Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's ideas on what happiness means and how to live a good life. Aristotle (384-322BC) explored these almost two and a half thousand years ago in what became known as his Nicomachean Ethics. His audience then were the elite in Athens as, he argued, if they knew how to live their lives well then they could better rule the lives of others. While circumstances and values have changed across the centuries, Aristotle's approach to answering those questions has fascinated philosophers ever since and continues to do so.
With
Angie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
Roger Crisp Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
And
Sophia Connell Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 1981)
Aristotle (ed. and trans. Roger Crisp), Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Aristotle (trans. Terence Irwin), Nicomachean Ethics (Hackett Publishing Co., 2019) Aristotle (trans. H. Rackham), Nicomachean Ethics: Loeb Classical Library (William Heinemann Ltd, 1962)
Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle: Past Masters series (Oxford University Press, 1982)
Gerard J. Hughes, Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Routledge, 2013)
Richard Kraut (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)
Michael Pakaluk, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
A. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (University of California Press, 1981)
Nancy Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue (Clarendon Press, 1989)
J.O. Urmson, Aristotle’s Ethics (John Wiley & Sons, 1988)
The Nibelungenlied
The Challenger Expedition 1872-1876
Demosthenes' Philippics
Bauhaus
The Morant Bay Rebellion
Wilfred Owen
The Fish-Tetrapod Transition
Berthe Morisot
The Knights Templar
The Electron
Plato's Atlantis
Nineteen Eighty-Four
John Bull
Angkor Wat
Dylan Thomas
The Death of Stars
Hegel's Philosophy of History
Comenius
Tang Era Poetry
The Davidian Revolution
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
History Extra podcast
Empire
Economist Podcasts
The Intelligence from The Economist
Not Just the Tudors