Comp. by: SatchitananthaSivam Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004760427 Date:24/2/20 Time:10:49:06 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004760427.3d Dictionary : NOAD_USDictionary 566 24 Friendship in Early Greek Ethics Dimitri El Murr 1. Introduction Aristotle launches into his account of friendship (philia) in Book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, with the following remarks: But there are not a few disputes about the subject. Some people suppose that it [friendship] is a kind of likeness, and that those that are alike are friends, which is the source of sayings such as “Like tends to like,” and “Jackdaw to jackdaw,” and so on; whereas others take the contrary position and say that like to like is always a matter of the proverbial potters. And in relation to these same things they pursue the question further, taking it to a more general and scientific level—Euripides claiming that “Ever lusts the earth for rain” when it has become dry, “Lusts too the mighty heaven, filling full with rain, To fall on earth”; Heraclitus talking of hostility bringing together, the divergent making finest harmony, and of all things coming to be through strife; but taking a view contrary to these there is Empedocles, for one, who says that like seeks like. Now those problems that come from natural science we may set to one side, since they are not germane to the present inquiry; let us look further into those that belong to the human sphere and relate to characters and affective states, for example, whether friendship comes about among all types, or whether it is impossible for those who are bad characters to be friends, and whether there is one kind of friendship or more than one.¹ Although it has long been recognized that in this passage, as elsewhere in EN 8–9, Aristotle relies heavily on earlier Platonic material, particularly on Plato’s account of friendship in the Lysis,² Aristotle’s approach to the subject is original and philosophically significant. He introduces a clear-cut double specification of philia and in so doing a distinctively ethical conception of friendship. Aristotle recognizes friendship as a crucial element of ethical life; and this view informs all subsequent accounts. The first specification, manifest in the quotation, concerns the broad extension of friendship. Earlier treatments regarded philia as a physical or cosmological relation, as well as an anthropological one. Instead, Aristotle claims that philia, having nothing ¹ EN 8.1, 1155a32–b 13. The translation is from S. Broadie and C. Rowe, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translation, introduction and commentary (Oxford, 2002). ² See, e.g., J. Annas, ‘Plato and Aristotle on Friendship and Altruism,’ Mind, 86 (1977), 532–54, A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1989) 9–10, and T. Penner and C. Rowe, Plato’s Lysis.[Lysis] (Cambridge, 2005), 312–22. See also H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus in Aristotelis Opera, ed. I. Bekker, vol. V (Berlin, 1961) 599 (s.v. Πλάτων 1), who provides a useful list of parallel passages in EN 8–9 and Plato’s Lysis. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 24/2/2020, SPi Dimitri El Murr, Friendship in Early Greek Ethics In: Early Greek Ethics. Edited by: David Conan Wolfsdorf, Oxford University Press (2020). © the several contributors. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198758679.003.0024