Aristotle's Ethics as First Philosophy

In Aristotle's Ethics as First Philosophy Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle's thinking. Referring to a broad range of texts from the Aristotelian corpus, Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and specifically, how one's encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos. Such a 'modern' intimation can, thus, be found at the heart of Greek thought. Baracchi's book opens the way for a comprehensively reconfigured approach to classical Greek philosophy.

Introduction; Part I. Prelude: Before Ethics: Metaphysics A and Posterior Analytics B; 1. Metaphysics A: on 'metaphysics' and desire; 2. Posterior analytics: on Nous and Aisthesis; 3. Architecture as first philosophy; Part II. Main Section: Ethikon Nikomakheion Alpha-Eta: 4. Human initiative and its orientation to the good; 5. On happiness; 6. On the soul; 7. On justice; 8. The virtues of the intellect; Part III. Interlude: Metaphysics Gamma: 9. Aporiai of the science of 'being qua being'; 10. The principle 'by nature'; 11. Reiterations; 12. Teleology, indefinable and indubitable; 13. The phenomenon of truth and the action of thinking; Part IV. Concluding Section: Ethikon Nikomakheion Theta-Kappa; 14. Friendship and justice: inceptive remarks; 15. Perfection and friendship; 16. Again on friendship and justice; 17. On happiness or the good; 18. Again on Logos and Praxis; Part V. Kolophon.

In this 2008 book, Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle's thinking. Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and specifically, how one's encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos.

Claudia Baracchi is a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Università di Milano-Bicocca, Italy and the author of Of Myth, Life, and War in Plato's Republic.