Between Friendship and Self-sufficiency. The Possibility of “Human Flourishing” in the Relationship Between Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics: A Multifocal Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the link between friendship and self-sufficiency in Aristotle’s ethical and political works. Friendship and self-sufficiency are needed in order to achieve happiness, which consists in the full actualization of the good possibilities inscribed in human nature. It is the irreducible complexity of human nature that gives origin to opposite (but not contradictory) statements in Aristotle’s texts, according to which in one sense, human beings, different from gods, cannot be happy alone; but in another sense, from the point of view of his intellect (nous), the divine part in human nature man can be happy alone. The different points of view adopted by Aristotle allow for the application of different – even opposite – theoretical frames, or for what I would like to call a ‘multifocal approach’: from different point of views, Aristotle can thus be said to maintain that for a human being to be happy, he or she needs both friendship and self-sufficiency.