Aristotle’s Humanistic Ethics

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to argue that Aristotle has no clear metaphysical basis for his ethical treatise as presented in his Nicomachean Ethics. What he claims as the supreme good for man which is happiness in accordance with the highest virtue of the soul has no metaphysical foundation in his metaphysical system. Aristotle thinks of God as the Prime Unmoved Mover who moves his objects by attraction, but the same God, according to his metaphysical view does not know the world, let alone trouble to think about it. The paper therefore argues that man’s self realization through contemplation is merely an activity satisfying only man’s intellectual well-being, outside this there is nothing guaranteeing that such self realization is possible beyond this life.