Starting from Donini’s work about the Aristotelian treatises of ethics, the paper proposes some reflections on both that interpretative perspective and some problematic aspects of Aristotle’s thought. It is divided into three parts: (i) some considerations are devoted to three motifs that allow to establish a relative chronology for Eudemian Ethics, Nicomachean Ethics and their so-called “common books”: the place of nature and of habit (ethos) within the formation of ethical virtues; the influence of Plato’s Laws over Aristotle’s ethical thinking; the relation between habit and practical reason; (ii) the argumentative structure of Donini’s work is briefly retraced, by focusing in particular the problem of the “common books”; (iii) some remarks are made on the controversial nature of the following issues: the feasibility of a total exclusion of nature from the horizon of the ethical virtues; the origin of the rationality of norms and laws, with which habits are often to be identified; the (im)possibility that a virtuous disposition (hexis) originates occasionally a non-virtuous action; the conception of friendship and the role of cultural conditioning.
