Friendship and politics in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Abstract

Aristotle’s discussion of political friendship points to perfect friendship and the possibility that the good citizen can be the good person. This conclusion is arrived at by reflection on three problems raised in Aristotle’s analysis. First, citizen friendships of utility are the cause of civil strife. Second, there is a tension between citizen friendship in timocracy and justice. Although citizen friendship in a timocracy can aspire to perfect friendship, political justice requires kingship. Third, familial friendship, although natural, is more limited in scope than political friendship. This article concludes with Aristotle’s discussion of conflicting obligations that opens up two grounds of natural friendship: relations to persons through body, and relations to persons who are virtuous. Virtue relations in timocracy allow citizen friendship to resemble perfect friendship.