Nicomachean Ethics

⚖The case for it

The reading is austere work. Aristotle defines and subdivides for pages at a stretch, and the job of turning any of it into something usable falls to you. Do the job. Two of the ten books go to friendship, and nobody since has written better on why we need people who want good things for us for our own sake and not for theirs. The central claim survives whatever politics you bring to it: character is a skill you build by repetition, the way people become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre, badly at first, until one day not badly.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

These are lecture notes, never polished for readers: compressed, repetitive, and dry as chalk. The mean threatens circularity (virtue is what the practically wise man would do; the wise man is the one with virtue), and the magnanimous man, slow-walking and deep-voiced, is hard to admire now. Aristotle's good life quietly assumes leisure, property, and Greek luck.

— the honest librarian