Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics: on goals, institutions, sin of exaggeration

2026-10-25

Raw link: YouTube OR Internet Archive

In this 1-hour video I read from the opening chapter of Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, and comment at length on themes of ranking goals in projects, of having a notion of success versus failure, of determining what we are actually working towards, of what exactly it means for some realities to be instituted as such, and of the one sin from which all others derive which is the sin of exaggeration.

Next time I will comment on eudaemonia, which is mistranslated as “happiness”, but we will get there.

I notice, by the way, that the laptop is too shaky. I will check if I can fix this next time.