Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life

  • Sherman N
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Abstract

In this paper I want to consider the value of friendship from an Aristote- lian point of view. The issue is of current interest given recent challenges to impartialist ethics to take more seriously the commitments and attach- ments of a person.' In what follows I want to enter that debate in only a restricted way by strengthening the challenge articulated in Aristotle's systematic defense of friendship and the shared life. After some introductory remarks, I begin by considering Aristotle's notion that good living or happiness (eudaimonia)2 for an individual nec- essarily includes the happiness of others. Shared happiness entails the rational capacity for jointly promoting common ends as well as the capac- ity to identify with and coordinate separate ends. This extended notion of happiness presupposes the extension of self through friends, and next I consider certain minimal conditions necessary for attachment. Finally, I discuss how Aristotle's notion of a friend as "another self" is compatible both with a conception of the separateness of the individuals and of the distinctive ways in which each individual realizes virtue within a shared life. Aristotle

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APA

Sherman, N. (1987). Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 47(4), 589. https://doi.org/10.2307/2107230

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