For Whom Is This Written?
I'm enrolled in a four week seminar on Rhetoric. We've read Thucydides and Homer and Sappho. Plato's Gorgias and Apology, dialogues I've read before and will read again; as always, I learned something new from a new teacher. I kept up with the conversations. I followed the thread of the arguments. I understood the words written on the page and I was able to deduce a meaning. It might not be "the right" meaning, but at least the words all made sense, strung together in a pleasing whole. This week we read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Look at how beautiful it is in Greek : Book 1 πᾶσα τέχνη καὶ πᾶσα μέθοδος , ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε καὶ προαίρεσις , ἀγαθοῦ τινὸς ἐφίεσθαι δοκεῖ : διὸ καλῶς ἀπεφήναντο τἀγαθόν , οὗ πάντ᾽ ἐφίεται . διαφορὰ δέ τις φαίνεται τῶν τελῶν : τὰ μὲν γά...