A ética aristotélica como caminho para a realização máxima do humano

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate eudaimony from the work Nicomachean Ethics, searching to investigate what would have led Aristotle to identify the greatest good attainable by man with happiness. We try to demonstrate that happiness represents, for Aristotle, a self-sufficient good, sought by itself and not by any other thing. It is a dominant good, that is, the good for excellence, not the openness to the covering of other goods. Otherwise, the search for a happy life would be endless and never fully realized. We also find that happiness shouldn’t be understood as permanently secured possession, because even a considered happy man to be happy will have no guarantee that he will have his happiness permanently secured, because eudaimony should be understood as an activity that requires an active life. In Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents two types of eudaimony, one that occurs in the contemplative plane and the other one that is realized through the ethical virtues. Happiness on the contemplative plane is considered the most perfect and the most self-sufficient, allowing man to realize that which is most divine in himself, which is reason, whereas happiness provided by the ethical virtues can only enable man human happiness, hence the Aristotelian assertion that it is a kind of secondary happiness.