Named for Aristotle’s son, Nicomachus, who was the first to edit this work, The Nicomachean Ethics plays a prominent role in defining Aristotelian ethics. In the ten books of this work, Aristotle explains the good life for man: the life of happiness.

For Aristotle, happiness exists when the soul is in accordance with virtue. Virtue exists in a deliberate choice of actions that take a middle course between excess and deficiency; this is the famous doctrine of the “golden mean.” Courage, for example, is the mean between cowardice and rashness. Justice is the mean 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 or, at least, in a virtuous life of political activity and public munificence.

(Translated by Sir David Ross (based on Bywater's text from the Oxford edition of The Works of Aristotle Translated into English, volume IX), with minor revisions by J. L. Ackrill and J O. Urmson)