Great Ethics — Magna Moralia
Two books present an ethics of virtue, action and happiness in relatively compressed form. The work revisits Aristotelian problems, but its arrangement and formulations raise the possibility of a school composition.
Understanding the text
Direct authorship remains controversial; a Peripatetic origin explains its place in the corpus without settling its author.
Transmitted under Aristotle’s name; personal authorship is disputed or rejected.
Key points
- 01
Virtue
Dispositions of character concern regulated ways of experiencing passions and performing actions.
- 02
Deliberation
Decision concerns what depends on the agent and requires coordination between reason and desire.
- 03
Comparison
Differences from the other Ethics illuminate the transmission and reformulation of philosophical teaching.
How to read it
Read a chapter on courage or friendship alongside the other Ethics and resist automatically harmonizing the three works.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗