Sophia in the Eudemian Ethics1

Abstract

My 1971 monograph argued that the Nicomachean Ethics could be shown to be a reworking and amplification of its Eudemian cousin, a thesis that included at least two of the so-called “common” books NE V–VII, which appear in the majority of our manuscripts also as Eudemian IV–VI. According to my argument, at least NE V and VII, along with I–IV and VIII–X, contained a Eudemian core, as it were, while NE VI was a new addition, including as it did a new treatment of the intellectual excellence of phronêsis, i.e. practical wisdom, quite distinct from its treatment in the undisputed Eudemian books. Few have been persuaded by this thesis, and I now think it mistaken, even while not abandoning my general view of the relationship between the two treatises: what we call the five books of the EE are earlier, and what we call the NE is essentially built on those five books plus other material which no longer exists except as contained within NE V and VII and no doubt other “Nicomachean” books. But while for the most part the undisputed Eudemian books work with a notion of practical wisdom identical to that found in the NE, I claim in this chapter that the five Eudemians display a noticeable lack of interest in the contrast, central to the Nicomachean from beginning to end, between practical wisdom, phronêsis, on the one hand, and sophia or theoretical wisdom, on the other. Inter alia, this supports my conclusion in 1971 that NE VI, which centres on that contrast, is not related to the project we label as “Eudemian” in the same way as the other “Nicomachean” books – which would create a significant obstacle in the way of the increasing tendency to treat NE V–VII as a whole as common to both works. The chapter ends by raising fundamental questions about what exactly an Aristotelian “treatise” is.