This decade should prove crucial in determining whether a close examination of the lesser-known version of Aristotle's ethics will prove as fruitful as hoped to those convinced by Kenny's case for awarding the so-called ‘common books’ (Eth. Nic. 6–7 = Eth. Eud. 4–6) to their original environs. With three recently published English translations of all eight Books, it will be easier than ever to study the whole. This volume stems from a 2006 conference but it is not the usual sort of slightly repackaged, disconnected proceedings. The authors had plenty of time to revise their presentations and at least one commentator at the original event now offers a monograph-length study of a key chapter in the book on friendship which is a tour de force.

The papers are arranged in the order of topics as they come up in the Eth. Eud., with D. Charles' discussion of the ‘voluntary’ in Book 2 coming first, then three on Book 7 by C. Rowe, M.M. McCabe and J. Whiting, ending with F. Buddensiek's treatment of good fortune in 8.2. As B. Inwood and L. point out in their quite helpful introductory overview, the topics treated are by and large confined to distinctively Eudemian contributions. The result is a challenging set of fresh interpretations of (relatively) unfamiliar arguments studied for their own merits, neither as mature departures from, nor jejune anticipations of, the much more familiar work. Chronological questions as such, then, dominant for a century, have given way to solid, original attempts to take the Eth. Eud. on its own merits, with special attention to the book on philia. While awaiting longer studies of the overall argument of the Eth. Eud., this collection will surely, and rightly, stir scholarly investigation.

For those coming anew to this text, I would suggest reading the papers in a somewhat altered order. After the informative introduction, begin with Rowe's short piece on the difference between loving things as opposed to people; he argues we should not interpret A.'s claim that we should love our friends for themselves in the exclusively altruistic, Kantian way (as ends in themselves) proposed by Vlastos but in a wider, more inclusive, manner that allows virtue-friends to enjoy each other on the grounds of pleasure and utility as well as their shared aretê. Rowe aims to give this text a ‘hearing’ of its own, with ‘serious discussion’, even while remaining attached to the Eth. Nic. (p. 29). Unlike those who approach the Eth. Eud. as early, and inferior, Rowe finds ‘no evidence here, at least’. i.e. in discussing the three main types of philia, that the Eth. Nic. ‘shows Aristotle moving on from, maturing in respect to’ the Eth. Eud. (p. 30). He reminds us that all three ‘forms of friendship’ are justly termed friendships, a point I believe would have only been strengthened by due attention to one striking difference between the two treatises, the fact that 7.2 treats the three eidê not as falling under one genus nor as merely equivocally related but rather, as cases of ‘focal meaning’, with ‘philia’ a pros hen expression, one whose distinct but related uses have their primary but not exclusive application to ‘first friendship’ (7.2.1236a15–32). The Eth. Nic. eschews this device and it is noteworthy that none of our authors discussing philia even so much as alludes to this technical difference.

In sharp contrast, Charles treats the Eth. Eud. discussion of the *voluntary* (= to hekousion), as earlier and inferior to the more familiar Eth. Nic., especially where it differs in being narrowly restricted to human adults, in not treating certain cases of coerced actions as *voluntary*, and as pinning too much on what an individual's nature can be said to bear when hard pressed. Citing gaps and omissions Charles traces ‘an intelligible route from the EE discussion of the *voluntary* to the NE account via CE V.8’, which common chapter introduces legal considerations allowing Aristotle ‘to replace the somewhat insecure idea of nature as his key concept with that of man as the limited controller of his (or her) actions’ (p. 25). The complex issues Charles raises require detailed responses from the ‘Kenny camp’ but his last paragraph's brief dismissal of the possibility of seeing the philosophical development between the two works as running in the other direction assumes that one or the other work must be seen as replacing the other, when other options might explain the observed dissimilarities, such as different audiences or the lack of a strong tie to the Politics, as in the call to complete ‘the philosophy of human affairs’ at 9.9.1181b15. Perhaps the Eth. Eud. is aimed at individuals not entering politics (cf. 1.2.1214b6–27).

McCabe generously covers three texts about friendship's ability to help one satisfy the cryptic Delphic injunction to ‘know oneself’, viz. the mirror analogy from the Magna Moralia along with the difficult discussions of how having friends helps one to appreciate their and one's own ‘self-perception’. She sees 7.12's handling of the puzzles presented by the question of whether the self-sufficient person needs friends – a concern shared by Eth. Nic. 9.9 – as a complicated, dialectical discussion of what sort of shared perceptions friends can have once we have left behind the misleading model of divine self-sufficiency. She finds ‘a bleaker world, where we are incapacitated by nature to perceive ourselves … [but] must do so in concert with a friend’ (p. 70). The common theme of a friend being another self is differently construed seriatim. Where the Eth. Nic. treats others as like oneself and thus enjoyable as a similar perceiving subject, the Eth. Eud. ‘picture seems different again … odder. For here the joint functioning of friendship is the way to fulfill my function … the self is a composite entity, made up of the two of us, engaged on the joint enterprise of self-perception and self-knowledge’ (p. 73). Her paper is rich and engaging and covers a good deal of the recent spate of literature on friendship.

Whiting carefully reviews McCabe's contribution, faulting any approach that takes ‘talk of the friend as “another self” to involve treating the friend as a kind of extension of oneself or at least as a part of some larger self of which one is oneself a part’ (p. 80). The key to why we need friends is the considerable pleasure a self-sufficient agent takes in the experiences and actions of our friends. In her exacting exegesis of the main argument in 7.12 she offers a ‘dogmatic preview’ of its overall structure, filling in details as she goes along, always attending to textual difficulties that emerge at almost every turn. One cannot do justice to Whiting here, but what will stand out for every reader is her stout defence of allos houtos (‘another this <so and so>’) at 1245a30 [the reading in all MSS] instead of the allos autos (‘another self’) adopted by most commentators and translators to bring it into line with the more familiar Eth. Nic. (pp. 132–3). We can make good sense of the passage's proverbial ‘another Heracles, another this <so and so>’ by claiming that what each wishes is not to be Heracles but ‘at least like Heracles’. We admire certain features of our best virtue friends and wish to be like them in these ways (pp. 133–4). The picture is one of distinctive, separate individuals in ‘epistemic intimacy’, sharing mutually enjoyable activities, bringing reciprocal understanding and harmony (pp. 136–7). Whiting invokes Plato's Philebus and Metaphysics Lamda to ‘triangulate’, as it were, her own positive solution to the main aporia and no future discussion of 7.12.1244b1–1245b19 can afford to overlook this painstaking examination of one of the Eth. Eud.'s most challenging arguments.

Buddensiek, whose full-scale 1999 book Die Theorie des Gluecks in Aristoteles' Eudemischer Ethik deserves to be more widely known, discusses eutuchia (‘good fortune’) in 8.2 and its close linkage to human happiness (eudaimonia). Aristotle took up the traditional, popular view that these concepts are so close as to be thought identical by some and explores various thoughts about the nature of good fortune. Are we just born lucky, or are the gods looking out for us, playing favourites, perhaps? Is it all a matter of pure luck, or does nature play a crucial role, with deliberation and reasoning having little to do with success? Buddensiek's discussion is patient, thorough and informative, topping off a fine collection.