Aristotle's two accounts of the nature of happiness in Nicomachean Ethics i and x have caused much disagreement concerning the precise constitution of human goodness, or happiness (eudaimonia). While all may agree that happiness is an activity of the soul, the question remains concerning the exact relation between the moral and intellectual virtues, or the practical and theoretical life. H. G. Gadamer here notes the tension in the two accounts:

Even as astute a reader of Aristotle as Gadamer has difficulty in determining the importance of some human accomplishments in relation to others. The assertion that both practical wisdom (phronesis) and intellectual wisdom (sophia) comprise the supreme good, and that both must be considered as the highest virtue, needs careful consideration. The uncertainty concerning the relation between the practical and the theoretical has a firm basis in Aristotle's text, and Gadamer's approach seems close to what Aristotle may have intended.

In the last chapters of the N.E. Aristotle praises the perfection of the intellect, the purely rational part of the soul, as the highest human achievement. This is the clearest expression of the supremacy of the theoretical life, and its dominant role in the production of happiness. If contemplation is supreme, then all other actions and pursuits must be directed toward the contemplative life. Only contemplative activity would merit the designation ‘supremely good’, since it not only perfects the best part of human beings, but its objects are also knowable in themselves (1177a19–22). Contemplation is the most continuous, independent and self-sufficient of human accomplishments, since it demands nothing outside the intellectual fervor and excellence of the contemplative. Aristotle can think of nothing more desirable than the pleasure of contemplating truth (1177a23).

Aristotle's ethics are the most important in the history of Western philosophy. However, precisely how his ethics have mattered over the centuries has varied enormously. Additionally, present knowledge of Aristotle's influence on his successors ranges widely. There is much to be said about both the significance of Aristotle's ethics for his successors and the spectrum of effects they had on them. The essays collected in the present volume speak to precisely these issues.

In this brief introduction, I want to prepare readers for the essays by elaborating on the general orientation of the volume. I shall also explain the criteria used for selecting philosophers or philosophical eras to include in the book. Finally, I shall say a little about the contributors themselves. Something I will not attempt is a summary of the contents of the chapters. While the details will obviously vary, the basic thrust or main aim of the thirteen chapters is highly similar. I will present this common aim here and let readers go to the chapters for the details.

So let me begin with the general orientation of the volume. It aims to provide an account of Aristotle’s reception from ancient times to the near present. It does so by pairing Aristotle with thirteen of his successors. These successors vary from philosophical eras to individual philosophers. In all cases, the accounts given include Rezeptionsgeschichte and conceptual analysis. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, I should explain how they are used in the present instance.

Overview

What did Roman philosophy make of Aristotle's ethical writings and teachings? More precisely, what role did Aristotle's ethics play in the most active period of Classical Roman philosophical culture, the first centuries bc and ad? This is the core question tackled in this chapter. However, to give any sensible answer to this question, it needs to be put in perspective. What we call “Roman philosophy” is, in large measure, the Roman reception of Greek philosophy, especially that of the preceding Hellenistic period. During this period, philosophical inquiry and debate was taken forward not only by Roman aristocrats such as Cicero and Seneca, but also by Greek teachers and writers who were often dependent on Roman political and economic patronage. Greek thinkers, both before and during this period, played a crucial part in setting the intellectual agenda that shaped the way Romans understood philosophy in this period. Hence, the topic for this chapter is better conceived as the reception of Aristotle's ethics in Greco-Roman intellectual life of the late Roman Republic and early Empire.

What period, precisely, is being covered in this chapter? The Hellenistic age is conventionally regarded as ending in 31 bc, a date defined in political terms, the battle of Actium, which established the start of Augustus’ rule of the Roman Empire. But scholars now tend to see the period 100 bc–ad 200 as forming a relatively determinate era, sometimes called the ‘post-Hellenistic’ period. This period forms a transition between the emergence of the main Hellenistic movements (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Academic Skepticism) in the third and second centuries bc and the four centuries (ad 200–600) dominated by the commentators on Plato and Aristotle. Two salient events falling within this period were Sulla's sack of Athens in 87 bc and the establishment of four chairs for the leading schools of philosophy (Aristotelianism, Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism) by Marcus Aurelius at Athens in ad 176. The first event brought about the closure of the philosophical schools (as formal institutions) at Athens and the movement of many intellectuals and writings to Rome.

The Graeco-Arabic translation movement

In one of his works of literary criticism, the Syrian scholar Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī (1297–1363) included a short passage which has attracted the attention of modern scholars studying the Greek legacy of Arabic intellectual culture. The passage begins with a statement concerning the interest of the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn (reg. 813–33) in Greek books which he had translated into Arabic. As is well known though, Ṣafadī continues, the first person who produced such translations was the Umayyad prince Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya (c. 668–c. 704 or 709) who had a passionate interest in alchemy. Most modern scholars agree that this pioneering role of Khālid is not more than a legend. Nevertheless, Ṣafadī's account includes a number of details which find ample confirmation in independent sources.

Neither Ṣafadī nor any other medieval author provided a more comprehensive explanation why the Abbasid caliphs should have been interested in having Greek works on philosophy and science translated into Arabic. Modern scholars have speculated about their motivations. Some explanations emphasize practical benefits of scientific works as a starting point. Once they had a taste of the ancient sciences, the Arabs continued to translate. Another explanation focuses on intellectual curiosity and the challenge which the philosophical systems of ancient Greece may have presented. Related to this is the suggestion that philosophical methods of arguing were convenient for the emerging class of Muslim theologians who defended their religious doctrines against Christians and other non-Muslims.

The best place to begin is with what is uncontroversial. Except for the Politics, the entire Aristotelian corpus was available in Arabic in the ninth century and formed part of the intellectual heritage of Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known to English-speaking audiences as Maimonides. In a letter written in Arabic to Samuel ibn Tibbon, his Hebrew translator, Maimonides claims that with the exception of those gifted with prophetic inspiration, Aristotle's intellectual achievement represents the extreme of the human intellect. This sentiment is repeated in the Guide of the Perplexed (henceforth: Guide), when he refers to Aristotle, albeit obliquely, as “chief of the philosophers” (1.5.29).

But when it comes to the Nicomachean Ethics in particular, Maimonides’ familiarity with Aristotle is open to question. It is now generally agreed that the inspiration for “Eight Chapters,” a section taken from his Commentary on the Mishnah and often published as a free-standing essay, is not Aristotle but Alfarabi's Aphorisms of the Statesman. Although there are several references to the N.E. in the Guide, two are incorrect and three deal with Aristotle on the sense of touch.

In his Life of Plotinus (14, 4–14), Plotinus’ pupil Porphyry lists the authors whom Plotinus read in the philosophical group gathered around him in Rome between ad 245 and 269. This list includes various Platonist and Aristotelian commentators of the Roman imperial period (the Aristotelians Aspasius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Adrastus are named). Porphyry also claims that much Stoic and Aristotelian doctrine is hidden in the works of Plotinus, in particular Aristotle's Metaphysics. Such information might lead us to infer that other works of Aristotle, besides the Metaphysics, were read in Plotinus’ school, including the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.), and that, since both Aspasius and Alexander had commented on this work of Aristotle, perhaps their commentaries on it were also known to Plotinus. We also know that Porphyry himself had commented on a work on Aristotelian ethics, perhaps the N.E. But can we be sure that these inferences are reliable?

If we use the list of references to Aristotle's N.E. given in Henry and Schwyzer's critical edition of Plotinus’ Enneads, we find, in checking the corresponding passages in Plotinus’ text, that the editors appear to identify some of these passages as quotations taken from the N.E. and others as containing ideas already to be found in Aristotle's text. This would seem to be good evidence that Plotinus read and discussed the N.E. in the meetings of his school. However, on closer inspection, one might wonder. As an example, we might take what is printed by Henry and Schwyzer as a quotation from the beginning of N.E. (1.1, 1094a2–3) in Plotinus’ Ennead 1.7, 1, 22: “for so the statement is true that it is that ‘to which everything aspires.’” Plotinus cites this statement as confirming the argument which precedes it and which seeks to establish an absolute metaphysical Good transcending all being. The statement is also cited by Aristotle at the beginning of the N.E. as confirmed by the way in which all (human) art, action, and choice are directed to some good. The statement is thus quoted, both by Aristotle and by Plotinus, in support of two very different positions, one concerning the human good, the other a metaphysical absolute Good. It is probably but not necessarily the case that Plotinus read this statement in N.E.; he could also have found it in some intermediary source, for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias.

That Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics casts a long shadow over the history of philosophy goes without saying. That its influence continues to be felt among philosophers in the seventeenth century, particularly those recognized as quintessentially modern thinkers, is a more contentious proposition whose affirmation requires considerable qualification and argument. Textbook accounts of early modern philosophy emphasize its sharp break, especially in natural philosophy and metaphysics, with the doctrines of Aristotle. In part, this is a result of taking at face value the rhetoric of early modern figures who stress their independence and distance from Aristotle. More often than not, however, what these figures are eager to reject is not so much the content of Aristotle's own texts, as the accretions of commentary on Aristotelian doctrines that comprise the body of scholastic philosophy, along with the methods of commentary and disputation on which that tradition relies. The imperative of the moderns is to address head-on the problems that nature has set for us, not X's criticisms of Y's interpretation of Aristotle's answer to a given problem. There are, to be sure, places at which characteristically modern accounts of matter, mind and causation directly challenge the content of Aristotle's theories. Yet even here there has been a growing recognition of the danger of reading seventeenth-century philosophers as monolithic in their rejection of central Aristotelian doctrines, such as teleology and hylomorphism.

The early moderns’ relation to Aristotle's practical philosophy, and especially his ethics, has received much less attention in the literature, and consequently suffers less from the weight of received opinion. In part, this reflects the fact that until recently relatively little attention had been devoted to the practical side of early modern philosophy, as against topics in epistemology and metaphysics, and to a lesser degree natural philosophy. In the domains of ethics and political philosophy, there are obvious places at which seventeenth-century philosophers stress their disagreement with Aristotle: Gassendi's qualified defense of Epicureanism; Hobbes's arguments for the artificiality of justice and the state; the movement in Grotius, Pufendorf, Cumberland and Locke toward a conception of morality founded on law rather than virtue. In these ways and others, we find the development of alternative conceptions of moral philosophy in the early modern period, which stand opposed to the teachings of the Nicomachean Ethics and are consequential for the subsequent development of the discipline.