ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS ON HUMAN HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE

Abstract

The issues of morality or the analyses of the ethics of living are dependent on the contents or intentions of one's actions. When actions are carried out or been exhibited, they are judged either right or wrongs, ethical or unethical dependent on societal classification of such actions, especially in accordance to the dictates of the natural law. This is socially occasioned by human sense of actions and their corresponding responsibilities for the attainment of happiness or pleasure. According to Aristotelian ethics, pleasures are very short-lived and fading, while happiness are enduring, lasting and in all, eternal, welling in the individual who long to please the other selves and the divine through his or her actions and taking proper responsibilities of his or her choices, for the sake of social order. Societies have been currently bedeviling by hedonistic and nihilistic consciousness and cultures of development, where we now have a very high demand for bodily modifications and enhancements. Hence, this paper adopts expository cum descriptive method of enquiry in assessing the implications of Aristotelian ethics on human moral responsibility towards the attainment of social order. The paper concludes that, following the principles of Aristotelian ethics, our actions should be enlivened by the consciousness of common good through moral values that lead to happiness rather than pleasure.