Paula Gottlieb (Wisconsin)  Aristotle's ethics: Nichomachean and Eudemian themes An examination of the philosophical themes presented in Aristotle's Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. Topics include happiness, the voluntary and choice, the doctrine of the mean, particular virtues of character and temperamental means, virtues of thought, akrasia, pleasure, friendship, and luck. Special attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of virtues of character and thought and their relation to happiness, the reason why Aristotle is the quintessential virtue ethicist. The virtues of character have not received the attention they deserve in most discussions of the relationship between the two treatises. Table of Contents Introduction 1. Happiness 2. Virtue of Character and the Doctrine of the Mean 3. The Voluntary and Choice 4. Virtues of Character and Temperamental Means 5. Justice 6. Virtues of Thought 7. Akrasia and Pleasure 8. Friendship 9. Sophistic Puzzles, the Kaloskagathos, and Luck 10. Happiness Revisited Conclusion. Glossary of Key Terms References Transcript Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Philosophy Podcasts, where we interview leading philosophers about their recent work. Today, I am pleased to be speaking with, Professor Paula Gottlieb. She was educated at Oxford and Cornell. She's the author of, The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics (2009), Aristotle on Thought and Feeling (2021). And the book we'll talk about today is, Aristotle's Ethics, Nicomachean & Eudemian Themes (2022). Those are all Cambridge University press. Paula Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy and the Affiliate Professor of Classical & Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Welcome, professor. Professor Paula Gottlieb: Thank you. Good to be with you. Speaker 1: Thank you. People have for thousands of years turned to Aristotle to help think about how to lead a happy life. I guess, the first question is, it's rhetorical, but if you could address it. One might think, a skeptic might say, "Well, why go back 2000 years? There are plenty of authors who are writing books about how to live your life today." What would be the advantage of going back so far? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Well, I think that a lot of modern philosophers do go back to Aristotle when they start thinking about happiness. Very often, they use Aristotle to support some more modern view, or they read back some modern views into Aristotle. And I take a different tack about the way we should think about reading ancient philosophers. I don't think, for example, Andrew Melnyk, that all the good bits of Aristotle have already been taken up by later philosophers, so we don't need to look at him anymore. Professor Paula Gottlieb: I think that there's a lot of interest going on there, and quite often it's things that we may not be still thinking about now, that's of interest. And I certainly take your point, you might wonder, "Why are we reading a dead, white man, who doesn't include women or enslaved people or whatever, in his discussion?" But I think we do look to say, the founding fathers and seeing them sort of interesting or maybe crucial ideas for today, even if they didn't see, I mean, they didn't fully grasp the insights of their own work. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I was actually going to ask you about that later, but maybe we could go to it now. As we talk later, we'll talk about virtues of character and virtues of thought, and I was kind of wondering what Aristotle's view on that would be. Would he say that to be a great philosopher, a great thinker, you need to be a great man also, or a person, and if you don't, that's a good sign that if there's an inconsistency there, that's a problem? Professor Paula Gottlieb: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, Aristotle does distinguish sort of theoretical thinking from practical thinking. And on my understanding anyway, he doesn't think that you need a great deal of abstract theoretical thinking in