Aristóteles amizade

https://www.academia.edu/3798602/Between_Advantage_and_Virtue_Aristotle_s_Theory_of_Political_Friendship_Published_in_History_of_Political_Thought_26_2005_565_585_?email_work_card=title 3 How can the Aristotelian account of friendship contribute to an understanding of the notion of politikē philia? The aim of this paper is to sketch out a general description of political friendship in the light of Aristotle’s well-known distinction between friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and friendships between virtuous people drawn in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics. I shall define the boundaries of political friendship through the analysis of resemblances to and differences from both friendship according ethical excellence and friendship grounded in mere utility. Political friendship seems to be a kind of advantage-friendship sui generis, where the search for utility does not prevent people from displaying other-regarding qualities like cooperation, trust and loyalty, that are typical of friendship according to ethical excellence. I will also show that activity according to justice replaces the form of mutual and intimate love that should subsist in a friendship based on ethical virtue. of justice in the polis; (ii) by illustrating in what respects political friendship resembles/differs from two of the three kinds of friendship identified in sections II and III of Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics: friendship grounded in utility and friendship grounded in ethical excellence (aretē). My view is that, in Aristotle’s thought, when it comes to good communities, political friendship is a kind of advantage-friendship sui generis, where the search for utility does not prevent people from displaying ‘other-regarding’ qualities like cooperation, trust and loyalty, that are typical of friendship according to virtuous individuals. I hope to show that activity according to justice replaces the form of mutual and intimate love that should subsist in a friendship based on ethical excellence, i.e. a kind of love which is not conceivable between citizens who do not know each other personally. I In Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle introduces the discussion of philia by describing it as a kind of excellence, or something related to it, that is necessary for human life: it will be appropriate to discuss friendship, since friendship is a kind of excellence, or goes along with excellence, and furthermore is very necessary for living (NE VIII, 1155a3-5) 5 . As it might be noticed here, rather than presenting friendship as a kind of relation, he seems to be more keen on stressing its closeness to aretē 6 , as though he meant to emphasize the ethical aspect of friendship; it would seem that - on his view - one cannot be friend to another without possessing a virtuous state of character. Secondly, 4 friendship is described as a very necessary thing (anagkaiotaton) for human life. The idea of the necessity of friendship with a view to living might make us wonder whether Aristotle is holding friendship to be necessary simply for a ‘mere living’ or, rather, for ‘living well’ 7 . As he makes clear in Book  of the Metaphysics, ‘necessary’ means both ‘that without which, as a concomitant condition, life is impossible’ (Metaph. , 1015a20- 21) and ‘The conditions without which good cannot be or come to be’ (Metaph. , 1015a22-23). It seems to me that Aristotle’s interest is addressed towards the necessity of friendship in the light of the good life rather than in mere living, as he shows at NE VIII, 1155a5-9 when he claims that no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the other good things; for even the wealthy or those who rule over or dominate others are thought to need friends more than anything- since what use would such prosperity be if they were deprived of the possibility of beneficence, which occurs most, and is most to be praised, in relation to friends? A similar concern emerges in the Eudemian Ethics, when he states that we think a friend to be one of the greatest goods, and lack of philia and solitude a very terrible thing, since our entire life and our voluntary associations are with friends (EE VII, 1234b31-34). Again, the supposed connection between friendship and the good life is supported by Aristotle’s appeal to the notion of ‘to kalon’ which, in the Aristotelian lexicon, is intimately intertwined to aretē. An indicative example of the relationship between friendship and to kalon is provided at NE VIII 1155a29-31: 5 It [philia] is not only necessary, but fine 8 as well, for we praise those who love their philoi, and having many philoi seems to be one of the fine things; and, furthermore, we think the very same people are good people and good philoi. It might be thought that, in the passage at issue, Aristotle is not expressing his own theory of friendship, given that the expressions ‘we praise’, ‘seems’ and ‘we think’ occurring in the passage seem to indicate beliefs generally held by people 9 . On the other hand, it should be reminded that Aristotle often assumes the so-called endoxa as a starting point for the development of his own philosophical views, ending up by interiorizing such general beliefs 10 ; therefore, there is no need to suppose that, when it comes to friendship, he rejects such beliefs, not least because Aristotle’s resort to ‘to kalon’ here might evoke the importance held by this notion both in his ethics and in his metaphysical thought 11 . If so, although the idea of friendship as a necessary thing, taken at a face value, seems to be more conceptually connected to advantage than