Die aristotelische EUDAIMONIA und der Doppelsinn vom guten Leben

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Zurück zum Heft: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 54
DOI: 10.28937/9783787336708_2

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Aristotle declares that happiness (›eudaimonia‹) persists in living well (›euzên‹) and in doing well (›eu prattein‹). From a philological standpoint, these two definitions appear to mean the same thing, and some philosophers accept this opinion as true. In the Nicomachean Ethics as well as in the Eudemian Ethics, in the Magna Moralia and in the Rhetoric, we discover that there are numerous external goods and other benefits related to the body that are necessary for a good life. Yet, Aristotle identifies happiness with actions and activities. Understood as an activity, happiness cannot be a state or condition wherein one is provided with external goods, but must be a practice in acting well. Hence, Aristotle makes a conceptual distinction between living well and doing well. For this reason his ethics is no eudaemonism in the classical sense, as Kant insinuates, for example. Rather, the ethics of Aristotle and Kant do not contradict each other strictly speaking, but rather have much in common.