Abstract
My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of the Aristotelian notion of civic friendship to contemporary political discussion by arguing that it can function as a social good. Contrary to some dominant interpretations of the ancient conception of friendship according to which it can only be understood as an obligatory reciprocity, I argue that friendship between fellow citizens is important because it contributes to the unity of both state and community by transmitting feelings of intimacy and solidarity. In that sense, it can be understood as an important relationship predicated on affection and generosity, virtues lacking from both contemporary politics and society that seem to be merely dominated by Post-Enlightenment ideals. For Aristotle, friendship is important for society because it generates concord, articulating thus a basis for social unity and political agreement.
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Notes
Abbreviations: NE (Nicomachean Ethics), EE (Eudemian Ethics), Pol (Politics), Rhet (Rhetoric). Translations from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics are from Ross (1980) and Stalley (1995) respectively, and the translations of Aristotle’s other works are from Barnes (1984), with some alterations of my own.
Discussions of Aristotelian justice (e.g. Williams 1981; Urmson 1988; Broadie 1991; Keyt 1991; Keyt 1995; Miller 1995) mainly concentrate on Aristotle’s account of distributive justice as presented in NE V.3. Commentators rarely focus on Aristotle’s discussion in Pol. III.9-13 of the relation of justice to constitutions where—among other things—it is pointed out that ‘the pursuit of a common social life is friendship’ and that the business of friendship is to safeguard the social institutions (Pol. 1280b38-39). A notable exemption amongst commentators has been Yack (1985, 1990, 1993).
Several monographs have recently been written on the topic of Aristotelian friendship (e.g. Price 1989; Nichols 1991; Schollmeier 1994; Stern-Gillet 1995; Pangle Smith 2003) but these usually dedicate only a chapter to civic friendship; only individual papers have concentrated on Aristotelian civic friendship (e.g. Kronman 1979; Schwarzenbach 1996; Cooper 1999b; Schofield 1999; Mulgan 2000).
Despite this luck of extensive discussion of political friendship in the Politics, there is no question that Aristotle’s notion of political friendship is unequivocally linked with his notion of political community (koinonia): ‘Friendship is community, and as we are in relation to ourselves, so we are in relation to a friend’ (NE XI.1171b32-33). For an extensive discussion of this relation, see Kronman (1979, pp. 125–128) and Irwin (1990, pp. 84–87).
As Cooper (1999a, pp. 312–313) points out, ‘the field of philia covers not just the (more or less) intimate relationships between persons not bound together by near family ties, to which the words used in the modern languages to translate it are ordinarily restricted, but all sorts of family relationships (especially those of parents to children, children to parents, siblings to one another, and the marriage relationship itself); the word also has a natural and ordinary use to characterise what goes in English under the somewhat quaint-sounding name of “civic friendship”. Certain business relationships also come in here, as does common membership in religious and social clubs and political parties’. Examples of philia describing family relationships such as those of parents to children, children to parents, siblings to one another, and the marriage relationship itself can be found in NE VIII. 1161b12; 1242a1; 1161b 12 and in EE VII.10.5-6; also in Generation of Animals, III.2. 753a13. See also Blundell (1989, pp. 39–49) where she discusses the many levels and varieties of philia under three main headings: family, fellow citizens and personal friends, and Mitchell (1997, pp. 1–72) for a presentation of the various Greek popular practices of philia.
Pleasure and advantage friendships should be distinguished from exploitative relationships in which the parties aim each at their own pleasure or usefulness and not at all at the other’s good.
‘Virtue friendship’ (agathon or aretēn) is also translated as ‘perfect friendship’, ‘friendship of the good’, ‘friendship of character’, or ‘primary friendship’.
For a more extensive analysis of the three kinds of personal friendship as described by Aristotle, see Leontsini (2007, pp. 175–185) from where this analysis derives.
I am adopting Cooper’s (1999a, b) interpretation according to which all three kinds of Aristotelian philia are indeed friendship, having in common affection and an altruistic concern for another’s well-being (no matter how loosely conceived). Cooper’s interpretation is also followed by Schwarzenbach (1992, 1996), and others but not Schofield (1999).
Communities or associations like these, although similar to the political community, should be distinguished from it, since it is the ‘constitution’ (the system of courts, a common set of laws and a shared conception of justice) which distinguishes the political community from other associations either merely contractual or commercial. Aristotle rejects the commercial model for the kind of community a city constitutes in NE III. 9, since for Aristotle the end of the city is not mere life, nor an alliance for mutual defence but the common promotion of a good quality of life. For an informative discussion of this, see Cooper (1999b, pp. 365–368).
Yack (1993, p. 110) labels it as ‘shared advantage friendship’.
Both Miller (1995, p. 209) and Yack (1993, pp. 109–127) partially deny Cooper’s interpretation on different grounds, since they attempt to argue that Aristotle advocates a form of commercial civic friendship (Cooper 1999b, pp. 365–368) that would support their libertarian appropriation of Aristotelian political philosophy. The Aristotelian text is in places ambiguous as to what kind of advantage (common or commercial) political friendship is really taken to be (see Cooper 1999b, n. 11 and n. 12 and Mulgan 2000, pp. 21–24).
Aristotle does not think that we could have feelings of friendship for people who are remote from us or for people we know nothing about. Aristotle does not seem to discuss, under the heading of ethically required other concern, concern for the interests of others however close or distant one’s commitment to them. His attention is focused rather on friendship as other-concern restricted to those people to whom one has a certain kind of commitment which can be deep, as with friendship based on virtue, or shallow, as in advantage friendships. In all cases though, friendship involves some personal commitment, and thus cannot be demonstrated to ‘all humanity’ in the sense of caring for people about whom we know nothing or to whom we have no special kind of personal commitment (Annas 1993, p. 250). For people we know nothing about, we could of course have ‘goodwill’, but goodwill alone is not a sufficient condition for friendship.
I am using here the English/Latin word ‘concord’ for the translation of Greek homonoia, although there is an etymological difference between the Greek concept and its English equivalent, homonoia involving a reference to nous, as explicit in NE 1167a28-1167b2 (‘having the same thing in mind’); homonoia is the opposite of faction (stasis) and expresses the unity among the citizens that is produced by their literally being ‘same-minded’. Although Aristotle does not fully expand on the notion of concord, giving the impression that he takes for granted the familiarity with the concept, it should be noted that homonoia was considered a key political virtue for fourth-century political writers and that there was a philosophical tradition in associating friendship, which generates concord, with justice, the unity of the state and the pursuit of happiness in the city (see. e.g. Kamtekar 2004; Leontsini 2013).
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, I am grateful to Derek Edyvane, Adam Rieger, Michael Smith, Richard Stalley, Kerri Woods, and the anonymous reviewer for this journal. I would also like to thank audiences at Glasgow, Athens, Ioannina, Manchester, Leuven, and London, and for financial support the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece.
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Leontsini, E. The Motive of Society: Aristotle on Civic Friendship, Justice, and Concord. Res Publica 19, 21–35 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9204-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9204-4