Aristotle’s Happiness Thought Research

The pursuit of happiness is the eternal subject of mankind. Having a happy and enjoying a wonderful life, is everyone’s unremitting pursuit and ideal life. In Aristotle’s ethics, the good and happiness was the starting point and the foothold of the research. In his book the Nicomachean Ethics of the first volume, He began to discuss the question of the good and happiness, and at the end of the book, he got back to the issues of the good and happiness. In his Politics, he further discussed the city-state of the good and happiness as well as the realization principle and conditions of the good and happiness. Good and happiness, therefore, was to solve the problem of the center of the Aristotelian ethics. Full text was divided into five parts:The introduction part mainly introduced the background and significance of the selected topic, the general situation of the research about Aristotle’s happiness ideas and literature review, the main research methods and innovation.The first chapter mainly introduced the Aristotle’s happiness thought of the era background, theoretical origin and the logical starting point. Unique city life, the development of the humanism ideological trend was its era background. The happiness theory of hedonism and virtue was its theory origin. The man is a rational and political animal was the logical starting point of the happiness of Aristotle.The second chapter was the main part of this article. It mainly introduced the connotation of the Aristotle’s happiness thought. Aristotle also thought that eudaimonia was the supreme good and the soul of real activity in accordance with virtue. Contemplation was regarded as the highest happiness.The third chapter was mainly about the process and way of implementation of eudaimonia. In Aristotle’s view, the goodness of the soul was the essence of happiness and exterior good was a way to achieve happiness. In the meantime, we must take the correct and middle path to realize eudaimonia. Only under the premise of the polis happiness, it was possible.The fourth chapter was the end of the article. I was mainly to analyze the theoretical significance and limitations of Aristotle’s happiness in this section. Thus we could conclude its reference significance to us in order to obtain more thinking and inspiration, and guide us to grasp the direction of happiness.