BMCR 2009.08.33: Lockwood on Burger, Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics (paperback reprint of 2008 edition)

Ronna Burger, Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean
Ethics (paperback reprint of 2008 edition).  Chicago/London:
University of Chicago Press, 2009.  Pp. viii, 309.  ISBN 9780226080529.
$22.50.

Reviewed by Thornton C. Lockwood, Boston University (tlock <at> bu.edu)
Word count:  2086 words
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At first glance, one might wonder how a philosopher such as Aristotle,
born in 384 BCE, could--as the title of Burger's book puts it--have a
dialogue with Socrates, who died in 399 BCE.  Not only did Aristotle
never see or hear Socrates in person, but since Socrates--according to
his contemporaries--never wrote anything, Aristotle also never
encountered the thoughts or opinions of Socrates at first hand.  Of
course, Aristotle encountered Plato's depiction of Socrates and it is
Plato's Socrates whom Burger presents as Aristotle's central
"interlocutor" in his Nicomachean Ethics [EN].  Burger presents a rich
and challenging reading of the Ethics based on the interpretative
principle that "Aristotle constructs the figure of Socrates as a
perfect foil against which to develop a different account of virtue of
character" (5). Burger's claim is not an empirical or historical one
about whom Aristotle had in mind when writing the Ethics, but rather a
philosophical claim about how Aristotle's Ethics begins in, wrestles