Abstract

Aristotle declares that happiness (›eudaimonia‹) persists in living well (›euzên‹) and in doing well (›eu prattein‹). From a philological standpoint, these twodefinitions appear to mean the same thing, and some philosophers accept thisopinion 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 benefi ts related to the body that are necessary for agood life. Yet, Aristotle identifi es happiness with actions and activities. Understood as an activity, happiness cannot be a state or condition wherein one isprovided with external goods, but must be a practice in acting well. Hence, Aristotle makes a conceptual distinction between living well and doing well. For thisreason 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 otherstrictly speaking, but rather have much in common.