Autor: Purcell, Brendan M.

Buch: The Drama of Humanity

Titel: The Drama of Humanity

Stichwort: Aristoteles, Freundschaft, Quelle, Ursrpung, nous,

Kurzinhalt: Identifikation mit seinem wahren Selbst (nous)

Textausschnitt: § 2 THE SOURCE OF FRIENDSHIP

21/5 Aristotle has the difficulty of articulating technically for the first time the shared habitual state of character which friendship is, without the linguistic developments for dealing with the specifically personal and interpersonal which we take for granted in later Western culture. In his Ethics, IX, 4 and 8, he deals with the source of friendship, which is not an abstract moral principle but a concrete good person. And since friendship is a relationship between several good persons, in IX,4, he uses the notion of the relationship of a good person with himself as a model or heuristic for deepening his understanding of this new interpersonal reality emerging into history among Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and their various disciples. Especially in IX,6, he shows its expansion into the human community, in keeping with his dictum in the Politics, 1262b7, that 'Friendship is the greatest good of the polis.' (135f; Fs)

22/5 Firstly then, there is Aristotle's notion of the good man as one who has achieved a relationship of conscious identification with his true self, which is the nous in him. He wishes to be his truest self, and to have nothing outside himself at the cost of his self: in fact the only good the good man tends towards unconditionally is participation in the divine good.1 Such a man, Aristotle continues in IX,4, wishes to live with himself, and in IX,8, he develops this notion of the good man's relation with himself, as his genuine love for or friendship with himself: (136; Fs)

[M]en say that one ought to love best one's best friend, and a man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it; and these attributes are found most of all in a man's attitude to himself, and so are all the other attributes by which a friend is defined [...] he is his own best friend and ought to love himself best.(IX,8)

21/5 The objection that self-love is selfishness gives Aristotle the opportunity to explain the new psychology of the self-transcendent self. He distinguishes the ordinary meaning of self-love, as closed-in and, in the terrible description he gives in IX,4, ultimately self-destructive of the true self-'a bad man seems to do everything for his own sake, and the more so the more wicked he is.' Such self-lovers 'assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures.'(IX,8) (136; Fs)

22/5 In contrast to such closed-in self-love, there is the outgoing self-love of the person who loves what is most human in himself, his nous-we could call this the selfs love of the intrinsically self-transcendent self. Such a love for that part of himself by which he reaches out to the divine good and to the good in others can involve him in losing his own life for their sake: (136; Fs) (notabene)

[H]e is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to a rational principle is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous [...] It is true of the good man [...] that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them; for he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself nobility; since he would prefer [...] a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum-existence, and one great and noble act to many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless obtain this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for themselves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their friends will gain more; for while a man's friend gains wealth he himself achieves nobility. The same is true of honour and office [...] But he may even give up actions to his friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend's acting than to act himself [...] In this sense [...] a man should be a lover of self.(IX,8)

23/5 It is hard not to be reminded of Aristotle's friend Hermias in this masterly delineation of the kind of utterly mature person who is, for Aristotle, the concrete source of friendship. (137; Fs)