%0 Journal Article
%T FRIENDSHIP AND THE COMMON GOOD IN ARISTOTLE
%A FRED GUYETTE
%J Agathos : an International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences
%D 2012
%I Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Ia?i
%X For theorists of political liberalism, individual rights take priority over the good. Communitarians hold, however, that a society focused exclusively on individual rights will be made up of atomistic selves who cannot sustain any commitment to the common good. Aristotle¡¯s discussions of friendship and the common good can contribute to the conversation concerning the polis and its ends. Aristotle¡¯s Nicomachean Ethics emphasizes homonoia, but his Politics envisions ¡°political friendship¡± more as a space for agonistic struggle. Aristotle knows about the destructive effects of pleonexia, and he describes several community-building virtues that are opposed to it: justice, temperance, and liberality. Aristotle also claims that the genre of tragedy can inform a commitment to work for the common good.
%K Aristotle
%K friendship
%K common good
%K justice
%U http://www.agathos-international-review.com/issue3_2/13.%20Articol%20-%20Fred%20Guyette.pdf