A Comparison Between Confucius And Aristotle 's Virtue Ethics

The thesis selects two famous thinkers who lived in the Axial Period, Confucius in China and Aristotle in ancient Greece, as competitive study objects. We analyze the virtue ethic thoughts of the two thinkers, grasping the main content of the ethics in ancient China and Greece, for enhancing the understanding the traditional civilizations of China.The article consist of three parts:the introduction, the main body and the conclusion.The introduction part gives the brief summary on the history and the present study of the comparison of Confucius and Aristotle’s ethic thoughts of the domestic and foreign scholars and defines the method of the ethical thoughts.The content of the thesis consist of four chapters:The first chapter takes the basis of the two virtue ethics. The distinctness lies in the points: Confucius takes "Dao" as the basis of "Virtue". And Aristotle’s virtue ethics makes on the teleology.The second chapter takes the comparison of the centre point Confucius and Aristotle’s virtue ethics thoughts. The common points on the view of virtue ethics of the two thinkers are that the both emphasized the total life of human, not the special facts, and the both focused the quality which can make a man good.The third chapter takes the comparison of Confucius and Aristotle’s on the thoughts of human nature. Mencius, the successor of Confucius’s thoughts, gives the "doctrine of good human nature", and Aristotle thinks that human nature can be divided into emotion and reason.The fourth chapter compares on Confucius and Aristotle’s final goal of virtue ethical. The distinctness lies in the facts:Confucius considered the final gage as "Cheng" while Aristotle assumed the intellectual actions are the most top actions.we summarize the differences in the content and method of the virtue ethics thoughts of Confucius and Aristotle in the conclusion part.In brief, from the comparing of the virtue ethical thoughts of Confucius and Aristotle, we can give a view the classical ethical thoughts of China the differences and accordance of the classical cultures of Confucius and Aristotle.