Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School March 2019 Aristotle's Quarrel with Socrates: Friendship in Political Thought John Boersma Louisiana State Univer, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Ancient Philosophy Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, and the Political Theory Commons Recommended Citation Boersma, John, "Aristotle's Quarrel with Socrates: Friendship in Political Thought" (2019). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4858. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4858 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ARISTOTLE’S QUARREL WITH SOCRATES: FRIENDSHIP IN POLITICAL THOUGHT A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by John Boersma B.A. Ave Maria University, 2011 J.D./M.A. St. John’s University, 2015 May 2019 © Copyright 2019 John Boersma All rights reserved ii Dedicated to my wife, Jennifer Driscoll Boersma iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a great many thanks to many people. My dissertation has its origins in the first political theory seminar course I took at Louisiana State University, taught by my committee chair, Professor James R. Stoner. Professor Stoner’s approach to teaching not only introduced me to the complexity and intricacy of ancient political thought but instilled in me a desire to make sense of that complexity. The guidance and wisdom I’ve received from my committee members—James Stoner, Cecil Eubanks, Alexander Orwin, Mary Sirridge, and Christopher Sullivan—has been invaluable. In addition, I would like to thank my professors from St. John’s University, William Byrne, Mark Movsesian and Marc DeGirolami, each of whom encouraged me to pursue my graduate studies. In addition, I would like to thank my parents. Aristotle writes that one can never repay the debt one owes to ones’ parents. This is undoubtedly true in my case. In addition to giving me the gift of life and raising me according to the principles of the Christian faith, my parents have been a constant source of support and encouragement. My father patiently read and edited each chapter, providing helpful feedback and criticism. Last, words cannot express the gratitude I have toward my wife and children for their love, support, and patience. Jennifer is my dearest friend, and her support of my graduate studies, after having already endured three years as the wife of a law student, is a testament to her deep and abiding friendship. Her love for me and our children, Kathryn, Gerald, Theodore, and our two boys on the way, has, in no small way, made my graduate studies and this dissertation possible. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...vi INTRODUCTION. POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND FRIENDSHIP ...……………………..1 CHAPTER ONE. SOCRATIC FRIENDSHIP AND MAN’S DESIRE FOR THE GOOD: LYSIS……………………………………………………………………………………15 CHAPTER TWO. SOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP……………………………………………...58 CHAPTER THREE. ARISTOTLE’S FRIENDSHIP OF THE GOOD………...…………….121 CHAPTER FOUR. THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP.….……..173 CONCLUSION. FRIENDSHIP AND THE PRACTICE OF POLITICS………..…………...237 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………253 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………261 v ABSTRACT Friendship played an outsized role in ancient political thought in comparison to medieval and modern political philosophies. Most modern scholarship has paid relatively little attention to the role of friendship in ancient political philosophy. Recently, however, scholars are increasingly beginning to investigate classical conceptions of friendship. My dissertation joins this growing interest by examining the importance of friendship in the political thought of Socrates and Aristotle. Specifically, I analyze the divergent approaches that Socrates and Aristotle take to politics and trace these distinct approaches to their differing conceptions of friendship. Through an examination of two Platonic dialogues—the Lysis and the Gorgias—I make the case that Socrates has a largely negative conception of friendship, according to which all friendships are based upon a metaphysical lack or need. This negative understanding of friendship causes him to adopt a negative, abstentious approach to politics. In contrast, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents a conception of friendship that is based not upon deficiency and need, but instead upon the mutual recognition of each other’s complementary virtues. Aristotle’s positive account of friendship ensures that he does not take a negative, abstentious approach to politics, but instead seeks to use his philosophic insight to impact politics and orient it toward the good. vi INTRODUCTION. POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND FRIENDSHIP Friendship and Politics The topic of friendship has recently seen a resurgence of scholarly interest. No less than eight monographs in the past few years have been devoted to this topic, and a fair number of such recent publications make recourse to the writings on friendship that date from classical antiquity to help further their own inquiries into the concept of friendship.1 Interestingly, while political philosophers of antiquity, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero all discuss the concept of friendship in detail, it fell out of favor as a source of inquiry with the coming of the Christian era. Lorraine Smith Pangle argues that Christianity’s call to “devote one’s heart as completely as possible to God, and to regard all men as brothers” may be the cause of this eclipse.2 According to Pangle, this new conception of the way social relations ought to be ordered “made the existence of private, exclusive, and passionate attachments to individual human beings seem inherently questionable,” unless ordered toward marriage and family life.3 Through much of the Middle Ages, friendship seems to have been less important as a topic of inquiry than it had been 1 See, P.E. Digeser, Friendship Reconsidered: What it Means and How it Matters to Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016); Alexander Nehamas, On Friendship (New York: Basic Books, 2016) Ann Ward, Contemplating Friendship in Aristotle’s Ethics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016); Filippa Modesto, Dante’s Idea of Friendship: The Transformation of a Classical Concept (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015); Gregg Lambert, Philosophy After Friendship: Deleuze’s’ Conceptual Personae (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); Seow Hon Tan, Justice as Friendship: A Theory of Law, (New York: Routledge, 2015); John von Heyking, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (Montreal: McGill- Queens University Press, 2016); Alicia J. Batten, Friendship and Benefaction in James (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017). 2 Lorraine Smith Pangle, Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2. 3 Ibid.; Cf., David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) esp. 156–167; But see, Constant J. Mews and Neville Chiavaroli, “The Latin West” in Friendship: A History, ed. Barbara Caine (New York: Routledge, 2014) 73, who argue that while there was a profound shift in the understanding of friendship from the Classical period to the Medieval period, “classical traditions of friendship never completely disappeared.” 1 during the classical period. Though it enjoyed a mild resurgence in the Renaissance era in the writings of Michel de Montaigne and Francis Bacon, after the Enlightenment, it again fell into desuetude.4 This history may go some way to explaining the resurgence of interest in friendship. If Christianity is responsible for channeling the love of friendship into marriage, it may be that the recent breakdown of the family goes some way to explaining the renewed interest in friendship: as the social unit in which individuals found completion begins to break down, people may begin looking to friendship elsewhere to fulfill that lacuna. Alternatively, it may be that people are responding to the inability of social contract theories to explain deep commitments. Perhaps as abstract rights and duties begin to be perceived as no longer capable of providing a solid foundation for politics, people are turning to friendship to afford this foundation.5 Whatever the reason, friendship has long been perceived as holding out the possibility of providing completion to man.6 To what extent can friendship provide an antidote to what seems to be a prevailing sense of anomie and isolation in our society? Should friendship figure more prominently in our political life? Was the eclipse of friendship as a basis of political order a salutary development or a problematic one? 4 Montaigne, “Of Friendship,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976); Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship,” in Francis Bacon: Essays and New Atlantis (New York: Walter J. Black, 1942). Pangle writes that “the devaluation of friendship is the result of a decisive new tun in philosophy that occurred