How to Read Nicomachean Ethics: Themes, Structure and Questions to Ask

What the Nicomachean Ethics is, and why it is still read

The Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle's major work on how to live well, written in the fourth century BCE and probably connected with his teaching at the Lyceum in Athens. It reads like lecture material rather than a polished book, which explains its compressed style, its restarts and its habit of surveying other people's views before giving its own. The name is traditionally linked to Aristotle's son Nicomachus, though exactly why is uncertain.

Its question is practical: what is the best life for a human being, and what kind of person must you become to live it? Aristotle's answer centers on eudaimonia, usually translated happiness or flourishing. Unlike Plato in the Republic, he grounds ethics less in knowledge of abstract Forms than in habit, character and good judgment about particular situations.

It is still read because it shaped how people talk about character. Modern virtue ethics, one of the main approaches in moral philosophy, starts from this book, and its accounts of habit, friendship and practical wisdom are discussed well beyond philosophy departments.

How the Nicomachean Ethics is structured

The work has ten books, each divided into short chapters. Scholars cite it by Bekker numbers, which give the page, column and line of a nineteenth-century edition of Aristotle; most translations print them in the margin. Books V–VII also appear in Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, which is one reason they can feel slightly separate from the rest.

• Book I: the highest good is happiness, and the function argument defines it as the soul's activity in accordance with virtue.
• Book II: virtue of character comes from habit and is a mean between excess and deficiency.
• Book III: voluntary action, choice and deliberation, then courage and temperance.
• Book IV: the remaining virtues of character, from generosity and greatness of soul to truthfulness and wit.
• Book V: justice, distributive and corrective, and equity as a correction to law.
• Book VI: the virtues of thought, with practical wisdom at the center.
• Book VII: weakness of will, self-control and a first discussion of pleasure.
• Books VIII–IX: friendship, its three kinds and its place in a good life.
• Book X: pleasure again, contemplation as the highest happiness, and a bridge to the study of politics.

Main themes in the Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle returns to a handful of themes from different angles. Each one below names the books where you can watch it develop.

• Happiness is an activity, not a feeling. Book I says one good day no more makes a happy life than one swallow makes a spring, and admits that fortune and a complete life still matter.
• Character is made, not born. Book II argues that we become just by doing just acts, as builders become builders by building, which is why upbringing and law matter so much.
• Ethics cannot be reduced to rules. Book I warns that the subject allows only rough precision, and Book VI makes practical wisdom, not a formula, the judge of what each situation requires.
• Humans are social. Books VIII–IX insist that even a happy person needs friends, and Book X hands the inquiry over to politics and lawmaking.
• Pleasure is not the enemy. Books VII and X tie it closely to activity, and Book X says pleasure completes an activity, so the good person enjoys acting well.
• Contemplation crowns the good life. Book X ranks the life of the intellect highest and the life of practical virtue second, which has long puzzled readers of the earlier books.

Key ideas in the Nicomachean Ethics, with examples

A few ideas do most of the work. The doctrine of the mean is easiest to grasp through Aristotle's own examples, so the table at the end of this section pairs each virtue with its two vices; names vary between translations, so match them to your edition.

How to read the Nicomachean Ethics: a practical plan

Because the text began as teaching material, it often states a conclusion before the argument for it or returns to a topic after a gap. Read a few chapters per sitting, with notes beside you; the two-column layout of the Cornell note-taking method works well, with Aristotle's argument in the main column and your own questions and examples in the cue column.

1. 1Read Book I, chapters 1–7, twice. The function argument in the second half of chapter 7 is the base everything else stands on.
2. 2Start a glossary of key terms (happiness, virtue, choice, practical wisdom) and add your translator's alternatives as you meet them.
3. 3When Aristotle lists other people's views, mark which he accepts, which he corrects and which he rejects.
4. 4For each virtue in Books III–IV, write a modern example of the mean and of both vices, drawn from your own life.
5. 5Read Book VI alongside Book II; virtue of character and practical wisdom only make full sense together.
6. 6Treat Books VIII–IX as a test of the theory: does the account of friendship fit your own friendships?
7. 7Finish by comparing Book X's praise of contemplation with Book I's account of happiness, and decide whether they agree.

Questions to ask about the Nicomachean Ethics

Use these to prepare for discussion or to frame an essay; the argumentative essay guide shows how to turn one into a claim you can defend.

• Does the function argument work? Is there really one function that belongs to humans as such?
• If the mean is relative to us, does it give practical guidance, or does it only say to do the right thing?
• How can you become good by habit if choosing good acts already requires being good?
• Is greatness of soul, as Aristotle describes it, a virtue or a refined kind of pride?
• Does Book VII's account of weakness of will really answer Socrates?
• Why does a book about virtue spend two whole books on friendship?
• Can a person be happy without good fortune, health or friends, on Aristotle's view? Do you agree?
• How does Book X's praise of contemplation fit the earlier focus on action and character?
• Which parts depend on the world Aristotle wrote for, a small class of free male citizens, and which apply more widely?

Choosing a translation of the Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle's technical vocabulary makes the choice matter. Check how each version renders the key terms: eudaimonia as happiness or flourishing, arete as virtue or excellence, phronesis as practical wisdom or prudence. A good edition explains its choices in a glossary and prints Bekker numbers in the margin.

Terence Irwin's translation for Hackett is precise, with extensive notes and a glossary. Roger Crisp's for Cambridge is clear and compact. W. D. Ross's older version, revised in later Oxford editions, is still widely cited. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins's for the University of Chicago Press stays close to the Greek, and Joe Sachs's is deliberately unconventional in its word choices. If you are new to Aristotle, an introduction and chapter summaries matter more than the closest possible rendering.