Video and Podcast Resources on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics books 1-3

24 lecture videos and 24 podcast episodes to help learners understand the first quarter of this key ancient work

In one class or another, I have been teaching portions (and occasionally the entirety) of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics since the very first course I was assigned, 25 years ago. I cover at least parts of this work in classes such as Introduction To Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Human Nature, Ancient Philosophy, and Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life. I assign it routinely because it is really an excellent work (though admittedly, I didn’t think so at first!), one well worth grappling with in the course of one’s education.

Over the last 10 years, I have produced core concept videos discussing in depth every idea, distinction, and argument from all ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics, and over the last five, corresponding Sadler’s Lectures podcast episodes. Many people have found them to be useful resources for fostering and furthering their own understanding of this classic text.

The 24 lecture videos and 24 corresponding podcast episodes linked to below lead you through roughly the first quarter of the text, covering all of the topics in books 1 and 2, and from chapter 1 to chapter 5 in book 3. The second part of book 3 really belongs more with books 4 and 5, since it involves examination of specific virtues and their opposed vices.

These provide an in-depth introduction to a number of the key ideas at the center of Aristotelian ethics, notably: the nature of human happiness; the scope of ethics; virtue as a mean and a habit; how to evaluate actions and characters; whether human beings are morally responsible; how our character is formed; and the roles of reason and affectivity.

So if you’d like to study Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, whether for the very first time as a beginner, or going back to it to deepen your understanding, these lecture videos and podcast episodes might prove useful for you.

Book 1

• Activities, Arts, And Purposes | watch video | listen to podcast

• Principles And Exactness In Ethics | watch video | listen to podcast

• Criticism Of The Platonic Good | watch video | listen to podcast

• Good Spoken Of In Many Ways | watch video | listen to podcast

• What Is Happiness? | watch video | listen to podcast

• Happiness & The Function Of A Human Being | watch video | listen to podcast

• External Goods And Happiness | watch video | listen to podcast

• Happiness, The Dead, And The Living | watch video | listen to podcast

Book 2

• Virtue And Human Nature | watch video | listen to podcast

• Virtue, Craft, And Knowledge | watch video | listen to podcast

• Virtue As The Mean | watch video | listen to podcast

• Virtue as a Norm for Evaluation | watch video | listen to podcast

• Virtue As Habitual Disposition | watch video | listen to podcast

• Pleasure, Pain, Virtue, and Vice | watch video | listen to podcast

• Intrinsically Bad Actions | watch video | listen to podcast

• Moral Emotions | watch video | listen to podcast

• The Aristotelian Moral Virtues | watch video | listen to podcast

Book 3 (chapters 1-5)

• The Voluntary And The Involuntary | watch video | listen to podcast

• Compulsion And The Involuntary | watch video | listen to podcast

• Ignorance And The Voluntary | watch video | listen to podcast

• Responsibility For Character | watch video | listen to podcast

• Deliberation, Means, And Ends | watch video | listen to podcast

• Prohairesis Or Moral Choice | watch video | listen to podcast

• Wish Or Rational Desire (Boulēsis) | watch video | listen to podcast

I will be publishing additional similar resource pages with links to videos and podcast episodes on other portions of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, focused on different books of the work. I hope you find these particular 24 lecture videos and 24 podcast episodes useful for your own studies.