Abstract

In this lecture I would like to show some of the principal characteristics about virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics, specifically I shall analyze books II and VI, where Aristotle defines the virtuous person as someone who has a disposition to make the right judgements as the φρόνιμος should have to do. I will try to determine what we mean exactly when we talk about the ethics of virtue. My aim is to reconstruct Aristotle’s picture of the rationality of action that exists in the concept of virtue. For that reason I will explore the relations between virtue and others notions like: “phronēsis” (φρονήσις), the intellectual virtue (τῆς ρετὴς διανοητικῆς), the boulēsis (βούλησις), and the proairēsis (προαίρεσις)