Content area
Full Text
1. introduction
Aristotle's ethics has been handed down to us in two different versions, namely, what the tradition calls the Eudemian Ethics (EE) as well as the better-known Nicomachean Ethics (EN).1 Though there is much overlap between the two treatises, in this paper I want to concentrate on a particular mismatch between them. Indeed, there is a feature of the first half of the EN that sets it apart from its Eudemian counterpart. Before discussing virtue in general, in book II the EN introduces a discussion of the formation of virtue (chs. 1–4), according to which virtue comes about by habituation (ἔθος, ἔθισμος), the repeated performance and practice of the actions typical of the virtues. Although in the EN this discussion of habituation takes up almost half of the second book, when we turn to the EE, nothing corresponds to this section, with the exception of a short passage (1220a39–b3)—on which I shall have more to say shortly and throughout this paper.
This mismatch represents a promising lead to follow in order to highlight a philosophically significant difference between the two treatises. For there is good reason to doubt that the Nicomachean conception of habituation is assumed, let alone argued for, in the Eudemian treatise, as indicated by the scant attention the EE devotes to habituation.2 This cannot mean that habituation is altogether absent from the EE: Aristotle accepts a traditional triad made up of three virtue-forming elements, namely, "nature" (φύσις), "habit" (ἔθος), and "reason" (λόγος), and it is unlikely that he ever intended to do away entirely with any of these.3 However, in what follows, I aim to show that, while in the EN the role of habit is crucial and always given significant attention, in the EE it is sandwiched between two other virtue-forming elements, nature and reason; as a result, in the EE, habit and habituation end up playing second fiddle. The different conception of habit in the EE being my main demonstrandum here, I further want to use this to associate the so-called common books (henceforth, CB I, II, and III4) with the EE insofar as, I shall argue, they too devote scant attention to habit and habituation,...