Autor: Purcell, Brendan M.

Buch: The Drama of Humanity

Titel: The Drama of Humanity

Stichwort: Freundschaft; Freunde: Aristoteles, Plato

Kurzinhalt: Plato, Aristoteles: Freundschaft als Aktualisierung der Teilnahme an Gott; Gedicht; gültige Standards in der Formulierung von Freundschaft

Textausschnitt: § 5 THE LIFE OF FRIENDSHIP

31/5 We can only refer to those earlier chapters in the first book of his Ethics where Aristotle unfolds his conception of the mature man as dynamically oriented towards the happiness which is the highest fulfilment of his soul, as a participation in the greatest good (I,1,2,7,12, and 13). In the last chapters of his treatise on friendship, Aristotle argues that the happy man needs friends for the fulfilment of his happiness. He is so conscious of goodness in himself, and even more so in his friends, whom he experiences as other selves, that he will want to share his life with his friend (IX,9). So the final chapter of Book IX concludes with a beautiful description of that shared life and development: (140; Fs)

[Friendship is a partnership, and as a man is to himself, so is he to his friend; now in his own case the consciousness of his being is desirable, and so therefore is the consciousness of his friend's being, and the activity of this consciousness is produced when they live together, so that it is natural that they aim at this [...] Thus the friendship of bad men turns out an evil thing, for because of their instability they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil by becoming like each other, while the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship; and they are thought to become better too by their activities and by improving each other.(IX,12).

§ 6 THE FRIENDSHIP OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

32/5 Both Plato and Aristotle despite their quite different approaches agree on the fundamental issues of friendship, that the true friend is the good man; that the friendship of good men, even if a rare occurrence because there are not that many good men around, is the core experience underpinning and expanding into a genuinely human community; that at the heart of that experience is its being a shared actualization of man's participation in the divine good. Both writers know that an explicit awareness of this transcosmic dimension both of personal and interpersonal existence is an exceptional achievement. At the beginning and the end of the Symposium, Socrates is depicted rapt in contemplation alone, and Aristotle left his magnificent account of the good man's achievement of complete happiness, which is the mountain peak towards which his whole Ethics has been leading, to the final Book, following the treatise on friendship: (141; Fs)

If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us [...] whether it be itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be perfect happiness [...] If then the intellect (nous) is something divine in comparison with man, so is the life of the intellect divine in comparison with human life. Nor ought we obey those who enjoin that a man should have a man's thoughts and a mortal the thoughts of mortality, but we ought to immortalize as much as possible and do everything toward a life in accordance with the highest thing in man (X,7)

33/5 Employing Aristotle's magnificent symbol, athanatizein, 'to immortalize,' (Voegelin, 1990b,pp.87-8) we can say that in both writers friendship is the locus in which genuine persons can best immortalize, achieve their fullest happiness in deepening participation in unconditional goodness. For Voegelin, Aristotle's philia, like Plato's eros is an existential virtue, a habitual actualization of the core of our being in tension beyond its own structure. (141; Fs)

34/5 Certainly there are the differing emphases in both writers' approach to friendship pointed out by Fraisse (1974,p.227) and Moulakis (1973,p. 100). Plato focuses on the divine goodness towards which our friendship is leading and in which our love is a participation, while Aristotle in his later period attempts to differentiate the specifically human aspect of this participation in divine goodness. Plato's style in the Symposium is a blend of the dialogical with the philosophical myth, while Aristotle's in the Ethics takes the form of an empirical analysis. (141; Fs)

35/5 Rather than set them at odds, it seems closer to the reality to see them as complementing each other in their experience and articulation of friendship. Plato give us the vertical upthrust of genuine friendship; Aristotle, while not neglecting this aspect, carefully explores the horizontal determinations of a whole range of levels in human friendship. Both writers set standards of analysis below which no subsequent investigation of friendship, including its contemporary formulation as a person-centred philosophy of universal humanity, has a right to fall. It is sobering to think that the prevailing winds in contemporary investigation of human relations blow in the direction of what Aristotle would classify as the useful or the pleasant, but hardly ever in the direction of the good. (142; Fs)

36/5 If only because it indicates the substance of the experience in which such analyses were rooted, we may conclude our brief examination of the first extended articulation of the substance of human relationship as such, with Aristotle's poem to the man who was perhaps his best friend, Plato. Along with the depth of personal appreciation, Aristotle shows that he is conscious of a spiritual epoch: that with Plato, a new stage in the articulation of the meaning of human existence had been attained, if not by Plato 'alone,' at least 'first.' It was written as a dedication for an altar to the god Philia, Friendship, which had been erected in Plato's honour (Jaeger.1967, p.107): (142; Fs)

Coming to the famous plain of Cecropia
He piously set up an altar of holy Friendship
For the man whom it is not lawful for bad men even to praise,
Who alone or first of mortals clearly revealed,
By his own life and by the methods of his words,
That a man becomes good and happy at the same time.
Now no one can ever attain to these things again.