Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle’s ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life. Aristotle (384-322BC) explored these almost two and a half thousand years ago in what became known as his Nicomachean Ethics. His audience then were the elite in Athens as, he argued, if they knew how to live their lives well then they could better rule the lives of others. While circumstances and values have changed across the centuries, Aristotle’s approach to answering those questions has fascinated philosophers ever since and continues to do so.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Angie Hobbs 25 episodes
  Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
• Roger Crisp 2 episodes
  Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, University of Oxford
• Sophia Connell 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London

Reading list

• Aristotle the Philosopher
  J.L. Ackrill (Oxford University Press, 1981) Google Books →
• Nicomachean Ethics
  Aristotle (ed. and trans. Roger Crisp) (Cambridge University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• Nicomachean Ethics
  Aristotle (trans. Terence Irwin) (Hackett Publishing Co., 2019) Google Books →
• Nicomachean Ethics: Loeb Classical Library
  Aristotle (trans. H. Rackham) (William Heinemann Ltd, 1962) Google Books →
• Aristotle: Past Masters series
  Jonathan Barnes (Oxford University Press, 1982) Google Books →
• Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
  Gerard J. Hughes (Routledge, 2013) Google Books →
• The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
  Richard Kraut (ed.) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005) Google Books →
• Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction
  Michael Pakaluk (Cambridge University Press, 2005) Google Books →
• Essays on Aristotle's Ethics
  A. Rorty (ed.) (University of California Press, 1981) Google Books →
• The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue
  Nancy Sherman (Clarendon Press, 1989) Google Books →
• Aristotle's Ethics
  J.O. Urmson (John Wiley & Sons, 1988) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Aristotle’s Politics
  
  6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science
• Happiness
  
  24 Jan, 2002 100 Philosophy
• Aristotle’s Biology
  
  7 Feb, 2019 570 Biology
• Virtue
  
  28 Feb, 2002 170 Ethics
• Aristotle’s Poetics
  
  27 Jan, 2011 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Epicureanism
  
  7 Feb, 2013 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Friendship
  
  2 Mar, 2006 170 Ethics
• The Examined Life
  
  9 May, 2002 100 Philosophy
• Plato’s Gorgias
  
  25 Nov, 2021 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• The Consolations of Philosophy
  
  1 Jan, 2009 100 Philosophy

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: m001rylh

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rylh

Auto-category: 170 (Ethics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, what is happiness and how do we live a good life?