Philosophers' Imprint 11:1-28 (2011)
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Abstract |
In Nicomachean Ethics 10.7, Aristotle says that the contemplative wise
person living the happiest and most self-sufficient life will need other
people less than a person living a life of practical virtue. This seems to
be in tension with Aristotle's emphasis elsewhere on the political nature
of human beings. I analyze in detail Aristotle's most elaborate defense of
the need for friends in the happy life in Nicomachean Ethics 9.9 to see
whether and how he resolves the need for friends with the self-sufficiency
of the happy life. The virtue-friendship described in the chapter does
turn out to be more compatible with the self-contained unity of a happy
life than other sorts of friendship, because collaboration in virtuous
activities integrates the friend into one's activities. This is true even
for contemplative friendship, where, as Aristotle suggests in the ornate
final argument of 9.9, the friends collaboratively contemplate human
nature and take pleasure in the goodness of human life. The unity achieved
in this kind of friendship is an imitation of God's self-contemplative and
self-contained unity. Nonetheless, I conclude, there is no evidence that
Aristotle did not think that friendship was conditioned on human failings
and so that friends would be less necessary for those leading the most
excellent contemplative lives.
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Keywords | Aristotle Friendship Self-Knowledge |
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Loneliness and the Emotional Experience of Absence.Tom Roberts & Joel Krueger - 2021 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (2):185-204.
Aristotle on Self-Sufficiency, External Goods, and Contemplation.Marc Gasser-Wingate - 2020 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102 (1):1-28.
Aristotelian Character Friendship as a ‘Method’ of Moral Education.Kristján Kristjánsson - 2020 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 39 (4):349-364.
Scholarship on Aristotle's Ethical and Political Philosophy (2011-2020).Thornton Lockwood - manuscript
Legal Vices and Civic Virtue: Vice Crimes, Republicanism and the Corruption of Lawfulness. [REVIEW]Ekow N. Yankah - 2013 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (1):61-82.
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