houryeh bakouei katrimi; Majid sadremajles; Hasan Fathi; Ali Akbar Abdolabadi
Abstract
Aristotle defines happiness as virtuous activity in both Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. By his discussing on psychology and considering the virtues of the parts of the soul, ...
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Aristotle defines happiness as virtuous activity in both Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. By his discussing on psychology and considering the virtues of the parts of the soul, he attempts to attain the final definition of “happiness” and “the virtuous activity”. His research in Nicomachean Ethics leads to the conclusion that ultimate happiness is contemplation. But in Eudemian Ethics happiness is defined as “the activity of a complete life in accordance with complete virtue”. In other words, in Eudemian Ethics happiness contains all the virtues, including contemplation and the moral virtues. These two apparently different definitions of the “happiness” show that moral virtue does not have the same status in those two ethical treatises. In this paper, we first express Aristotle's ethical thought in both treatises, and then we show that Aristotle considers moral virtue, at the end of the Nicomachian Ethics, as a necessary condition for happiness and contemplation, but in the Eudemian Ethics, he considers the moral virtue together with contemplation as the constituents of happiness. This difference on the stutus of moral virtue in the happiness issues from Aristotle's different viewpoints on the life of happy man in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics. In the first treatise, Aristotle concerns with human beings in “the domain of God-like activity”, but in the second treatise, he concerns with human being in “the domain of human activity”.
