Introduction to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

This book provides a balanced and accessible introduction to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. It carefully and comprehensively follows the thread of Aristotle’s argument and sheds light on topics that all too often receive little attention or are entirely ignored in the existing textbooks (such as self-control, legislative science and the legislator, the life of the money-maker, craft-knowledge, comprehension, and beastliness).

Its objective is not only to offer an academically reliable presentation of Aristotle’s Ethics but to also defend Aristotle’s main tenets—or, at least, to present them in their most defensible form.


It places the Nicomachean Ethics within the study of ethics generally; students are invited to understand Aristotle’s claims in the light of, or in contrast to, other ethical theories or their own intuitions about ethical matters.


It follows the reader of the Nicomachean Ethics in action, registering questions, expectations and progress within an insightful exegesis of Aristotle's philosophical argument.

It is replete with pedagogical tools including examples from our concrete everyday experience, paintings, films, and literature, end of chapter summaries, internet resources, suggestions for further reading, study questions, and essay questions.

Pavlos Kontos is Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Patras, Greece. He has held Visiting Positions at several universities in Europe, China, and USA. He was a Humboldt Fellow, a Senior Visiting Scholar of the Onassis Foundation in USA, the W.J. Bouwsma Fellow at the National Humanities Center, and an International Visiting Fellow at Stanford University. He is the author of Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason (2021) and the editor of Evil in Aristotle (2018).