CUP (2015) p/b 310pp £19.99 (ISBN 9781107540934)
This volume traces the changing fortunes of A.’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) over the centuries by comparing him with a range of moral philosophers from immediately after A.’s death up to the twentieth century. It does not pretend to be comprehensive (fans of Hegel will be disappointed). Each chapter was written by a different expert, and these authors were given the freedom to choose which material to discuss. The result is that you never know quite what you are going to get. The chapter on the Renaissance is for example an essentially historical survey of the broadening of Aristotle’s appeal beyond the universities with minimal discussion of the doctrines of the NE (beyond noting that A.’s discussion of magnificence, the Renaissance virtue par excellence, had a particular impact). In contrast, the chapter on Buridan, while telling the story of how Buridan’s commentary dominated the university curriculum for three hundred years, explores the manner in which Buridan uses Seneca and his elevated conception of a divine element in us as a way to emphasise the more mundane and realistic world of the NE.
Although for this reason any general themes of this volume emerge by accident, the reader cannot help but be impressed by the sheer resilience of the NE as a core text of European thought. Time and again when all seems lost the hero emerges from the swamp. The scientific revolution in the seventeenth century came with a huge reaction against Aristotelian thought. But even as this was happening, a fervent anti-Aristotelian, Thomas Hobbes, was in his Leviathan adapting the framework of Aristotelian ethics in order to work out the answer to the question of how men could enjoy life alongside each other (itself an Aristotelian question). Similarly in the nineteenth century, Darwinism was seen to discredit the Aristotelian project of moral theorizing. Bertrand Russell declared that to a man of any depth of feeling, A.’s ethics cannot but be repulsive. Even Sir Alexander Grant, whose translation and commentaries on the NE were the standard text in Oxford for many years, declared that they were of no value in comparison with modern scientific accounts. Nevertheless A. eventually came back into fashion largely as a reaction to the sterility of the conceptual analysis that ruled the roost in British and American philosophy departments in first half of the twentieth century.
This book addresses a neglected area of study and the quality of the contributions is high. I recommend it to anyone with a broad interest in ethical theory or the history of ideas.
Alan Towey