Aristotle's dialogue with Socrates : on the Nicomachean ethics /

Readers looking for a probing review of gaps in the line of thought of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) can do worse than to follow Burger's fresh approach. Burger (Tulane) asserts that Aristotle's theory of happiness constitutes a dialogue with Socrates. Observing correctly that Aristotle targets the claim, found in Plato's Laches, that knowledge is virtue, Burger apprehends Socrates "lurking" throughout NE, in Aristotle's "allusion" to Platonic dialogues. Aristotle engages in an act of conversation with an opponent who is "indistinguishably the Platonic Socrates or the Socratic Plato." Burger thus stands outside two scholarly traditions. One questions the integrity of Aristotelian texts (see Anthony Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, CH, Apr'79); the other acknowledges Aristotle's method of building on his predecessors (see G. E. L. Owen, "Tithenai ta phainomena," in Logic, Science, and Dialectic, ed. by Martha Nussbaum, 1986) while distinguishing between the character of Plato's dialogues and the historic Socrates (see Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, The Philosophy of Socrates, CH, Jul'00, 37-6200). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. P. W. Wakefield Emory University