This is one of the only elementary texts I've found that explains Latin meter correctly and from first principles. Handbooks of Greek meter often treat Latin in a 2-page appendix, saying little more than "The Romans borrowed all these meters." This book, on the other hand, is half Latin and half Greek, and works equally well for students starting from either language. The Latin aeolic meters are explained in terms of the glyconic, not in terms of "feet" as so many books do; this makes it easier to see how aeolic meters work and facilitates learning the Greek versions later. The meters of Plautus and Terence are explained, but saturnians are only briefly mentioned. The student of Greek is also well served by West's book (though this one is an easier read), but for Latin there is not a whole lot else that is as good.

More than any other of Aristotle's writings, the Nicomachean Ethics speaks in a powerful voice to our own age; not only as an artifact of thought, or as a key to the historical interpretation of "Western Metaphysics", but as a challenge to our values, our assumptions, and, above all else, the complacency with which we approach the task of living life. Yet precisely because of its apparent immediacy, we must remain vigilant regarding the prejudices that we bring to the act of reading. Even the title, in this regard, presents difficulties. Ethics, for Aristotle, is not the same as "morality" or "right conduct": rather it means the cultivation of habit of the soul, --- a disposition towards the passions --- that is conducive to virtuous action. The very notion of virtuous action is itself misleading. Aristotle is not so much concerned with individual "actions" - let alone with the "moral dilemmas" so many so-called "ethicists" - as with the activity that, as the proper work or function (ergon) of human beings, grants a unifying purpose to all the "doings" that constitute life. This "work," - which must be nothing else that the work of our entire lives -, is either the political life or the life of contemplation. The first is the highest purely human life; the latter, in contrast, is divine. Perhaps the strangest notion of the Nicomachean Ethics, however, is pleasure: pleasure is neither a passive sensation, nor some sort of activity, but rather that which brings the activity to perfection, supervening on the activity like "the bloom of health in the young and vigorous."
If we have learned our lessons from Darwin, and have the strength of mind to behold a nature without purpose and a human race with no proper and essential function, what can then remain for us of an ethics grounded upon a natural and immanent teleology? Must we insist upon the fact/value distinction in all its rigor and exile ethics into the stars? Or are we left only with an act of pure, groundless will - a will that exists only through the act of positing values, of assigning to things their worth and thus giving human kind its end and meaning? Perhaps Aristotle's "pleasure" points towards another possibility: the joyful contemplation of this life in the blossom of its ephemerality and contingency.

It seems rather foolish to 'review' Aristotle, THE Philosopher. Nothing in the Western intellectual tradition isn't touched by Aristotle's works. The Nichomachean Ethics, unlike say, the largely irrelevant Physics, or extremeley esoteric Metaphysics, is a very accessible. It's also the work that probably best sums up Aristotle's practical philosophy. To summerize in a way that is completely insulting to the work, Aristotle applies his idea of moderation, the Golden mean, to numerous ethical situatlions, in an attempt to discover what constitutes the Good life and the Good man. AS previous reviewers have said, there isn't a chapter of Aristotle that does not produce some revalation or insight. And with over 100 chapters...well, you get the idea. Anyway, in addition to providing a basis for understanding the very workings of ethics and morals in a timeless sense, reading Aristotle changes the way in which you think. Literally. He has a distinctive, ordered, logical philosophy that anyone who want to be taken seriously in argument needs to learn. Simply, this is only of the most important books ever written, and anyone, philosophy scholar or not, owes it to him or her self to read it.

The Nicomachean Ethics is the first systematic description of an ethical system. It has the clearest formulation of the questions that Ethics asks: 1. How should we live? 2. Why? 3. Why is that best? Aristotle's answer to 1. is that we should avoid extremes, because (answering 2.) every extreme is evil, and (answering 3.) since the opposite of any extreme is itself an evil extreme, we must therefore avoid extremes. The book has been read by every serious ethical philosopher since history began. Because of this, every serious ethical work can (and should) be read as a dialogue with Aristotle, as he sets the rules, and then challenges, "I know of no good that crosses all the categories . . . but in each category there is one particular good." Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals is an attempt to find a normative good that crosses all categories, a "categorical imperative." Likewise Bentham's discussion of what has come to be called utilitarian ethics. Really, a most important book.

In this Protagoras dialogue, the conversation is about virtue--what it is and if it can be taught. The text consists of several speeches in conjunction with the familiar Socratic method of dialogue. Protagoras, whom Socrates does treat with a good bit of respect, declares that he teaches the art of politics and makes of his students better citizens. Socrates voices his opinion that virtue cannot in fact be taught. The conversation basically revolves around these two questions. In the middle of the debate, Socrates declares his intention to leave for an appointment if Protagoras does not stop answering his questions with long speeches, and a compromise must be struck before the debate continues. Socrates himself, though, often makes long speeches of his own, one example being a lengthy discussion of his interpretation of a poem. I found this to be a rather difficult text to understand, and its effectiveness is further hampered by the fact that too many lengthy speeches constantly upset the balance and blur the focus of the debate. There is also little sense of accomplishment at the conclusion because no conclusive truths are agreed upon by the two adversaries.

Several core Socratic ideas are incorporated into his arguments--e.g., no man does evil willingly but only out of ignorance. Protagoras contends that all men have a share in justice and virtue, for these qualities were given to man by the gods in order that man might live communally for self-protection against nature; all but the thoroughly unredeemable thus have the right and ability to speak of virtue, and all men are actually teachers of virtue--punishment itself is intended as a means for correcting the evil in an individual. Still, the natural ability of each individual in this regard determines his ability to act justly--this is how Protagoras explains the fact that the sons of good men sometimes turn out bad. Socrates doesn't buy this argument. In the argument's "second round," he tries to determine whether virtue is one thing in itself or if there are distinct parts to it such as piety, self-control, justice, wisdom, and courage. This question was never sufficiently dealt with in my mind. Basically, we end the debate back where we started, with Socrates stating that virtue cannot be taught and that human nature dictates that the individual chooses what he believes to be good and/or what he believes to be the lesser of two evils.

My 1956 Library of Liberal Arts edition contains a lengthy introduction by Gretory Vlastos. This introduction may be appreciated by individuals with some formal knowledge about philosophy, but I found it a dense jungle of words that often required a number of machete hacks of effort to get through. It is far more complicated than Plato's dialogue itself. Vlastos does seek to show some of the methodological problems of Socrates' method, but I found his discussion of this enticing subject very hard to follow. He also reminds me of Socrates in that he seems to take some joy in saying other academic writers have been dead wrong about certain things and then concludes by saying that the individuals he criticizes so forthrightly are actually good men whom he has learned a great deal from.

If you are unfamiliar with Plato's philosophy, you certainly do not want to start your study with this particular dialogue. As someone with very little philosophical training, I found myself confused on more than one occasion, despite the fact that I have only recently read again a number of Plato's more reader-friendly writings. When I picked this particular edition of the book up, I was unsure if I should read the lengthy introduction before or after the dialogue itself, and I now can say that the introduction is so dense that I would be no worse off had I not read it at all.