How should we live? This question lies at the core of what it means to be human. In volume I we explore the “best which has been thought and said” from the dawn of civilization through the fall of Rome. Today’s session is on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:

The Nicomachean Ethics is explicitly devoted to the question of The Great Conversation, “How should we live?” Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) formalizes and extends the ethical analyses of his teacher Plato and of Plato’s teacher Socrates. What are we looking for in life? What can make us happy? Is there such a thing as an excellent way to be human? What is friendship, without which who would want to live?