Primary Friendship in the City: Respect, Duties of Virtue and Other Selves in Aristotle’s Politics

This paper unfolds into three parts. In the first one, I shall provide a short introduction to the main general features of friendship and the three kinds identified by Aristotle, with particular reference to perfect friendship and its distinctive concern for the friend "for the sake of the friend". In the second part, I will examine the notion of "koinonia" and identify it as the locus of political friendship, especially with regard to the ideal city. where each citizen seems to have an equal entitlement to political participation. Finally, I will take issue with the idea of the friend as "another self" and stress its prescriptive role, especially with reference to the view that decent fellow-citizens, qua citizens according to virtue, ought to respect and wish good things for each other.