Aristotle's theory of friendship and ethical selfishness

Abstract

The friendship has founded a political relationship that put in the background any rule that instrumentalizes the relation between self and other. What is fundamental is not only our own “self-referential” desires or those of others, but the construction of a political-ethical base of action and “correlation” in which the key is what we have in common, i.e. what we share and consent. We defend, therefore, that it is such perspective that Aristotle seeks to support in VII Ethica Eudemia, VIII and IX Ethica Nicomachea (EN). Therefore, from the existential structure of man and thus maintaining consistency with Aristotle’s thoughts exposed in Politica, Physica, De Anima and Metaphysica, the friendship is, not by necessity, but by its political and ontocosmological constitution, an “appropriate” response to how men should relate to each other, namely: “ [...] man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others. Therefore even the happy man lives with others; for he has the things that are by nature good” (EN 1169b15-20).