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The Nicomachean Ethics is the first systematic description of an ethical system. It has the clearest formulation of the questions that Ethics asks: 1. How should we live? 2. Why? 3. Why is that best? Aristotle's answer to 1. is that we should avoid extremes, because (answering 2.) every extreme is evil, and (answering 3.) since the opposite of any extreme is itself an evil extreme, we must therefore avoid extremes. The book has been read by every serious ethical philosopher since history began. Because of this, every serious ethical work can (and should) be read as a dialogue with Aristotle, as he sets the rules, and then challenges, "I know of no good that crosses all the categories . . . but in each category there is one particular good." Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals is an attempt to find a normative good that crosses all categories, a "categorical imperative." Likewise Bentham's discussion of what has come to be called utilitarian ethics. Really, a most important book.

"Every art or applied science and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seem to aim at some good; the good, therefore, has been well defined as that which all things aim."

In his Ethics, Aristotle does little more than to search for and examine the "good." Aristotle examines the virtues and vices of man in all of his faculties.

Aristotle refers to three types of lives, the common life, the political life, and the contemplative life, to which he assigns the highest order. Certainly, this is the most difficult life. Similar to Plato, Aristotle believed that "the unexamined life is a life not worth living." Aristotle does nothing other to examine the life of man and what is the best life to live.

Unlike Plato, you do not need to read the entire work to walk away with some useful insight into life. Though the over 100 chapters, divided into ten books, flow and build upon each other, you can read just one of them and be benefited. Aristotle covers many different subjects such as the good, morals, virtue, vice, courage, generosity, justice, intelligence, art, science, friendship, love, pleasure, and pain.

I can not say enough for the depth of insight Aristotle has into living the good life. Nicomachean Ethics is well written and presented in a clear manner that should be accessible to most readers. This is a must read for everyone.

Whenever I read the ancient philosophical texts, which I do because I tend to believe that they're good for me and that old wisdom is sometimes (but not always) the best wisdom, I try to identify their influence on modern times and literature. One of the principal messages in the Judeo-Christian tradition is that of the importance of personal virtue, and many images and stories in this tradition instruct us by illustration either real or fictional about virtue's rewards, that he or she who acts in an acceptable manner will reap worldly (and heavenly) benefits. By somewhat of a contrast, Aristotle had contended that virtue is its own reward, that is, to be virtuous is to be happy, and he expounds this idea in the body of writings called the Nicomachean Ethics.

Defining virtue as a desirable state of character, Aristotle enumerates the different categories of virtue--courage, temperance, thrift, modesty--and proceeds to explain that the ideal human state is one that seeks the mean, or intermediate, quantity of each of these virtues, the excess or deficiency of which is called a vice. For example, a deficiency of courage, called timidity, is certainly a vice; but likewise an excess of courage, called rashness, is faulty behavior as well. (An "excess" of a virtue may sound like a good thing, but Aristotle means an excess in the sense of lacking judgment or wisdom; for example, stepping in front of a speeding car may take courage, but it is more accurately described as rashness and would not be considered by anybody to be virtuous behavior, unless there were a higher purpose in doing so, such as to save someone else's life. But rashness is at least closer to the virtuous mean than is timidity.)

To those that would say that virtue has rewards outside of itself, Aristotle might reply that virtue rather has effects or consequences. A man who attains virtue earns pride, which is the "crown of the virtues" despite the fact that in a different context it can be regarded as a deficiency of modesty, and therefore is happy. A virtuous man is likely to exercise justice (a man who performs a just act is just only if the act is voluntary) and equity (if you steal a man's watch, you owe him a watch), and this behavior wins him friendship (with other people of similar virtue, of course; evil people gain evil friends), which results in pleasure (no man is an island).

Unlike the sophists, Aristotle is not teaching virtue or dispensing advice to his students (one of whom was Alexander the soon-to-be-Great) to make them more virtuous; he is suggesting that virtue may be developed by observing the effects of our behavior, since none of us is perfect. Virtue is not a state of perfection but an understanding of how to minimize our tendency to submit to our baser impulses.