Aristotelian Ethics and Its Byzantine Reception

The presence of Aristotelian ethics can be attested in two ways: the influence of Aristotle’s ethical views and the occupation with Aristotelian texts. While Aristotelian logic had a continuous presence in Byzantine thought and education through handbooks and the Organon itself, the fate of Nicomachean Ethics was different. A great number of the manuscripts (almost 200) of the three Aristotelian ethical treatises verifies the interest in reading and commenting on them in the twelfth century, when the Byzantines undertook the task to write commentaries on works of Aristotle, among them the Nicomachean Ethics. So did Eustratios of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus, and others. Eustratios used Platonic and Christian elements and discussed not only definitions and terms but also the ethical views of Aristotle. Michael followed Alexander of Aphrodisias and Alexandrian Neoplatonists; the comments on Books 2-4 are a compilation of Neoplatonic scholia. Pachymeres in Philosophia XI was not an ‘‘explanator’’ and omitted several chapters of Nicomachean Ethics; his text is more like an epitome with few additional remarks. Two paraphrases were composed later by Konstantinos Palaeokappas (?) and Ps.-Olympiodorus; the latter - once attributed to Emperor John VI Kantacuzene - must be a paraphrase of the comments by the Neoplatonic Olympiodorus. It is difficult to say that the study of Nicomachean Ethics changed ethical reasoning in Byzantium as it did in the West. Anyway, the interest in Aristotle was not confined to commentaries but it is evident in texts of Psellos, John Italos, Nikephoros Blemmydes, and other Byzantine philosophers and scholars who were familiar with the Aristotelian texts. The debate of Platonists and Aristotelians in the fifteenth century touched also ethical issues. Of interest is the critique of Aristotelian ethics by Plethon, who doubted whether the Aristotelian mean helps to make the fundamental distinction between good and evil (as a result of Aristotle’s degradation of the soul) or to understand the relation of pleasure to happiness.