-
Friendship In Aristotle Vis-À-vis Modern Day Conception Of Friendship
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 2]
Page 2 of 2
-
-
-
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.
In spite of the
fact that friendship is a “sine qua non†to human existence, it has over
the years passed through different hardships. Even the early Greeks and
Romans were victims of this. Thus Aristotle laments over the failure of
friendship with, “O my friend, there is no friendâ€.2 Empedocles on his
side, contrasts friendship with strife. This motivated Aristotle to
exalt friendship in his ‘Nicomacheaan Ethics’.
The Stoics and Cynics
place friendship upon the most complete “abundance†and generosity of
spirit. For the Christian writers, friendship is synonymous with love.
This love must be grounded in God and thus spurs one to channel the same
love to another person.
On the other hand, the decline of friendship
to its lowest level came in the modern day. Among the modern people,
there is too much exultation of romantic love as friendship. Others see
friendship as a business where one sees profit making as the primary
aim.
With this in mind, friendship, like a rolling stone that carries
a lot of dust, carries to itself many negative connotations. This makes
people to regard friendship as something to be avoided. They see it as
something that is intrinsically bad.
1.3 METHOD OF RESEARCH.
The
method applied in this research is mainly expository. It is expository
because it shows in great detail what friendship was in the olden days.
Also it exposes what is obtainable now as friendship with its benefits,
problems and possible solutions.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE WORK.
Since
time immemorial, one of the problems of human beings is how to relate
well with people around him. There is an innate derive in human beings
that pulls them together. Each of them has his or her unique way of
behaviour. But the problem remains, how can people of different
behaviour, culture, belief, etc., relate? It is to tackle this problem
that motivated several scholars and leaders of thought to have various
speculations on friendship. Among these scholars is a Greek philosopher,
Aristotle.
Aristotle’s conception of friendship seems to be more
famous than that of other philosophers. Therefore, the limitation of
this work will be on how the modern people conceive friendship, bearing
Aristotle’s conception in mind. This is whether or not the modern day
conception of friendship is in line with that of Aristotle.
1.5 DIVISION OF WORK
This
work is divided into five chapters for easy grasping. Chapter one is
the general introduction, purpose of study, statement of problem, method
of research, scope of the work and division of work. In chapter two,
the researcher gives an overview of some philosophers’ view on
friendship. Chapter three is the heart of the work. It treats both the
Aristotelian conception and modern day conception of friendship. Chapter
four handles the importance of friendship, the problems of friendship
and possible solution to the problems of friendship. Finally, chapter
five sums up the research by evaluating and summarizing the whole work.
1
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Translated with introduction and notes
by Martin Ostwald, (The bobs – Merrill Company Inc., 1962). IX, ix,
1169a, 3.
2 R. White, “Friendship: Ancient and modernâ€(, International philosophical quarterly, vol. Xxxix,) no. 1.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 2]
Page 2 of 2
-
