Friendship, Morality and Ethics in Reminiscences from Aristotle: An Outline of the Personalist Interpretation of Friendship

Jacek FRYDRYCH

Department of Ethics, Institute of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

The current article describes friendship as an essentially normative phenomenon. The first thinker to have developed a mature conception of friendship conceived of as an interpersonal relation of normative character was Aristotle. Thus, in the opening section, I expound the Aristotelian understanding of friendship with the objective to point that the understanding of this phenomenon as a strictly moral reality involves a specific conception of morals. Having refuted the Aristotelian (eudaimonistic) interpretation of morality, yet preserving the Stagirite’s model of the phenomenon of friendship, I sketch an outline of the personalist approach to this category, drawing on Tadeusz Styczeń’s interpretation of the phenomenon of morality, in which the moment of truth-grasping has constitutive value. Indeed, I claim that a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon of friendship construed as a normative relation is impossible unless the normative power of truth is taken into account. In this context, I also conclude that the present crisis of the institution of friendship results, among others, from inadequate education, which does not leave room for a systematic insight into the moral dimension of a human life.

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

Keywords:

friendship, morality, truth, ethics, Aristotle, Tadeusz Styczeń