I STAND IN AWE

This was posted, for some mysterious reason, on my other blog -- Formal Methods -- on April 11.  It was supposed to appear here:

Yesterday evening, Susie and I had dinner with David Reeve and his wife, Ina. David is a senior member of the UNC Philosophy Department who teaches Greek philosophy, among other things, and Ina has been sitting in on my Marx lectures. Susie and I got to the restaurant first, and when David and Ina arrived, he presented me with a thick paperback book with a brilliant red cover. It turned out to be a new translation of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics which David published very recently.

Now, I have the deeepest respect for those who read Plato and Aristotle in the original, but I stand in awe of anyone who has actually translated works of Plato or Aristotle. This morning I started reading David's long Introduction, which is fascinating and written without the slightest trace of jargon or faux scholarly showing off. I have already learned a great deal that I did not know [although that is, alas, faint praise indeed.]

If any of you are looking for a good summer read, I strongly recommend David's translation. The Ethics is of course on my list of twenty-six essential great works of Philosophy.