The Nicomachean Ethics cover art

The Nicomachean Ethics

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Nicomachean Ethics

By: Aristotle, David Ross - translator
Narrated by: Nadia May
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £10.99

Buy Now for £10.99

About this listen

In the Nicomachean Ethics (so called after their first editor, Aristotle's son Nicomachus) Aristotle sets out to discover the good life for man: the life of happiness or eudaimonia. Happiness for Aristotle is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. Virtue is shown in the deliberate choice of actions as part of a worked-out plan of life, a plan which takes a middle course between excess and deficiency. This is the famous doctrine of the golden mean; courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and rashness, and justice between a man's getting more or less than his due. The supreme happiness, according to Aristotle, is to be found in a life of philosophical contemplation; but this is only possible for a few, and a secondary kind of happiness is available in a virtuous life of political activity and public magnificence.

Public Domain (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Classics Ethics & Morality Greek & Roman History Philosophy Political Science Politics & Government Happiness
All stars
Most relevant
Read the book, got the t-shirt, but starting to forget what it was actually all about....a great way to dip back into all that heavy-duty stuff that was based on afternoons at the library in the days before Wikipedia.
Despite other reviews, this is easy to follow - albeit in the bite-size chunks and commuting and listening on the go dictates. But then, this is a modern world, isn't it....?

Hardcore only - audiobooks come into their own

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This in many ways an excellent audio book, but I would hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly. Nadia May reads, as usual, clearly and intelligently and this version is much to be preferred to the mechanical monotone of the other audiobook version of this work. By listening to this recording it is possible to get an overview of one of the most fundamental works of moral philosophy.My hesitation comes from the difficulty of following the intricacies of some of Aristotle's arguments while listening. This is one of those books where an audio book is greatly inferior to reading and rereading the text slowly.

Aristotle on audiobook?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A clear, decent reading of an interesting philosophical consideration of what makes a person good, and how we can balance extremes to find the optimum. I found some parts of this more interesting than others, but enjoyed it as a whole, and the reading was crisp and clear.

Interesting and clearly-read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
While the narrator has a decent voice she speaks ridiculously fast that one cannot comprehend half of what she is saying. It almost makes you feel anxious trying to keep up. It’s like she is merely reading words off an autocue with no emotion. As for the story I didn’t catch much of anything and gave up after 15mins. I’ll have to read the book for myself

Impossible to understand

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.