Plato’s Lysis and Aristotle’s Notion of Friendship

Plato’s Lysis forms the background for Aristotle’s analysis of friendship (philia, φιλία). The dialogue raises four central questions: who is the friend—the lover or the beloved? Are friends alike or unlike? Are friends good or bad people? And what is the deep ground of loving friends? Although Socrates leaves each of these issues in aporia, Aristotle’s account of friendship offers systematic and philosophically illuminating responses. These responses together yield a comprehensive picture of Aristotelian friendship. Friendship is grounded more in loving than in being loved; both similarity and difference can give rise to friendship, though in distinct forms; and while bad people may be friends only in a qualified sense, good people—despite their self-sufficiency—still require friends. The account culminates in Aristotle’s claim that friends are “another self,” a claim that explains why friendship is necessary for decent people without reducing friendship simply to self-love.

Author dc:creator

• XIE YANAN

• Θετικές Επιστήμες
• Science

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

uoadl:5363160

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:lib.uoa.gr:uoadl:5363160