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Part III - Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2013

Martha C. Nussbaum
Martha C. Nussbaum
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’

That with which people most continuously associate – the discourse that orders everything – with this they are at variance; and what they encounter every day seems strange to them.

Although the discourse is shared (xunou), most people live as if they had a private understanding.

The person who speaks with understanding (xun noōi) must insist upon what is shared (xunōi) by all, as a city insists upon its law.

Heraclitus, DK 72, 2, 114
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The Fragility of Goodness
Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
 , pp. 235 - 236
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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