Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"

Paper Summary:

The author of this paper outlines Aristotle's view on the nature of friendship and goodness. In Book IX, the Greek philosopher concedes that everyone is not the same and that these dissimilarities may be a detriment to friendship. The writer stresses Aristotle's opinion that according to the ethics of the time, a good man would want for a friend what he would want for himself. This paper shows why Aristotle's philosophy continues to have an influence on developing Western philosophical theories.

From the Paper:

"Aristotle assumes that a happy man is also a good man. This will be elaborated further in this paper. First, in a consideration of friendship, let us look at what friendship does for the good and happy person. Aristotle's view is that the one characteristic of a friend is rather to do something good for a friend than to do something good for himself. This is of course a virtue. So the good man, being good, would need to do good things for other people. Because
the good man enjoys doing this, many people will be attracted to him and want to have him for their friend. And so many will also do good things for the good person, because they are his friends. And thus goodness and friendship feed upon each other. This need to do good things for people is the basis that Aristotle uses for his view that we need friends both in prosperity and adversity."

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