There is much background and explanatory information in the Irwin translation, so reading guides to it will usually note only key ideas that I will focus on in discussion. I will sometimes also refer you to Irwin’s notes discussing particular passages, and let me do that first.

When you get to the first asterisk in bk. I, ch. iv, §2 (around the middle of p. 3), you should read Irwin’s note on the preceding passage. You can find that on p. 175. Near the beginning of that note, you will see that the word ‘happiness’ appears in small capitals (i.e., it is emphasized by replacing lower case letters by smaller-sized capital letters). That’s an indication of a word that appears in Irwin’s glossay, and you should read that entry, too (see p. 333).

You should also read the glossary entry for ‘virtue’ (pp. 352-353), another English word that is a conventional translation of a Greek term with a somewhat different meaning.

Of course, these are not the only notes and glossary entries to look at, just the only ones I’m actually assigning for this reading. You should look at as many as you have time for on top of your reading of the assignment.

The ideas we will focus on in discussion are the three steps of Aristotle’s argument in this book—which may be stated very roughly as follows: (i) there is a good at which all actions are aimed, (ii) this good is happiness, and (iii) this good (and happiness) are found in virtuous action. The culmination of the argument is in ch. 7-8, with most of the rest of assignment serving to lead up to the points he makes there or to fill them out further. One exception is ch. 6, which is devoted to criticizing a different view of the good to be found in Plato; that’s less important for our purposes (in part because this view did not appear in the assignments from Plato), but the difference between Plato and Aristotle on this issue is an important one and worth thinking about.