophical commentary. Of the five books of the Eudemian Ethics that do not overlap with the Nicomachean Ethics, the three translated in this volume are likely to be of the greatest interest to readers of the present day. This work of Aristotle's presents special difficulties to a translator, because the text is in an extremely poor state, especially in Book VIII, and in many passages it is not possible to reconstruct what Aristotle wrote with any confidence. Although in many passages at least the general sense is clear, in some cases doubts about readings are the source of uncertainty about major points of interpretation. In consequence, a large number of passages have had to be mentioned in the Notes on the Text and Translation, and I have found it necessary, for reasons of space, often simply to give the text adopted for the translation, without offering a full defence of my choice, or referring to alternative proposals. Where a point of major philosophical interest turns on the textual reading adopted, I have tried to make this clear in the Commentary. It was not possible, with this work, to take one edition of the Greek text as a base and simply note deviations. In the translation, in accordance with the policy of the series, I have aimed at producing a version as close as possible to the original, even at the cost, sometimes, of elegance and conformity to English idiom. In the Glossary are given the renderings of some of the more philosophically important Greek words and phrases. Wherever possible, a uniform rendering of a given expression has been used in the translation. It is a pleasure to record a debt of gratitude to many people with whom I have discussed Aristotle's ethics, and this work in particular, over a number of years. I benefited from attending the meetings of the Symposium Aristotelicum, held in Oosterbeek, Holland, in 1969. The late Richard Walzer made available to me his draft for an Oxford Classical Text of the E. E., making use of earlier work of the late Sir David Ross. More recently, after Walzer's death, Mr D. A. F. M. Russell has allowed me to see some further documents, including some textual proposals of his own, and comments on the suggestions of Ross and Walzer. As v PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION will be apparent from the Notes, I have often thought that these proposals were superior to anything proposed previously, and have been glad to adopt them for my translation .. I have learned a good deal from Dr A. J. P. Kenny, with whom I gave a seminar on this work in Oxford a few years ago. Although a discussion of the relative priority of the Eudemian and Nicomachean books and the problem of the 'common books' is outside the scope of this volume, I have taken account of his interpretations of a number of passages in the E.E. in his book The Aristotelian Ethics. His more recent book, Aristotle's Theory of the Will, appeared when the work for this volume was already completed. (The same is true of the new French translation of the E.E. by Vianney Decarie.) I must record a great debt to Professor J. L. Ackrill, the General Editor of this Series, who has been extremely generous with his time in reading drafts of this book and discussing them with me. He has made many suggestions for the improvement of the translation, and for making the Commentary clearer and less prolix, which in most cases I have gratefully adopted. Mr Douglas Hutchinson has also made a number of useful suggestions. Finally, I must express my gratitude to the Radcliffe Fund for a Fellowship during which much of the work for this volume was done, and to the Governing Body of Brasenose College for allowing me to accept it. MICHAEL WOODS Brasenose College, Oxford October 1979 vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION With the publication of the Oxford Classical Text (O.C.T.) of the Eudemian Ethics (R. R. Walzer and J. M. Mingay (eds.), Aristotelis Ethica Eudemia, Oxford, 1991), the opportunity has been taken to revise this Clarendon volume. In a large number of passages, I have adopted the reading of the O.C.T., in pre ference to that used in the first edition; though, since I had been given the opportunity to see a number of proposals made by Sir David Ross, Dr Richard Walzer, and Mr Donald Russell, some of the innovations had been anticipated in the first edition. As the Notes are now based on the O.C.T., and not Susemihl's text, it has been possible to delete many of those that appeared in the first edition, and, in general, there is a Note on the text translated only where I deviate from the O.C.T. A number of other changes have been made that are inde pendent of the publication of the O.C.T. I have made a number of revisions to the Translation, the Commentary, and the Notes. Some additions have been made, in particular, to the Com mentary on Book II. The Bibliography has also been revised. Some of the changes take account of some of the work on Aristotle's ethical writings that has been published in the last decade; but I have not attempted to take account systematically of the large volume of publication on this subject during that period. I have also been able to remove a number of errors, infelicities, and misprints in the original edition. I am grateful to reviewers of that edition, and, in particular, Richard Devereux in his review in Philosophical Review, 94!3 (1985). The work of revision was completed during my tenure, at the National Humanities Center, of the Walter Hines Page Fellowship of the Research Triangle Foundation, whose support I am very happy to acknowledge. MICHAEL WOODS National Humanities Center Research Triangle Park, North Carolina February 1991 VII To My Parents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION xi TRANSLATION COMMENTARY ~ NOTES ON THE TEXT AND TRANSLATION 185 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 201 GLOSSARY 205 INDEX 209 IX
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