Friendship and the Good in Aristotle

If the number of published discussions is a fair measure, the two books of the Nicomachean Ethics devoted to friendship (PtXita) have not much engaged the attention of philosophers and philosophical scholars. Yet such neglect is not easily justifiable. For both in his account of what friendship is and in the various considerations he brings to bear to show what is good about friendship, Aristotle displays psychological subtlety and analytical ingenuity of an unusually high order, even for him. In this paper I hope to show this for Aristotle's views on the value of friendship, by discussing his principal arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere bearing on this topic.'