Comentarios sobre etica a nicomaco

Aristotle, C. C. W. Taylor (ed., tr.)
Nicomachean Ethics, Books II-IV
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books II-IV, C. C. W. Taylor (ed., tr.), Oxford University Press, 2006, 258pp., $39.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780198250678.
Reviewed by Allan Gotthelf, University of Pittsburgh
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In this latest addition to OUP's famous and valuable Clarendon Aristotle Series, Christopher Taylorprovides, for students and professionals alike, a helpfully close translation of, and much useful commentary on, the second, third, and fourth books of the Nicomachean Ethics.[](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29)[[1]](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29)[](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29) After providing, in my own voice, an account of the setting NE I provides for Books II-IV, an overview of the content of these three books, and some key interpretative questions regarding them, I will turn in my review first to the translation, then to the commentary,then to the introduction and back matter, and finally to an overall assessment.
_Subject Matter of, and Some Questions Regarding, NE II-IV_
NE Book I has established that the human good, happiness, is fundamentally a life of the fullest exercise of the rational part of the soul in accordance with excellence or virtue,[](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29)[[2]](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29)[](file:///\Users\agutting\Library\Caches\TemporaryItems\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29\gotthelf=taylor.doc%28T47F%29) and so can be understood in such a way as to be a successful target for action only if one understands theexcellences proper to that part of the soul (chs. 7, 13). Because, in addition to the part or capacity which "has reason and thinks" (1098a4-5), there is in the soul another part or capacity that is subject to reason, namely "the appetitive and in general desiring" part (1102b30), there are for Aristotle two sorts of excellence, "excellence of thought on the one hand and excellence of character on theother" (Book II init., tr. Taylor).
Books II-IV are about the virtues of character. They are united by a concern with understanding this sort of excellence, both in general and in its particular cases (the individual virtues), in such a way that listeners aimed at developing and manifesting a fully virtuous character across the breadth and depth of their lives are best positioned to do so. (Thevirtue of justice, though a virtue of character, is treated separately, in Book V.)
To understand virtue of character in this way requires understanding first how it develops, what the signs of its presence are, what it is for it to be manifested in action (Book II, chs. 1-4), and then what its precise definition is -- its genus as a state concerned with choice (or decision, prohairesis), andits differentia as a state that is in a mean in relation to us -- and what the particular virtues (and vices) operative in the different spheres of feeling and action in life are, and how, given all of this, and certain facts of human psychology, we can best keep ourselves directed towards the virtuous action in any context (Book II, chs. 5-9). To guide ourselves towards virtue, and to evaluatethe moral character of others, we need to understand the significant extent to which virtuous actions, and indeed a virtuous character, are up to us and are decided upon, and we need to understand, in some form, the structure of, or elements that go into, a choice or decision. We need in particular a good understanding of such phenomena as the voluntary, the involuntary, choice (or decision),...