SOURCE: Dunbabin, Jean. “Robert Grosseteste as Translator, Transmitter, and Commentator: The Nichomachean Ethics.” Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion 28 (1972): 460-72.

In the following essay, Dunbabin examines Grosseteste's translation of the Nichomachean Ethics, commenting on its accuracy, range of scholarship, clarity, logical precision, and philosophical skill, and lauding it as an example of the foundation Grosseteste laid for future commentators on Aristotle's work.

Because Robert Grosseteste's translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is now seen as having provided the framework for a dynamic study of Aristotle's moral philosophy, more significance must be attached to what itself became the standard translation in the Middle Ages. That Grosseteste was responsible both for the full translation of Aristotle's text and for the translation of the Greek commentaries which accompany the Ethics in twenty-one known manuscripts¹ modern scholars are now in agreement.² Grosseteste's work on the Nicomachean Ethics has been...