The Study On Aristotle's Theory Of Eudemonia

On the basis of the predecessors,especially Socrates and Plato,Aristotle built up his own theory of eudemonia.He thought that the eudemonia was the Realization of the Virtue of the Soul.He added virtue between soul and eudemonia and built a system of “ soul-virtue-eudemonia ”.So the eudemonia was a kind of practical activity,rather then a kind of idea.On his view,the eudemonia came from the balance of the soul,which must depend on the power of reason to achieve.Because the dominance of practice and truth are feeling \ desire and nous.Among them,only nous is unique to human beings,which is the key to distinguish human beings from animals and plants.The eudemonia is the achievement of the reason,and the virtue comes into being in the process.Aristotle thought that the Virtue could be divided into moral virtue and intellectual virtue.The moral virtue,which consists in the life of the city-state,aims at moderation,and could be developed by custom.The intellectual virtue could be developed by study and divided into advisability and contemplation.In Aristotle's opinion,The contemplation was the best eudemonia and the others were the second.Although the contemplation was the best eudemonia,Aristotle didn't deny the other.In contrast,he thought the others were also divine.In his opinion,the eudemonia was living-well and doing-well and must last all the life.For human beings,the eudemonia needs external goodness and the soul achieves balance by the cooperation between moral virtue and intellectual virtue.Aristotle's theory of eudemonia has a far-reaching infullence on the later scholars and realistic meanings to our society.The artic briefly investigates the infullence on a few ones in order to see the whole picture.