Are the Utopians “happy”? Aristotle's Ethics and Politics and the concept of Eudaimonia in Thomas More’s Utopia

Abstract

Aristotle always wished to provide his interlocutors, and posterity, with an account of how the good person should live, and how society should be structured in order to make such lives possible. The Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, which are among Aristotle's books of practical philosophy, are straightforwardly concerned with such questions. Aristotle believes that a city state should have eudaimonia, happiness, as its goal, and considers the ideal constitution as one in which every citizen achieves eudaimonia. Sir Thomas More's Utopia, also, in its Book 2, gives an account of an ideal state. This essay will put Aristotle's Ethics and Politics under close observation and apply Aristotle's philosophical attitude expressed in these two works to Utopia in order to figure out: (a) are the Utopians happy in Aristotelian terms? (b) is the Utopian constitution an ideal one—in which every citizen achieves eudaimonia?

Keywords

• eudaimonia
• utopia
• happiness
• virtue
• pleasure
• constitution
• commonwealth
• slavery