Historically, women have occupied a subordinate position, with marriage and family structures perpetuating their social and economic dependence on men. The long struggle for women’s liberation has centered on securing access to education, employment opportunities, and social and economic independence as foundations for social status. Within this trajectory, feminist activists have played a pivotal role, with Mary Wollstonecraft emerging as a key figure who emphasized women’s social responsibilities and argued that, by virtue of their rational capacities, women merit equal recognition in society. Her advocacy for equality within the family structure was particularly influential in proposing that the Aristotelian concept of high-level friendship be applied to marriage—identified as “companionate marriage”—thereby positioning egalitarian marital relationships as a pathway to women’s greater status and equality. In the contemporary context, women’s increased empowerment and capacity for independent action, including greater willingness to leave marriages that no longer serve their interests, signal the autonomy they have gained but also raise questions about the rising incidence of divorce. This study examines the historical concept of marriage as a form of high-level friendship—originally advanced as a means of promoting gender equality—and investigates its potential application as a strategy for addressing contemporary divorce in a society where women are increasingly empowered. Conducted as a qualitative study using secondary data, it analyzes the notion of friendship as articulated in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Nicomachean Ethics. The findings indicate that Mary Wollstonecraft’s model for women’s advancement remains normatively robust and socially relevant, providing a conceptual framework for reimagining marriage as an egalitarian partnership that can respond to current gender and relational tensions. This philosophical exploration of divorce further underscores the need to dismantle patriarchal ideologies embedded in social structures so that marriage can function as a space of mutual respect, reciprocity, and shared flourishing.

Abstract This study focuses on Michael of Ephesus’s contribution to the interpretation of Aristotelian ethics. After a description of Michael’s life and work, we examine his understanding of the notion of happiness as it appears in the Nicomachean Ethics , book X , chapters 6 to 9. The main claim of this paper is that Michael holds an integrated view of happiness, so that his commentary remains Aristotelian, despite the prevalent reading that tends to consider his work as strictly intellectualistic.

Abstract This commentary situates Louis Rodrigue’s paper “Michael of Ephesus’s Commentary on Chapters 6 to 9 of the Tenth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics ” in the context of recent scholarship. It looks at several factors in Michael’s intellectual environment which may have played a role in his reading of the Nicomachean Ethics . It suggests that a more differentiated account of Neoplatonic anthropology might bring out key aspects of Michael’s position and proposes that a more explicit confrontation with the question of Michael’s argument on the immortality of soul (particularly in light of his intellectual debt to Alexander of Aphrodisias) might contribute to a more complete account of Michael’s view of the good life. Finally, it finds Rodrigue’s arguments important and compelling.

While the enumeration of potential sources of virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics, X, 10, 1179b20-25 seems to set nature aside as a factor that does not depend on us, Aristotle mentions it again in the Politics. In book VII 13, Aristotle answers the question, “how does an individual become virtuous?” by saying that virtue is acquired through three elements: nature, habit and reason (φύσις, ἔθος, λόγος). The aim of this article is to clarify the importance of nature in the acquisition and development of virtue in Aristotle’s ethics through the study of the concepts of natural virtue (ἀρετὴ φυσική) and good nature (εὐφυΐα), which will allow us to show how Aristotle affirms the existence of a natural virtue, which is not the same for everyone and which, from birth, places human beings more or less far along in their ethical path towards virtue. I argue that εὐφυΐα is the highest form of natural virtue because it closely resembles virtue in the proper sense (ἀρετὴ κυρία).

This paper examines the fundamental spiritual relevance of friendship which philosophers, poets, theologians, and artists have already engaged with deeply throughout time. In several previous studies, I have examined the ideal of friendship primarily in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. For this paper, by contrast, I will examine how friendship was dealt with in the age of Enlightenment, probably best expressed in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s last play, Nathan the Wise (1779). Here, true friendship overcomes all religious barriers and achieves a virtually spiritual bond among people and thus also with the divine dimension sustaining this ideal. Friendship thereby emerges as the critical catalyst to transform toleration – a grudging acceptance of difference – into true tolerance – the highest ideal in human life at least as perceived by Humanists and members of the Enlightenment, and hopefully by us today as well. All over the world and throughout time, people have enjoyed their social bonds which are the foundational building blocks for all communities. Already Aristotle had talked about people as social beings always in need of living in neighborhoods, families, associations, work contexts, offices, love relationships, and then ultimate also friendship (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I,2 (1094a-b)Since early antiquity, the value of friendship has been greatly appreciated and praised as one of the most valuable phenomena in human life. The Greeks and the Romans thus laid the foundation for this discourse on friendship (most famously, Cicero) and they were then followed by their medieval and early modern successors (see the friends in the various heroic epics, later, within the courtly context, Marie de France, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Dante Alighieri). In this study, I will draw from and rely on a vast body of relevant scholarship, including my own volume on this topic from 2010, but will then trace this major discourse far into the late eighteenth century and highlight what the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing had to say about friendship as a basis for tolerance. In this play deeply informed by Enlightenment ideals, the relationship between friends gains a glorious profile and is identified as fundamentally important for people’s well-being irrespective of cultural, religious, racial, age, or philosophical differences.

This study offers a critical re-evaluation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus through the philosophical frameworks of Aristotle with particular reference to his typology of governments. To do this the tragedy has been scrutinized in terms of three different benchmarks utilizing Aristotle’s great works Politics, Poetics, and Nicomachean Ethics. While the study initiates with the juxtaposition of governmental systems of Aristotle and the political aspects of the tragedy, it further investigates how the tragedy aligns with or diverges from Aristotelian ideals of ethical character, political virtue, and tragic structure. The political structure of Rome, as portrayed in the play, reflects a fragile and transitioning polity, aligning neither with Aristotle’s ideal constitutional model nor with his stable deviations. Coriolanus’s rejection of deliberative politics and the common people imparts him an anti-polis figure. Thus, Coriolanus emerges not only as a structurally Aristotelian tragedy but also as a dramatic interrogation of personal excellence in unstable political regimes.

Abstract The principle of charity (PC) is widely discussed in the philosophy of language and argumentation theory. Typically, in these disciplines, it is considered justified for prudential and epistemic reasons. However, the limitation of such arguments lies in their dependence on the goals of the individual interpreter and the usefulness of PC to facilitate them. Ethical reasons based on broadly accepted principles of fairness and rights offer more universal justifications. Stevens (Charity for moral reasons?–a defense of the principle of charity in argumentation. Argumentation and Advocacy 57:67–84, 2021), divides those into the deontological, which refer to respect for dignity, and the consequential, which rely upon the duty to avoid harm. The goal of this paper is to provide a systematic conceptual framework, rooted in the Socratic conception of justice, which strengthens and elaborates these ethical reasons for PC. On a psychological view of harm, the consequential argument seems to suggest an obligation to interpret even the most extreme and harmful claims charitably. To avoid this problematic outcome, we propose an approach to harm as unjust damage, originating with Socrates and refined by Feinberg (The moral limits of the criminal law, vol 1. Oxford University Press, New York, NY; Oxford, UK, 1984). We also apply the distinction between compensatory justice and the principle of equal measure that Ajdukiewicz (On justice. Philosophy of Science 30(1):119–130, 2022) draws from Aristotle (Nicomachean ethics. Oxford University Press, London, UK,1966) to show that the charitable interpretation of arguments is the just desert of a dignified human being, due to their status as a rational subject. In this way, the deontological and consequential arguments put forward by Stevens are united into one ethical support for PC and the potential paradox of charity raised by Lewiński (The paradox of charity. Informal Logic 32(4):403–439, 2012) is dissolved.

Abstract The various pseudonymous authors of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or employ ill-defined and seemingly inconsistent notions of friendship. In this paper, I examine the different uses of friendship, including some conspicuous references to friendship and attention in a Greek sense. I then consider several possible interpretations of this Greek friendship. These include friendship that follows the model described by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics , the kind of midwifery Socrates describes in the Theaetetus , and the ancient Greek practice of xenia, or guest-friendship.

Friendship is a virtue that holds significant potential as a method of Christian virtue formation. The article begins with Aristotle's concept of character friendship found in the Nicomachean Ethics as an integral part of his overall account of moral goodness. The Aristotelian account serves as a valuable foundation as there are many elements that can be adopted in a Christian approach. Next the article engages the uniquely Christian understanding of friendship and how it transforms Aristotle's understanding beginning with the example of Jesus in the Gospels. Reflections on friendship in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman are highlighted to respond to the criticism that Christian thinkers denigrated friendship between the early fifth and mid-nineteenth century. Finally, the article shows how Christian ethics might reach a critical synthesis of Aristotelian and Christian insights on friendship in order to propose friendship as a valuable method of Christian virtue formation.

Abstract In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that virtuous actions are for the sake of the kalon. Susan Sauvé Meyer (2011) suggests that there are two distinct ways in which the kalon governs the actions that are performed for its sake. First, it determines the nature of them. She calls this ‘normative governance’. Second, it determines when, whether, and to what extent they are to be performed. She calls this ‘regulative governance’. Contra Meyer, I argue that for Aristotle, normative governance is essential to a for-the-sake-of (-the-kalon) relation.

Abstract This article investigates the development of Aristotle’s theory of justice through a comparative analysis of Book v of the Nicomachean Ethics and key passages from the Politics. While the so-called “common books” (ne v–vii = ee iv–vi) have long been a subject of scholarly debate regarding their original attribution, recent studies by Dorothea Frede and Mi-Kyoung Lee suggest that first common book fits more naturally within the theoretical framework of the Nicomachean Ethics than the Eudemian Ethics. Building on their insights, this article seeks to clarify why Aristotle revised and expanded his account of justice in the form preserved in the Nicomachean Ethics. The analysis unfolds as follows: first, it shows that in the Politics justice is tied to the notion of the common good, serving as a criterion for evaluating political regimes; second, it explores how Aristotle grounds justice in law and equality within the Politics, while also noting unresolved tensions; third, it compares these findings with Book v of the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle addresses these tensions by offering a more systematic rigorous account of justice as both lawfulness and equality. The article argues that this revision reflects Aristotle’s effort to integrate justice more thoroughly into his ethical theory and to respond to conceptual challenges that remained implicit in Politics.

Abstract In the following, I examine Aristotle’s non-univocity argument against the Form of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics (EN) 1.6. I assess the main available interpretations of it and, having shown that they are not wholly satisfactory, I put forward a new one, based on strong textual evidence deriving from EN and the Topics. According to this interpretation, in EN 1.6 Aristotle should be taken to speak about a particular kind of good: goods which are good per se, i.e. intrinsic goods.

The global health crisis, known as COVID-19, has revealed the already present absence of deep friendships and strong communities in the Western world—contributing to a mental health crisis. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that true friends contribute to each other’s growth in virtue. Among the virtues discussed by Aristotle is courage, which is a cardinal virtue from which other virtues such as perseverance and resilience flow. For Aristotle, when you grow in virtue, you increase your ability to deal with those situations which may contribute to a decline in mental health. In this essay, we explore how virtuous friendships contribute to mental health, preventing its decline and strengthening it. We first define friendship and the different types of friendship. We then suggest that though all forms of friendship contribute to mental health, the most important is the virtuous friendship. We conclude with some reflections about how such friendships may be encouraged.

abstract: Aristotle concludes Nicomachean Ethics book VI (= Eudemian Ethics book V) with several puzzles, one of which has to do with the utility of practical wisdom (1143b21–28). I argue that scholars have neglected the importance of this puzzle, together with Aristotle’s reply to it, which, crucially, brings in his notion of natural virtue. Reflecting on this puzzle shows, first, that Aristotle has a robust understanding of natural virtue; and second, the role of practical wisdom as a correction of, and supplement to, the shortcomings of natural virtue. My argument has important consequences for Aristotle’s acceptance of the unity of the virtues.

Abstract This paper delves into the role that theologians and philosophers of the late Middle Ages (13th–14th centuries) attribute to language in shaping religious, social, and political communities. Beginning with the religious community, I highlight the sacrament’s function as a cohesive force and underscore the significance of linguistic knowledge in disseminating the Christian message. Subsequently, I explore texts of political philosophy where established languages contribute to social cohesion and the formation of communal identity within linguistic and ethnic communities. Lastly, I explore how language, in the commentaries on Nicomachean Ethics, while facilitating education and persuasion, falls short in fostering political stability and order, revealing its limitations in constructing and maintaining a political community.

Abstract This paper explores economic theories of Gerald Odonis (d. 1348) and John Buridan (d. ca. 1360), focusing on their views on economic value, money, and usury in their commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Both philosophers critically engage with Aristotle’s ideas, reshaping economic thought during a transformative era marked by intense socio-economic changes and crises. Odonis, influenced by Franciscan traditions, argues that money is a social construct established by legal and political authority. He defines value primarily in terms of human need and societal necessity, suggesting a dynamic, skill-based valuation of labour rather than value of intrinsic worth. On usury, Odonis shifts from a liberal attitude in his earlier works towards moral condemnation, highlighting its injustice and harmful social consequences. Buridan further refines these ideas, emphasising the necessity of stable currency as essential to just economic exchange. He critiques arbitrary political interventions and advocates for currency grounded in precious metals to ensure economic stability. Addressing objections concerning economic value, Buridan argues that value is based on communal rather than personal need. Drawing from Aristotle and Seneca, he differentiates between necessary and apparent needs, highlighting that both the impoverished and wealthy experience poverty due to persistent desire. Ultimately, economic value, according to Buridan, is determined by apparent rather than necessary need. Futher, Buridan permits interest charges under genuine loss or risk-sharing conditions, reflecting a practical approach to late medieval economic morality.

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the view that digital technologies offer an opportunity to greatly enhance peacebuilding efforts. With reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and his distinction between the intellectual virtues of knowledge (epistêmê) and craft (technê), the article aims (i) to critically engage with the almost unquestionable assumption that ‘the digital’ is teleologically inclined towards social progress; (ii) to caution the optimism with which scholars and practitioners alike invest their faith in ever more advanced digital applications for achieving peace; and, (iii) to interrogate the relationship between the very name of this recent academic sub-field (‘digital peace’) and its epistemological aim(s) and praxis (‘postdigital’). In Aristotelian logic the former indicates a desire (to use or develop digital tools to build peace) which is distinct from peace as objective goal and equitable end (telos).

Abstract: The standard view of the relationship between the Nicomachean Ethics , the Eudemian Ethics , and their shared “Common Books” ( AE ) holds that the NE and the AE share a more sophisticated moral psychology compared to the EE . I argue that this is backwards. The undisputed books of the NE (I–IV, VIII–X) are committed to a three-part soul, which combines theoretical and practical wisdom. The AE argues for a four-part soul, distinguishing theoretical and practical wisdom. The undisputed EE books (I–III, VII–VIII) endorse the same four-part model. This suggests two conclusions: (a) the AE and EE are harmonious, while the AE and NE conflict on point of fundamental doctrine; (b) the EE does better than the NE on the standard view’s own criteria that a model of the soul with more distinctions and parts is more sophisticated.

Abstract What does it mean to say that one “ought” to undergo an emotion? In The Imperative of Responsibility, Hans Jonas provocatively asserts that twentieth‐century citizens “ought” to fear for the well‐being of future generations. I argue that Jonas's demand is not straightforwardly reducible to claims about the fittingness, expedience, or aretaic desirability of fear, and I present an interpretation of its content and coherence using Aristotle's moral psychology of fear in the Rhetoric, Politics, and Nicomachean Ethics as a framework. Aristotle's account of fear as an anticipatory, imaginative stance that alters perception and judgment helps to clarify that Jonas's demand concerns acts of affect‐laden, imaginative reflection through which one might revise one's affective sensibilities with regard to future persons. I conclude by considering several objections to Jonas's first‐order argument, and indicating several clarifications and caveats that are important for formulating strong normative assertions about political emotions more generally.

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to explore how preschool teachers, through reflection, understand and describe their pedagogical leadership. The theoretical framework of this study draws upon the theories of Aristotle [1967. Den nikomachiska etiken. [The Nicomachean Ethics]. Stockholm: Daidalos] who highlighted that knowledge can be seen from both theory and practice perspectives through episteme, techne, and phronesis. The study was conducted within a qualitative research paradigm. The methodological steps of dialogue seminar [Hammarén, M. 1999. “Ledtråd i förvandling: om att skapa en reflekterande praxis.” In Clues in Transformation: On Creating a Reflective Practice. Stockholm: Dialoger.] were completed with 12 preschool teachers in Sweden. Data were analyzed through a hermeneutic approach with several phases where the context and the study's knowledge-theoretical starting points formed an understanding of the empirical evidence [Gadamer, H. 1997. “Sanning och metod: i urval.” In Truth and Method: In Selection. Gothenburg: Daidalos.]. The results reveal the complexity of pedagogical leadership in preschool, in which pedagogical actions are left to the responsibility of preschool teachers. Thus, regardless of theoretical knowledge, preschool teachers might need to use their judgment or practical wisdom (phronesis) to decide how to lead in an educational situation.