Shared Tastes: Similarity in Aristotelian Character Friendship

What is it about?

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle repeatedly claims that the best kinds of friends are similar to each other. This likely seems familiar enough to the modern reader. But what does this similarity amount to? Is it the sort of troublesome and clannish kind of similarity in which we befriend only those who happen to be sufficiently like ourselves? Is it the sort of formal and uninteresting kind of similarity in which good people share the same good characteristics (like being courageous and noble)? I argue that Aristotle envisions an interesting and substantive similarity between the best kinds of friends, which similarity is nevertheless neither troublesome nor clannish.

Featured Image