Aristotle's Concept Of Friendship And The Community

Friendship is one of the important issues that philosophers pay close attention to,and it also plays an important role in politics and ethics.Aristotle's discussion on friendship is an important source of the theory of friendship in Western Philosophy.His ultimate purpose of friendship is good,which is a quality of life to achieve virtue.Aristotle considers friendship as a basic virtue,both private and public.Friendship is not only an important condition for individuals to pursue happiness,but also an ethical bond that unites the city-state community.It involves two basic communities of human society: individual community and political community.No matter what kind of community,for Aristotle,friendship is the basic nature of human beings.In the individual community,it is directly extended from self-love to other love;in the political community,friendship is explained by virtue of the general good,which aims to achieve the ultimate goal of happiness.In modern political philosophy,the debate between communitarianism and liberalism on the relationship between friendship and community is becoming more and more intense.Their thinking on this issue,to some extent,will go back to Aristotle.Therefore,understanding the relationship between Aristotle's concept of friendship and different forms of community is still of great significance for understanding the relationship between modern ethics and political.This paper discusses the relationship between Aristotle's friendship and community from the following three aspects: first,starting from the basic connotation of friendship in ancient Greek social,it explores the basic treatise on friendship of philosophers before Aristotle,and probes into the basic thoughts of these philosophers concerning the private and public nature of friendship.Second,Aristotle's critical inheritance of previous thinkers,was used as a basis to analyzes Aristotle's theory of friendship,focusing on the types,characteristics and purposes of friendship.Third,it focuses on Aristotle's view of friendship in the two forms of private community and political community,in order to grasp the internal connection and specific differences between political friendship and private friendship.