Philosophy in the Contemporary World

Volume 5, Issue 2/3, Summer/Fall 1998

Realism, Constructionism, and the Self

The Self in Aristotle’s Ethics

This paper examines Aristotle’s treatment of friendship and self-love in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics. The purpose is to explore what Aristotle means by self, and his understanding of why selves become, engaged in benevolent relationships with others. Some discussion of Aristotle’s influence on Kierkegaard helps to bring out the significance of Aristotle’s insights about the self. Aristotle explains how the self’s movement toward actuality grounds friendship and benevolence. True friendship and all endeavors to “produce” good, derive from love for one’s own being as mediated by one’s intelligence or nous. All such authentic endeavors constitute an effort to actualize one’s self, to act nobly, to be in one’s achievement and to panicipate in the community of being.