Download ARISTOTLE'S Nicomachean Ethics book in the link bellow :
Extract :
This translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics attempts to be as literal as sound English usage permits. We hold that literal translations, while certainly having their limits and even frustrations, nonetheless permit those without a reading knowledge of the original language the best possible access to the text. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, unable to read a word of Greek, still became a supreme interpreter of Aristotle on the basis ofWilliam ofMoerbeke's remarkably faithful translations of Greek into Latin, just as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) became "the Commentator" on "the Philosopher" despite having had access to the works of Aristotle only in Arabic translation. To be sure, we do not claim to have attained such fidelity to the original as did the great medieval translators. What is more, the distance between contemporary English and ancient Greek is often great, and any simple substitution of this English word for that Greek one would result in a largely unintelligible hash, one no longer in Greek but not yet in English either. What, then, do we mean by "literal translation"? We begin from the assumption or prejudice that Aristotle composed the Ethics with very great care-whether or not the text we have consists of or is derived from lecture notes-and hence that he chose every word with (as Maimonides would say) "great exactness and exceeding precision." We have attempted to convey that exactness and precision. In practice this means that we have rendered all key terms by what we hold to be the closest English equivalent, resorting to explanatory footnotes when the demands ofidiom or intelligibility have made this impossible. Readers may therefore be confident that an appearance of nature, for example, is due to the presence of the same Greek word or family of words (phusis, phuein) in the original. It hardly needs to be said that the identification of "key
xvi] A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
terms" and their English counterparts depends finally on the translators' interpretation of Aristotle, on an understanding of his intention. The outlines of that understanding are found in the interpretive essay; the choice ofkey terms and their equivalents, in the list of Greek terms and the glossary.
link to download :
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
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