Goals and Achievements -- Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

December 28 - Having finished reading Book VII on "Troubleshooting the Virtues" and "Concomitating Pleasure with Flourishing," we are going to celebrate at this meeting by renewing and recommitting ourselves to the goals we individually cherish. What has Aristotle been saying about these goals of ours and how we are to achieve them in these seven magnificent books? Let us review, reflect, and rejoice in his achievements.
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Our main translation from here on will be by Adam Beresford (Penguin Classics, 2020), but we will occasionally dip into other older English translations to get more insights and interpretations.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and we are about to dip into book VIII on friendship, social relations, and love.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
2. How does one come to acquire it? (E.g. [Aristotle’s], ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, generosity, candor, …)
3. From a first-person perspective in being virtuous, how does one feel and what does one see (differently, discursively) in a given situation of everyday living?
4. From a third-person perspective, how is the virtuous person (of a specific virtue) to be characterized?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.