Hyder Husain Arastu

This paper takes as its starting point the apparent discontinuity of the account of the vicious person between the books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Following a brief discussion of the various attempts at resolving this, it is found that these remain unsatisfactory. It is here that, through an allusion to a sophistical argument in Book II, a corresponding account of a ‘foolish virtuous person’ is found in the Eudemian Ethics. The paper attempts to describe this account as a solution to the seeming inconsistency, with the hope that the now symmetrical account provides a cohesive framework for the virtuous and vicious people. The account of the ‘foolish vicious person’ raises questions ranging from the place of the common books in the Aristotelian corpus to questions concerning the nature of virtue and vice.