I like to tell students in my undergraduate ancient philosophy class that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is a sort of self-help book.  I think this is a fair description given that the major thrust of Aristotle’s ancient text is to help its readers understand what happiness means and just what is required in order to obtain it in our lifetimes.  On the other hand, my description is a bit of a stretch in the sense that the Nicomachean Ethics is a notoriously densely argued and poorly edited text.  It just doesn’t seem suitable for the audience that most self-help books are meant to reach.  Reeve’s Aristotle on Practical Wisdom can help some make better sense of Aristotle’s work.

C.D.C. Reeve is an accomplished scholar.  His commentaries on and translations of ancient classics are often cited and well-respected.  I often choose to use his translations in my ancient philosophy course because of their balance between readability and scholarship.  Readers of this review should make no mistake about it.  Aristotle on Practical Wisdom is not meant for a general reading audience.  Reeve is a philosopher’s philosopher, a scholar’s scholar.  This book is a masterful work of scholarship.  Reeve’s claim that the aim of the book is to make Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics “accessible to a wide range of readers” (ix) requires qualification.  The range of readers that might find this book accessible would likely be limited to those readers who have some substantial experience reading philosophy, ancients texts in general, and in particular those who have some experience with and interest in Aristotle.  I believe students would require some assistance with this book from an experienced guide.

Reeve describes this book as a “companion volume” to his earlier Action, Contemplation, and Happiness: An Essay on Aristotle.  The current 280-page book is divided into three main parts.  First, there is a general introduction which offers an overview of the whole work as well as some helpful context by which one can situate the Nicomachean Ethics within Aristotle’s broader scholarly concerns.  Second, there is a “translation and analysis” of Book VI of the Ethics.  Third, making up the bulk of the Reeve’s book, is the more or less line by line “commentary” on Book VI of the Ethics.

Aristotle’s approach to ethics is at odds with much modern and contemporary thinking.  To oversimplify matters, many non-philosophers believe that ethics is all about emotion, with rationality have little to do with it.   Many philosophers, in contrast, believe just the opposite, that ethics has everything to do with rationality while emotion can just muddle things.  Aristotle is famous for his third way, that reason and emotion are both intimately intertwined in ethical decision-making.   Just as mathematics or medicine, for example, utilizes certain kinds of reason, ethics, too, according to Aristotle, needs a certain sort of reason.  As Reeve says, the “major aim of Nicomachean Ethics VI is to define the relevant type of correct reason (orthos logos)” (1), required by ethical thinking.

As I said, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics makes for a difficult read.  And Book VI of that work might be the most difficult part of that difficult work.  So it’s fitting that Reeve dedicates an entire volume that tries to sort things out.  Some of the questions that arise in Book VI that scholars debate include just what sort of reason is practical wisdom (the type of reason that Aristotle claims is required of ethical thinking)?  In other words, what sets this kind of reason apart from other types of reason (like that used in the sciences, for example)?  Is Aristotle’s ethical thinking concerned only with means and not ends (thereby rendering it susceptible to charges of relativism of one sort or another)?  Does Aristotle’s ethics abandon the notion of the use of action-guiding principles in favor of the cultivating an appropriate emotional demeanor or virtues of character?  Reeve’s extensive discussion Aristotle’s understanding and use of the syllogism is a significant contribution to the settling of this latter issue.

One way to judge the success of a scholarly book is to measure its accomplishments against the author’s own stated aim.  To this point, Reeve says, this “book is a presentation and discussion of the account of practical wisdom (phronêsis) that Aristotle gives in Nicomachean Ethics Book VI.  Its aim is to make this important but rather complex and opaque text accessible to a wide range of readers” (ix).  I’ve already mentioned above how this claim must be qualified.  But more importantly, I believe Reeve is exactly right when he says that what he has provided with Aristotle on Practical Wisdom “is one–as I hope–credible and intelligible guide to this astonishing text.  The guide, like the key to all mythologies, will never exist” (x).  Anyone with a serious interest in Aristotle’s approach to ethics should all of Reeve’s work in this area, including this book.

© 2013 Ben Mulvey

Ben Mulvey, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Arts and Sciences of Nova Southeastern University.  He received his doctorate in philosophy from Michigan State University specializing in political theory and applied ethics.  He teaches philosophy at NSU and is a member of the board of advisors of the Florida Bioethics Network.