著者

香春 Xiangchun

出版者

名古屋大学人文学研究科

雑誌

名古屋大学人文学研究論集 (ISSN:2433233X)

巻号頁・発行日

no.3, pp.221-250, 2020-03-31

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Our aim in this paper is to investigate the core thought of "Happiness" (eudaimonia) in Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea in order to elucidate the significance of his ethical thought in the age of globalization. Against common thought that the core opinion of Aristotle's ethics is rather 'communitarian', we have tried to interpret his thought as a kind of ethical theory that could fit the multicultural situation of our age. He characterized the notion of 'Happiness' as a kind of human 'proper' activity which would be controlled by human 'reason' (logos). He situated Happiness in the midst of 'our own authentic activity'. We drew a distinction between the 'Goodness for human being' and 'Goodness as a human being', both of which are expressed as "the human goodness". The former is Happiness and the latter is "virtue", and then the main problem of his ethics can be formulated as follows; how we realize our own happiness through 'virtue' as our own activity. According to our interpretation, the concept of his happiness as the final end of our life can be interpreted as ethically connected with Kantian notion of dignity of person as "Zweck an sich". We pointed out one of the most important features of Aristotle's ethics, namely that his ethical theory is very practical one. Aristotle suggested a real method of becoming to be virtuous through real exercise of accustoming oneself to do good things and to do well in moral sense. We can conclude that Aristotelian thought of morals contains in itself a theory of the real method through which we can become a 'good or virtuous person' and therefore we can assert that his ethical theory has kept its power as the most persuasive one even now.