Political Friendship and the Second Self in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
| dc.contributor.author | Vander Valk, Francis | |
| dc.contributor.editor | Fitzsimmons, Scott | |
| dc.contributor.editor | Singh, Anita | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-12-18T19:35:25Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-12-18T19:35:25Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2004 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The difficulty that academics have faced in resolving the tensions between competing interpretations of Aristotelian political friendship can be traced to a lack of attention paid to Aristotle’s understanding of the self. The friend, Aristotle tells us, is a 'second self,' but it is not clear what he means by this phrase. One group of contemporary commentators (to whom I give the name Strong Integrationists) suggests that Aristotle calls for an intimate connection between moral and political forms of friendship. Strong Integrationists, in making their arguments, tacitly assume a more-or-less Cartesian understanding of the self. I suggest that this assumption is in error. The Aristotelian self is generally unstable, fractured, and only rarely capable of the sustained virtue that characterizes the highest form of friendship. By reexamining the nature of the Aristotelian self I hope to provide a reading of political friendship that is more faithful to Aristotle’s text, and more in line with his own philosophical assumptions. | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1480-6339 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1480-6367 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112866 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/38461 | |
| dc.publisher.department | Political Science | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Arts | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Albany | |
| dc.rights | © Innovations: A Journal of Politics 1998-2029 | |
| dc.title | Political Friendship and the Second Self in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics | |
| dc.type | journal article |